http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article301250.ece
Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict
As he completes another tour of duty in the chaos of Iraq,
award-winning reporter Patrick Cockburn charts how Bush and Blair's
'winnable war' turned into a mess that is inspiring a worldwide
insurgency
By Patrick Cockburn
07/24/05 "The Independent" - - The Duke of Wellington, warning
hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military
intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small
wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict
terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in
Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.
The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez
crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more
harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by
providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across
the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The
war, which started out as a demonstration of US strength as the
world's only superpower, has turned into a demonstration of weakness.
Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of Iraq.
The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so
many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying
to destroy those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in
Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been
more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq over the last year.
It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The
Iraq war has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most
of the bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers
and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives,
detonators, vehicles and intelligence is home-grown.
The shrill denials by Tony Blair and Jack Straw that hostility to the
invasion of Iraq motivated the bombers are demonstrably untrue. The
findings of an investigation, to be published soon, into 300 young
Saudis, caught and interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to
Iraq to fight or blow themselves up, shows that very few had any
previous contact with al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist organisation
previous to 2003. It was the invasion of Iraq which prompted their
decision to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar
reasons, according to the same study, commissioned by the Saudi
government and carried out by a US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf
Obaid, who was given permission to speak to Saudi intelligence
officers. A separate Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq,
carried out by the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in
Israel, also concluded that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq
alone.
Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small,
hunted group; since the invasion they have become a potent force,
their ideology and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around
the world. Their numbers may still not be very large but they are
numerous enough to create mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they
strike, be it in London or Sharm el Sheikh.
The bombers have paralysed Baghdad. I have spent half my time living
in Iraq since the invasion. The country has never been so dangerous
as today. Some targets have been hit again and again. The army
recruiting centre at al-Muthana old municipal airport in the middle
of Baghdad has been attacked no fewer than eight times, the last
occasion on Wednesday when eight people were killed.
The detonations of the suicide bombs make my windows shake in their
frames in my room in the al-Hamra hotel. Sometimes, thinking the
glass is going to shatter, I take shelter behind a thick wall. The
hotel is heavily guarded. At one time the man who looked for bombs
under cars entering the compound with a mirror on the end of a stick
carried a pistol in his right hand. He reckoned that if he did
discover a suicide bomber he had a split second in which to shoot him
in the head before the driver detonated his bomb.
The bombers, or rather the defences against them, have altered the
appearance of Baghdad. US army and Iraqi government positions in
Baghdad are surrounded by ramparts of enormous cement blocks which
snake through the city. Manufactured in different sizes, each of
which is named after a different American state such as Arkansas and
Wisconsin, these concrete megaliths are strangling the city by
closing off so many streets.
For all the newspaper and television coverage of Iraq, the foreign
media still fail to convey the lethal and anarchic quality of
day-to-day living. The last time I drove into west Baghdad from the
airport in early July we were suddenly stopped by the sound of
volleys of shots. This turned out to be the police commandos, a
12,000-strong paramilitary force which is meant to be the cutting
edge of the government offensive against the insurgents. On this
occasion they had loaded coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, containing
the bodies of two of their officers murdered that morning, on to the
backs of their pick-ups and were weaving through the traffic, firing
over our heads. Drivers slammed on their brakes since people detained
by the commandos, often for no known reason, are often found later in
rubbish dumps, having been tortured and executed.
The government, whose members seldom emerge from the Green Zone, make
bizarre efforts to pretend that there are signs of a return to
normality. Last week a pro-government newspaper had an article on the
reconstruction of Baghdad. Above the article was a picture of a crane
at a building site. But there are no cranes at work in Baghdad so the
paper had been compelled to use a photograph of a crane which has
been rusting for more than two years, abandoned at the site of a
giant mosque that Saddam Hussein was constructing when he was
overthrown.
The same quality of make-believe mars British and American policy in
Iraq. The current motto of both governments is to "stay the course in
Iraq". This may be useful propaganda at home but Iraqi government
officials counter that London and Washington have no "course" in
Iraq, only a policy of endless zig-zags.
For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock
example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars
escalating into big ones. Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in
2003 that Saddam ruled a powerful state capable of menacing his
neighbours. Secretly they believed this was untrue and expected an
easy victory.
Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq
more truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an
un-winnable conflict.
The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain
against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said:
"Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that supposedly
limited conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states.
Having seen what a small war in Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew
what he was talking about.
The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez
crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more
harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by
providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across
the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The
war, which started out as a demonstration of US strength as the
world's only superpower, has turned into a demonstration of weakness.
Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of Iraq.
The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so
many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying
to destroy those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in
Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been
more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq over the last year.
It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The
Iraq war has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most
of the bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers
and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives,
detonators, vehicles and intelligence is home-grown.
The shrill denials by Tony Blair and Jack Straw that hostility to the
invasion of Iraq motivated the bombers are demonstrably untrue. The
findings of an investigation, to be published soon, into 300 young
Saudis, caught and interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to
Iraq to fight or blow themselves up, shows that very few had any
previous contact with al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist organisation
previous to 2003. It was the invasion of Iraq which prompted their
decision to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar
reasons, according to the same study, commissioned by the Saudi
government and carried out by a US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf
Obaid, who was given permission to speak to Saudi intelligence
officers. A separate Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq,
carried out by the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in
Israel, also concluded that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq
alone.
Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small,
hunted group; since the invasion they have become a potent force,
their ideology and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around
the world. Their numbers may still not be very large but they are
numerous enough to create mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they
strike, be it in London or Sharm el Sheikh.
The bombers have paralysed Baghdad. I have spent half my time living
in Iraq since the invasion. The country has never been so dangerous
as today. Some targets have been hit again and again. The army
recruiting centre at al-Muthana old municipal airport in the middle
of Baghdad has been attacked no fewer than eight times, the last
occasion on Wednesday when eight people were killed.
The detonations of the suicide bombs make my windows shake in their
frames in my room in the al-Hamra hotel. Sometimes, thinking the
glass is going to shatter, I take shelter behind a thick wall. The
hotel is heavily guarded. At one time the man who looked for bombs
under cars entering the compound with a mirror on the end of a stick
carried a pistol in his right hand. He reckoned that if he did
discover a suicide bomber he had a split second in which to shoot him
in the head before the driver detonated his bomb.
The bombers, or rather the defences against them, have altered the
appearance of Baghdad. US army and Iraqi government positions in
Baghdad are surrounded by ramparts of enormous cement blocks which
snake through the city. Manufactured in different sizes, each of
which is named after a different American state such as Arkansas and
Wisconsin, these concrete megaliths are strangling the city by
closing off so many streets.
For all the newspaper and television coverage of Iraq, the foreign
media still fail to convey the lethal and anarchic quality of
day-to-day living. The last time I drove into west Baghdad from the
airport in early July we were suddenly stopped by the sound of
volleys of shots. This turned out to be the police commandos, a
12,000-strong paramilitary force which is meant to be the cutting
edge of the government offensive against the insurgents. On this
occasion they had loaded coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, containing
the bodies of two of their officers murdered that morning, on to the
backs of their pick-ups and were weaving through the traffic, firing
over our heads. Drivers slammed on their brakes since people detained
by the commandos, often for no known reason, are often found later in
rubbish dumps, having been tortured and executed.
The government, whose members seldom emerge from the Green Zone, make
bizarre efforts to pretend that there are signs of a return to
normality. Last week a pro-government newspaper had an article on the
reconstruction of Baghdad. Above the article was a picture of a crane
at a building site. But there are no cranes at work in Baghdad so the
paper had been compelled to use a photograph of a crane which has
been rusting for more than two years, abandoned at the site of a
giant mosque that Saddam Hussein was constructing when he was
overthrown.
The same quality of make-believe mars British and American policy in
Iraq. The current motto of both governments is to "stay the course in
Iraq". This may be useful propaganda at home but Iraqi government
officials counter that London and Washington have no "course" in
Iraq, only a policy of endless zig-zags.
For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock
example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars
escalating into big ones. Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in
2003 that Saddam ruled a powerful state capable of menacing his
neighbours. Secretly they believed this was untrue and expected an
easy victory.
Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq
more truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an
un-winnable conflict.
© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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