A roadside bomb that killed two soldiers in Baghdad on 11 February is the latest evidence that attacks against United States and other coalition troops continue without respite. But two suicide bombs on successive days this week have confirmed the leading insurgent tactic of targeting the internal Iraqi security structures. The progressive withdrawal of US forces to heavily-protected barracks underlines the effectiveness of this trend.
On 10 February in Iskandariya, a town on the frontier between majority Sunni and majority Shia areas south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a pick-up truck appears to have detonated an explosion between the courthouse and the police station that killed at least 54 people and injured about 60. Many of the victims were unemployed young men hoping to become police recruits. An ominous aftermath to the bombing for the US military was the hostile attitude of a large crowd who gathered in the area, blaming the coalition for the attack. A tense standoff between Iraqis and US troops lasted several hours.
Paul Rogerss new book, a collection of his openDemocracy weekly columns, is now available. A war on terror: Afghanistan and after is published by Pluto Press
The reformed Iraqi police force is a key element in US plans to maintain indirect control in Iraq. It now numbers around 67,000 officers in addition to 9,000 in the border security force, a number that also reflects the high level of unemployment. But the police are lightly-armed, do not have body armour or protected vehicles and have experienced repeated attacks in recent months. At least 300 of them, as well as a number of potential recruits, have been killed since the previous regime was terminated last year.
The day after the Iskandariya bomb, a further damaging attack on an army recruiting station in Baghdad killed 47 people and injured many more. It is virtually certain that the successive attacks were coordinated. The combination of central direction and the ability to deploy suicide bombers gives some indication of the robust nature of the insurgency.
The numbers game
The latest security problems in Iraq come at a time when governments on both sides of the Atlantic are being exposed to severe scrutiny over the motives for war they launched in Iraq in March 2003.
In Britain, the Hutton reports conclusion that absolved the government of sexing-up the threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons is treated with widespread scepticism. Three experts in the United States, Britain, and continental Europe respectively have recently offered judgments that support public doubts on the issue of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
David Kay, after his resignation from the Iraq Survey Group, testified to Congress about his doubts about the existence of any remaining WMD in Iraq. Brian Jones, a former senior member of the Defence Intelligence Staff, repeated the view he expressed to Hutton that British politicians manipulated intelligence reports on Iraqi weapons.
Hans Blix, head of the UN weapons inspection team in pre-war Iraq in perhaps the most damaging contribution said that politicians in the US and UK had acted more like salespeople; Tony Blairs intention was to dramatise (the WMD), just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to increase or exaggerate the importance of what they have.
Such comments have caused embarrassment for the government in Britain and may yet inflict serious damage on Tony Blair. They are also having some impact on the political climate in the United States, where the Democratic front-runner John Kerry emerges as a serious contender for the presidency in Novembers election. This presents George Bush with two Iraq-related political challenges, the absence of WMD and the continuing financial burden of the war. In response, he has sought to defuse both issues until after November with two deft political moves.
First, a bipartisan panel has been established to investigate intelligence failings in the run-up to the war. But it will not report until 2005, comfortably after the election. Unless there are damaging leaks from the panel or from some of the aggrieved intelligence agencies it may expose to criticism, the administration will probably be able to use the investigative process to protect itself from damage.
Second, the administration is seeking (as mentioned in last weeks column) a record defence budget of just over $400 billion for fiscal year 2005 (which begins on 1 October 2004), but this does not include ongoing war costs. These would normally be met by a supplemental appropriation, likely to be a further $50 billion in the light of the problems Afghanistan and Iraq are posing.
The armed forces would normally expect such a supplemental bid to be made at the start of the fiscal year, which in 2004 would be a few weeks before the November election. Instead, the Pentagons Comptroller, Dov Zakheim, has announced that it will not be sought until January 2005 (Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham, Military Chiefs Testify About Worries of War Funding, Washington Post, p.A25, 11 February 2004). This means that the armed forces will have to stretch existing budgets to cover three extra months of operations. This may cause concern within the military, but it may also deflect attention from the issue during the election campaign.
