There are three features of the period immediately following the Iraq war that offer an insight into the likely prospects for the country in the weeks and months ahead.
The first is that the extent of the human cost of the war is starting to become apparent. Although some recent newspaper reports have suggested that Iraqi military casualties amount to no more than 2,000 soldiers killed, there is abundant evidence that at least 10,000 were killed and over 20,000 injured.
Among civilians alone, the figures are heading towards 2,000 killed and several thousand injured, and this does not begin to take into account the near-collapse of health provision in many parts of the country. In Basra, there is a critical shortage of drugs and equipment, and operations even on children have been undertaken in recent days without anesthetics. In Baghdad, several of the main hospitals have been closed or have been able to offer only a limited amount of medical help.
This is impacting on a health system that is already devastated by twelve years of sanctions, with many people experiencing chronic ill-health on top of a near-permanent lack of crucial equipment and other medical supplies. Even a week after Basra had come under British control, there remained severe shortages. The absence of medical help is extraordinary, especially given that it had proved possible to move huge supplies of military equipment into the region in the midst of the conflict.
Many of these and other immediate post-war problems had been predicted by medical non-government organisations (NGOs) such as Medact, so there is in principle no excuse for the US and British governments consistently failing to deliver aid, even as military forces are withdrawn from the region.
The second feature of the current situation directly follows from this. The frenzy of looting and other manifestations of disorder that followed the overthrow of the old regime indicate a new risk: that ordinary Iraqis will start to turn militantly against the US and allied forces. Indeed, this is already starting to happen. In many parts of Iraq, a mood is developing that remains deeply positive about the end of the Saddam Hussein regime but tempers this with a strong belief that the regime has been replaced not by liberators but by an occupying power.
The latter perception is reinforced by the apparent inability of these occupying forces to maintain order, and is further exacerbated by the fact the number of Iraqis whose relatives have been killed by US and British forces is now in the hundreds of thousands. It is an extraordinary situation that an occupying force which has eliminated a brutal regime is already beginning to be treated by the people of the country with deep suspicion.
The third relevant feature of the wars aftermath is the evident reluctance of the United States to allow the UN arms inspectors to return to continue their work of disarming Iraq of any chemical or biological weapons, even though Unmovic still has a mandate to do just that. US and British specialists are now scouring the country looking for these weapons but, in the absence of any kind of independent verification, any finds will be dismissed as fabrications throughout much of the region.
This attitude, and the failure to deliver immediate humanitarian assistance, leads to the obvious questions of whether US motives are concerned with facilitating the development of a genuinely democratic and independent Iraq, or whether the reality is of an occupying power that intends to ensure its long-term influence by running a client regime.
The oil factor: two scenarios for the US in Iraq
To understand how these elements may help shape Iraqs future, it is necessary to make clear that two quite different things have happened in the last month one obvious and one much less so. The first is that the Saddam Hussein regime has been deposed; the second is that the United States now controls five times as much oil as it did before the war. (This is because Iraqs proven oil reserves are about four times those of the United States even excluding the possibility that there is much more oil to be discovered, perhaps beneath the western desert).
One month ago, the United States was the worlds sole superpower but was rapidly running down its own oil reserves while having to import nearly two-thirds of its requirements to feed an exceptionally profligate oil-based economy. Now, by occupying Iraq, it controls oil reserves of a capacity second only to those of Saudi Arabia.
Many will argue that this is a grossly unfair analysis and reaffirm that the war was fought to depose a wicked Iraqi regime and to rid the region of a military threat that extended to chemical and biological weapons; in this light, the oil issue is seen as strictly irrelevant.
The validity of this argument will be tested by what happens over the next year. If Washington is acting with the best of motives and intends a peaceful, democratic and genuinely independent Iraq to develop, there will be three early indicators. The US will withdraw virtually all its occupation forces and hand over to some kind of transitional, multinational stabilisation force; the UN and other intergovernmental organisations will be heavily involved in the development of democratic governance; and, most significant of all, the US will make no attempt to set up permanent military bases on Iraqi soil.
If, on the other hand, the United States maintains a heavy political influence stemming from its current military occupation, and ensures that an Iraqi administration is essentially a client regime of Washington, then the question of oil will come to the fore. The most telling indicator of all will precisely be the third indicator above: any move to establish a long-term military presence, as has happened recently in Uzbekistan and is probably now happening in Afghanistan.
What will be really significant is if two or three major and well-resourced US military bases begin to be established in the coming months. One would most likely be in the immediate vicinity of Baghdad, a second would be near the northern oil fields between Kirkuk and Mosul, and a third might be close to Basra and the huge southern oilfields.
Such developments could take place even while US occupying troops are being withdrawn from much of the rest of Iraq, and while the US allows UN and other agencies to enter the country to aid its civil reconstruction (albeit under indirect US influence).
If the practice of US occupation bears out this scenario, it will demonstrate that a primary motive for the war, with all its death and destruction, will have been a determination to maintain long-term control of Iraq. By acting thus, the United States will have overcome the most serious impediment to solidifying its global status: it will be a superpower in every sense, including secure access to long-term energy supplies.
Where, in all this, is the declared US commitment to a democratic Iraq? The coming months will also test whether that is reality or mirage.
