The Iraqi Governing Council may be a creation of Washington, but Iraq needed a platform on which to build its future, and for better or worse the council is that platform. Thus the murder yesterday of its head, Izzedin Salim, is deeply depressing. It is also foolish. The Iraqi resistance may have thought to deal a blow to the occupation forces with this killing, but in fact it has shot itself in the foot.
Salim is the second council member to be killed. Last September Aqila Al-Hashimi was shot dead, and as a result of that attack, the occupation forces stepped up security for other council members, but those were not enough to stop the suicide bomber who attacked yesterday.
Iraqis are rightly angered that following the defeat of Saddam, the old police and army were disbanded and the coalition took on the task of policing a country whose language few of its soldiers spoke and whose complex culture fewer understood. It took over 12 months for Washington to understand the crass error of robbing Iraq of its own law and order authorities. The recruitment of fresh police and military has not helped stem the lawlessness. Now the Americans are having to turn to former members of Saddam’s security apparatus.
This will cause alarm to ordinary Iraqis who once feared these people. But given the extraordinary mess that Washington’s total lack of post-conflict planning has created, there does not appear to be a realistic alternative. The interim government that is due to take over in just 43 days will have no power to change laws in advance of elections in December or January. It is still undecided if it will have control of security, which means not just Iraqi police and military but coalition forces as well. British officials have indicated that the interim government must have overall security responsibility. Yet Washington is not keen to have its troops come under any sort of Iraqi control, except in one important respect: If the interim government wants coalition forces to quit, the US is making clear, it will comply.
That is an opportunity, but only if the interim government can feel that it has at least a measure of support among the Iraqi population, if it has some chance at least of leading the country to a more secure future that accommodates the desires and needs of its disparate elements, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. Otherwise if the interim government requested a coalition withdrawal, it would merely get President Bush and the tottering Tony Blair off the hook. But an insecure interim government would never make such a request. It would want the Americans to stay as long as possible, on the assumption that what happens after a US withdrawal will in fact be precisely the sort of murderous folly we saw yesterday, but with nothing at all to check it.