The vision thing
A wider question of United States strategy the administrations increasingly vocal commitment to a Middle East grand plan for democratic reform is more likely to receive substantial attention in this election year, especially during the Group of Eight Summit to be hosted by George Bush at Sea Island, Georgia, in June 2004 (Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, Bush Aims for Greater Mideast Plan, Washington Post, 9 February 2004).
The Greater Middle East Initiative, already in receipt of inputs from some other Nato member-states, may be modelled on the Helsinki process of the post-1975 period, which focused on human rights across Europe especially in the then Soviet bloc. An indication of the political tenor of this move was given by Dick Cheney, US vice-president, at Davos recently: Our forward strategy for freedom commits us to support those who work and sacrifice for reform across the greater Middle East. We call upon our democratic friends and allies everywhere, and in Europe in particular, to join us in this effort.
It is probable that this initiative is partly a response to the failure of existing US-led policy. It was earlier claimed that terminating the Saddam Hussein regime and implementing the Israel/Palestine roadmap would transform the Middle East and encourage the development of pro-western democratisation. Instead, the roadmap has gone nowhere and Iraq is in disarray.
By way of compensation, visionary talk of a greater Middle East for a few months during election year carries the hope of convincing the US electorate, and possibly people across the region, that such an initiative is genuine. It is possible that it will have some effect in the United States, but prospects of an impact in the Middle East itself are remote, for three reasons.
The first is the continuing and bitter confrontation in Israel/Palestine, and Washingtons indifference to or ignorance of the symbolic impact of the new Israeli security wall on Arab opinion. That Ariel Sharons government is engaged in an evident land grab in parts of the West Bank is a problem in its own right, but the construction of massive separation barriers within Jerusalem itself has an impact all of its own.
The impact of this enforced division of one of Islams central sites, justified by the Sharon government on security grounds, is potent. People in the region perceive Washington as offering strong support for this government from Washington, and thus disbelieve any talk of a US commitment to a just Israel/Palestine settlement.
The second reason why the vision is unlikely to have an impact in the Middle East is the type of control exerted on the Iraqi economy since the United States occupation began in spring 2003. The rapid, enforced moves towards a free market and privatisation, and the granting of reconstruction contracts to wealthy United States corporations, create scepticism about claims that Iraq is developing towards economic independence.
The third reason, the potential long-term presence of US troops in Iraq, only reinforces this attitude of scepticism in the region. US army planners are studying the logistics of maintaining a full-scale occupation force of around 100,000 troops for three years; this is in addition to the development of four permanent military bases whose full establishment implies a US presence lasting decades.
Thus, whatever the talk in Washington of democratisation, it is simply not supported by developments on the ground. The existence of massive oil reserves in Iraq lend weight to the near-universal belief that talk of democracy is no more than a cover for the establishment of a client regime.
Whether or not this is fair is less relevant than the fact of such a deep-seated perception across the region, one also fuelled by the longer-term US record of dealing with difficult democracies. After all, if current circumstances enabled Iraq actually to develop as a fully-functioning independent and democratic state, this would likely result in an early demand for the withdrawal of all United States forces from the country. The geo-strategic importance of Iraq would make this flatly unacceptable to Washington.
Messing up democracy
If this sounds too harsh an analysis, it is worth recalling the real antagonism that the United States demonstrated towards New Zealand in the 1980s over the relatively minor issue of a nuclear-free zone. At that time, the New Zealand government of David Lange refused to allow US warships into ports unless the US navy would confirm that the ships were not carrying nuclear weapons.
The American response was to maintain a neither confirm nor deny posture, leading to a crisis in US/New Zealand relations. David Langes deputy, Geoffrey Palmer, was driven to comment that the New Zealand government does not see why solidarity in an alliance always means agreeing with the American view; a remark echoed a few months later by the US ambassador to New Zealand, Paul Cleveland: Sometimes it is more difficult to deal with a messy democracy like New Zealand than with some Asian dictatorships.
It may be that current United States policy, with its vision for the Middle East, will involve allowing even a messy democracy to develop in Iraq. But there are few people in the region who believe it.
