Both George Bush and Tony Blair have welcomed agreement on the text of a new United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq as the beginning of the end of their problems. They clearly hope that the decision, along with the recent political moves within the country, is a signal that Iraq is moving towards a fully independent and functioning sovereign democracy.
For these leaders, the UN resolution serves hugely useful domestic purposes. Combined with the G8 meeting this week in Sea Island, Georgia, it provides George Bush with a welcome mid-campaign diversion; in the midst of a difficult campaign for elections to the European parliament, it also enables Tony Blair to draw some credit from an apparent success.
But behind the political rhetoric, and in order to assess the real prospects for the war on terror, three important issues need to be considered: the nature of the Iraqi administration, the dynamics of the insurgency there, and a neglected if not forgotten question the situation in Afghanistan, thirty-two months after regime change and with elections still to be held.
A tight embrace
The worlds largest embassy is being prepared in Baghdad, to represent United States interests in Iraq and to be headed by John Negroponte, the current US ambassador to the United Nations and a key figure in the Bush administration (as he was in that of the just-deceased Ronald Reagan). Although it will be answerable to the state department rather than the Pentagon, the embassy will adopt many of the functions of Paul Bremers Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
An apparent compromise in the wording of the UN resolution may suggest otherwise, but it is clear that the United States intends to remain in full control of Iraqs military forces, and to secure very strong influence for its military leaders over Iraqi security forces.
Perhaps even more significant is the remarkable series of links between leading American institutions and key ministers in the new Iraqi cabinet. As a report in the Boston Globe noted:
Although about a third of the new governments leaders spent most of their lives under Saddam Husseins rule, five of the six leading posts in the government are held by people who lived a significant part of their lives abroad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The authors, Farah Stockman and Thanassis Cambanis, report that at least two cabinet members are actually American citizens and seven others were members of exile groups financed by the United States; this is in addition to the new prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, with his acknowledged CIA links. This does tend to support those analysts who see the new interim government as essentially a client regime of Washington.
A violent routine
The Iraqi insurgency shows no sign of easing. In addition to the routine targeting of US and Iraqi security personnel, there have been serious developments in the form of a new wave of infrastructure attacks, as foreseen in an earlier column in this series (An Iraqi intifada?, 29 April 2004).
The three-day period from 7-9 June alone was frenzied. The attacks included a bombing near the city hall in Mosul (which killed nine people and injured twenty-five) and one on a US forward base near Baquba (which killed five Iraqis and an American, and wounded twenty-five people including ten Americans). The Mosul bombing appears to have been aimed at a convoy carrying two senior politicians and Mosuls deputy chief of police. The politicians avoided injury but the police officer did not.
Another American soldier was killed in a separate incident on 7 June; six coalition soldiers (from Poland, Slovakia and Latvia) were killed while attempting to defuse munitions, and a US military base north of Mosul was targeted by a mortar attack that injured two foreign contractors.
The upsurge in attacks on economic infrastructure has been devastating physically if not so deadly. CPA sources confirm the view that the insurgents have the capability to disrupt both electricity supplies and the oil extraction and distribution system, but have consciously limited the extent of such attacks.
This restraint suggested that the insurgents were waiting for the summer heat and the transition to the interim government before escalating their campaign. The signs are that this escalation is occurring ahead of if not on schedule. On 5 June, coordinated attacks on fuel and transmission lines linked to one of Iraqs largest generating stations normally responsible for about 20% of Iraqs total electricity supply shut the entire plant down.
There have also been repeated recent attacks on oil pipelines, and around two attacks a week on the network of high-tension power lines that form the backbone of the electricity grid system. On 9 June, two major oil pipelines were set ablaze in northern Iraq, one of which resulted in temporary loss of power from a generating station supplied by the pipeline. Within the CPA, there are real worries that this marks the start of a particularly aggressive campaign aimed at destabilising the new government.
Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an Iraqi engineer who leads a ministry of industry unit working at a number of power plants, judges the aim as to distract the American-backed government. If there is no electricity, no water, whatever, the government will fail.
