RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Ryan Crocker had served for three decades in and around the Middle East. He has been the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. Now he's in the midst of his toughest assignment. As he looks back at the year just ended, Ryan Crocker says that some signs of progress in 2007 could make for new challenges in 2008.
RYAN CROCKER: You can consider some of them both gains and challenges. The reduction in violence has led to refugee and displaced persons returns. This is clearly a good thing, but it is also a process that has to be carefully managed. Now, as young men get out of the militia business, as they have been doing, they need to have another business to get into. There will be a need for further efforts at political reconciliation, all things that leads to a national level of reconciliation.
MONTAGNE: Let's break down those positives and those challenges, starting with political reconciliation. Is the U.S. government looking at an alternative way to achieve what one might call political reconciliation that doesn't depend on this particular central government?
CROCKER: First, it's not really realistic to expect instant national reconciliation. When you remember how this year began and really how much violence there was, reconciliation under those circumstances just wasn't a possibility. And the dust and the smoke are just clearing from those levels of violence. That said, we are pushing on different fronts on this. We are clearly keeping up the pressure on the national government and the national leadership. But we're also assisting at other levels. There's been a lot of talk about grassroots reconciliation. What happens in the provinces, as we saw in the west in Anbar, and in the predominantly Shia southern provinces, where there has been a popular reaction against extremism, is extremely encouraging. And what is equally encouraging is that as populations, both Sunni and Shia, have rejected violent extremism, they've reached out to each other.
MONTAGNE: Now, they're credited with calming some of the move violent areas in Iraq, and it's a growing movement, up to 80,000 armed men. But it has Shiites worried because it's mostly Sunni and potentially a threat. Could this Sunni movement be a threat to reconciliation itself?
CROCKER: It has been a firm condition of ours that these groups, as they form, commit themselves to support of the new Iraqi state, and everything we do in connection with these groups we do in full coordination with the Iraqi central government. It is key - it is absolutely key to future stability that these groups be linked to the central government, as they have been in Anbar. There are now roughly 24,000 young men in Anbar province wearing the uniform of the Iraqi police and getting their salaries paid by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad that started out in these awakening or concerned local citizens movements.
MONTAGNE: Right. But in other places, especially in Baghdad, the government has really dragged its feet on bringing these ad hoc forces into the national police or the army, and partly because they say there's just absolutely no way, when you get out of tribal areas, to really check out who's in them.
CROCKER: It is clearly a more sensitive issue as you move into mixed areas. But in our discussions with the Iraqi government, one important point we've agreed on is that not all of these people should or can be accommodated in the security services, the forces. Nor...
MONTAGNE: Right. Because there's just too many of them.
CROCKER: There's too many of them. What I foresee here is probably a situation in which maybe 20 percent will go into security forces and the other 80 percent more or less will need to move into other forms of civilian employment.
MONTAGNE: Ambassador Crocker, all last year the political talk seemed to be about benchmarks - benchmarks that Iraq has to meet, of an oil law, and the return of some Baathists to the government. Some of that is in process. But you were one voice that would have said last year that benchmarks were overrated. Have they now quietly in a way gone by the wayside?
CROCKER: This will continue to be very difficult because it gets at existential issues here. It has to wrestle with, again, the relationship between the center and the provinces or regions, who controls what, who can sign a contract. And it also gets at a very basic issue: what is the role of the private sector or the international private sector in Iraq's oil sector?
MONTAGNE: It sounds like Iraq does need to get an oil law in place, complicated as it may be, or regions of the country than operate on their own, which will make it a lot more complicated.
CROCKER: Absolutely right. I mean, these things are all important. They all need to be done. But I don't think it's correct to say that, well, the fact that they didn't get an oil law in 2007 means that the country has just fallen off the edge.
MONTAGNE: Wouldn't - last question - what signs would you be looking for that would point an arrow towards ultimately a peaceful Iraq?
CROCKER: None of these are tremendously flashy. They are all extremely important, and that's what we'll be working for as we move through 2008. And as we enter the new year I'm cautiously optimistic on the prospects in all of those categories.
MONTAGNE: Ambassador Crocker, thank you for joining us and Happy New Year to you.
CROCKER: Renee, thank you very much and Happy New Year to you, to all of your listeners, and the best for 2008.
MONTAGNE: Ryan Crocker is the U.S. ambassador to Iraq speaking to us from the American embassy in Baghdad.