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MESSING-UP THE MIDDLE EAST (2003-2006)

USS Abraham Lincoln, site of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on 1 May 2003

Thursday, 24 July 2003

CHAOS AND RAGE

There used to be a mosaic of President George H W Bush on the floor at the entrance to the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. It was placed there soon after the first Gulf War in 1991 and was a good likeness, though the artist gave Bush unnaturally jagged teeth and a slightly sinister grimace. The idea was that nobody would be able to get into the hotel, where most foreign visitors to Iraq stayed in the 1990s, without stepping on Bush's face. The mosaic did not long survive the capture of the city on 9 April, 2003 and the takeover of the al-Rashid by US officials and soldiers. One American officer, patriotically determined not to place his foot on Bush's features, tried to step over the mosaic. The distance was too great. He strained his groin and had to be hospitalised. The mosaic was removed.

Almost all of the thousands of pictures of Saddam which used to line every main street in Baghdad have gone, though for some reason the one outside the burned-out remains of the old Mukhabarat (intelligence) headquarters survives. My favourite was straight out of The Sound of Music: it showed Saddam on an Alpine hillside, wearing a tweed jacket, carrying an alpenstock and bending down to sniff a blue flower. Other equally peculiar signs of Saddam's presence remain. The Iraqi Natural History Museum was thoroughly ransacked by looters, who even decapitated the dinosaur in the forecourt. In the middle of one large ground-floor gallery almost the only exhibit still intact is a stuffed white horse which, when living, belonged to Saddam. Wahad Adnan Mahmoud, a painter who also looks after the gallery, told me the horse had been given to the Iraqi leader in 1986 by the King of Morocco. The King had sent a message along with it saying he hoped that Saddam would ride the horse through the streets of Baghdad when Iraq won its war with Iran. Before this could happen, however, a dog bit the horse, and it died. Saddam issued a Republican Decree ordering the dog to be executed.

"I don't know why the looters didn't take the horse - they took everything else," complained Mahmoud, who was in the wreckage of his office painting a picture of Baghdad in flames. "It isn't even stuffed very well." The horse, he added, was not the only dead animal which had been sent from Saddam's Republican Palace to be stuffed by the museum. One day an official from the palace had arrived with a dead dolphin in the back of a truck. He said the leader wanted it stuffed. The museum staff protested that this was impossible because a dolphin's skin contained too much oil. Mahmoud laughed as he remembered the terrified expression on the official's face when told that Saddam's order could not be obeyed.

Saddam had three enthusiasms in the 1990s, two of which still affect the appearance of Baghdad. Soon after defeat in Kuwait he started obsessively building palaces for himself and his family. None of these is likely to be knocked down since they now serve as bases for the US Army and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA, has his headquarters in the enormous Republican Palace beside the Tigris, where he and his staff live in an isolation comparable to Saddam's. Then, in the mid-1990s, Saddam began to build enormous mosques, the largest of which, the Mother of Battles mosque at the old Muthana municipal airport, was only beginning to rise from its foundations when the regime collapsed.

Saddam's third craze, beginning about three years ago, was more surprising. He started to write novels. He dictated them to his secretaries and they were published anonymously in cheap editions, but Iraqis were left in no doubt as to the author. The critical response was adulatory, the print runs enormous. After the fall of Baghdad, documents were found in the Mukhabarat headquarters instructing agents to buy the books and get their contacts to do the same. Copies of his most recent novel, The Impregnable Fortress, as well as an earlier volume called Zabiba and the King, are still for sale in the Friday book market on al-Mutanabbi Street.

They cannot do much about the palaces and mosques Saddam built, but the US Army and the CPA are obsessed with removing every mention of his name from Baghdad. You cannot enter the main children's hospital without walking through a stream of raw sewage, and on some days there is no electricity or water, but earlier this month two cranes were at work removing large green overhead signs for Saddam International Airport. The US officials now in charge of Iraq seem to believe that their problems will be over if all evidence of Saddam's existence is eliminated. This obsession explains in part the political failure of the US and Britain after their swift military victory. Their demonisation of Saddam produces a picture of Iraqi society as being wholly dominated by one man. In fact, the regime's support base was always narrow - this was the reason for its exceptional cruelty.

