The Hindu : The U.S. in Iraq

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Wednesday, Oct 29, 2003

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The U.S. in Iraq

By Hamid Ansari

The parallels with Vietnam are uncanny. The grandiose plans of a New Middle East seem to unravel in the sands of reality.

IRAQ IS back in the headlines. A new United Nations Security Council resolution lends legitimacy to the occupying forces. The Madrid Conference is being billed a success. Donald Rumsfeld's internal memo of October 16 to four of his closest aides has found its way into print. Lost in the excitement is its operative sentence: "The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost benefit ratio is against us!" The 60 Minutes programme of the CBS television broadcast this week a set of interviews on the changing views of the Shias on the United States' role in Iraq. AFP has reported the results of an opinion poll conducted by the Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies. The latter two are particularly revealing.

CBS interviewed two Shia clerics, junior in rank but making the news nevertheless. Hussein Khomeini has been in Washington for several weeks making pronouncements that might have, 15 years earlier, invited an excommunication from his own grandfather along the lines of what was pronounced on Baruch Spinoza in 1656. The young Khomeini denounced theocracy anywhere and everywhere. If this was music to Neocon ears, the views of the other cleric were not. Moqtada al Sadr, son of a leading Iraqi Grand Ayatollah killed by the Baathists and wielding considerable muscle power, described Saddam Hussein as the small serpent and the Americans as the big one: "the little serpent has left and the great one has come in". His opposition to the occupation is finding expression in an increasing number of attacks on the U.S. forces in Shia areas. The new Shia activism against the occupying forces is also part of a complex domestic Iraqi calculus: resistance to occupation, if left to the Sunnis only, could have an adverse impact in the eventual distribution of power in the post-conflict period.

The opinion poll was conducted in early October in major cities in Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish areas and, despite its limitations, makes interesting reading. 67 per cent of the Iraqis regard the U.S. presence as occupation, and 15 per cent consider them as liberators. The corresponding figures in April, after the war, were 46 per cent and 43 per cent. 46 per cent felt the security situation had deteriorated and only 23 per cent had confidence in the ability of the coalition forces to improve matters. Asked about the shape of the future government of Iraq, 33 per cent favoured an Islamic model and 30 per cent a Western style democracy. In the preference for leaders, Shia clerics al Hakim, Bahr al Ulum and Ibrahim al Jafari got the first three places (58, 57 and 54 per cent). The preference clearly is for a Shia cleric rather than for a leader known in the Western world. Proponents of the modernising theory would now need to rework their arguments.

Iraq figured in the recently concluded summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Malaysia and what happened there is revealing. Foreign occupation of a member-state prompted some members to table a resolution calling for a timetable for the end of U.S. occupation and for the U.N. being given a central role. Overt American pressure, however, led to the resolution being replaced by a statement simply urging U.S. withdrawal and a role for the U.N. Interestingly enough a member of the Governing Council of Iraq, who led his country's delegation to the conference, described the draft resolution as an interference in the internal affairs of Iraq (and therefore in contravention of the OIC Charter). In fairness to the OIC, it only followed the trend set by the Security Council Resolution 1511 of October 16 that authorised the U.S.-led multinational force to take all necessary steps to maintain security. The resolution gives the U.N. "a vital role" (not a "central" one) in the reconstruction of Iraq. The document is a triumph of semantics over substance. Despite this apparent success, the diffidence with which financial commitments were made at Madrid should make clear the scepticism with which the Iraqi venture is being viewed.

In one of his books, Henry Kissinger has written, two decades after the event, about the shock of "the abruptness of the collapse of America's national consensus on Vietnam". Do the demonstrations in Washington this weekend, and other expressions of dissent in recent weeks within the Beltway and elsewhere in the U.S., signal the beginning of a similar process? The parallels are uncanny: indignation over a perceived international conspiracy against America and a determination to build free institutions in another part of the world, followed by a realisation of the limits of American power and an outpouring of moral indignation against the loss of American lives in a foreign war. A report by Human Rights Watch on October 21, accusing U.S. soldiers of the use of excessive force against Iraqi civilians, adds another dimension to the debate. The HRW report touches only one aspect of occupation tactics; it makes no mention of credible reports of collective punishment, and of punitive destruction of crops and orchards of peasant communities. Such harshness is not easily forgotten.

Thus the grandiose plans of a New Middle East, made "to advance the interlocking causes of democracy in the Arab world and the survival of Israel", seem to unravel in the sands of reality. Would not a less doctrinaire, more even-handed, approach produce better results? The wholesale endorsement of Ariel Sharon tactics of repression has done nothing either to advance Israeli security or the road map to which Mr. Bush committed himself with much fanfare a few months ago. Instead, street level resentment against the U.S. policy has reached unprecedented levels across the Arab lands. Could this be a harbinger of change? Yes. Would this necessarily further the cause of democratic reforms coupled with stability of economic activity? No. The prospect of a destabilised West Asia may cater to the fancy of a few ideologues; the world at large would view it with horror. We in India should have no illusions about it nor should we be deluded by prospects of prescriptive pseudo-modernisation.

(The writer is a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations.)

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