KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - The United States must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation with Iran.
This is the central recommendation of a study by the Brookings Institution, based on the assumption that President George W. Bush's last-ditch troop increase fails to stabilise the country and the reality that Washington cannot walk away from the disaster unleashed by the invasion.
Even the US staying to try to contain the fighting, said Kenneth Pollack, one of the report's authors, "would consign Iraqis to a terrible fate. Even if it works, we will have failed to provide the Iraqis with the better future we promised."
But it was the "least bad option" open to the US to protect its interests in the event of full-scale civil war.
US troops, says the study, should withdraw from Iraqi cities. This was "the only rational course of action, horrific though it will be", as America refocused its efforts from preventing civil war to containing its effects.
The bleak document, drawing on the experience of civil wars in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Congo and Afghanistan, offers a stark assessment of Iraq's "spillover" potential across the Gulf region.
It warns of radicalisation and possible secession movements in adjacent countries, an upsurge in terrorism, and of intervention by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Ending an all-out civil war, the report says, would require a force of 450,000 - three times the present US deployment even after the 21,500 "surge" ordered this month.
Everywhere looms the shadow of Iran. In a "war game" testing US options, the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution found that, as the descent into civil war gathered pace, confrontation between the US and Iran intensified, and Washington's leverage on Tehran diminished.
Civil war in Iraq would turn Iran into "the unambiguous adversary". All indications are that that is already happening.
- INDEPENDENT
