quote:

Just as Bush's main reasons for the war turned out to be bogus, the explanations proffered by the American troops for their mounting troubles in Iraq have been delusory. In maintaining that the occupation was popular and resistance to it limited to "enemies of freedom," America has been blaming, variously, "Baathist bitter-enders," Iranian or Syrian "agent provocateurs," Islamists (homegrown and foreign), anti-Shiite Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists, and "Saddamists in the Sunni triangle." The fallacy of such propaganda stands exposed today as Iraqi resistance is clearly coalescing into what looks like a burgeoning national war of liberation by both the Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...ol=968350116795

I think that pretty much sums it up. All along we've been told that the dissidents were the minority - they were all "Saddam loyalists" or "Shiite terrorists" from Iran. At every major milestone the coalition have laid claim to - the toppling of the statute, the end of major combat operations, the killing of Saddam's sons, the capture of Saddam, the ratification of the new Iraqi constitution and so on - we've been told that lasting peace is just short step away, and that with these milestones, the morale of those conducting the resitance will be wittled away. As the intensity of the resistance intesifies (remembering that it's been strong and unwavering for 12 months now) the coalition needs to admit that this isn't a problem isolated merely to small groups of ideological extremists, it's a major grass-roots issue. As the US troops - by necessity - begin to lock-down on rogue cities like Fallujah, the citizens will only feel more oppressed, the ill-feeling will spread, tougher security will be needed and the entire thing begins to snowball. This is no longer a case of merely dismantling small, disbanded groups of "terrorists" to win the peace, it's a case of winning over 24 million people amongst whom ill-will continues to spread. The coaltion needs to admit that the simple picture they've painted (in the form of lots of "freedom lovers" crushing small groups of "freedom haters") is inaccurate and need to develop a new strategy on the basis that this is going to be a permanent, on-going, large-scale problem that they do not have under control at all.

Similarly, what is becoming more apparent is that the US war-planners just didn't give enough thought to what would happen after the fall of Baghdad. They seemed to believe that the hatred of Saddam Hussein possessed by most average Iraqi citizens would be enough to coalesce the nation under a new US installed regime. What they failed to take into account though:

1) The unity under Saddam's Iraq was always going to disipate once the Baathist regime fell and the various ethnic groups within Iraq made a dash for power.
2) People will generally not be acquiescent in the occupation of their nation for too long, regardless of the circumstances under which this occupation arose.
3) The major ethnic groups in Iraq have, historically, not gotten along. Merely because they've been united under a brutal, iron-fist regime for 40 years (and say they wish to retain this unity) there is necessarily going to be disunity as these ethnic groups start pulling towards their necessarily disparate ideologies in the resultant power-vacuum.
4) The Iraqi people - almost unanimously - hate Chalabi, the criminal the US have installed at the top of the administrative heirarchy.

Mix all this up with the influx of ideological extremism and militantism, 12 months of instability and social decay in many parts of the country, the delay in the power transfer and elections promissed by the occupying forces and a continuous, all-encompassing uncertainty about the future of the country and you can begin to understand why many average Iraqi citizens are starting to vent their frustrations at the US and UK troops. When Wolfowitz admitted that the US hadn't properly planned for post-war Iraq he was more particularly referring to the inadequacy of the troop numbers, but it's now clear that they didn't have a clue about how to solve all these social problems that even the most amateur arm-chair politician could see coming prior to the war.

And, of course, the wild-card in all this are the Kurdish people. They been well behaved so far (they're used to being occupied and protected by foreign troops I think) but just watch what happens when they're told they have to surrender their oil-fields and their semi-autonomous government. Getting the Sunnis and the Shiites to get along and unify under a single constitution is nothing (due to their similarities) compared to getting the Kurds to acquiesce. If you tell the Kurds to hand over everything they've worked hard to acquire since the first Gulf War to the soon-to-be Iraqi government, they will dissent and you're half way to a genuine civil-war. The alternative - giving the Kurds the protected autonomy they want - will lead to the Turks strolling over the border as soon as the US leave (the Turks have said, explicitly, that they will have no hesitation in invading "Kurdistan" should this scenario eventuate) and this, of course, will bring its own set of problems.

So while the violence in Iraq escalates, we're still nowhere near the worst-case scenario. At the very least, there is some sense of national unification (even if that is only the unification of antipathy towards the occupying forces) but if this begins to decay (more likely to happen as power is handed over to the Iraqi people) then this could be an on-going problem of Yugoslavian proportions.

Oh the joys of "liberation"!

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/