Iraq: US policy in a blind alley

The United States is doing an awful lot wrong in Iraq. Its occupation policy ignores the country’s culture and traumatic past and is based on a flawed appraisal of the balance of political power in Iraq. The alternative to the present situation is a swift handover of power to the Iraqis under the auspices of the United Nations. That would not make the task in hand any easier but the prospects would be brighter.

Pacifying and bringing democracy to a country after a military invasion is always hard work, even if the intervention removed a despised dictator. But it is rash and foolish to try and pacify and democratise a country without any real understanding of its divisions, its culture and the traumas of its past. And yet that is precisely what the neoconservative “crusaders” at the Pentagon set out to do – and failed.

The Arab world is racked by the double trauma of centuries of Ottoman rule followed by imperial colonisation by the West. Iraqis underwent something very akin to the trauma of Versailles: betrayal in 1919 by allies France and Britain, who broke their promise of freedom and autonomy and instead created protectorates in the ex-Ottoman territories. Against the backdrop of this historical precedent, any occupier is viewed in Iraq with suspicion. Anyone who promises freedom but starts by establishing control is seen as a lier, whose only interest is in oil. And the negative perception of the occupier is made even worse in the present circumstances by the notorious bias of the US stance on the Palestinian conflict.

What’s more, the Pentagon grossly overestimated the influence of the Iraqis in exile (especially that of Ahmed Chalabi) and underestimated the power of the politicised Shiites. Removing all Baath Party members from the civil service not only caused the administration to collapse; it also fuelled fear and resentment in simple Baath supporters, creating a pool of potential recruits for the resistance organised by Saddam Hussein’s supporters. And the US troops – more vulnerable on the ground than during the high-tech war in the air – are naturally a magnet for murderous Islamist terrorists from all over the world.

The fact that the United States arrogantly pushed aside the United Nations deprived it of the UN’s vast experience of rebuilding war-torn countries – and hugely increased the mistrust of the Iraqis. The right course of action would have been to follow the Afghan example: arrange a political reconstruction conference to provide the impulse for creating an independent Iraqi coalition government overseen by a UN special representative. If possible, that representative should come from a Muslim country (Malaysia would have been a geographically remote and therefore acceptable candidate). The money for reconstruction should have been channelled through the UN presence and not through the occupying force.

Even under those conditions, however, the task to be accomplished would not have been much easier. With a UN mandate, more countries would certainly have joined in the work of stabilising and rebuilding Iraq but because of the widespread insecurity in the country the presence of American troops will be necessary for a long time to come – until a new Iraqi government is in place with the capacity to ensure security. As long as US soldiers are in Iraq, however, the terror will not stop. That presents a dilemma – a dilemma made worse by the fact that, as recent attacks have shown, even the UN is not popular with everyone. The organisation is held responsible for twelve years of sanctions and their consequences for the civilian population.

So the alternative to the present occupation may not be without violence or risk but it would offer the majority of Iraqis a credible prospect of independence. At the same time, it would remove the Americans from centre-stage and quell suspicions that they are only there as imperialists, out to control and exploit Iraq’s oil resources. Handing over power could be enough to secure majority support for the reconstruction process across Iraq’s ethnic divides. Those who call for a swift end to the occupation, therefore, are right.