VIENNA, 3 December 2003 — America’s allies in Iraq, suddenly besieged by a barrage of guerrilla attacks that until recently targeted mostly US forces, are coming under fire at home from a public shaken by the mounting dangers.
Although many coalition countries had braced themselves for the inevitability of casualties, and have responded by reaffirming their intentions to stay put, their resolve is being tested like never before.
The mood was summed up yesterday by opposition lawmakers in Hungary, who have taken the government to task for boldly declaring it will maintain its 300-strong force in Iraq through the end of next year.
“The situation is starting to resemble Vietnam,” said Karoly Herenyi, parliamentary leader of the Hungarian Democratic Forum.
The party supported the troops’ deployment last summer, but wants the soldiers home now that “conditions of war have developed,” he said. Eight in 10 Hungarians oppose the country’s presence in Iraq, polls show, even though there has been just one Hungarian death — a civilian killed last month under murky circumstances.
Although US troops have suffered the most deaths with 440 casualties since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, the British military has reported 52 deaths; Italy 17; and Spain eight. Denmark, Ukraine and Poland have reported one each.
Support has eroded dramatically in countries such as Spain, a key US ally which lost seven intelligence agents last weekend in the deadliest attack yet on its forces in Iraq. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said yesterday, a day of national mourning, that pulling out of Iraq would mean giving into terrorists. “Pulling out can never be an option in the face of terror,” said Aznar, in an address to Parliament made just four hours after the Madrid funeral of the agents killed near Baghdad on Saturday.
But the Spanish media thought otherwise.
“We believe the Spanish presence in Iraq in its current form — with troops more focused on self-defense than on any other task — makes increasingly little sense,” the daily El Mundo said in a front-page editorial this week.
Japanese media reported that the country — alarmed by the ambush slayings of two of its diplomats in Iraq last weekend — will postpone sending a team of engineers and doctors.
Japan has vowed to send non-combat troops to help with Iraq’s reconstruction, but Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s ratings have plunged and the government has not set a deployment date. The country’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has denounced the planned troop dispatch as foolhardy, saying all of Iraq is a combat zone. “What we had feared has, sadly, happened,” Japan’s largest daily, Yomiuri, said of Saturday’s attacks. “This is a painful sacrifice.”
El Salvador’s main leftist opposition party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, has criticized the use of 360 Salvadoran troops in Iraq. The government will not pull them out, Vice President Carlos Quintanilla said Monday.
But other countries — including those who have yet to suffer a single casualty — are understandably jittery.
Top officials in Thailand will discuss the possibility of withdrawing the country’s 422 troops if the situation continues to deteriorate, Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said yesterday. Thai soldiers will stay as long as they can carry out their humanitarian duties, he said.
Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s chief representative in Iraq, described the rebuilding of Iraq as “a highly dangerous exercise” and urged foreign diplomats and aid workers to boost security. “People have to be very careful. The Spaniards and the Japanese who were killed this week were not following the strictest possible protection rules,” he told BBC radio.
