Iraq: 366 days later
By Roy Eccleston
20mar04
THE bombings came days and thousands of kilometres apart, but the purpose was the same. The carnage in Madrid and slaughter at a Baghdad hotel bore the hallmarks of al-Qa'ida's terrorists, and both apparently aimed to split the US from its allies.
On the first anniversary of the US-led war in Iraq, the reverberations continue. It was supposed to make the world safer, bring democracy to a long-terrorised nation and spread a tide of political freedom through the Middle East.
Yet Spain's new leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is scathing. "The war has been a disaster," Zapatero railed this week as the death toll topped 200 from an attack many Spaniards saw as payback for supporting the US in Iraq.
"It divided more than united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation was poorly managed."
He didn't end there. "You can't organise a war on the basis of lies," the newly elected Socialist claimed, a reference to the US and British claims of Iraq's elusive weapons of mass destruction. "Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate."
A year after the first missiles rained down on Saddam Hussein's regime, world opinion is as divided as ever on the wisdom of the invasion. Did it create or destroy terrorism? Will it create a hopeful new Arab democracy?
Iraq itself hangs in the balance, experts say. On one side is a chasm of civil war, religious oppression and conflict with neighbours; on the other security, prosperity and the prospect of being the region's most tolerant and democratic Arab state.
Good news jostling against bad: petrol station lines stretch for kilometres but hundreds of thousands of cars have flooded into the country; power outages continue but some of the strain is from air-conditioners and goods unavailable before.
The mass graves are no longer being filled but violence continues. Bombers killed 170 people in two huge attacks on the Shia faith's holiest day on March 2; the next week the religious factions and ethnic groups put aside differences to sign the Arab world's most pluralistic and modern constitution.
Saddam is captured, awaiting trial, but with just over three months until the US hands over sovereignty, there is no alternative leadership acceptable to the Iraqis.
In the broader world, the US's credibility, and perhaps its ability to secure allies for future conflicts, has been hurt. A poll this week by the Pew Centre in Washington found majorities in Germany, Turkey and France, and half of Britons and Russians, believe the war in Iraq undermined the war on terrorism. At least half the people in all those countries now see the US as less trustworthy as a consequence of the war.
And the logic of the US war on terrorism -- that you must seek and destroy them before they acquire a weapon of mass destruction -- is under attack. European Union President Romano Prodi claims: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with the terrorists."
Zapatero is vowing to withdraw Spain's 1300 troops from Iraq (although he may change his mind if the UN issues a new mandate, as it is likely to do). Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, another US ally, says he may also withdraw troops early and feels "misled" by the US over Iraq's WMDs.
The Bush administration has no doubts it has succeeded, though. "The world is safer because of the action we took in Iraq," says White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "Iraqi people have been liberated; some 25 million people are now realising a better future." The US can point to Libya's recent decision to renounce WMDs.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell also dismisses the possibility that Iraq increased the terrorist threat in the world. "Al-Qa'ida was around before we went after Saddam Hussein," he told one interviewer. And although there is a chance of internal conflict in Iraq after the US hands back sovereignty on June 30, "I don't expect a civil war".
Yet while the war was supposed to make the world safer by removing Saddam's still-missing WMDs and severing an unproven link between the dictator and al-Qa'ida's network, some claim it has not done so.
"No," agrees James Lindsay, a senior foreign policy analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "In the short term the war in Iraq may actually have made us less secure because it fuelled the flames of anger within the Islamic world. It gave militants justification for attacks."
Of course, it is possible al-Qa'ida or its supporters would have attacked Spain even without its involvement in Iraq. Still, Islamic terrorist attacks since the end of major combat in Iraq last May have "gone up the (US) alliance chain", says Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and now Spain have been hit.
"The question is who's next," he says. "And you'd have to say the leading candidate would be the UK and a secondary candidate would be Australia."
Iraqis are split over whether the invasion was right but they say their lives have improved. According to a poll paid for by five world TV broadcasters, 48 per cent say the US was right to invade, 39 per cent disagree, 56 per cent say conditions are better than under Saddam, and only 19 per cent say they are worse. Seventy-one per cent expect a better year ahead.
The secret police are gone, the economy has picked up, electrical output, oil output, economic product are all up, says Lindsay. As well, the US has trained more than 200,000 Iraqi police, who it says are beginning to take over security.
