On Aug. 7 unknown forces bombed the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and twelve days later blasted the United Nations building. The latest criminal act in Iraq was the assassination of the Shiite leader Baqer Al-Hakim. The threat of civil war draws ever nearer.
The finger of blame has been pointed in more than one direction — the first was to members of the Baath Party still loyal to Saddam Hussein, then at Al-Qaeda on the basis that there was some sort of relationship between that extremist organization and the former Iraqi leadership.
Finally the blame was placed at the door of “external forces” that sought to incite unrest between the different sects in Iraq in order to would push the country into civil war as part of their “scorched earth” policy. Internal chaos is considered the best cover for stealing Iraq’s wealth.
The backlash was instantaneous. Jordan decided to stop all military aid to Iraq, since the explosion happened a few days after the Jordanian government announced that it was ready to send its forces to Iraq if the provisional Governing Council of Iraq asked it to.
The UN announced through officials in New York that the number of workers remaining in Iraq would be reduced to 50 as soon as possible due to the deteriorating security conditions in Iraq.
The assassination of Baqer Al-Hakim is considered the most serious of these events. The Shiites declared that bloody confrontations would ensue if it were ascertained that the Sunnis had a hand in the crime. This means civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, and it could in turn be followed by confrontations between Kurds and Turkmen. Any attempts to create an independent Iraq and expel all foreign forces would be doomed.
The French newspaper Le Monde described the assassination of Baqer Al-Hakim as the bloodiest event the Middle East had witnessed in more than 25 years and the most violent since the official end of the Iraqi war. This event reaffirms the US’s inability to guarantee Iraq’s internal security. It added that the events in Najaf focused international attention on the difficulties faced by the Anglo-American occupying forces in implementing their promise to guarantee Iraq’s security as a precursor to the rebuilding of the country.
But the French analysis is inaccurate. I believe that the US has the policing, intelligence and military ability to impose internal security — if it wanted to. The FBI is spread throughout Baghdad and the larger cities in Iraq and the CIA has been working in the country since even before the war.
Security is firmly in the hands of the occupying forces and those from the Iraqi police force that it has entrusted with the task. Consequently, the lack of security is not the result of the security forces’ inability so much as of neglect or of underestimating the ability of the active factions working against the occupiers.
If the current security conditions in Iraq are any indication, the blasts that shook the country last month will not be the last
Therefore I think that in order to impose real internal security as a precursor to rebuilding Iraq and compensating the people for the tyranny of the last years, the US must hand full control over to the UN Security Council. The Anglo-American forces must gradually leave the country and simultaneously hand over authority to the Iraqis, who will govern through a democratic system that takes into account Iraq’s unique situation. Europe also must be given a greater role in a way that re-balances the situation in the Middle East and restores the rule of International law, which has been absent since the day Washington and London decided to invade Iraq without the consent of the UN.
