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Civil War Warning Blow to Blair    [

    "Low Intensity Civil War" Likely in Iraq, Ambassador Says
    By Mary Jordan and Fred Barbash
    The Washington Post

    Thursday 03 August 2006

    London - Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq has advised his government that the country is more likely headed to "low intensity civil war" and sectarian partition than to a stable democracy, the BBC reported Wednesday.

    The network said it obtained a diplomatic dispatch from William Patey to Prime Minister Tony Blair and top members of Blair's cabinet.

    The British government, which maintains troops in Iraq, has been supportive of the policies of the Bush administration in Iraq, making Patey's assessment all the more significant. Patey's views are shared by many other commentators, but few, if any, officials allied with the U.S.-led coalition have said so publicly.

    Patey's assessment was not made publicly either and the British government said it does not comment on leaked documents.

    Blair is scheduled to hold a news conference later Thursday and will likely be faced with questions about the Patey memo.

    In it, the BBC said, Patey wrote that "the prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.

    "Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror - must remain in doubt."

    He said it a major priority was to contain militia organizations - such as the Mahdi Army led by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - lest they become "a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon...

    The BBC did not publish a copy of the memo, but rather reported excerpts from it.

    President Bush has acknowledged that the situation in Iraq in many ways has worsened lately. But administration officials have resisted "civil war" analogies.

    Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has reversed a decision to skip a public hearing on Capitol Hill and said he will testify Thursday at a session on the Iraq war.

    The move came after hours of criticism and pressure from Senate Democrats who urged him to come before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer questions about the administration's Iraq policies.

    Rumsfeld had said earlier Wednesday that his crowded calendar did not allow him to be present for the meeting Thursday morning, but he agreed to attend a private, classified briefing in the afternoon with the entire Senate.

    Speaking to Pentagon reporters earlier Wednesday, Rumsfeld suggested that complaints about his decision could be politically motivated.

    The Pentagon provided no reason for the change. The committee said the Pentagon called and said the secretary would be testifying.

 

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    Civil War Warning Blow to Blair
    By James Sturcke and agencies
    The Guardian UK

    Thursday 03 August 2006

    Britain's outgoing ambassador to Baghdad has warned that civil war is the most likely outcome in Iraq, according to a leaked report.

    In a confidential memo to ministers, William Patey also predicted the break-up of Iraq along ethnic lines.

    The grim assessment from Britain's most senior civil servant in Iraq will have come as a blow to Tony Blair and his attempts to portray Iraq as "at a new beginning" on the road to a stable democracy.

    The judgment was contained in Mr Patey's final telegram, or e-cable, from Baghdad before he left the Iraqi capital last week - details of which were obtained by the BBC. Among those who received the letter were the prime minister, the foreign secretary, the defence secretary, the leader of the House of Commons, and senior military commanders in both Iraq and the UK.

    "The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy," Mr Patey wrote.

    "Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror - must remain in doubt."

    But the memo also says that the position is not hopeless, although it adds that Iraq will remain "messy and difficult" for the next five to 10 years.

    Talking about the Shia militias blamed for many killings, Mr Patey said: "If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy then preventing the Jaish al Mahdi [the Mahdi Army] from developing into a state within a state, as Hizbullah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority."

    The BBC reported it has also learned from military sources that British troops in Basra are planning to dramatically step up operations against Shia gunmen. Mr Patey urges the government to ensure that Iraqi troops are brought into this effort as the British forces "can't confront the militias alone".

    The Conservative director of policy development, Oliver Letwin, called on the government to be open about the scale of difficulties in Iraq.

    "We need a frank assessment from the government and the government needs to be very open with all of us about all the information it has received and what it really believes the position to be in Iraq. We are all in this together and we can't act together and do the right things unless we know what is really going on," Mr Letwin told the BBC's Today programme.

    "If the frank assessment is that more needs to be done, that is what we should be hearing and we should be working out how, collectively, the alliance to carry out that task can perform it."

    The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Michael Moore, said the raw truth was in "sharp contrast" to the public statements of Mr Blair and senior Iraqi politicians.

    "Nobody has been drawing attention to the still parlous security situation in the country and the desperate way in which the country is still trying to get back on its feet after the war three years ago," he told the BBC's Today programme.

    "We need a strategy. At the moment, there is no clear strategy from our government or from the Americans, apart from a hope that things will get better."

    Mr Moore said the UN should be driving the process in Iraq and that regional powers like Iran, Syria and Turkey should be given a role.

    Mr Blair also received withering criticism from one of Britain's most senior retired civil servants.

    Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former UK ambassador to Moscow and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, accused Mr Blair of failing to defend his country's interests.

    Writing in the Financial Times, he said: "Stiff in opinions, but often in the wrong, he has manipulated public opinion, sent our soldiers into distant lands for ill-conceived purposes... and reduced the Foreign Office to a demoralised cipher because it keeps reminding him of inconvenient facts."

    Sir Rodric said Mr Blair was constructing foreign policy out of "self-righteous soundbites".

    "Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago... Mr Blair's total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ grinder?"

    Diplomats in the Foreign Office have been working frantically in private for months on what they refer to as the "exit ticket" from Iraq.

    Ambitions for the country have been drastically scaled down in private. Last September, a Foreign Office source told the Guardian that the goal of the US administration to turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East had long ago been shelved. "We will settle for leaving behind an Iraqi democracy that is creaking along," the source said.

    In April, an internal US government report portrayed a grim picture of Iraq's stability, rating six of the country's 18 provinces as in a "serious" situation and one "critical".

    The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed the report, which was leaked to the New York Times. The report, a "provincial stability assessment," prepared by the US embassy and the US military command, was in marked contrast with the sunnier assessments generally heard from the White House and the Pentagon.

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