Several recent articles in this series have sought to analyse the increase in violence in Iraq, especially the attacks on United States forces. It might therefore be useful to stand back from the immediate problems to try and get some sense of the longer-term trend. In doing so, perhaps the key aspect is whether the reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure and society is happening in a manner and at a pace that might help curb what is clearly a dangerous and growing insurgency.
This assessment must, of course, be made in the context of immediate events. These have included the destruction of the CH-47 Chinook troop-carrying helicopter near Fallujah on 2 November, killing 15 and injuring 20; repeated attacks on US patrols resulting in some deaths and many injuries; the attack on a Mosul police station on 3 November; and three successive nights of mortar attacks this week on the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) headquarters in Baghdad.
There have also been regular assassinations of Iraqi figures associated with the new order, such as the recent killing of two Iraqi judges, in Mosul and Najaf respectively. In the Najaf incident, Muhan Jabr Shuweily was in charge of a court investigating former Baath party members. He was abducted and killed on 3 November. The day before, the head of a Neighbourhood Council in west Baghdad, Mustafa Zaidan Khaleefa, had also been murdered. These three deaths are part of a more general pattern of the murder or attempted murder of officials cooperating with the US occupying powers.
There is also increasing concern for foreign diplomats in Baghdad, particularly those attached to states that have troops based in the country. Bulgaria has 500 troops in Iraq, the Netherlands nearly 1,200; before this week, both had already withdrawn most of their diplomats to Amman. Spain, with 1,300 troops in the country, has now done likewise. British diplomats are now subject to very high levels of security and this extends to most British officials working for the CPA.
The very frequency of attacks on US patrols means that the Coalition Provisional Authority does not routinely provide figures for US service personnel who are injured. In this light, some of the media reporting in the aftermath of the Chinook attack is revealing. The pattern in Iraq is for personnel injured in combat to be treated at field hospitals and then quickly airlifted to a large army hospital at Landstuhl (Germany) for comprehensive treatment; many patients are subsequently sent to the United States. In the case of the CH-47 attack, 16 people were airlifted to Landstuhl, of whom 11 were placed in intensive care (Stars and Stripes, 4 November 2003).
The hospital itself maintained 300 beds during the initial three-week phase of the war (as it seems appropriate now to refer to the campaign of 20 March-9 April 2003), reducing this to 200 afterwards. Yet its normal staff of 1,800 has been supplemented by 334 extra doctors and nurses, and the hospital is currently receiving about 140 casualties every week from Iraq. (International Herald Tribune, 4 November 2003). It has treated a total of 7,701 US personnel since the war began for combat injuries, accidental injuries, suicide attempts, and mental and physical illness. US forces in Iraq are currently experiencing about thirty attacks each day, more than double the number of three months ago.
American expectations, Iraqi realities
These incidents and statistics suggest that the overall picture in Iraq is one of a developing insurgency with increasing levels of violence. This outcome contrasts with confident predictions made by the authorities in Iraq around the middle of 2003 of a rapid increase in security and stability. At that time, their analysis of security prospects in the country rested on four key expectations. How do these expectations match up with what has happened since?
The first expectation was that the intensive search for Saddam Hussein, his sons and the core of the Baath leadership would be largely successful and, as people of this status were captured or killed, so the remnants of the old regime would fade away.
In the past few months, most of the leaders of the old regime have indeed been killed or captured, including Saddam Husseins two sons. Saddam himself remains at large, along with a handful of his lieutenants, but the killing of Uday and Qusay was hailed as a major achievement that was likely to have an immediate effect on the violence. It has not; instead, the violence is escalating.
The second expectation was that the intense summer heat might well cause severe, but only short-term, problems within the country: making coalition soldiering more difficult, and when combined with lack of power supplies creating intense frustration among the Iraqi people. The passing of the summer heat and the partial restoring of power supplies would then ensure that frustrations would diminish and near-normal become possible. In practice, however, even into November the insurgency gathers pace.
The third expectation was that the anti-coalition actions were limited almost entirely to the Sunni triangle to the north and west of Baghdad, and that the situation elsewhere in the country was much more positive. To an extent this was and remains true; there is indeed far less opposition to occupation in the Shia south, and US forces are largely welcome in the Kurdish north-east. Despite this, violence has recently extended to Kirkuk and Mosul, with attacks on police stations and assassinations, and there is clear bitterness towards the US forces among part of the Shia population not least in the Sadr City district of Baghdad.
The fourth expectation was that the process of reconstruction would show rapid progress, and that this would help decisively to undercut the insurgency. The Economist (1 November 2003) reports that there are indeed many signs of progress in this area. Those in government employment number over a million, they are getting regular salaries which are often much higher than under the old regime. The southern city of Basra now actually has a power surplus and the situation in Baghdad is improving, with the country as a whole producing electricity at pre-war levels. Oil production, around 30% of pre-war levels immediately after the war, is now up to 75%, and is expected to reach those levels by March 2004.
