http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/george-w-bush-iraq-anbar-115155.html?hp=m1#.VN1UEy6GNOUGeorge W. Bush Is Intervening in Iraq—Again
When Iraqi tribal leaders came to D.C. looking for help against ISIL, the White House refused. Then the former president made a call.
By MARK PERRY
February 12, 2015
Late in the evening of Sunday, January 18, an eleven-member delegation of tribal leaders from Iraq’s western Anbar Province arrived in Washington, D.C. Just as their plane was touching down, Islamic State units back in Iraq attacked the compound of one of the delegation’s senior leaders, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, killing nine Iraqi police officers and wounding 28 of the sheik’s guards. A nearby Iraqi military unit failed to respond to repeated calls for help.
The brutal attack underscored the purpose of the Anbar delegation’s visit: The tribal leaders believed that they could defeat the Islamic State—but only if the Obama administration would agree to ship them weapons directly, bypassing Iraq’s untrustworthy Ministry of Defense.
Yet after they arrived in Washington the tribal leaders found themselves thwarted at every turn in their efforts to meet with high-level administration officials. They were told they would have to take up these matters with new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and would have to rely for weapons on those provided to them by Abadi’s ministry of defense.
That’s when George W. Bush called Abu Risha at his hotel in Washington.
It’s startling enough for a Sunni tribal leader to get a call from a former U.S. president—and even more so from Bush, who has been especially reluctant to interfere in world affairs since leaving office. But Iraq, after all, was Bush’s baby. He knew about the tribesmen’s difficulties as Islamic State fighters continued to make inroads against the Iraqi military, and he had been alerted to the delegation’s visit in Washington by his contacts in the U.S. policymaking community.
Abu Risha, the president of the powerful Anbar Awakening Council, said Bush listened carefully as the sheik explained in a 20-minute conversation that the Anbar tribesmen were unlikely to get any weapons from the Iraqi government, which, as Abu Risha claimed, is notoriously corrupt, beholden to Tehran and more interested in arming Shia militias than Sunni tribesmen. Bush urged Abu Risha to extend his stay and meet with retired Gen. David Petraeus, as well as with Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. According to Abu Risha, Bush pledged that he would “do everything I can” to help him get a hearing in Washington.
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Iraq’s Sunni Anbar tribesmen comprise a minority in Iraq, but have historically had an outsized influence in its government. That influence ended with the 2003 U.S. invasion, which empowered Iraq’s majority Shia population. Anbar’s Sunnis fought back—mounting a bloody insurgency against U.S. forces, allowing al Qaeda to recruit fighters from Anbar’s disaffected population. But al Qaeda overplayed its hand, imposing their harsh vision of Islam on Anbar’s population. So, beginning in mid-2004, the province’s tribal leaders began to shift their allegiance away from al Qaeda, choosing instead to force the terrorist group out of the region. The United States supported this so-called Anbar Awakening with arms and ammunition.
But following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the Shia-controlled Iraqi government marginalized Anbar’s tribes, providing an opening for the Islamic State, which represented an even more virulent form of jihadism than appeared in Anbar in 2003, to advance. America’s response has been to pressure Abadi’s Baghdad government to support the tribes. The support has not arrived, and, worse yet, the Shia-controlled Baghdad government has ensured that weapons are funneled to Iraq’s Shia militias, many of which are under the sway of Iran and are cleansing Sunni influence in areas of eastern Iraq. The result is that, in Anbar, the Islamic State has gotten stronger, while the tribes remain weak.
The Anbar delegation that arrived in Washington on January 18 hoped to reverse this policy, arguing that the United States should bypass the Baghdad government in arming the tribes against ISIL as they had once done against al Qaeda. Doing so, they believed, would spark an Anbar “Re-Awakening.”
The delegation, which in addition to Abu Risha included Anbar Gov. Sohaib al-Rawi, Haditha Mayor Abdalhakeem al-Jughaifi and Anbar Provincial Council Chairman Sabah Karhout, had high hopes at first. Their 10-day schedule included a meeting with a White House aide and a visit to retired Gen. John Allen (Obama’s emissary to the coalition fighting the Islamic State) at his home, as well as one-on-one meetings at the State Department and Pentagon. They arrived confident that they would be heard; after all, the Obama administration had made the fight against the Islamic State a priority and Allen had promised during meetings with Sunni tribesmen in October in Amman, Jordan, to pass their request for arms on to the Pentagon.
But as their meetings in Washington went on, their hopes started to fade.
“There were a lot of smiles, a lot of nodding heads, but that was it,” one of the delegation’s members told me. “It’s clear the administration has made up its mind. Abadi’s their man, and that’s that.” Another delegation member agreed, but was even more outspoken. “We appreciate the meetings we had, they were fine,” he said, “but it’s obvious that U.S. officials were going through the motions. I wouldn’t call it the ‘cold shoulder,’ but it certainly was a cool one.”
No one was going through the motions more than Vice President Joe Biden, according to several of the Anbar delegates. Biden surprised the delegation on the afternoon of January 22 by dropping in on their White House meeting with Phil Gordon, the administration’s coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region. The voluble Biden was at his best, smiling broadly and accompanying his handshake with his patented shoulder grip. Biden reassured the delegation that Abadi’s government was working hard to restructure Iraq’s military, and he urged them to cooperate with him. “The Vice President encouraged the delegates to continue to work constructively with Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi government . . .” a “read out” from the Vice President’s office concluded.
On the record, Anbar’s delegates said they were pleased by Biden’s visit. (“We’re honored that vice president took the time to see us,” Abu Risha told me.) But off the record they were bitterly disappointed. “We’re interested in fighting ISIL [Islamic State] and the administration is interested in restructuring the Iraqi government,” a delegation member said. “In the meantime, ISIL is killing our people.” (The vice president’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the meeting.)
That view was reinforced when delegation members met at the Pentagon with Elissa Slotkin, the Defense Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. The delegation had hoped to press their case with officers of the U.S. Central Command, but had been told to meet with Slotkin instead. While Slotkin had spent 20 months in Iraq, she has consistently raised the ire of Sen. John McCain for her testimony on U.S. policy in the Middle East, which included a nasty exchange in December, when Slotkin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the administration’s “strategy” in Iraq and Syria was to “defeat ISIL.” McCain couldn’t believe it. “That’s a goal, not a strategy,” he sputtered. “I want to know what the strategy is.”
Slotkin fared no better with Abu Risha’s Anbar delegation. “She basically reiterated Biden’s point,” a delegation member said in describing the meeting, “and seemed to have a lot of faith in Abadi. She knows Iraq, and we were pleased with that. But we were hoping to get someone in uniform—someone who can make a decision.”
