With every passing day the security situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse. Yesterday’s car bomb carnage in Baghdad ripped into the bodies of children among the bystanders, as well as Iraqi police and US troops. Washington is being forced to abandon its stance that everything is on target for elections in January. Though still reluctantly, senior Bush administration officials are admitting that the security situation is running out of control.
One US think tank has said that the rate of recruiting and training Iraqi troops and police is so behind schedule that it is likely that they will not be able to take over the most demanding roles for at least another year. Even this assessment may be optimistic since it appears to presuppose that the current wave of violence will not worsen significantly. Tragically the evidence against this supposition is increasingly damning.
The time is fast approaching when a radical reassessment of what is happening to Iraq is of critical importance. The key factor to understand is that the Americans are part of the problem. They may see their presence as having changed from an occupying power to one of support for the interim government, but few Iraqis view it that way. The moderate majority who once hoped that coalition forces would act as a catalyst for a rapid and fundamental change in their lives have been rudely jolted.
US heavy-handedness and basic lack of understanding of the complexities of the country they had occupied led them into a series of grievous errors which began with their immediate dismantlement of the old police and army. It is now clear that the period of relative peace that followed the overthrow of Saddam allowed the local forces of resistance — largely disenfranchised former Baathist police, army and other officials to regroup. It also permitted foreign fighters for whom the United States and anyone to do with them was an eagerly anticipated target to pour into the country. Their ability to attack, almost at will, anywhere in the country demonstrates the failure of US-led intelligence efforts to identify them. Laser-guided bombings on places like Fallujah may kill one or two militants but they also blow apart innocent men, women and children and so alienate even further significant sections of the population. These US attacks are probably mounted as a result of signals intelligence — triangulation of mobile telephone conversations or spy satellite observation. Precious little information is flowing from ordinary citizens.
The more successful the terrorists are, the harder it is for Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to garner support for his government and the January elections which it is supposed to hold. George Bush is not going to leave Iraq before November because that would tell US voters that he had failed. If he leaves sometime soon thereafter, it will tell the world that Al-Qaeda has whipped its sworn enemy. But what really matters is not Bush’s international reputation but the fate of Iraqis who seemingly hover on the brink of civil war. Washington has to do some joined-up thinking, and fast.