On the other side of this optimistic survey are several bleaker pieces of evidence. Estimates of unemployment run as high as 75%, at least in some parts of the country. The fact that it will take a year to restore oil production to the rather meagre pre-war levels is indicative of serious supply and security problems. Moreover, even under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq had high levels of education possibly the highest in the Arab world apart from among the Palestinians. Thus, knowledge of what the country is capable of, coupled with a resentment at foreign occupation, is likely to be far more deep-seated than most coalition advisers appreciate.
If the war drags on
The overall picture that emerges from this is that the expectations of security analysts in the middle of the year have not been met. The blunt truth is that the opposite of what was predicted is happening the insurgency is growing. In such circumstances, the conclusion must be that this trend will continue in the coming months, one that will carry many human costs and serious political implications.
This is an prospectus that may be shared by at least some US planners in Baghdad and Washington. Indeed, they are already implementing two clear responses in the areas of economy and security. The trouble is that both of them may turn out to be counter-productive.
The first response is a series of moves to speed up economic development. This involves, most notably, the privatisation of the Iraqi economy combined with the very recent decision to impose a flat tax system on the country (Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, US Administrator Imposes Flat Tax System on Iraq, Washington Post, 2 November, 2003). Neo-liberal economic advisers have long proposed such a system for the United States itself, but its prior application in Iraq resembles the national version of the local poll tax that caused such resentment in Scotland, and then in the rest of Britain, in 1989-90 and helped cause the downfall of the Margaret Thatcher regime.
Furthermore, the tax system being imposed on Iraq involves a very low flat rate. The CPAs 37th order, issued in October, is called Tax Strategy for 2003. It declares: The highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent.
The very imposition of such an order is a strong reminder that the United States is running the Iraqi economy; its programme of rapid privatisation an augur of what may follow. If the effects mirror those experienced in former Soviet states, there will be a rapid accretion of wealth by a minority of the population, coupled with the risk of impoverishment for the majority. Although such outcomes may not become apparent for many months or even a year or more, their likely result would be to intensify resentment and opposition, both to the foreign occupation itself and to the Iraqi elite with which it will be working.
The second response from the coalition authorities to its current difficulties is even more indicative of Washingtons approach and outlook. A recent development in US policy is the rapid expansion of the Iraqi police force, alongside the training and employment of security guards for important installations such as power plants and pipelines. This is expected to have an indirect effect on the insurgency but the result so far is to provide a ready target for a substantial increase in guerrilla attacks. Meanwhile, the American forces themselves are having little success in counter-insurgency actions even as they face daily attacks on their forces.
It is widely accepted that the Iraqi police have neither the capacity nor the ability to undertake counter-insurgency activities, and that the American forces lack the local knowledge to do so. As a result, and in a clear reversal of previous policy, Washington is now accepting the idea of an Iraqi paramilitary force numbering several thousand. This would be controlled by the US-appointed Governing Council and would include former employees of Saddam Husseins security services as well as militias associated with opposition parties. (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, US Shifts on Creation of Security Unit in Iraq, Washington Post, 5 November 2003).
The functions of this new force are intended to go well beyond intelligence gathering and to include (for example) the power to conduct raids and interrogate suspects. US administration sources emphasise that there would be careful screening and training of applicants; but a substantial paramilitary force run by an unelected Iraqi leadership, and widely regarded as controlled by US occupation forces, would find it difficult to gain the allegiance of the Iraqi population.
There are questions about the competence as well as the independence of such a force. Supporters of its creation claim that local knowledge would facilitate a much higher level of intelligence than that available to the Americans. One Iraqi National Congress official told the Washington Post: We have very well-established intelligence networks. If we can act on that information right away with a strike force, instead of waiting for the Americans to receive our reports, we can catch a lot more people than the Americans are now.
This sounds an impressive claim, but it was such well-established intelligence networks that did much to convince Washington and London that the Saddam Hussein regime was bristling with weapons of mass destruction.
The real worry is that it will be only too easy for such a paramilitary force to develop into the kind of force widely employed in the past by pro-US regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia, which in parallel with the rapid marketisation of an economy has so often resulted in the entrenchment in power of a wealthy governing elite. If this is what happens, the consequence in the coming months and years is that the forces opposed to US occupation and its nascent client regime will receive large numbers of new recruits.
Some commentators still hold the view that the Iraq war of 2003 was a brief, intense conflict lasting just three weeks. It is now accepted more widely that it is in fact a continuing war now into its eighth month. If the United States leadership maintains its present strategy, the length of the war is likely to be measured in years.
