http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/ ... ith_am.php
Notable snippets:
Murray: Does that mean that the January 1st deadline – how big a deal is the ending of the UN mandate which gives currently gives the US occupation powers in Iraq?
Crocker: It is important. Iraq has been the subject of a Chapter 7 resolution since 2003. In 2004, when an Iraqi government assumed responsibility, they continued under a Chapter 7 resolution, so the expiration of this resolution will mark a very important step in the history of a new Iraq. And things will be different.
We have to have a legal basis to operate here to do anything, whether it’s actually security operations or to train and equip [Iraqi forces], so there has to be a legal basis. The desire of the Iraqis is to move from the Security Council resolution to a bilateral agreement.
We’ve made very substantial progress, I think we’re getting to the endgame, but you don’t have an agreement until you have everything agreed and we’re not quite there yet. It is clear that this agreement is going to create a very different reality. It will affirm Iraqi sovereignty. In every respect in this agreement, Iraqi’s are controlling their own destiny in a way they don’t under the Security Council resolution, so it going to mark an important evolution in Iraq’s development as a state.
It is striking, to say the least, that there is virtually no coverage of Iraq in the news anymore given all the criticism of the war - including the reckless proclamation by Harry Reid that "the war is lost" - in the not so distant past. It's bad for the American psyche I think that we only ever hear about our failures and rarely, if ever, about our successes. Something needs to change.Murray: You arrived in Iraq as Ambassador in March of 2007; it’s now been about 18 months. If you were to rate Iraq right now compared to March 2007 or perhaps October 2006, rating that period perhaps as a 1, as a time of fear and loathing, versus where we are here today two years later, on a scale of 1 to 10, where do you think we are here in October 2008?
Crocker: If it’s a relative comparison, it’s well beyond 10. This is a transformed country since the time I’ve arrived. I will always remember my first visit to a Baghdad neighborhood as Ambassador. It was to Dora and the surge brigade had just moved in to the area. I’d been here in 2003 and lived here in the late 1970s, and walking through the streets of Dora a year and a half ago, it reminded me of Beirut in the 1980s, it was a war zone.
People were afraid to go out in the streets, to the big Dora market, which had only a dozen shops open, out of maybe 400. The residents were afraid to cross the bridge to go to the hospital because they thought the national police at the checkpoint would kill them because they were Sunnis. It was deeply depressing.
Dora is now utterly transformed. Not only are all 400 shops opened, the market has expanded well beyond that and during the commemoration of the birth of the last Shia Imam, tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia walked through Dora on their way to Karbala and were given food and drink by the Sunni residents. Contrast that to a time when if any Shia had tried to walk into Dora they wouldn’t have walked out, period. It’s that kind of transformation that is, to me, utterly striking.
That said, the threats are still there. Al Qaeda is diminished and in retreat, but not defeated. The Iranians clearly are trying to follow a Hezbollah model here as in Lebanon. The big Jaish al Mahdi militia model didn’t work for them. That is transforming into a non-militant organization but they are still working with Special Groups that are trained, equipped and directed by the Qods Force out of Tehran and the training is done by Lebanese Hezbollah.
So the Sunni extreme of al Qaeda, the Shia extreme of Hezbollah-like groups directed by the Qods Force represent real threats to this country and we and the Iraqis are going to have to be absolutely diligent in not letting up and tracking them down and eliminating them.
You have the challenge of services. A year ago, everybody was talking about security. Nobody worries much about security anymore in most of the country so now they’re all complaining about services. Where is the power, where is the water, where is the job opportunities and the government is going to have to step up to that? They are making progress but there is obviously a very long way to go.
And then there is the question of political evolution. There are lots of strains and pressures in this evolving system and how that evolution takes place is going to determine the future of the country. But there has been enormous progress -- coming back from Dora, putting my head on my desk, wishing I was back in Pakistan, from that moment I never would have hoped that Iraq would have come as far as it has in these 18 months, but there is still a long way to go, so we’re going to have to stay with this.
Me too J....me too.