Bring 'Em On?
- From: "tony" <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:10:50 +0800
Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict
As he completes another tour of duty in the chaos of Iraq, award-winning
reporter Patrick Cockburn charts how Bush and Blair's 'winnable war' turned
into a mess that is inspiring a worldwide insurgency
Published: 24 July 2005
The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against
ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do
not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict
terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain
had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.
The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez crisis in
1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good.
It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by providing it with a large pool
of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess
before the invasion of 2003. The war, which started out as a demonstration
of US strength as the world's only superpower, has turned into a
demonstration of weakness. Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of
Iraq.
The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many
fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying to destroy
those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month
12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks
in Iraq over the last year.
It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The Iraq war
has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most of the bombers
in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers and supporters who
provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and
intelligence is home-grown.
The shrill denials by Tony Blair and Jack Straw that hostility to the
invasion of Iraq motivated the bombers are demonstrably untrue. The findings
of an investigation, to be published soon, into 300 young Saudis, caught and
interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to Iraq to fight or blow
themselves up, shows that very few had any previous contact with al-Qa'ida
or any other terrorist organisation previous to 2003. It was the invasion of
Iraq which prompted their decision to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar
reasons, according to the same study, commissioned by the Saudi government
and carried out by a US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf Obaid, who was given
permission to speak to Saudi intelligence officers. A separate Israeli study
of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq, carried out by the Global Research in
International Affairs Centre in Israel, also concluded that almost all had
been radicalised by Iraq alone.
Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small, hunted
group; since the invasion they have become a potent force, their ideology
and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around the world. Their
numbers may still not be very large but they are numerous enough to create
mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they strike, be it in London or Sharm el
Sheikh.
The bombers have paralysed Baghdad. I have spent half my time living in Iraq
since the invasion. The country has never been so dangerous as today. Some
targets have been hit again and again. The army recruiting centre at
al-Muthana old municipal airport in the middle of Baghdad has been attacked
no fewer than eight times, the last occasion on Wednesday when eight people
were killed.
The detonations of the suicide bombs make my windows shake in their frames
in my room in the al-Hamra hotel. Sometimes, thinking the glass is going to
shatter, I take shelter behind a thick wall. The hotel is heavily guarded.
At one time the man who looked for bombs under cars entering the compound
with a mirror on the end of a stick carried a pistol in his right hand. He
reckoned that if he did discover a suicide bomber he had a split second in
which to shoot him in the head before the driver detonated his bomb.
The bombers, or rather the defences against them, have altered the
appearance of Baghdad. US army and Iraqi government positions in Baghdad are
surrounded by ramparts of enormous cement blocks which snake through the
city. Manufactured in different sizes, each of which is named after a
different American state such as Arkansas and Wisconsin, these concrete
megaliths are strangling the city by closing off so many streets.
For all the newspaper and television coverage of Iraq, the foreign media
still fail to convey the lethal and anarchic quality of day-to-day living.
The last time I drove into west Baghdad from the airport in early July we
were suddenly stopped by the sound of volleys of shots. This turned out to
be the police commandos, a 12,000-strong paramilitary force which is meant
to be the cutting edge of the government offensive against the insurgents.
On this occasion they had loaded coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, containing
the bodies of two of their officers murdered that morning, on to the backs
of their pick-ups and were weaving through the traffic, firing over our
heads. Drivers slammed on their brakes since people detained by the
commandos, often for no known reason, are often found later in rubbish
dumps, having been tortured and executed.
The government, whose members seldom emerge from the Green Zone, make
bizarre efforts to pretend that there are signs of a return to normality.
Last week a pro-government newspaper had an article on the reconstruction of
Baghdad. Above the article was a picture of a crane at a building site. But
there are no cranes at work in Baghdad so the paper had been compelled to
use a photograph of a crane which has been rusting for more than two years,
abandoned at the site of a giant mosque that Saddam Hussein was constructing
when he was overthrown.
The same quality of make-believe mars British and American policy in Iraq.
The current motto of both governments is to "stay the course in Iraq". This
may be useful propaganda at home but Iraqi government officials counter that
London and Washington have no "course" in Iraq, only a policy of endless
zig-zags.