Meanwhile, as the insurgency develops, cooperation between the United States and Israel continues. In recent months, much of the traffic has been from Israel to the US military, including specialist training in counterinsurgency and a wide range of equipment transfers (see the columns of 22 April and 20 May in this series).
Now, the roles are being reversed as the Israeli defence forces urgently seek to purchase several hundred of the US armys new Stryker armoured combat vehicles, already in widespread use in Iraq. Under the US foreign military sales programme, Israel has already acquired three of the $1 million dollar vehicles for technical evaluation, and now wants a large force for use against Palestinian paramilitaries in urban combat.
A forgotten country?
The attention on recent events in Iraq has tended to overshadow significant developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US efforts in February and March 2004 to cooperate with Pakistans army in a series of combined operations either side of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border were reported and analysed in earlier columns (see those of 26 February, 11 March, 18 March and 25 March). The hammer and anvil approach was designed to allow US forces (the hammer, on the Afghan side of the border) and their Pakistani counterparts (in the NWFP) to counter any Taliban preparations for a renewed guerrilla offensive in summer 2004.
The military campaign has been supplemented by the imposition of tough economic sanctions in parts of Pakistans troubled South Waziristan province (causing the closure of thousands of shops), a ban on all public display of firearms, and the banning of gatherings of more than five people in one place.
The overall indication is that these efforts have far from crushed resistance in the region, nor have subsequent efforts to persuade local people to hand over or at least register foreign paramilitaries had much effect. Foreign militants are still present in the region; some of their leaders have moved to more secure locations. There has also been some retaliation against Pakistani army units.
This is in the context of wider instability in other parts of Pakistan, not least Karachi. On 9 June, the military commander of the city, Lieutenant-General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, survived an assassination attempt when his motorcade was attacked. Nine people died including police and soldiers.
Across the border in Afghanistan, a low-level but persistent insurgency continues. Four US soldiers were killed on 29 May in Zabul province; the same day, an apparently co-ordinated series of four attacks by Taliban units on government targets in Helmand province killed seven Afghan soldiers and wounded twenty more. In a major operation on 8 June, US and Afghan forces backed by air support were reported to have killed twenty-three Taliban militants in Zabul province.
Meanwhile, on 2 June, five medical personnel from four countries (Afghanistan, Norway, Belgium and Netherlands) working for the French aid charity, Medecins sans Frontières, were killed in a single incident in Badghis province, north-west Afghanistan. On 9 June, eleven Chinese aid workers building a road near Kunduz were killed when their compound was attacked by around twenty paramilitaries. At least thirty-two aid workers have now been killed in Afghanistan in 2004.
United States sources attribute the apparent escalation in operations by Taliban militias across Afghanistan to the USs and its partners own sharper military challenge. 20,000 troops are now available to the US commanders, an increase of at least 5,000 over recent months; a more intense conflict does appear to be developing.
The Taliban is especially targeting Afghan police units and expatriates preparing for the planned national elections in September 2004. One effect of this activity has been to force foreign aid workers to evacuate the more insecure parts of the country, raising the possibility the elections themselves may be delayed.
In these circumstances, it is extraordinary that none of the international aid promised to support the election has so far been delivered. Of the $101 million required, $70 million has been pledged, but $87 million is required by 1 July if the elections are to proceed in September. $30 million is supposed to be on its way but none has arrived.
Thus, a picture emerges of large areas of Afghanistan still controlled by warlords, the opium trade expanding, and Taliban insurgencies active in several regions; all this at a time of wholly inadequate international support for the elections. Afghan officials and others are working effectively to register voters in many areas, but a lack of commitment by the wider international community to the future of the country as a whole is apparent.
The termination of the Taliban regime has not yet ushered in a stable, self-governing polity. The greater size and strategic investment represented by Iraq raise American hopes of a better outcome there, but by the same token the risks of failure are even larger than in the bleak Afghan terrain.
