Fears over a 'new Saddam' as Iraq battles to avert civil war

[RedEarth]

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Advances in training an Iraqi national army have been slow. The Pentagon announced on Friday that the number of Iraqi battalions able to operate independently of US forces had fallen from one to none.

Krepinevich believes 2006 is a crunch year for American public opinion. “If we haven’t made any significant progress four years after the invasion, it will be hard to persuade the public that it’s worth sticking with,” he said. In the event of a civil war Americans might “want to wash their hands of Iraq”.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff at the state department, shares Krepinevich’s view that a new Saddam could emerge. “If a civil war were to break out, we would be faced with a difficult choice. Do we enclave ourselves in Iraq and hope and pray the violence is short-lived or do we throw our weight on one side?”

In Wilkerson’s scenario, emergency powers would be granted to a political leader, much as they would be in any threatened democracy. Allawi could be a potential candidate. The Americans would make sure there were “checks and balances” to the leader’s authority, but they might not last.

“If you put someone in who is extremely powerful at the top, the key is whether that person turns into another Saddam Hussein,” Wilkerson said. “After a year you might see the political apparatus around him disappearing and he’s there for life.”

The alternative could be a war that engulfs the region and leaves Iraq as a haven for terrorism. According to Allawi, if Iraqi politicians fail to agree on a secular government with the power to dismantle the sectarian militias, “the situation will be catastrophic and civil war will break out”. “If this were to happen, it will not be limited to the borders of Iraq but will most certainly spill over and affect a lot of neighbouring countries,” he warned. Last autumn, Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, argued that a civil war “would finish Iraq for ever”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-2058790-524,00.html