For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock
example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars escalating into
big ones. Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in 2003 that Saddam ruled
a powerful state capable of menacing his neighbours. Secretly they believed
this was untrue and expected an easy victory.
Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq more
truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an un-winnable conflict.
The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against
ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do
not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict
terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain
had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.
The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez crisis in
1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good.
It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by providing it with a large pool
of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess
before the invasion of 2003. The war, which started out as a demonstration
of US strength as the world's only superpower, has turned into a
demonstration of weakness. Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of
Iraq.
The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many
fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying to destroy
those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month
12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks
in Iraq over the last year.
It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The Iraq war
has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most of the bombers
in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers and supporters who
provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and
intelligence is home-grown.
The shrill denials by Tony Blair and Jack Straw that hostility to the
invasion of Iraq motivated the bombers are demonstrably untrue. The findings
of an investigation, to be published soon, into 300 young Saudis, caught and
interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to Iraq to fight or blow
themselves up, shows that very few had any previous contact with al-Qa'ida
or any other terrorist organisation previous to 2003. It was the invasion of
Iraq which prompted their decision to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar
reasons, according to the same study, commissioned by the Saudi government
and carried out by a US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf Obaid, who was given
permission to speak to Saudi intelligence officers. A separate Israeli study
of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq, carried out by the Global Research in
International Affairs Centre in Israel, also concluded that almost all had
been radicalised by Iraq alone.
Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small, hunted
group; since the invasion they have become a potent force, their ideology
and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around the world. Their
numbers may still not be very large but they are numerous enough to create
mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they strike, be it in London or Sharm el
Sheikh.
The bombers have paralysed Baghdad. I have spent half my time living in Iraq
since the invasion. The country has never been so dangerous as today. Some
targets have been hit again and again. The army recruiting centre at
al-Muthana old municipal airport in the middle of Baghdad has been attacked
no fewer than eight times, the last occasion on Wednesday when eight people
were killed.
The detonations of the suicide bombs make my windows shake in their frames
in my room in the al-Hamra hotel. Sometimes, thinking the glass is going to
shatter, I take shelter behind a thick wall. The hotel is heavily guarded.
At one time the man who looked for bombs under cars entering the compound
with a mirror on the end of a stick carried a pistol in his right hand. He
reckoned that if he did discover a suicide bomber he had a split second in
which to shoot him in the head before the driver detonated his bomb.
The bombers, or rather the defences against them, have altered the
appearance of Baghdad. US army and Iraqi government positions in Baghdad are
surrounded by ramparts of enormous cement blocks which snake through the
city. Manufactured in different sizes, each of which is named after a
different American state such as Arkansas and Wisconsin, these concrete
megaliths are strangling the city by closing off so many streets.
For all the newspaper and television coverage of Iraq, the foreign media
still fail to convey the lethal and anarchic quality of day-to-day living.
The last time I drove into west Baghdad from the airport in early July we
were suddenly stopped by the sound of volleys of shots. This turned out to
be the police commandos, a 12,000-strong paramilitary force which is meant
to be the cutting edge of the government offensive against the insurgents.
On this occasion they had loaded coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, containing
the bodies of two of their officers murdered that morning, on to the backs
of their pick-ups and were weaving through the traffic, firing over our
heads. Drivers slammed on their brakes since people detained by the
commandos, often for no known reason, are often found later in rubbish
dumps, having been tortured and executed.
The government, whose members seldom emerge from the Green Zone, make
bizarre efforts to pretend that there are signs of a return to normality.
Last week a pro-government newspaper had an article on the reconstruction of
Baghdad. Above the article was a picture of a crane at a building site. But
there are no cranes at work in Baghdad so the paper had been compelled to
use a photograph of a crane which has been rusting for more than two years,
abandoned at the site of a giant mosque that Saddam Hussein was constructing
when he was overthrown.
The same quality of make-believe mars British and American policy in Iraq.
The current motto of both governments is to "stay the course in Iraq". This
may be useful propaganda at home but Iraqi government officials counter that
London and Washington have no "course" in Iraq, only a policy of endless
zig-zags.
For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock
example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars escalating into
big ones. Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in 2003 that Saddam ruled
a powerful state capable of menacing his neighbours. Secretly they believed
this was untrue and expected an easy victory.
Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq more
truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an un-winnable conflict.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article301250.ece
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