Baghdad: Conference Fails to Meet Expectations

The recent Conference on Security in Baghdad has turned out generally disappointing rather than successful, with all the hopes pinned on it by the Washington administration and the Iraqi government headed by Premier Nuri al-Maliki. Both had expected it to help stabilize Iraq, a country plagued by sectarian violence and balancing on the verge of a full-scale civil war.

In this context, the close shelling which started in the course of a conference session giving the participants a rare fright, and new bloody bomb attacks in Baghdad on the conference days looked even symbolic.

The conference was designed as a breakthrough of sorts; it convened representatives of 16 nations, and was supposed to present the new U.S. strategy to resolve the crisis in Iraq. Iran’s and Syria’s participation was to make a sensation, as the Bush Administration keeps accusing those two nations of helping fund Iraq's Shia militias and encouraging violence in that country.

Among the participants were permanent UN Security Council members and the Arab League representatives. Still, the actual attendance was not up to the expected level. For instance, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn’t turn up even though she was on the participants list.

The key issue on the official conference agenda was how the U.S., the Iraqi government and its neighbors could pool efforts to strengthen security and end sectarian violence in that country, with help from international community. At the same time, many analysts say the U.S. decision to sit down to a negotiating table with Iran and Syria might mean Washington is shifting gears with regard to those two nations. Certain experts even believe that officials from Washington and Tehran may have taken the rare opportunity to talk in the lobby of the conference, trying to ease tension over their key bilateral issue, Iran's nuclear ambitions.

One of the ideas of the organizers of the conference was to enlist at least the formal support of Iraq’s neighbors for the current Iraqi government and to encourage them to strengthen control along the Iraqi border in order to isolate the insurgents. The plan must have been to go further and prod the neighboring countries to join efforts with the U.S. by touching the right chord – their common fear of Iraq breaking up and plunging into a civil war chaos with violence spreading beyond its borders.

In his opening speech, Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the neighboring states to help stem the activity of the Iraqi insurgents saying he did "not want Iraq to be the battleground to settle scores for other countries.” Obviously addressing Tehran and Damascus, al-Maliki demanded that "regional or international states refrain from interfering or influencing Iraq's state of affairs through supporting a certain sect, ethnic group or party".

However, al-Maliki’s appeals have hardly elicited the expected response, given the current situation in Iraq, a country invaded by the U.S. with each of the neighboring states having its own specific sphere of interests there. Arab nations, like Turkey and Iran, will hardly cut the support of their co-religionists in Iraq any time soon. Iran, in particular, provides large-scale assistance to the Iraqi Shiites, while Saudi Arabia and several other nations support the Sunnis in a variety of ways. Turkey, in turn, is also willing to support the Sunnis who fight Kurds in northern Iraq, and is even ready to cooperate with Tehran in this issue, etc.

As a result, the government in Baghdad has found itself between two millstones: the Arab nations and Iran vying for Mideast leadership, on the one hand, and the U.S. and Iran settling scores in Iraq, on the other.

As regards Iran, according to most independent observers, the stronger Washington’s pressure on Tehran, the greater problems the latter will cause in Iraq. Only if Washington changes its policy concerning Iran will the latter change its policy in Iraq. However, no signs of change is seen in U.S. attitudes so far.

This is the reason why many experts and observers had predicted only modest results of the Baghdad conference. Conference participants decided to form three committees to tackle security cooperation; refugees and displaced Iraqis; and fuel and energy imports for Iraq. A follow-up meeting will be held in April in Istanbul on the level of foreign ministers.

Officials in Baghdad, however, hailed the conference as a success, labeling the meeting "constructive and positive." US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad who also took part in the conference echoed this opinion. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari even likened the Baghdad conference to an icebreaker. However, this “icebreaker” even failed to scratch the thick “ice” of long-accumulated security problems in Iraq, let alone “break” it.

Even Washington does not seem too confident of this U.S.-sponsored event’s success. Otherwise, how could one interpret President Bush’s request for another $3.2 billion for the “war on terror,” Iraq included, made to the U.S. Congress exactly as Baghdad was hosting the much-advertised security forum? Moreover, Bush decided to increase the U.S. force in Iraq by another 4,400 in addition to the recent 21,500 troop boost.