Paul Wolfowitz, the United States deputy defense secretary and one of the most significant architects of American policy in the Middle East, visited Iraq this week at a moment chosen to highlight the view from Washington that serious progress is being made in reconstructing the shattered country.
Three positive developments were adduced to support this view. First, the Madrid conference of potential donor countries raised in theory around $33 billion, though in practice many of the commitments were in the form of loans rather than grants. Furthermore, it is unclear how much money can be spent in the short term grants available in the crucial period of the next fifteen months may total only $3 or $4 billion.
The second and third signs of progress were announced in Baghdad to coincide with Wolfowitzs visit: the reopening of a key bridge in the centre of the city, (closed since the war for security reasons), and the ending of the curfew during the month of Ramadan.
These latter decisions were intended to demonstrate substantial progress and to counter an image developing in the United States that the Bush administration is now embroiled in an increasingly difficult guerrilla war just as the country prepares for the 2004 Presidential election campaign.
A waterfall of attacks
This political and media strategy seemed until Saturday 25 October to be working; but a series of coordinated and costly attacks in the following three days exposed its frailties and had the effect of refocusing attention on the critical security problems still facing the coalition.
Most evidently, there has been an upsurge in attacks on US troops across much of central Iraq, and a further attack on a civilian convoy that killed and injured a number of people working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These took place at a time when violent incidents are increasing in intensity, number (they now average close to thirty a day), and geographic spread (see the references to Kirkuk in last weeks column in this series).
Of even more relevance to an assessment of the overall security situation were two attacks relating directly to Paul Wolfowitz himself: a US army Black Hawk attack helicopter was shot down near Tikrit on 25 October, shortly after Wolfowitz had travelled there by helicopter; the next morning, a major assault on the Baghdad Hotel where Wolfowitz was staying killed a US army colonel and injured fifteen people.
Coalition sources were quick to point out that the latter action could not be seen as assassination attempt as it would clearly have been planned well in advance of Paul Wolfowitzs visit. It is equally probable that its preparation may have been initiated some time ago precisely to be ready for the opportunity presented by any senior official visiting the city. The Baghdad Hotel is within a heavily- guarded perimeter that also houses the coalition headquarters, itself subject to a mortar attack a few hours after the hotel was hit.
The Tikrit attack is indicative of a serious military capability, the more so as it followed an earlier failed attempt to shoot down a C-130 military transport aircraft. The hotel attack is significant for more than its presumed target: it used rockets that are normally carried by helicopters and fired at targets on the ground. Whatever group was responsible therefore had access both to sophisticated weapons almost certainly from former Iraqi armed forces inventories - and to the expertise to modify them for a quite different use.
Thus, allowing for some doubt about the real target of the Tikrit incident, Paul Wolfowitz may well have been subject to two assassination attempts within eighteen hours. In any case, elements within Iraq opposed to the US presence will interpret them as such, even if the intention of one or both of these attacks is less clear.
Paul Wolfowitzs near-miss was highly symbolic, but if anything the multiple bomb attacks in and around Baghdad the next day, 27 October, are of greater concern to US security forces. The bombing of the ICRC headquarters was a further attempt to undermine international assistance, at a time when humanitarian NGOs are being forced to reassess the security of their already sharply reduced numbers of local and international staff.
The near-simultaneous attacks on four Baghdad police stations is also significant as part of a longer-term pattern of targeting those elements of Iraqi society that are seen to be collaborating with the occupying power.
Perhaps the greatest concern of all in this explosive period is the sheer concentration of events. In one 48-hour span, numerous small-scale attacks on US patrols were combined with the destruction of a Black Hawk helicopter, a rocket attack on one of the most heavily-protected buildings in Baghdad, the bombing of the Red Cross headquarters and major attacks on four police stations - with these last five actions killing 35 and injuring 234 people. A day later, a police station in Fallujah was attacked in another suicide bombing.