Iraqis were never going to welcome the US and British armies with cheering crowds hurling flowers. It is, nevertheless, extraordinary that in only three months the US has managed to generate such fury against its occupation. Guerrilla actions have so far been limited, but they are popular. In the middle of June two men drove up to US soldiers guarding a propane gas station near al-Dohra power station in south Baghdad and opened fire. One of the soldiers was shot through the neck and killed and the other was wounded in the arm. An hour or so later I asked the crowd standing around a pool of drying blood on the broken pavement what they thought of the shooting. They all said they approved of it, and one man said he was off to cook a chicken in celebration.

A month later the attacks have spread to the centre of Baghdad. I was waiting outside the National Museum, where the CPA had arranged a brief showing of the 3,000-year-old golden treasure of Nimrud, whisked for the occasion from the vaults of the Central Bank, to demonstrate that life was getting back to normal. Suddenly there was a six-minute burst of firing on the other side of the museum. It is a measure of the chaos in Baghdad that this turned out to be the result of two quite separate incidents. The first was a funeral: as is normal in Iraq, people were firing their guns into the air as a sign of grief. The American troops on the roof of the museum thought they were under attack and shot back. But most of the gunfire was in response to somebody firing a rocket-propelled grenade into an American Humvee in Haifa Street, wounding several soldiers. The surviving soldiers had then opened fire indiscriminately and killed a passing driver. As the Americans withdrew, the crowd, dancing in jubilation, set fire to the already smouldering Humvee.

A week after I had been to look at Saddam's stuffed horse, Richard Wild, a young British freelance journalist, went to the Natural History Museum to get a story about its destruction by looters. He was a tall man with close-cropped blond hair and he was wearing a white shirt and khaki trousers. To an Iraqi he may have looked as if he were working for the CPA. As he stood in a crowd outside the museum an Iraqi walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

There are 55,000 US troops in and around Baghdad but they seem curiously vulnerable. They largely stick to their vehicles there are very few foot-patrols. They establish checkpoints and search cars, but usually have no interpreters. "Mou mushkila (no problem)," one driver said when asked to open the boot of his car. "Don't contradict me," a soldier shouted. Military vehicles are often stuck in horrendous traffic jams (because of the electricity shortage the traffic lights are not working) making them an easy target for grenades. Just before the attack in Haifa Street I was talking to an American soldier outside the National Museum. The tag on his shoulder read: "Old Ironsides." I asked him what unit this referred to. He replied: "The First Armoured Division, the finest armoured division in the world." But tanks and heavy armour are not much use in Baghdad. A few hours later a sniper shot dead another soldier as he sat in his Bradley Fighting Vehicle by the gates of the museum.

Outside Baghdad the Army has been conducting search missions in the villages and giving them such names as "Desert Scorpion". The press office puts out statements proudly listing the number of detainees and arms captured and suspicious amounts of money discovered. Villagers protest that they have always had weapons, and need them more than ever because of looters. They also have large amounts of cash, often in $100 bills. Iraqis have not kept much of their money in banks since Saddam closed them just before the first Gulf War. When they reopened the Iraqi dinar was worth only a fraction of its former value.

Some foreign observers are already convinced that this American and British venture will end disastrously. A friend representing a French company in Washington recently went with some trepidation to Paris with the unwelcome news that he had been told by the Pentagon that because of France's opposition to the war there was absolutely no chance of his employers getting a contract in Iraq. He was not looking forward to reporting the total failure of his well-paid efforts, but to his relief the chairman greeted the dire news with prolonged laughter, saying: "Don't worry. Let's just wait a year or two and then it will be American companies which won't be able to do business with the Iraqis."

This could be discounted as the evil-minded French watching with delight as the Americans, with Tony Blair loyally chugging behind, sink deeper into the Iraqi quagmire. But the quite correct perception that the US has already failed in Iraq is becoming the consensus in Iraq as well as much of the rest of the world.

It is a failure of historic proportions. The aim of the war in Iraq was to establish the US as the world superpower which could act unilaterally, virtually without allies, inside or outside Iraq. The timing of the conflict had nothing to do with fear of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with getting the war won in time for the run-up to next year's presidential election in the US.

The US failure to win a conclusive victory in Iraq is like that of Britain in South Africa during the Boer War. Like the US, Britain went into the war filled with arrogant presumptions about an easy victory. As the conflict dragged on, with a constant trickle of casualties from attacks by the elusive Boers, nationalists from Dublin to Bombay drew the conclusion that the British Empire was not quite as tough as it looked.

