Operation Support Garner
The Pentagon's one-size-fits-all 'liberation' is a disaster in Iraq
Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Tuesday May 6, 2003
The Guardian
American efforts to foist new rulers on the people of Iraq are
becoming increasingly grotesque. In some cities US troops have
sparked demonstrations by imposing officials from the old
Saddam Hussein regime. In others they have evicted new
anti-Saddam administrators who have local backing.
They have mishandled religious leaders as well as politicians. In
the Shia suburbs of Baghdad, they arrested a powerful cleric,
Mohammed Fartousi al-Sadr, who had criticised the US
presence. In Falluja, an overwhelmingly Sunni town, they
detained two popular imams. All three men were released within
days, but local people saw the detentions as a warning that
Iraqis should submit to the US will.
The Pentagon's General Jay Garner has taken an equally biased
line in his plans for Iraq's government. He held a conference of
300 Iraqis in Baghdad last week and excluded almost every
group which has an organised following.
In a Freudian slip at a recent press conference, Donald
Rumsfeld smugly explained democracy as a competition in
which rival politicians try to "garner support". His message in
Iraq looks like the opposite - Operation Support Garner.
Otherwise, you are cut out.
Washington's failure to hold broad-based consultations at
central and local levels is provoking resistance, sometimes
armed. In response, US troops have used excessive force,
further raising tensions. Ten people died in Mosul when soldiers
fired at crowds of protesters on successive days in mid-April. In
Falluja the death toll from American shootings over two days
last week was at least 16.
The massacre in Falluja was symptomatic. The town was quiet
for two weeks after Iraqi troops and local Ba'ath party leaders
fled. The imams halted the looting and got much of the stolen
property returned. A new mayor arranged for schools to re-open
and persuaded police to return to work. Then the Americans
arrived, arrested imams, put up roadblocks and occupied a
school - all without prior discussion with local leaders.
They seemed to be working from a one-size-fits-all Pentagon
textbook. First "liberate", then move in and provide policing
whether people want it or not. In Baghdad there were indeed
security problems after Saddam's forces vanished, and many
residents asked why US forces did so little to halt the looting of
key buildings. Having failed initially there, the US
over-compensated elsewhere. It came down too hard in Falluja
and other cities where people did not want a US hand.
The contrast with Afghanistan is sharp. For months Afghans
pleaded for the US to deploy international peacekeepers beyond
Kabul to cities where warlords held sway or were fighting for
power. The US refused, either for fear of taking casualties or
because of lack of interest in a poor country once its
anti-western regime was toppled.
In Iraq, where there are no warlords and people feel they have
the expertise to run the country themselves, the US insists on
moving in and staying.
It has excluded Iraq's best-known forces from consultations on
forming a central government. The Islamic Da'wa party, which
was founded in 1957 and suffered repression under Saddam in
the early 1980s, was not invited. Nor was the Iraqi Communist
party, which also lost thousands of its activists in the old
regime's prisons. Both opposed the US attack. The communists
are weaker than they once were, as a result of decades of
propaganda that they reject Islam. But they are part of the Iraqi
spectrum which needs to be recognised.
Washington's biggest omission is its refusal to make overtures
to Iraq's clergy. The Shia Muslims in particular are enjoying a
strong revival and cannot be pushed aside. There are family and
other rivalries between the main groups. The al-Hakim family,
which founded the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq after escaping to Iran 20 years ago, now faces criticism for
going into exile. It has a volatile policy towards the US,
sometimes meeting officials, sometimes denouncing them. The
al-Sadr family, which stayed in the sacred city of Najaf, is
gaining ground. Both groups must be brought into discussions
on the future.
It is not too late for the UN to play a role. There is no need for
foreign troops. Iraqis have shown a high degree of post-war unity
and can provide their own security. The much-predicted clashes
of Sunnis v Shi'ites, or Kurds v Arabs have not happened.
But the UN should come in, with a short-term mandate, to
convene a genuinely representative conference of Iraqis which
would choose an interim government and an assembly to draft a
constitution. Only the UN can give legitimacy and impartiality to
this process. Instead of supporting Washington as Mike O'Brien,
the Foreign Office minister, did when he joined Gen Garner in
co-chairing last week's highly selective meeting of Iraqi
politicians, Britain should work with the security council to give
the UN the same kind of government-brokering role as it had in
post-war Afghanistan.
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