Iraq: The new Bosnia?

Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment suggests that it is (Assessing Iraq: The Country has Already Collapsed Der Spiegel Online 03/09/06):

We need to start thinking about things radically differently. Rather than trying to impose our own view - or the American vision - of what Iraq should be like, it's time to seriously consider doing what was done with Bosnia in the Dayton Accords. The Dayton Accords were not an attempt to impose an American or a European solution. It was an attempt to take into consideration what the various groups wanted. At that point, what they wanted was to not have anything to do with each other - but the treaty more or less salvaged Bosnia. The time may have come to do the same in Iraq.

And apparently Rummy wasn't just babbling when he said that US troops aren't planning to intervene in the sectarian conflicts:

Ottaway: ... The United States is trying not to intervene in the conflicts flaring at the moment. Following the blowing up of the Golden Mosque in Samarra and the retaliatory attacks against Sunni mosques, American troops were pretty much confined to barracks. This led to a lot of complaints, but the position taken by the United States was that it was not going to step into the middle of these sorts of conflicts. The American role is to build up the Iraqi national forces so that they can provide security. The problem is, as we said, that the national police force and national military - but particularly the police force - are to a large extent fiction.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the US continues to rely on this strategy. Why? Is it naivety?

Ottaway: It's not naivety. We have never understood the political situation in Iraq. And don't forget that the American policy in Iraq was driven almost completely by the military. It was not designed by experts on the country. And frankly I'm not sure anybody else could have done better - it is an extremely complicated situation. There was an honest attempt by the United States to create a new Iraq. But it has failed. (my emphasis)

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