UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for a rapid withdrawal of US and coalition forces from Iraq will be welcomed in many quarters. Unfortunately events are overtaking this ambition. The armed resistance in Iraq is strengthening. The US occupation forces are taking a fatality virtually every day. More disturbingly, Iraqis who are helping the coalition are being intimidated and murdered.

If the Americans quit now, Iraq would be plunged into chaos, with the still weak and divided political movements in the country having to combat the deadly hidden forces of the old Baathist regime. Therefore the continuing insecurity within the country gives Washington the excuse to perpetuate the occupation. This may in time come to represent a deadly political cost to George W. Bush as he seeks re-election next year. However, Bush would suffer an even bigger blow to his prestige if he cut and run, leaving Iraq in turmoil.

Ordinary Iraqis are only a few short months out from under a regime where an absolutist dictator and his henchmen held the arbitrary power of life or death over them. In the early days of the occupation, people could dare to hope that the old regime had gone once and for all. Yet many still refused to believe that the nightmare was over.

Now with every new attack against the Americans, their worst fears are being reinforced. Unable to find Saddam and his sons, seemingly ever more powerless in the face of a guerrilla war by Baathist diehards, the coalition forces are facing increasingly stiff resistance. Unless by sheer luck the US runs down the Iraqi dictator and his sons or deals a stunning blow to the structure and leadership of the guerrilla movement it is facing, the future for Washington’s Iraqi policy looks bleak.

An essential ingredient for the success of a guerrilla war is the active support or terrified acquiescence of the population among whom its fighters operate. That ingredient appears to be establishing itself more strongly with every passing day. The Coalition’s best way out of its bind, which the British seem to appreciate better than the Americans, might be to hand over peacekeeping to the United Nations.

But by now it may well be too late for such a move. It is likely that a multinational UN force would be even less effective against Baathist diehards than the occupation forces. Three months ago a UN security force might have been able to win enthusiastic Iraqi support. Today the continuing bloodshed and instability may have eroded any goodwill toward further experiments. As so many people warned Bush, the process of stabilizing Iraq and establishing a working administration there — let alone a liberal democracy — is be infinitely more difficult than the invasion.