Two further recent incidents were largely unreported but are significant in their own way. On 26 October, one of Baghdads three deputy mayors, Fars Abdul Razzaq Assam, was assassinated just after his return from the Madrid donors conference. Assam had worked energetically for the reconstruction of Baghdad following his appointment as a deputy mayor by the US authorities. Two days later, the editor of the newspaper Without Direction in Mosul, Ahmed Shawkat, was killed.
This wave of attacks shows a degree of sophistication and ruthless determination that has caught the US authorities by surprise and led to some evidence of rethinking on their part.
The regional trapdoor
The leaked memorandum written by US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and candid comments from secretary of state Colin Powell, each indicate awareness of the gravity of the Iraqi security situation at high levels of the American administration. After some months of denial, US political leaders are at last acknowledging the extent of the problems they face.
But current developments in Iraq raise two wider concerns that make the American position in the region even more worrying for its architects.
The first is the regularity and extent of the violence in Israel-Palestine. In recent weeks, there have been further suicide bombings in Israel with an extensive loss of life, and many Palestinians have been killed and injured in operations of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
The sustained violence in the past week in Gaza in particular is widely reported throughout the Middle East as a further example of Israels ability to act with impunity, given its backing by the United States. The Israeli air strike in Syria on 5 October is adduced as evidence of the suspicion that some elements within the IDF even believe that it is now possible to destabilise the Syrian regime itself.
According to one IDF general quoted in Defense News [20 October 2003 (paid-only)]: "Our goal is fundamental behavioural change in Syria, and if that means rendering the Assad regime unviable, then so be it, but we're looking at how to accomplish this with minimal use of force." The motive for such a stark view may relate to a fear in Israel that the United Statess position in Iraq is becoming untenable - and that Israel should seek regime change in Damascus while it can.
In practice, the short-term effect of the Israeli air raid may actually have been to strengthen the Syrian regime, but the widespread perception across the Arab world remains that the United Statess overthrow of Iraqs old regime could be followed by Israel acting as a US proxy against Syria.
This moment of Israel-Palestine-Syria violence leads to the second serious concern for American strategy in the region. Any problems facing the United States in Iraq are viewed with huge interest across the Middle East and are likely to lead to an increase in the flow of armed militants into Iraq in coming months.
According to most analysts, the impact of these militants has so far been one more of potential than of actuality. That view is now diminishing - not least because recent incidents in Iraq have involved a number of suicide bombings, a tactic favoured by committed and radical Islamists from across the region. It is possible that the latter are starting to work with more secular elements that appear to comprise most of the guerrilla groups indigenous to Iraq.
In this light, the range of views being expressed at present by the US military in Iraq is striking. Sources at the coalition headquarters in Baghdad talk readily of substantial numbers of paramilitaries entering Iraq; field commanders on the ground discount this, arguing that the great majority of the opposition remains domestic. These differences in analysis may involve political factors but are also likely to stem from a poor intelligence base within the country.
The constraints of occupation
Where does all this leave US policy in Iraq? In essence, there seem to be three choices: bring in more US troops, get substantial peace-enforcing help from other states, or hand over much of the security role to Iraqi forces.
The first is a non-starter, at least on the scale required. The diminished size of the US armed forces means that Washington simply does not currently have the capability of importing to Iraq the many tens of thousands of extra troops required to control the violence.
The second, too, is not going to work. Among the recent candidates for help, Pakistan is now deeply reluctant to provide troops, and the Turkish offer is intensely unpopular within Iraq. The United States has no serious prospect of major external aid, at least in the short term.
It follows that the third option, to expand Iraqi police and security forces as rapidly as possible, is the only one available to the United States. This is almost certainly what will now happen. But it also raises a deep concern, currently to be found in the more sensible recesses of the Pentagon and more generally in the state department.
A key feature of the past three months has been the systematic increase in the targeting of police forces in Iraq and the assassination of Iraqis working at a high level with the Americans. The implication of this trend is that the forces opposing the US occupation have thought carefully about the American strategic dilemma - and that it is they who are setting the agenda.
