With memories of atrocities in the Abu Ghraib prison still fresh in many minds, the United States armed forces appear to have raised another storm, albeit on a smaller scale. This time the story is that an American Marine shot an unarmed wounded insurgent in a mosque in Fallujah. The world may never have heard of the incident had it not been for an American television reporter, “embedded” with the Marines, who videotaped it. The US military have already suspended the Marine involved, and launched an investigation. But the matter is unlikely to rest there.
The incident raises a number of questions.
Was it an isolated case, or should we assume that it is part of a pattern? Should we not see the incident as a sign that the pressure of a tough urban campaign is beginning to tell on the American military? And, last but not least, what would the incident do to the reputation of the interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that, technically at least, was in charge of the entire “Phantom Fury” Operation in Fallujah?
The weeklong battle for Fallujah and the battles currently waged in a dozen or so other localities have two aims: One tactical, the other strategic. The tactical aim of the insurgents is to make as much trouble as they can in the hope that this will lead to a cancellation, or at least postponement, of the elections scheduled for Jan. 27, 2005. The US-led coalition and the interim Iraqi government, on the other had, need to impose a sufficient degree of calm to allow the elections to proceed as planned. The current round of fighting is certain to continue until election day. The insurgents hope that the fighting will produce enough collateral damage and be sullied by enough acts of brutality, not to say straight war crimes, to make the US and its Iraqi allies pay a heavy political price.
The tactical dimensions of this conflict, however, should not make us overlook the strategic stakes. On one side we have a coalition of Saddamite remnants, non-Iraqi Arab “holy warriors” and an unknown number of ordinary Iraqis who do not wish the fate of their country to be shaped by outside powers. This coalition has remained united because the US-led coalition and the new Iraqi leadership elite have failed to see and treat it in primarily political terms. On the other side of the conflict one finds a majority of Iraqis that see the forthcoming elections as the first step toward ending their country’s occupation by the US-led coalition. Under the latest UN resolution on Iraq, the US-led coalition will be obliged to leave Iraq as soon as it is asked to do so by an elected Iraqi government. Thus those who want to derail the elections and prevent the formation of a legitimate government in Baghdad are, in effect, fighting to prolong the occupation.
And occupation, even by the most benign powers, is bound to provoke violence and counterviolence as well as atrocities such as those witnessed in Fallujah the other day. The occupation of Iraq must end. And the way to end it is to let the Iraqis choose a government of their own.