In Washington as a visiting fellow at a think-tank for the first six weeks of the year, I was continually struck by the ignorance and arrogance of the neo-cons, then at the height of their power. They had all the intolerant instincts of a weird American religious cult, impervious to any criticism of their fantasy picture of Iraq, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Iraqis willing to explain how their country really worked found appointments with senior officials mysteriously cancelled at the last moment, sometimes while they were sitting in the official's waiting room.

This should be the real charge against Tony Blair's government - not that it did not understand what was happening in Baghdad, but that it did not take on board the strange happenings in Washington.

There is nothing peculiar about Britain supporting the US come what may, since this has been a priority of British foreign policy for nearly a century. But it should have been realised much earlier in London that this US government is very different from, and more dangerous than, any of its predecessors. The extent and irreversibility of the American failure is not yet appreciated outside Iraq.

Sunday, 12 March 2006

THREE YEARS AFTER SHOCK AND AWE

President George Bush is about to embark on one of the toughest campaigns of his second term. Tomorrow, with the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq looming, he will make the first of a series of speeches to convince the American public, a sceptical world - and perhaps even himself - that things are going the right way in Iraq.

Signalling the start of this public relations offensive, Mr Bush said on Friday that Iraq had stepped back from "the abyss" of civil war. That is debatable - in the eyes of many Iraqis, civil war has already begun- but it shows how far expectations have sunk since the invasion was launched with such swaggering confidence 36 months ago.

Far from creating a stable, democratic and prosperous Iraq, whose benign influence would spread to the rest of the Middle East, the United States and its faithful ally, Britain, have created what Foreign Office minister Kim Howells yesterday called "a mess". Iraq could no longer attack its neighbours or develop nuclear weapons, he said, adding: "So yes, it's a mess, but it's starting to look like the sort of mess that most of us live in."

To appreciate how ludicrous this statement would appear to the average Iraqi, it is necessary only to point out that Mr Howells was visiting Iraq to examine the oil industry. In December and January, daily oil production was around 1.1 million barrels a day, the lowest since May 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations at an end. Before 2003, oil output was 2.5 million barrels a day. Ironically, revenue has risen to about $2.5 billion a month, because world oil prices have shot up, at least partly because of the situation in Iraq.

But for all the efforts of the political establishments in the US and Britain to play down the problems, reality persists in breaking through. The latest example of this for Mr Bush, whose handling of Iraq is now supported by fewer than 40 per cent of Americans, is the death of a US hostage, Tom Fox, one of four kidnapped Christian peace activists who include the 74-year-old Briton Norman Kember.

Rather than being the kind of bad news that masks quiet progress, it illuminates the daily threat to Iraqis.

Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world. And in many important ways, things are getting worse. Iraq Body Count, which has sought to do what the Pentagon and the Iraqi health ministry refuse to do - keep a tally of Iraqi civilians who die violently - estimates that even before the third year of occupation has ended, the toll is higher than in either of the previous two years.

According to IBC, which compiles figures for civilian deaths reported by at least two media outlets, 6,331 were killed between 1 May 2003 and the first anniversary of the invasion, and 11,312 in the second year of occupation. The toll for the period from the second anniversary of the invasion to the beginning of March, it says, was 12,617 - and that did not include most of the deaths in the upsurge of sectarian violence which followed the destruction of a major Shia shrine in Samarra last month.

Average violent deaths per day, IBC adds, went from 20 in year one of the occupation to 31 in year two and 36 in year three. When Iraqis are asked about the biggest change in their life since 2003, nearly all point to the danger of violent death. But IBC admits that with the increasing inability of journalists to move around and report freely, its method of monitoring civilian deaths is becoming increasingly inaccurate.

What evidence has emerged indicates that a widely ridiculed study published in The Lancet in autumn 2004, estimating that at least 100,000 civilians had died violently since the war began, might not be so inaccurate.

Apart from sectarian killings or the risk from trigger-happy coalition troops, ordinary Iraqis have most to fear from crime, which is why everyone is armed. Kidnapping is an industry, with children a frequent target, leading most well-off Iraqis to flee: hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have left for Jordan, Syria and Egypt. One banker who stayed was kidnapped when his seven bodyguards were murdered.

