[NYTr] Iraq: Petraeus Helps Destroy Bush's "Proxy War" Claim

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS - Sep 17, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39294

Petraeus Helps Destroy Bush's "Proxy War" Claim

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Sep 17 (IPS) - In his prepared statement to the U.S. House
Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees last week, Gen. David
Petraeus claimed that Iran is using the Quds Force to turn Shiite
militias into a "Hezbollah-like force" to "fight a proxy war against
the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq".

But Petraeus then shattered that carefully constructed argument by
volunteering in answering a question that the Quds Force, an elite unit
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, had essentially left Iraq.
"The Quds force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals have
been pulled out of the country as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers
that were being used to augment that activity..."

Petraeus's contradictory statements on the Quds force are emblematic of
an administration propaganda line that has essentially fallen apart
because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after
the George W. Bush administration declared that it was going to go
after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening U.S. troops, the U.S.
military still has not produced any evidence that the Quds Force
operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting
against U.S. troops.

The U.S. military command in Iraq has failed to capture a single Quds
Force member whom it could link to the Shiite militias. And the
evidence that has emerged over the past nine months about Shiite
militias and their relationship to Iran suggests that Quds force
personnel in Iraq never had the mission of assisting Shiite militias,
as claimed by the Bush administration.

It appears that an increasing number of military intelligence officers
in Iraq have concluded that the Quds force has been steering clear of
working directly with Shiite militias attacking U.S. troops, in order
to avoid giving the Bush administration a pretext for aggression
against Iranian territory.

In a military briefing presented in Baghdad on Feb. 11, an unnamed U.S.
official stated flatly that weapons were being smuggled into the
country by the Quds Force, but the briefers failed to present any
specific evidence to back up the assertion.

Since that briefing, the U.S. military command has captured the alleged
deputy head and key logistical officer of the main Iraqi EFP, or
armour-penetrating explosives, network and a Hezbollah operative who
was a liaison with the network, as well as a number of what it called
"suspected members" or "suspected leaders" of a "secret cell terrorist
network known for facilitating the transport of and EFPs from Iran to
Iraq".

But the interrogations of these detainees have not led to the capture
of a single Iranian official. Nor has the military been able to
identify a link between any Iraqi militia member and any Iranian
official. On Jul. 6, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. operations
south of Baghdad, told reporters his troops had not captured "anybody
that we can tie to Iran".

Even more devastating to the "proxy war" line, Lynch's spokesperson,
Alayne Conway, acknowledged on Aug. 19 that they had not caught anyone
supplying arms from Iran to the Iraqi Shiite militias.

There has long been some evidence, however, of a link between Shiite
networks for procuring EFPs and other arms and Lebanese Hezbollah. The
leader of a Madhi Army group that was carrying out attacks against
British forces, Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, who was arrested in September
2005, had lived in Lebanon for several years and was known to have
personal contact with Hezbollah, according to a Mar. 27 New York Times
report.

Along with evidence of a growing relationship between Hezbollah and
Moqtada al-Sadr's army, which has now culminated in a Sadr office in
Beirut, such past links between the two Shiite groups suggest that
Hezbollah's assistance to the Shiites need not have been ordered by
Tehran.

U.S. and British officials have acknowledged in the past that the EFP
technology being used in Iraq might have entered Iraq from Hezbollah in
Lebanon rather than from Iran.

The premise that the Quds Force agents in Iraq were involved in
training Shiites to carry out operations against U.S. troops was
shattered when Lynch told reporters Aug. 19 that the Iranians were
"facilitating the training of Shiite extremists" militiamen in Iraq.
That clearly implied that the training was being done by Hezbollah.

The Washington Post and other news outlets quoted Lynch's statement but
nevertheless reported that Lynch had charged that Iranians were doing
the training. A spokesperson for Lynch confirmed to IPS that Lynch had
not made any allegation about Iranians training Shiites in Iraq.

Petraeus dealt the final blow to the notion of a Quds Force training
role when he noted that the Hezbollah trainers had also been withdrawn
from the country.

The briefing by U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner on
Jul. 2 was aimed primarily at advancing the theme that Hezbollah acts
in Iraq as a "proxy" for Iran. But the real significance of the
briefing -- unreported in the news media -- was the first suggestion by
a U.S. official that the Quds Force personnel in Iraq might have
avoided direct contacts with Shiite militias altogether. Asked by a
journalist why the Quds Force would "subcontract" the training of
Shiite militias to Hezbollah, Bergner answered that Hezbollah could "do
things that perhaps they didn't want to have to do themselves in terms
of interacting directly with special groups".

Without mentioning any pull-out of Quds force personnel, spokesperson
Conway said on Aug. 19 that Gen. Lynch estimated that there were 50
Quds Force agents in his entire area of responsibility in southern
Iraq. Four days later Lynch clarified that estimate, telling reporters
that 30 of those estimated 50 agents were "surrogates" -- presumably
referring to Hezbollah operatives engaged in training Shiites in
southern Iraq.

Although it was buried in the Aug. 19 story inaccurately reporting
Lynch's statement about training in Iraq, Megan Greenwell of the
Washington Post reported the much more significant fact that "some
military intelligence analysts have concluded there is no concrete
evidence" linking the Quds force in Iraq with the Shiite militias.

The charge that Iran was using the Quds force to fight a proxy war was
an effort to raise tension with Iran by suggesting a potential reason
for U.S. attack against Iran. Similarly, the pressure for targeting the
Quds Force in Iraq late last year came from senior officials in the
Bush administration who wished to demonstrate U.S. resolve to confront
Iran, according to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by
the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer published Feb. 26.

That policy was regarded with "scepticism" by the intelligence
community, the State Department and the Defence Department when it was
proposed, Linzer wrote, because of the fear it would contribute to an
escalation conflict with Iran.

"This has little to do with Iraq," a senior intelligence officer told
Linzer. "It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It's purely political."

[Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst.
His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road
to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.]

(END/2007)