THE MORASS IN IRAQ: Horrific Baghdad explosion highlights American failure(BUSH FAILURE), troops' deaths, the chaos facing Iraqis. Robert Collier
Blast highlights U.S. failure to end chaos in Iraq
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, August 20, 2003
The truck bomb explosion that wrecked U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday thrust the U.S. occupation of Iraq deeper than ever into chaos and uncertainty.
Amid the horror, many things were unclear -- the identity and aims of the group that carried out the attack, the effect on a jittery Iraqi public, the response of the world community.
What was clear was that Iraq has become a complete mess in which U.S. troops suffer casualties almost every day and the American-led civilian administration has failed to bring economic revival or even a basic sense of law and order.
There was plenty of speculation about who was to blame for the blast, which killed at least 20 people and injured about 100.
Administration officials hinted that the attack had been masterminded by Ansar al-Islam, a shadowy terrorist group that was driven into Iran by U.S. troops during the war but may have infiltrated back into Iraq and reconstituted itself in Baghdad.
Some analysts blame terrorists from other Muslim nations who seek jihad, or Islamic holy war, against the West.
'JIHADI WOODSTOCK'
"Iraq is becoming the jihadi Woodstock, with terrorists coming in from Syria, Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world," said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank.
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has long expressed hostility toward the United Nations, accusing the international body of lending its legitimacy to Israel's crackdown on Palestinians and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
However, other analysts discount the possible role of foreign fighters, saying the attack probably was mounted by the same Iraqi Sunni Muslims who have waged guerrilla attacks against U.S. soldiers and sabotaged power plants and other infrastructure.
U.N. Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in Tuesday's attack and appears to have been its main target, had angered Iraqi nationalists recently by his strong support for U.S. political initiatives.
He had publicly backed the Governing Council, a 25-member body of Iraqis appointed by chief U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, and he became a major behind-the-scenes player in its political maneuverings.
But the theory that Vieira de Mello was a lightning rod for Iraqi discontent also has plenty of holes.
In interviews in Baghdad and nearby cities in July, a wide variety of Iraqis sympathetic to the guerrillas and opposed to the occupation told a Chronicle reporter that they supported the United Nations as a counterweight to U.S. might.
On Tuesday, U.S. anti-war activists and Iraqis condemned the U.N. blast, saying it had the hallmarks of foreigners, not Iraqis.
"I don't know in what way this kind of attack will make Iraqis any more sympathetic to the resistance," said Eman Khammas, an Iraqi woman who is co- director of Occupation Watch, founded in Baghdad in June by a coalition of U.S.
activist groups, including San Francisco's Global Exchange.
"From a political point of view, the United Nations was paralyzed and discredited, but from a humanitarian point of view, it helped a lot of Iraqi people," Khammas said.
GUERRILLAS CONDEMN BLAST
The Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera reported that an anti-American guerrilla group, the Iraqi Islamic National Resistance Movement, had released a statement condemning the bombing and saying no Iraqis would have attacked the United Nations.
Al-Jazeera recently aired a videotaped statement from the same group making threats against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Regardless of who carried out the blast, its impact adds to the growing sense that Iraq is spiraling out of control -- a tailspin that disturbs both supporters and opponents of the U.S. occupation.
Electricity supply remains below prewar levels, leaving Iraqis stewing in the blast-furnace summer heat with little air conditioning and an erratic water supply, and thieves and carjackers rule Baghdad's formerly safe streets. U.S. aid workers and technicians live in heavily guarded bunkers, venturing out only when surrounded by phalanxes of U.S. soldiers or private guards.
May, a strong supporter of the U.S. invasion, says the task of governing postwar Iraq may be more than the Bush administration reckoned on.
"We often talk about how powerful the U.S. military is, but the kind of warfare we know how to do is what we saw in the first three weeks of the war, the 'shock and awe,' " May said. "But the kind of conflict we're in now, with prolonged fighting, a low-intensity conflict, we don't have a lot of experience in. We don't know how to win, but we have to learn.
"Nobody has succeeded at nation building. We didn't succeed with Haiti in the 1990s after the invasion, and the Europeans haven't done well in Africa. We don't know if we can succeed."
WANT U.S. TROOPS TO STAY
Some opponents of the U.S. presence in Iraq reacted to Tuesday's explosion by saying the time is not yet right to end the occupation.
Khammas said U.S. troops should not leave "until they get things right" and restore a functioning government and basic services such as electricity, water and police protection.
If the Americans pulled out now, she said, "this would be impossible, it would be bloodshed, with so many factions, so many feuds."
For radical Islamists and hard-line Hussein supporters who despise Westerners as infidels, the more anarchy, the better.
By targeting the United Nations, the attack is likely to scare away the world body and many aid groups whose help is needed to help rebuild Iraq.
U.N. WORKERS WANT PULLOUT
In a statement, the U.N. employees' association called on Secretary-General Kofi Annan "to suspend all operations in Iraq and withdraw its staff until such time as measures can be taken to improve security."
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the organization would stay in Iraq, but he suggested the mission might be reduced.
One early pullout was Internews, a nonprofit group based in Arcata (Humboldt County) that is helping create independent media in Iraq.
Markos Kounalakis, the chairman of Internews, said he had decided Tuesday to withdraw his group's staffer from Iraq.
"The blow is devastating to reconstruction efforts in the country, but we need some time to figure out what our strategy will be for continuing to help drive media reconstruction," he wrote in an e-mail.
Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, said the United States was in a deeper hole than ever.
"The Iraq reconstruction will depend on nongovernmental organizations and U. N. support, but if they walk away from Iraq, we've got a serious problem," he said. "It will make it much harder for the United States to engage other countries. It will show the dangerous nature of Iraq, and it makes it open season on everyone." |