Many Iraqis supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein because they wanted a return to a normal life. Sitting on some of the world's largest oil reserves, they did not see why they should not enjoy the same standard of living as Kuwaitis and Saudis. But if Saddam had led them to ruin and defeat, Iraqis have found that in many ways their lives have got worse without him. In the first year of occupation, some Iraqis comforted themselves with the thought that "the US cannot afford to fail". But the more time has passed, the greater the extent of the failure has become obvious. For all the billions of dollars in reconstruction money, there is not a single crane on the skyline in Baghdad, except a few rusting examples left over from Saddam's grandiose projects to build giant mosques. There are more cars in Baghdad, but there is also a permanent traffic jam because so many streets are blocked for security reasons.

Optimists can point to some improvements. Teachers now get $200 a month, compared to $2 three years ago, and many have returned to the profession. Some Iraqis have benefited from the influx of dollars. For the first time there are mobile phones and satellite TV, but the cost of living has soared and there is very high unemployment, perhaps 50 per cent. Most people survive on a state-subsidised ration, just as they did under Saddam. The most glaring failure is that the supply of drinking water and sewage disposal are both below pre-invasion levels, according to the US Government Accounting Office. Electricity output has just begun to exceed the Saddam-era figure of 4,600 megawatts. Overall, Iraqis have power only for 12 hours in 24.

People might have tolerated such difficulties if they were convinced the country was heading towards greater stability and self-government. Instead they are having to live with the consequences of the occupation authorities' early mistakes, born of ignorance and overconfidence. The best-known is the precipitate decision to disband the entire Iraqi army and sack every member of Saddam's Baath party, no matter how lowly. This not only fuelled an insurgency whose causes the US military have apparently only just begun to grasp, but gave Iran, Saddam's former enemy and the greatest threat to international peace, according to the Bush administration, undreamt-of influence in Iraq.

The US view of the insurgency as part of its "war on terror" led to more errors. First it insisted resistance came only from "foreign fighters" loyal to al-Qa’ida and its leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Later it was conceded that most insurgents might be Iraqis, though they were dismissed as disgruntled former army officers and Baathist "dead enders". Even more belatedly, US commanders have admitted to themselves that their attempt to suppress the insurgency has created more recruits for the resistance, most of whom are inspired by communal pride and lack of economic opportunities. As for training an indigenous army to deal with this situation, the Iraqi military has been reconstituted on highly sectarian lines. It is badly equipped, because the US did not want to give it heavy weapons, and the procurement budget in 2003-2004 was largely stolen. But the main concern must be whether the army would stay together in the event of civil war. The Ministry of the Interior has 110,000 men under arms, mostly police, who are increasingly controlled by Shia militias; the paramilitary police commandos are seen by the Sunni community as death squads controlled by the main Shia militia.

Nearly three months after the Shia alliance won the election on 15 December, no government has been formed: the divisions between Shia, Sunni and the Kurds have proved too great. If a unity government is formed, it is likely to be too divided to make decisions.

President Bush is imprisoned by his own rhetoric on Iraq. Rather than the grand aims he proclaimed in his first term, he will be lucky if he can extricate himself without being seen as responsible for the worst US foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. It will be interesting to see what his speechwriters can make of this unpromising material.

PERSONAL FREEDOM AND SECURITY

Iraqis have gained freedom of speech, with many new newspapers and TV channels, but the secular middle classes increasingly fear Islamist militias. Hundreds of thousands of the better-off have fled the country.

The Promise: "The future of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. After years of dictatorship, Iraq will soon be liberated. For the first time in decades, Iraqis will soon choose their own representative government. Coalition military operations are progressing and will succeed. We will eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, deliver humanitarian aid, and secure the freedom of the Iraqi people. We will create an environment where Iraqis can determine their own fate democratically and peacefully." Joint statement by George Bush and Tony Blair, 8 April 2003.

The Reality: "Not only has the Iraqi government failed to provide minimal protection for its citizens, it has pursued a policy of rounding up and torturing innocent men and women. Its failure to punish those who have committed torture has added to the breakdown of the rule of law." Amnesty International, 9 March 2006.

The Statistic: 14,000 prisoners still being held in Iraq by coalition forces at the end of November 2005.

