In view of the rise in US tensions with Iran, the tortuous path of the Israeli-Palestinian roadmap and the questions facing the Tony Blair government in Britain over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it may seem perverse to concentrate yet again on what is happening within Iraq (columns of 29 May, 4 June, 12 June).
Iraq is, of course, still at the forefront of public discussion, but much of the current argument concerns the motives for the war especially the issue of the control of Iraqs oil reserves, rather than the aftermath of the conflict. The former may become more exposed as official enquiries are pursued in London and Washington; if so, they could well tarnish the image of a war whose proclaimed purposes were defensive or humanitarian.
But even if the real motives for war are revealed, it is likely that what is happening now within Iraq will prove to be more important, in the light of earlier assessments that the current situation really may be the beginning of what has been described as a potential thirty-year war.
A gathering resistance
As June 2003 opened, there had been occasional reports of resistance to American troops, including ambushes and sniper attacks, but these were said to be little more than the actions of remnants of Baath support rather than anything more substantial.
By early June, however, it became clear to some of the more perceptive analysts that United States forces had been facing considerable opposition stretching over the whole of the previous month. These involved large numbers of individual attacks leading to over thirty US troops killed and scores more wounded.
In response, a number of counter-insurgency operations were mounted in and around Baghdad, together with much larger military strikes against a terrorist camp to the north-west and an area of strong opposition near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.
US military commanders were now prepared to say that there was an on-going conflict and that they were taking vigorous yet necessary action to counter opposition to their occupation of the country.
Yet despite this, a plausible picture was sustained during the period of fighting itself of mere little local difficulties facing US troops in the context of an occupation that was otherwise going very well. In military terms, the problem was presented as one of isolated and uncoordinated remnants coupled with small numbers of terrorists moving into the country from elsewhere in the Arab world. In no way were these representative of the mood of Iraqis as a whole; and even the Sunni people of central Iraq were said to be, for the most part, neutral about the US presence.
Peace-building and counter-insurgency
More generally, many media outlets were concerned to convey a picture of rapid civil progress in post-war Iraq. An article typical of the current view in Washington is a recent piece by George Ward, the former US coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Iraq (So far, so good, International Herald Tribune, 16 June 2003). This thoroughly positive report cites rapid progress in post-war peace-building and reconstruction:
Iraq is in most respects further along the road to recovery than we could have expected before the war.
All major public hospitals in Baghdad are again operating. Sixty per cent of Iraqs schools are open. Nationwide distribution of food supplies has resumed.
Ward does mention some residual problems, not least with the police, but his overall conclusion is one of sound progress, to the extent that we Americans may soon look back on the post-war looting as only a bump in a long road; this is contrasted with pre-war predictions of mass refugee flows, destruction of oil fields, epidemics and food shortages.
So is the process of peace-building really going well and are the current counter-insurgency operations no more than minor problems that will be over in a matter of weeks?
A provocative counterpoint to George Wards optimism was given the next day, 17 June, in a report in the Daily Telegraph citing a senior British official in Baghdad as saying that the US reconstruction effort was suffering from a complete absence of strategic direction and that This is the single most chaotic organization I have ever worked for.
There may be an element of we Brits could do better in this view, but it is also relevant that the chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has fewer than 600 staff to run a country that was previously run by a rigid dictatorship whose collapse has entailed a complete absence of functioning infrastructure. It is even more significant here that Bremers outfit is already the second attempt by Washington to control Iraq, the first having had to be replaced within a month of the end of the war.
Some indication of the extent of the predicament is a report in the Times (17 June) from a British defence source that the 17,000-strong British force in south-east Iraq might have to stay as long as four years. The same day, the Independent carried a comment from Major-General Freddy Viggers (the British commander attached to US military HQ in Baghdad) to the effect that a long-running struggle would ensue unless the remains of the Baath regime were finally eliminated and that this must include the death or capture of Saddam Hussein. General Viggers cited the experience of the Balkans, where 1,600 British troops were in Bosnia eleven years after the start of the war.
A new military pattern
If the peace-building is fraught with difficulties, what is happening on the military side? In the past week it has become clear that the initial operations in north-west Iraq and around the town of Balad formed part of a much wider offensive by US troops. These were followed by major military operations in at least four Iraqi cities, starting around 14 June and continuing for several days.
These included the use of thousands of troops backed by tanks, planes and helicopters in a series of operations in and around the city of Fallujah, and were reported to be part of plan that had been under development for some time, rather than an immediate response to recent attacks on US soldiers.
It is frankly unlikely that these operations will have the desired effect. Widespread arrests, damage to property and the accidental killing of numerous innocent people are all conspiring to increase antagonism to the US presence. Recent days have seen further attacks on US convoys and the killing of a soldier in a sniper attack in Baghdad. It is a situation made worse by the fatigue and edginess of young US soldiers operating in temperatures of 35-40 degrees Centigrade; some of these have been in the region for nine months, and few of them are trained for peace-keeping, still less for urban counter-insurgency operations.
Beyond all these problems lies the key question where is the opposition coming from? The official answer is that small numbers of Baath party loyalists have combined with some remnants of the fedayeen and some radicals coming in to Iraq from elsewhere in the Arab world.
But this is not enough to explain the extent of the opposition. A more accurate answer probably lies in the way in which the first phase of the war ended in early April. Although the US forces were able to use extraordinary firepower against ordinary Iraqi army units and against several divisions of the general Republican Guard to the south of Baghdad, one of the unanswered questions was what happened to the much more disciplined and better-equipped Special Republican Guard.
This elite force, drawn mainly from Tikrit and other areas north and west of Baghdad, numbered at least 15,000 and was considered to be thoroughly loyal to the old regime. Moreover, it was specifically trained and equipped for urban combat and was expected to offer considerable resistance in Baghdad itself.
That resistance never came, and Baghdad fell in a matter of days. There have been persistent reports, although not yet substantiated in any detail, that some of the key senior officers of the Special Republican Guard were bought off by US agents and intermediaries with substantial cash inducements. They were thus able to escape in return for giving US troops more or less unimpeded entry into Baghdad.
The implied result of this arrangement was that many of the key elements of the guard simply melted away, bereft of their core leadership. The consequence, if this analysis is in any way accurate, is that the middle-ranking officers and their troops would have been left isolated, yet able to regroup, with most of their weapons and munitions intact.
If this argument is factored in to the groundswell of opposition to US occupation in many of the Sunni areas of Iraq, then some indication of the extent of the problem facing United States forces begins to emerge. In brief, the latter may be dealing not with isolated remnants aided by a few foreign elements, but with an opposition that includes well-trained, highly-motivated regular forces that can readily organise themselves to operate in guerrilla mode.
In an earlier analysis, when the first part of the war appeared to be nearing an end in the second week of April, the following conclusion was drawn:
In the United States, it would seem that there is a perception that the war is already as good as won, and peace and tranquility will rapidly follow a stunning victory. In reality, whether the war ends soon or drags on, it is likely to prove a hollow victory with a deeply bitter and unstable peace.
At the time this was a minority view, but is now beginning to look uncomfortably accurate. This weeks news that Baghdad is considered insufficiently safe for the UK international development minister, Valerie Amos, to make a visit, coupled with the continuing violence in Baghdad and elsewhere, lends support to the view that the war in Iraq is very far from over.
