U.S. strategy in Iraq called helpful to insurgents

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency that grips the country.

The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course.

But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence data have started to challenge this precept, noting what they termed a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and any progress in reducing insurgent attacks.

Now, with Saturday's constitutional referendum looming as an event more likely to divide than unify the country, others within the Bush administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, actually could strengthen the insurgency.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey, has acknowledged that such a scenario was possible, while officials elsewhere in the administration, all of whom declined to be identified because of the subject's sensitivity, said they shared similar concerns about the referendum.

Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who are believed to make up the core of the nation's insurgency, are bitterly opposed to a constitution drafted mainly by the country's majority Shiite Muslim sect and ethnic Kurds. Yet by all indications, they will fail to muster enough "no" votes to defeat it.

"It could make people on the fence a little more angry or (make them) come off the fence," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity.

A growing number of experts outside the Bush administration and in Iraq say they agree with such assessments.

"If the constitution passes in a nonamicable way, the violence will increase," said Ali Dabbagh, an Iraqi National Assembly member considered close to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari.

The White House consistently has linked the building of democracy in Iraq and in the broader Middle East with the defeat of the insurgency there.