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U.K., U.S. still look like losing in Iraq

Max Hastings

Whatever the tactical successes of the U.S. surge, it is hard to believe that anything other than disaster awaits.

— PHOTO: AFP

The U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus (right), greets Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Ramadi on March 13. — PHOTO: AFP

EVERY NOW and again, grown-up people review their cherished opinions and prejudices. Does the evidence still stack up? Or are there grounds for thinking again? It seems especially important to do this at regular intervals with Iraq, because its fate is critical for the West. Sceptics have for years been rehearsing a countdown to a day of doom. I am often among their number. But, as a compulsive consumer of the torrent of analysis and situation reports that comes out of Iraq, I sometimes shut my eyes and ask: is there a shred of hope?

Europeans are prone to think of the Americans who run the place as body-armoured oafs. If this was sometimes true in the past, it is certainly not so now. On the contrary, the United States has belatedly entrusted the salvation of Iraq to its best and brightest — and I do not use that phrase pejoratively.

David Petraeus, who commands, is probably the cleverest and most imaginative general in the American army. He has assembled around himself a cluster of like-minded people, passionately committed to retrieving the country from the brink of disaster. H.R. McMaster, for instance, the most successful unit commander to have served in Iraq, was whisked back to Baghdad from an academic fellowship in London to join General Petraeus' team.

Despite the latest Iraqi government figures showing civilian deaths up in March, the evidence is that George W. Bush's "surge," entrusted to General Petraeus' direction, is achieving real results. In Baghdad, there has been a dramatic fall in the rate of murders, suicide-bombings, insurgent attacks. Many Sunnis have become deeply hostile to the depredations of Al-Qaeda's foreign fighters.

In some cases, Sunnis have taken violent action to expel or eliminate the intruders, whom they no longer want as allies.

Aided by much improved intelligence, so-called Tier One special forces — of which almost one-third are British SAS [special forces] - have been carrying out intensive operations to "harvest" insurgent leaders. Hundreds have been captured or killed. The Americans have exchanged a policy of dispatching troops daily on armoured excursions from their huge bases for one of holding positions to provide visible security in the midst of Iraqi communities.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired U.S. officer fiercely critical of his nation's policies in Iraq, has just visited the country, seen all the top brass, and delivered a report to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. General McCaffrey is full of praise for what General Petraeus and his team are doing. He argues that there is now a slim chance of stabilising the country.

Yet everything turns not upon what Americans — much less the British — do, but upon Iraqis. "Reconciliation is the way out," writes the General. "There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable U.S. force levels."

Huge problems persist, first, with the paralysis of Iraqi rule. General McCaffrey acknowledges that "there is no function of government which operates across the nation."

Secondly, though progress is being made with training Iraqi soldiers and police, these are still a million miles from being sufficiently numerous, motivated, trained, or equipped to assume responsibility for the nation's security.

For U.S. policy in Iraq to have a chance of working, the indispensable ingredient is time. Yet the storehouse of this precious commodity was almost emptied before General Petraeus arrived. Everybody concerned with Iraq — the American and British governments, the precarious regime in Baghdad, the insurgents, the population across the country — is staring at the calendar, looking towards January 2009.

When Mr. Bush quits the White House, it seems unlikely that any successor will be willing to maintain a big commitment in Iraq. The game will be over. Yet to put Iraq on its feet, to leave behind a viable society, a minimum of five years and hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed. Many of the right things are now being done, too late to retrieve the mistakes of 2003 and 2004.

Main challenge

The foremost challenge is to persuade a sufficient number of Iraq's people to overcome a visceral desire to see their occupiers humiliated, and act on the basis of self-interest. However successful are General Petraeus and his brightest and best in holding the ring, only the Iraqis can save themselves. Today, as General McCaffrey acknowledges: "No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection." Surge or no surge, there are not remotely enough Western troops in Iraq to alter this wretched reality. Only the people who live there can do it.

It is hard to believe that, whatever tactical military successes General Petraeus' people are achieving — and these are real enough — Iraq's leaders, security forces and citizens can take the strain in real time. We still look like losing.

If defeat, chaos, regional war indeed come to pass, the Iraqi people and the security interests of the west will suffer a disaster for which the disgrace of President Bush and Tony Blair will represent wholly inadequate compensation. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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