BAGHDAD, 17 March 2004 — US President George W. Bush contends that the Iraq war he launched a year ago has made the world a safer place. His critics say it has fuelled terrorism. “The world is a much unsafer place,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Lahore-based Pakistani expert on Al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

“The Iraq war has distracted from the war against terror. It has created international disunity and public mistrust of governments at a time when greater cooperation was needed.”

Spaniards, latest victims of a suspected Al-Qaeda outrage, have begged to differ with Bush by electing a leader who plans to withdraw Spanish troops from the Iraq “disaster”.

Most Iraqis are delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein, but many are dismayed at the violence that still plagues their country, some of it thought to be the work of Al-Qaeda.

“Bush has created another terror base in Iraq and I can’t see how the world is safer,” said Saad Jawad, a political science professor at Baghdad University.

Some security experts say the Bush administration can chalk up as postwar successes Libya’s scrapping of its banned weapons programs and Pakistan’s crackdown on nuclear proliferation.

But the war demonstrated that Iraq had none of the weapons of mass destruction cited by Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar as the deadly threat that justified invading Saddam’s country.

“One thing is clear. The Bush administration went into Iraq on false pretences and didn’t have a clue what it was getting into,” Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said. “It’s too early to say if the Americans will succeed and the promised domino effect of democracy sweeping across the region will materialize, or whether it will be a regional fiasco, with negative effects flowing out. But there is a very strong sense we will have more of this terror.”

Spaniards are not the only ones to have suffered. Since the ousting of Saddam, once said by US officials to have had links with Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden’s network or its affiliates have been blamed for bloody attacks in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq and Turkey, as well as last week’s Madrid bombings.

In Iraq itself, the war has cost the United States and its allies 445 troops killed in action.

The Iraqi military lost an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 dead in the war, while Iraqi civilian deaths in the war and ensuing insurgency are put at between 8,000 and 10,000.

So was it all worthwhile? Yes, says Bush, even though US officials say Iraq has become a magnet for militants.

“Iraq is now the central front in the war on terrorism and those engaging and organizing those attacks are trying to turn back the tide that is moving very quickly toward democracy, sovereignty, and Iraqi political and economic empowerment,” Dan Senor, a senior US spokesman in Iraq, said on Monday.

He forecast intensified attacks in the runup to the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis. “The terrorists recognize that the stakes are high in this country.” Indeed they do, says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and author on Al-Qaeda who is based in Singapore.

“Iraq is the new land of jihad. After losing Afghanistan, extremists desperately needed a new theater for psychological and physical warfare. Iraq has created that opportunity.”

Gunaratna said the Iraq war had increased the worldwide risk of terrorism, partly by sparking resentment even among moderate Muslims. Their emotions were being exploited by extremist groups who had regained strength.

Mustafa Alani, of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said the US military had destroyed Al-Qaeda’s nerve center in Afghanistan, but the Iraq war had created a new one.

“Iraq had never been a center for international terrorism before the war and Al-Qaeda was never able to operate there,” he said. “Terrorism has a new field and recruitment center.”

Alani and Gunaratna both predicted more attacks in Europe, after the dramatic political impact of the Madrid bombings, with nations providing troops to Iraq the most likely targets.

“The experience is going to be repeated in other European capitals,” Alani said. “These attacks are simple to organize.” The one country that seems convinced it has benefited from the Iraq war is Washington’s closest Middle East ally, Israel.

“It has certainly made Israel a safer place,” Alpher said. “It has brought about a situation where there is no conventional military threat to Israel at all.”