Now comes what may be the hardest part. On June 30 the US insists it will hand back sovereignty to a temporary Iraqi government, ahead of elections in December or January next year.
"I think the US is at a really critical point in the transition," says Marina Ottaway, a specialist in democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
The US has imposed the deadline itself, partly with an eye on the November presidential election. "It will be extremely difficult for the US not to meet that deadline," she says. At the same time, "there is no real plan on how to get there -- in order to transfer power you need to have somebody to transfer power to".
The key is how to appease the different ethnic and religious groups. Shia Muslims make up about 60 per cent of the population, with Sunni Muslims representing about 35 per cent. Then there is the ethnic split: about three-quarters are Arabs and 20 per cent Kurds (mostly Sunnis); the latter are concentrated in three of Iraq's 18 provinces and want to stay semi-autonomous.
At present, Iraqis are represented by a 25-member Governing Council, including 13 Shi'ites. Powell says the council is too small and unrepresentative, but the question is how to expand it in a way that gives it credibility in the eyes of Iraqis.
The most powerful Shia leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has been pushing for democratic elections, mindful the Shias are in a majority. He opposed a US plan to select an Iraqi interim government through a series of provincial caucuses.
But the US argued there was too little time for an election. The stalemate was broken when the US, which had kept the United Nations at arm's length, called on the UN for help. In January, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi killed the caucus plan, but also said Iraq needed at least eight months to organise an election.
Brahimi had suggested a meeting of powerful Iraqis, similar to Afghanistan's loya jirga, but Powell says there isn't time for that either.
So what happens next? In a breakthrough this week, Sistani sent word to the UN he wanted Brahimi back, and in due course the Iraqi Governing Council agreed. Some sort of face-saving deal is now vital, but it will need Sistani's support.
The good news is that on March 8 the Governing Council did agree to an interim constitution, although it can be changed. It provides an elected national assembly and a bill of rights with freedoms of expression and religion, a promise of equality for women and, although it allows for Islam to be "a source" of the law, it says no law shall run counter to democratic principles. Kurdish and Arabic will be the official languages.
The constitution has not made the Shias happy because it gives Kurds in their three northern provinces an effective veto over future constitutional change. There is a suspicion that once the Americans leave Sistani will try to strengthen the role of Islam. But the most immediate problem remains the Sunni Arabs -- the people Saddam favoured.
One answer, argues Ottaway, is to revive Saddam's despised Baath Party, which was dominated by Sunnis. If Baathists could be convinced to play a more constructive role, like the Communist Party leaders in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that would give the Sunnis a political channel.
"Unless the Baath Party makes a similar transformation, goes from being all the bad guys who have to be shunned, unless there is legitimate process of transformation for the party, I don't see how we can convince the Sunnis there's a place for them in Iraq," she argues.
The Baathists are blamed for the majority of roadside bombings and smaller-scale attacks that continue to kill US troops, foreign workers and many Iraqis.
But the biggest strikes, the car bombs that have struck the UN, the Red Cross, the Shia mosques and the Mount Lebanon hotel in Baghdad this week, are blamed on an al-Qa'ida-trained terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Earlier this year, the US intercepted a letter from Zarqawi to al-Qa'ida leaders. It outlined his role in the bombings and his plan to foment a civil war by provoking Shias to blame the Sunnis for the attacks.
The letter, if authentic, suggested the terrorists felt they had only a small window left to prevent Iraq becoming a democratic state, because attacks would be difficult to justify once the US handed over.
The top US commander in Iraq, General John Abizaid, forecasts a bloody few months ahead. Abizaid says Iraq's future is difficult to predict.
"I don't think anything will ever happen in this country the way we think it will happen," he told a US interviewer. "The country is unique; it's filled with talented people; it's got a lot of resources.
"But, on the other hand, it has a past that will help guide its future. They have a tradition of violent repression by the state. They have a tradition of an awful lot of warfare. They have a tradition of various tribal groups, religious sects, being played off against each other.
"The question is: can you take the violent impulses and calm them enough to allow political moderation to surface? I think the answer is: you can."
The world must hope his confidence is well-placed. A lot is riding on a stable Iraq.
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