Can there be any doubt that the invasion of Iraq has been a total disaster? The latest report from Iraq on Times Online shows that there is no prospect of reconciliation between the Sunnis and the Shias. The civil war is gradually building up -- as all civil wars do. The Shias must now be on the very edge of revolt. Grand Ayatollah Sistani will not be able to restrain Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army for much longer. God knows what would happen if the Shias rise up. Certainly the American and British occupation forces could not possibly do anything (except retreat even further into their bunkers) if two or three million young Shia males took up arms (arms which most of them probably still possess since Saddam dished them out on the eve of the invasion). American forces cannot even keep the peace now. The infrastructure is collapsing and is in a worse state than it's ever been. No wonder Bechtel Corporation wants out.
There is not a word to describe the irony, the farcicality and the tragedy of the occupation. The Sunnis want Saddam Hussein to be released. The Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, says that, in any case, he will refuse to sign a death warrant if Saddam ever gets to trial. Prime Minister Allawi is calling ineffectually for international help and arms for his security focres. The Kurks are every day strengthening their independence and making claims for Kirkuk and its rich oilfelds. Only they will benefit if the Shias rise up against the Americans and Sunnis. Turkey is unlikely to attack the Iraqi Kurds if it is to have any chance of joining the European Union which it badly wants to do.
Unless Bush is to face shame and obliquity in his own country very soon, he must come out with a new policy. I believe he (or his puppet-masters) have already been making the first steps towards it. Two proponents of the invasion, Wolfowitz and Bolton, ivory-towered pseudo-intellectuals both, are already out of the White House and two much more intelligent and wordly-wise individuals, Negroponte and Zoellick, are in. As soon as Negroponte passes muster in front of the Congress committee vetting his appointment as Intelligence supremo, then I think Rumsfeld will be out. A week ago I gave him a month, then I revised it to a fortnight. Now I think it will be within the week.
Also, now that Bernanke, an economist heavyweight and a likely future Chairman of the Fed, has accepted the position of chief economic advisor to Bush (after turning him down for months, it is rumoured), we can fully expect that "deficits don't matter" vice-president Cheney's days are numbered also.
But what is Bush to do? Apart from sacking Rumsfeld and withdrawing some troops from Iraq in the coming week or two under the pretence that the Iraqis are now sorting themselves out politically and that their security forces are up to it, I don't know what Bush can do now. There can scarcely have been a more ill-thought through decision ever taken by an American president than the invasion of Iraq.
There are only two long-term solutions for a stable Iraq. One is to release Saddam Hussein and allow him to re-establish governmance again in Iraq. The other is to occupy the country with a United Nations force of something like 300-400,000 troops. Either would need at least a generation to decide whether they were successful. Both solutions are politically impossible.
Once again -- apart from sacking Rumsfeld -- what is Bush to do? I can only think he'll have to face the music very soon. Manipulation of a credulous public takes a political leader a long, long way but reality intervenes sooner or later.
Keith Hudson
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LEAVE TOWN OR DIE, SHIAS TOLD
James Hider
Baghdad -- Without a government, with the fringes of the capital slipping out of control and a resurgent guerrilla movement mounting ever bolder attacks, Iraq lurched further into chaos yesterday as hundreds of troops tried to quell an outbreak of violence that has been compared to "ethnic cleansing".
Although the town of Madain is only 20 miles from Baghdad, where the new parliament was meeting, nobody seemed able to explain exactly what was happening in the lawless area on the southern edge of the capital, renowned for its kidnappings, Islamic extremists and highway mafia.
General Rashid Felayeh, commander of one of three Interior Ministry commando brigades that were rushed to the area, said that Sunni terrorists were holding 100 to 150 Shia residents hostage and were threatening to kill them if Madains Shias did not leave town. He said that on Friday night between 45 and 55 gunmen had arrived in the ethnically mixed town and started to pull local residents out of their cars. Now they were holding them in three locations in the southern part of Madain.
US troops surrounded the town as Iraqi forces deployed amid confusion over whether hostages had been rescued.
This technique is ethnic cleansing,said Jawad al- Maliki, an official of the United Iraqi Alliance, which, despite a decisive win in the elections in January, has failed to cobble together a government with the powerful Kurdish block.
The area around Madain and nearby Salman Pak has long been out of official control. Iraqi security forces have ceded the towns to criminal gangs and Sunni extremists. In response, Shia militias, including members of the Badr Corps, the armed wing of the main Shia party in the National Assembly, have formed, triggering tit-for-tat kidnappings and murders.
The escalation, from localised tribal reprisals to an attempt at ethnically cleansingthe town, sparked fears of civil war in which US forces could be caught between Sunni and Shia militias.
The terrorists are Sunnis. Their aim is to split Iraq, General Felayeh told The Times.
Iyad Allawi, the outgoing caretaker Prime Minister, spoke of the seriousness of the crisis. Unfortunately, evil powers are trying to disturb the peace of our country, stop progress, destroy Iraq, keep killing innocent civilians and planning for the start of ethnic, sectarian and religious division,he said.
Qassem Dawoud, the interim National Security Adviser, said that a big offensive would be launched by the end of the week against those towns in the area that had become strongholds of kidnappers and rebels. These are terrorist activities aiming at stirring civil war.
In the same area south of Baghdad, security forces found 19 corpses, many of them badly decomposed, of people who had been killed by criminal gangs. In scenes reminiscent of Bosnias civil war, Sunni guerrillas were also blamed for an explosion that destroyed an historic Shia mosque near by.
Reports of the fighting were confused. Defence Ministry officials declined to comment on the stand-off, then later said that troops had retaken part of Madain in intense fighting.
Mr Dawoud denied that a rescue operation had been launched. Saad Dulaimi, a Sunni council member from Salman Pak, said that he had heard nothing of the hostage crisis and several witnesses said that the town was calm.
In the northern city of Mosul, two senior security officials were shot dead. Three US soldiers died in a mortar attack on their base in the western Sunni city of Ramadi. Marla Ruzicka, the American founder of the Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict, was killed in Baghdad on Saturday.
Times Online -- 18 April 2005
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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