Sticking to his guns

A parking lot near the Green Zone in central Baghdad shortly after a car bomb explosion on July 17.-ALI AL-SAADI/AFP

The Bush administration continues to justify the military occupation of Iraq despite the bloodshed, sectarian strife and disarray.

WITH the overwhelming majority of the American people wanting a quick end to the United States-led occupation of Iraq, the George W. Bush administration is under increasing pressure to begin a phased military withdrawal from that country. Influential Republican politicians have started to speak out against the administrations Iraq policy and the Democrat-dominated legislature has set end 2008 as the deadline for a complete pullout. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the U.S. treasury more than $610 billon in the six years since 2001 the most expensive period of conflict for the U.S. since the Second World War.

From all indications, the much ballyhooed U.S. military surge initiated in March is not working. U.S. Deputy Director of National Intelligence Thomas Fingar told Congress that the surge of more than 30,000 American troops had done little to stem the bloodshed. Car bomb explosions and suicide attacks continue. An interim White House assessment released in July could only boast of a few of its self-imposed benchmarks being achieved. A full report on the situation in Iraq will be released by the White House on September 15, on the basis of inputs from the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker. Congress insisted on the report after it reluctantly approved the military surge policy.

General Petraeus, who is masterminding the counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq, stated recently that the U.S. Army might have to stay in Iraq for another 10 years. In the last three months, 331 U.S. soldiers have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded. In the third week of July, the northern city of Kirkuk witnessed two of the worst suicide bombings, which killed more than 100 civilians. Recent reports suggest that the largest number of suicide bombers in Iraq hail from Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the U.S. But Washington habitually blames Iran and Syria for abetting the insurgency. An unidentified U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times that 50 per cent of all Saudi fighters in Iraq were suicide bombers.

There has also been an unreported surge in the number of contractors fighting alongside the official U.S. Army in Iraq. This mercenary army is said to number between 126,000 and 180,000. Many of the contractors hail from countries such as South Africa, Australia, Brazil, India, Pakistan and Nepal. At least 916 of them have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded in the war, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Labour Department.

In July, prominent Iraqi politicians urged Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves as the death toll among civilians surged. Even Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his job to the Bush administration, said that he was not opposed to U.S. troops leaving Iraq this year and that Iraqi security forces were up to the task of keeping the peace.

Prominent Sunni-led insurgent groups fighting the occupation have decided to come together in order begin negotiations with the U.S. in anticipation of a U.S. withdrawal. The leaders of this group met with Western media representatives for the first time since the U.S. invasion. They announced that they would continue with the armed resistance as long as foreign troops remained in Iraq. At the same time, the spokesmen for the group, which includes the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Suna and the Iraqi Hamas, condemned the activities of al Qaeda in Iraq and suicide bombings against civilians. He also said that the general view among combatants was that U.S. forces would start to withdraw within a year.

Many Iraqis are of the opinion that things cannot get much worse if the Americans withdraw. Under American occupation, more than four million Iraqis have been displaced and two million have fled the country. The countrys economy has deteriorated. Some parts of Baghdad get no electricity. Oil production remains hostage to saboteurs and thieves. People have to wait for hours to buy petrol. Clerics in Baghdad have issued a fatwa against eating river fish because of the number of dead bodies being dumped into the Tigris.

Ignoring the bloody facts on the ground, Bush has reiterated his administrations plans to stay the course in Iraq. He also claimed that U.S. troops in Iraq are fighting the same people who staged 9/11 and that their withdrawal would mean surrendering Iraq to al Qaeda. Interestingly, the U.S. President no longer talks of victory, instead he stresses the consequences of defeat, which he said recently would be death and destruction in the Middle East [West Asia] and here in America.

Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have tried to tar all Iraqi resistance movements with the brush of al Qaeda. It is a well-known fact that 95 per cent of the Iraqi resistance abhors the activities of the group that calls itself al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In recent months, the occupation forces have had an alliance of convenience with sections of the Sunni resistance that also want al Qaeda out of Iraq. However, these groups, comprising mainly Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province, also consider the Shia-led government in Baghdad their enemy. Many observers feel that the Bush administration is treading on dangerous ground by arming militias that oppose the Iraqi national army. Iraqis fear that the U.S. occupation forces will have a long-term presence in their country by hook or by crook. A report by the neo-conservative think tank, the Project for a New American Century, commissioned by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2000, concluded that a substantial American troop presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration is working overtime to secure a stranglehold on Iraqs hydrocarbon sector. The Iraq Oil Law, which the puppet government in Baghdad wants the Iraqi Parliament to approve, is aimed at handing over the Iraqi oil sector to Western oil companies.

Iraqis across the sectarian divide oppose turning over control of the countrys oil resources. The general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Workers, Faleh Abood Umara, said that the proposed law would undermine the sovereignty of Iraq. The woman trade union leader, who was elected to the post by her fellow workers, said that if the law was ratified then the Iraqi people could forget about reconstructing the country as it would allow the U.S. to keep its hegemony over Iraq. She emphasised that the most dangerous part of the law was the production-sharing clause. This agreement, she averred, would rob Iraq of its main resource. Because Iraq has the biggest [oil] reserves in the world right now, the Bush administration is trying to control our oil to support the U.S. economy. I think this is the main reason why it declared war on Iraq, Umara told David Bacon, an American journalist who specialises in labour issues.

Another devious way in which the U.S. hopes to retain its influence in Iraq is by encouraging the de jure split of the country into three parts a Shia south, a Kurdish north and a Sunni centre. A Brooking Institution study r ecently recommended a soft partition of Iraq, which would necessitate the transfer of two to five million Iraqis under U.S. military supervision. In effect it would mean the destruction of the Iraqi state.

Many observers had predicted such a scenario before the start of the U.S.-led occupation. In 2004, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the American journalist Seymour Hersh that the best-case scenario the U.S. could expect was the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq. The Kurds and the Israelis are the only two genuine friends the U.S. has in the region.

Iraqi Kurds, who feel that an opportune moment has finally arrived for full statehood, have attempted some ethnic cleansing in the major cities of Kirkuk and Mosul so that they can be part of a future Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds have refused to hoist the Iraq national flag in their administrative capital, Irbil, since the overthrow of the Iraqi government in 2003. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, 99 per cent of Kurds voted for nationalist parties with an avowed secessionist agenda. In an unofficial referendum held in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq in January 2005, as many as 98 per cent voted for an independent Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Turkey is not amused by the prospects of a Kurdish state on its doorstep. Turkey, otherwise one the staunchest military allies of the West, has said that it would under no circumstances accept the creation of such a Kurdish state. Reports in July stated that Turkey had amassed more than 200,000 troops, tanks, and heavy artillery and strengthened its airpower along the border with Iraq. Turkish military leaders have warned that they will despatch troops into Iraq if cross-border raids by the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) are not stopped. Ankara has alleged that PKK fighters are allowed to operate from northern Iraq. Since the invasion of Iraq, the number of terrorist attacks inside Turkey has increased significantly. The PKK has seen a revival in its political and military fortunes.

An unstated goal of the U.S. military surge was to dismantle the Mahdi militia, which owes allegiance to the spiritual leader Moqtada al-Sadr. His power base, Sadr City, has been targeted relentlessly by U.S. forces. Sadrs representatives in Parliament have vehemently opposed the bid to hand over Iraqi oil to foreign companies. Sadr himself keeps a low profile, knowing well that the Americans are keen to liquidate him. Sadr models himself after the charismatic Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nasrullah. According to most observers, he has emerged as the most popular figure in Iraq today. His efforts at bridging the sectarian divide seem to be succeeding. He has made frequent public appeals to Shia militias to desist from targeting Sunnis. In a widely publicised sermon in May, Sadr said that killing Sunnis and Christians was prohibited, adding that they were brothers, either in religion or in the homeland.

After the second attack on the holy Shia shrine in Samarra, Sadr made emotional appeals to Shias not to retaliate. The first attack on the mosque in February last year triggered a full-scale civil war, which resulted in Shia control over most of Baghdad. Today, the Mahdi army controls huge areas in Iraq, including Baghdad.