Today, the AP reports that U.S. foreign service officers may face compulsory duty in Iraq because of a lack of volunteers:

[T]he State Department is warning diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and will soon identify prime candidates for upcoming vacancies in Baghdad and outlying provinces.

A cable sent to all foreign service officers says the department is facing a looming crisis to fill about 300 jobs that will come open in 2009 in Iraq and that it may not get enough qualified volunteers. If it doesn’t, the department will begin selecting diplomats for compulsory duty.

Similarly, last fall, the State Department came under intense criticism for its plan to make approximately 48 diplomats to take forced assignments to Iraq. It eventually dropped the plan when the spots were filled with volunteers.

The State Department’s “looming crisis” stands in stark contrast to statements made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a House Armed Services Committee hearing today, during which she took umbrage at the suggestion that foreign service officers don’t want to serve in Iraq. She said that comments by diplomats who protested the forced assignments last fall were “offen[sive]” and “cast a very bad light on the foreign service.” Watch it:

Rice tried to downplay a town hall meeting last November, during which a diplomat called serving in Iraq a “potential death sentence.” Rice said the remark “was a comment, from a person, who said that he felt in danger in the Green Zone.” But what she left out was that many of the several hundred foreign service officers at the meeting applauded the remarks.

A January poll found that 48 percent of diplomats opposed the war in Iraq, citing “disagreement” with the Bush administration’s policies. Just 18 percent said Rice was “doing a good job protecting their profession.”

Transcript: Read more

Today, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Washington, DC. He will become the second pontiff ever to visit the White House, where he will meet privately with President Bush in the Oval Office. The event is just the 25th meeting between a pope and a sitting president.

Pope Benedict has severely criticized the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. “Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees,” he said in his 2007 Easter message.

During today’s White House press briefing, spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed aside the two men’s disagreements over the Iraq war, saying that they don’t have “prolonged conversations about it.” She also attempted to claim that the Pope has accepted Bush’s so-called “surge” strategy. She added, not surprisingly, that Bush doesn’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the war:

PERINO: Obviously, there was a difference of opinion, back in 2003 and beyond, in subsequent years. But now I think that there is an understanding that, with the strategy that’s working in Iraq right now, that the most important thing we can do is help to solidify the situation, root it into freedom and democracy, so that people of religious minorities who — I’m sorry, people of religious faith who are minorities in their countries can practice freely and be free from persecution. [...]

I really don’t think that the president is planning to spend a lot of time talking about the issues of Iraq with the pope.

Watch it:

Pope Benedict’s predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, was also a fierce critic of the U.S. invasion. In January 2003, he called war “a defeat for humanity” and said it should not be pursued “except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.”

Transcript: Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a national security consultant at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The big news out of the new Refugees International study is the support Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has gained through providing aid to internally displaced Iraqis. American commanders on the ground recognize this, and are planning another wave of public works projects in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood to try and break this relationship.

However, Sadr’s not the whole story. Sunni militias – known as sahwa or awakening groups – have taken on the same role in majority Sunni neighborhoods. Many of these militias – called “Sons of Iraq” or “Concerned Local Citizens”- receive money from the U.S. military. According to the authors:

Sunni militias also handle the distribution of key items such as heating gas. As Sunnis in Baghdad get virtually no electricity or other services from the government, they rely on local militias and warlords to secure their areas and manage what services they can obtain.

Moreover, recently displaced Sunnis are joining these theoretically local militias. These displaced militiamen are “more aggressive and radical” than locally recruited fighters. Given the mistrust of both the Iraqi government and Shi’a Arabs that exists among local fighters, the injection of even more radical displaced fighters increases the combustibility of an already delicate arrangement.

The problem of both Shi’a and Sunni militia political control over various neighborhoods is only the tip of the displaced persons iceberg. Lurking beneath the surface is the even bigger political quandary of refugee return.

If and when Iraq’s internally displaced and refugee populations return, they will be confronted with a redrawn sectarian map. Many Iraqis who were driven from their homes due to sectarian violence will return to see their homes occupied by squatters of the opposite sect, who have been “resettled” by a local militia. The small number of refugees that returned to Iraq from Syria last year (primarily due to a lack of resources) have instead become internally displaced.

Without an official system to adjudicate property claims of refugees, many displaced Iraqis turn to sectarian militias. As a result, Iraq’s internal sectarian divisions have hardened.

Iraq’s refugee and internal displacement problem isn’t simply a humanitarian or moral issue; it’s ticking political time-bomb that threatens to renew sectarian violence if not adequately addressed soon.