With many neoconservatives also admitting to the failure of the Iraq mission, a U.S. military withdrawal may be inevitable.
THE big defeat suffered by the Republicans in the midterm congressional elections is due mainly to the military and political quagmire the administration of President George W. Bush finds itself in with respect to Iraq. It is the valiant fight of the Iraqi resistance that has made the situation untenable for the United States occupation forces. The insurgency continues unabated. The spectre of civil war looms. Some senior U.S. administration officials and political pundits have been advocating the carving up of Iraq into three states before the final withdrawal. This idea seems to have the support of only the two Kurdish parties represented in the government in Baghdad. The Sunnis as well as the big Shia parties are against the idea. So also are Iraq's neighbours and the Arab world.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has warned that his country would under no circumstances allow the creation of an independent Kurdish state. Turkey is particularly upset at what it sees as U.S. abetment of Kurdish plans to take over the key oil city of Kirkuk. The majority in Kirkuk today consists of Arabs and Turkmen. An independent Kurdish state is anathema to Iran and Syria, which also have sizable Kurdish populations. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has given a new impetus to Kurdish separatism.
Leon Panetta, a member of the high-powered "Iraq Study Group", told the media that the situation in Iraq is "even worse than we thought". The group, comprising former Secretary of State James Baker and confidants of Bush Sr., was approved by Bush in March to recommend new options for the war in Iraq. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton heads the "bipartisan" group.
The most prominent political casualty of the war so far has been Donald Rumsfeld, who was asked to quit immediately by President Bush after the Democrat's landslide was known. Before the elections, Bush had pledged to retain Rumsfeld despite loud demands for his removal. Senior U.S. military commanders had stated that the Defence Secretary no longer had their support. Several military newspapers published editorials demanding his ouster. Rumsfeld's hands-on style of leadership and his continuing assertion that the war in Iraq was "winnable" made him an object of loathing and ridicule in influential sections of the media and the establishment. His successor as Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, is a trusted ally of the President's father and is said to be in favour of a more conciliatory policy for West Asia. In one of his recent articles, he called for restarting the dialogue process with Iran. He argued that Washington should have a relationship with Iran similar to the one it has with China.
The Bush administration, while retaining its hard-line stance on Iran's nuclear programme, has indicated that it is not averse to seeking Teheran's help in finding a solution to the problem in Iraq. Teheran, reflective of its new-found confidence, has said that it would only talk to Washington if there were a general change in attitude towards Iran in the White House. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also seems to be distancing himself from his old friend, Bush, by suggesting that the U.S. should engage Iran and Syria in finding a solution to the problems in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat who is tipped to be the next chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said that the Bush administration should realise that the U.S. is "getting deeper and deeper into a hole" in Iraq.
In all likelihood the Iraq Study Group may recommend two policy courses for the Bush administration - greater cooperation with Iran and Syria and a phased military withdrawal from Iraq. Many of the newly elected Democrats are demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq before the presidential poll in 2008. The majority of Republicans, however, still opposes a timetable being set for withdrawal. But with even most of the neoconservatives, including luminaries like Richard Perle, admitting to the failure of the Iraq mission, a military withdrawal, either phased out or precipitate, seems to be inevitable. Richard Haas, president of the prestigious Council of Foreign Relations, stated that the Iraq war is "not winnable". In an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Haas says that the current situation in Iraq makes him nostalgic "for the old middle-east", when the U.S. was the most influential power in the region.
Rumsfeld, while resigning, still insisted that the Iraq war was a winnable one and that very few people understood its real nature. A few days after his resignation, a court in Germany prepared to hear a lawsuit charging him and other senior officials, including former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, with having played a role in the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. The plaintiffs are 11 Iraqis and a Saudi, who said that U.S. interrogators tortured them. The lawyers for the plaintiffs said that Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. military commander of Iraqi prisons at the time, will testify on their behalf. German law provides "universal jurisdiction", which allows for the prosecution of war crimes that have taken place anywhere in the world. In the first week of November, to coincide with the elections, hundreds of U.S. troops serving in Iraq signed a petition calling for withdrawal. The petition, to be submitted to the U.S. Congress in January, states: "As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all the American military forces and bases from Iraq.". A British Security Company, Pilgrims, which is actively involved in Iraq, warned that the country may soon descend into full-fledged civil war. "Washington has chosen to emphasise the role played by foreign elements in the insurgency. This has allowed them to portray the insurgency as a magnet for Al Qaeda supporters rather than as an Iraqi-led phenomenon which might undermine U.S. claims of local approval for the reconstruction project," said the report. The report also envisaged the "steady unravelling of the situation" in Iraq. More than 3,000 Americans have lost their lives and 20,000 have been wounded since the war began.
Another report prepared by the U.S. Defence Department for the U.S. Congress in August states that "conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq". It notes that the "coalition forces" were the targets of 63 per cent of attacks and reveals that 6,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed since the U.S. occupation of Iraq in the beginning of 2003. The report said that 20 per cent of policemen who had joined the force were quitting every year and more than 40 per cent were absent from duty. According to the report, Baghdad's central morgue is seeing a big increase in the number of bodies since July. In the second week of November, it received 60 bodies every day. There are reports in the media that the morgue has run out of space as bodies of murdered and tortured Iraqis pile up by the hour.
The British medical journal, Lancet, in an article published in October, estimated that 2 to 3 per cent of the Iraqi population may have been wiped out since the U.S. invasion. More than a million Iraqis have been displaced since 2003. Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said that more than 150,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. occupation started. Lancet has given the figure of Iraqis killed as 655,000. Al-Shemari blames the U.S. for the ongoing tragedy. "The army of America didn't do its job - they tie the hands of my government," he told the media while on a visit to Austria. He belongs to a political grouping led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated that he would not renew the United Nations mandate under which the U.S. keeps its troops in Iraq if the Bush administration does not make a commitment to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq.
The rapidly deteriorating situation was exemplified by the recent kidnapping of more than a hundred teachers and students from the Ministry of Higher Education in Baghdad by armed men dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi Interior Ministry security officials. The uniforms were recently supplied by the U.N. and are difficult to duplicate. There have been allegations for a long time that groups abetted by high officials in the government are actively engaged in vigilante activities, especially those targeting the Sunni minority. The situation has been spiralling out of control since the bombing of the Askariyah mosque, among the holiest for Shias, in Samarra in February.
The U.S. forces in Iraq today are being assaulted on various fronts. The Sunni resistance has made many parts of Baghdad and central Iraq virtual no-go areas for the U.S. and Iraqi government forces. The U.S. is also viewing the "Mahdi" militia led by the young radical cleric Sadr as a serious long-term threat. It has now emerged as the single most powerful militia in Iraq. There is nothing much the Bush administration can do at this juncture to combat Sadr's growing influence. The present Iraqi government is largely dependent for its survival on the support of Sadr. His supporters cornered a significant number of seats in the elections held last year. It is Sadr's writ that runs in Sadr city, a sprawling suburb of more than two million. His influence extends to Basra and other important towns in the south. Sadr's role model is Hassan al-Nasrullah, the Shi'ite cleric from Lebanon, who has emerged as the most popular leader in the Arab street.