STABLE GOVERNMENT

Fears of civil war are increasing as Iraqi politicians wrangle over the formation of a government nearly three months after the election. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, detested by Sunni politicians because of his links to Shia militias, refuses to stand aside so that a unity government can be formed.

The Promise: "Having liberated Iraq as promised, we will help that country to found a just and representative government, as promised. Our goal is a swift transition to Iraqi control of their own affairs. People of Iraq will be secure, and the people of Iraq will run their own country." George Bush, 1 July 2003 "The Prime Minister and I have made our choice: Iraq will be free; Iraq will be independent; Iraq will be a peaceful nation; and we will not waver in the face of fear and intimidation." Joint Bush and Blair statement, 16 April 2004

The Reality: "Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government." Conservative US columnist George Will, March 2006.

The Statistic: 86 days since the Iraqi people voted on 15 December 2005, without a government being formed.

ARMY AND POLICE REFORM

The new Iraqi army and police force is one of the most controversial and secretive aspects of the occupation. Apart from doubts about the loyalty and effectiveness of troops trained by the coalition, there are fears that police and paramilitaries are functioning as death squads.

The Promise: "As the Iraqi security forces stand up, the confidence of the Iraqi people is growing - and Iraqis are providing the vital intelligence needed to track down the terrorists." Bush at US naval academy, 30 November 2005

The Reality: "Many cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees held in facilities controlled by the Iraqi authorities have been reported since the handover of power in June 2004. Among other methods, victims have been subjected to electric shocks or have been beaten with plastic cable. The picture that is emerging is one in which the Iraqi authorities are systematically violating the rights of detainees in breach of guarantees contained both in Iraqi legislation and in international law and standards." Amnesty International, March 2006

The Statistic: 60 battalions in the reconstituted Iraqi army are Shia, outnumbering the 45 Sunni and three Kurdish battalions.

THE ECONOMY

It seemed a reasonable assumption that Iraq's oil industry, crippled by sanctions, could swiftly be revived after the invasion, but the insurgency has wrecked those hopes. Incompetence in the Coalition Provisional Authority and lack of security have also ruined reconstruction, with basic services almost all in a worse state than before the war, despite billions of dollars in investment.

The Promise: "We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit." Blair and Bush, 8 April 2003 "Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction." White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, 18 February 2003

The Reality: "The US never intended to completely rebuild Iraq. This was just supposed to be a jump-start." Brigadier General William McCoy, Army Corps of Engineers commander, January 2006

The Statistic: $9 billion of US taxpayers' money unaccounted for in Iraq.

DAILY LIFE

The coalition authorities admit that much of the insurgency is fuelled by a lack of economic opportunity. While the occupation has brought more money to some, mainly in Baghdad, life has been made more difficult for most by shortages of water and power, sky-high prices - and the ever-present danger of violent death.

The Promise: "Our progress has been uneven but progress is being made. We are improving roads and schools and health clinics and working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity and water. And together with our allies, we will help the new Iraqi government deliver a better life for its citizens." George Bush, 27 June 2005

The Reality: "The Iraqi people are suffering from a desperate lack of jobs, housing, health care and electricity… If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major deterioration of the situation." Barham Saleh (planning minister) in 'Living conditions in Iraq 2004', a survey by Iraqi authorities and the UN. "Although a large percentage in Iraq is connected to water, electricity and sewage networks, the supply is too unstable to make a difference to their lives." Staffan de Mistura, UNDP representative, May 2005

The Statistic:

5.2 ─ average number of daily hours of electricity in Baghdad homes

THE DEATH TOLL

37,589 ─ maximum number of civilian deaths since the Iraq invasion in 2003, according to Iraq Body Count, which bases its estimates on media reports. The minimum figure it gives for the same period is 33,489

100,000 ─ the estimate of civilian deaths since the invasion, published in 'The Lancet' in the autumn of 2004, based on statistical analysis

2,306 ─ US military deaths since the invasion

16,653 ─ US military personnel wounded in action since the invasion

103 ─ British military deaths since the invasion. Figures for British wounded are not available

103 ─ other coalition military deaths since the invasion

1,110 ─ highest monthly total of bodies brought into Baghdad mortuary during the past 12 months. The lowest figure was 780

Patrick Cockburn and Raymond Whitaker