FEATURES
Giving peace a chance
Richard Beeston detects a
modest glimmer of hope as troops try to bring order to Iraq ahead
of the elections
Baghdad
The house looked like a neo-colonial mansion that had been picked
up in an American suburb and dumped in the back streets of the Iraqi
city of Ramadi. The squad of US marines did not bother to knock.
They simply kicked in the door and began searching the home and
rounding up the startled residents who, not surprisingly, had been
fast asleep at two in the morning. ‘Where are your weapons?’ shouted
the sergeant to an elderly Iraqi in a nightdress, who fetched a
stunning nickel-plated Webley revolver that had probably last seen
action when the British ran Iraq half a century ago. ‘It was a gift
from my father,’ the man explained, sheepishly handing over the
pistol. At this point it was the turn of the Americans to look apologetic.
‘We got the wrong fucking house,’ said a soldier, straining over
a satellite map to identify the correct target for that night’s
raid. The gun was returned. The marines made their excuses. The
family went back to sleep and the whole procedure was repeated at
the neighbour’s home, where male occupants were rounded up, blindfolded,
handcuffed and taken away for questioning.
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‘Get a life!’ |
The comic element of the night’s operation was lost on the participants.
The young marines rightly expect to be blown up or ambushed at any
moment when they are on the streets of Iraq, particularly in insurgent
strongholds like Ramadi. They are nervous and aggressive in their
dealings with locals. The work is dangerous and relentless and likely
to get a lot tougher very soon. The Iraqis look sullen and resentful
when faced with their occupiers. They too are fearful for their families
and livelihoods amid the rising violence. Both sides seem to understand
that they are now involved in the critical battle of post-war Iraq
and that the situation will almost certainly get worse before it gets
better.
America has embarked on a strategy to salvage something workable from
the failure of the occupation, where after 17 months most of the country,
particularly the capital and several major cities, is gripped by chaos
and violence. The crisis is so dire that nobody in Iraq bothers debating
the rights and wrongs of the war, the absence of WMD or the failure
of reconstruction. Instead the focus is directed on what will happen
between now and the elections scheduled for January 2005, when the
country is supposed to choose its first democratic government, and
America and its remaining allies hope to begin the process of disengaging
from the country.
In purely military terms the objective is clear. America’s 140,000
troops, probably boosted by additional US forces and thousands of
newly trained Iraqi soldiers, must systematically reimpose authority
over the restless Sunni Muslim heartland of central Iraq and maintain
security long enough to allow voters to register, politicians to campaign
and, finally, polls to open on time. ‘We are not just going to sit
on our hands. We need what I call a kinetic precursor,’ said a senior
official at the US embassy, charged with executing this bizarre experiment
in Iraqi democracy. ‘We will have to blow some things up. We will
have to win some battles before the elections can take place.’
The tactic is a huge gamble. Pitted against the Americans is the motley
insurgent movement made up of fanatics like Abu Musab al-Zarkawi,
the terrorist mastermind responsible for suicide bombings, kidnappings
and televised beheadings, former members of the Baathist regime, who
still hope to return to power, and ordinary Iraqis, who simply want
the occupation over as soon as possible. The Americans have just scored
one lightning victory over the town of Samarra, which was captured
by American and Iraqi forces in a three-day ground offensive. But
the real battles lie ahead in Baghdad, in Mosul, in Baqubah, in Ramadi
and particularly in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which was abandoned
by the Americans after heavy fighting in April and is now the headquarters
of the country’s militant groups. Using tanks and helicopter gunships
to subdue these areas so that people can vote could cost hundreds
of lives, further alienate the population and risk repeating one of
the great absurdities of the Vietnam war, when the Americans had to
‘destroy the village in order to save it’.
And yet there is still a modest glimmer of hope that something positive
may emerge. It is true that scores of Iraqis interviewed over the
past month have been uniformly critical of the Americans, but they
are even more terrified by the prospect of civil war or rule by a
militant Islamic regime, like the one now running Fallujah. The town
is controlled by ‘emirs’ who have imposed Taleban-style rule, including
summary execution of those suspected of collaborating with the Americans.
While the beheading of Westerners has shocked people abroad, in Iraq
the population is traumatised by the death toll from daily car bombings,
which kill ordinary Iraqis. On one day recently, the campaign reached
new depths when 34 children, who were being given sweets by American
soldiers, were blown to pieces in an explosion.
These tactics have caused deep rifts within the ranks of the resistance,
where local activists increasingly dissociate themselves from the
ruthless conduct of the extremists. The Americans have benefited from
the split and in several recent cases have launched successful air
strikes against foreign mujahedin fighters in Fallujah using intelligence
supplied by locals. There is also a chance that the fledgling Iraqi
army, which should be able to mobilise tens of thousands of troops
by next month, will be able to take on some of the burden of the looming
campaign.
Americans are now staking everything on the belief that if the right
climate can be created before the elections, the population will be
swept up in the process. Optimists point to elections held in other
trouble spots like Algeria and East Timor, and even the apparent enthusiasm
for democracy in Afghanistan. In Iraq it is clear that the country’s
Kurdish population, which has had the right to vote in its northern
enclave for a decade, and the majority Shia Muslims in the south are
likely to participate.
But none of this will mean very much if the Sunnis, the former ruling
class in Iraq, do not. A parliament elected without them could exacerbate
the situation by deepening sectarian divisions and threatening civil
war or even a break-up of the state. For this process to work, the
Sunnis, who are largely leaderless, have to be subdued by force and
then encouraged to participate in a political process likely to enshrine
their reduced status in Iraq.
That is a lot for any community to swallow, particularly if you are
one of those Sunni families who have just had their door kicked in
at two in the morning.
Richard Beeston is diplomatic editor of the Times.
© 2004 The Spectator.co.uk
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