Date: July 15, 2005 8:56:03 PM PDT
Subject: Why occupation cannot bring peace
The Guardian (UK)
July 15, 2005
Our troops are part of the problem
Heavy-handed occupation is not a solution to the Iraqi
insurgency
By Robin Cook
In the single week since the London bombings there have
been 11 suicide attacks in Iraq. One car bomb this week
wiped out 30 children, one as young as six, who had
gathered to plead for western chocolates from American
soldiers.
I do not draw a parallel between London and Baghdad to
diminish the pain and horror caused by the crime on our
own shores, but because that appalling experience should
give us some insight into the violence that is now a
daily occurrence in Iraq. And as the occupying force we
bear responsibility for its security. There may be room
for debate over whether there is a connection between
the war in Iraq and the London bombings, but there is no
escaping the hard truth that the chaos in that country
is a direct result of the decision to invade it, taken
in defiance of the intelligence warning that it would
heighten the terrorist threat.
And still those who took us into the war are not frank
with us. For months those of us who have asked for a
timetable for withdrawal from the occupation of Iraq
have been told that it would encourage the insurgents to
circle that date in the calendar. Yet at the weekend we
learned from another leaked minute that the Ministry of
Defence has ticked the middle of next year as the target
by when it will have reduced the British presence to
about a third of its present level.
This has nothing to do with progress against the
insurgents, who are growing bolder rather than weaker.
It is entirely to do with American domestic politics. As
George Bush sinks in popularity back home, his
desperation rises to cut his losses in Iraq. The leaked
memo confirms that the Bush administration is planning
to cut its occupying forces to a third by the first half
of 2006, which would make it politically impossible at
home for Britain not to do the same.
Apparently there is a row going on between the Pentagon,
which wants "a bold reduction", and the US commanders on
the ground, who know that they cannot contain the
insurgency with their present numbers and do not see how
they will be able to do better with fewer. For once I
find myself on the side of the Pentagon.
Heavy-handed US occupation is not the solution to the
insurgency but a large part of the problem. US army
rules of engagement appear to give much greater weight
to killing insurgents than to protecting civilian lives.
It is alarming testimony to its trigger-happy approach
that statistics compiled by the Iraqi health ministry
confirm that twice as many civilians have been killed by
US military action as by terrorist bombs. The
predictable result is that the US occupation breeds new
recruits for the insurgency at a faster rate than it
kills existing members of it.
Nor is it only the fatalities of US forces that foster
resentment. Homes in every neighbourhood have been
trashed by US forces in futile searches for insurgents.
Every extended family knows of at least one person who
has disappeared into the new gulag of detainees. A year
after President Bush promised to demolish Abu Ghraib it
is being expanded, rather than closed, to accommodate an
even larger number than were held there by Saddam.
It is an inexorable law of foreign occupations that the
greater the repression, the stronger the resistance. The
reduction in US forces may be planned for the wrong
reason, but should be welcomed as a step in the right
direction. It does though present the coalition
governments with a rhetorical problem.
They have repeatedly told us that they would stay in
Iraq until the job was done. Patently the job is not
done if it is measured by success in getting on top of
the insurgency. It has therefore been necessary to
redefine what was meant by the job they promised to
complete. Last week an imaginative new interpretation
surfaced.
Apparently, when Donald Rumsfeld warned that the
insurgency could take a decade to contain he did not
mean the US troops would stay that long to defeat it but
that they would expect the Iraqi forces to do the job
for them. In short, completing the job now is not
bringing peace to Iraq but equipping the Iraqis to fight
their own civil war, possibly for another 10 years. The
Iraqi government itself appears to have a shrewd grasp
of its need to find other allies, hence its surprising
agreement last week to a mutual defence pact with Iran.
It is striking how little events on the ground in Iraq
have figured in the key decisions of this sorry episode.
The timing of the original invasion was dictated not by
the reports on the UN weapons inspections but by the
momentum of the US military build-up. Now the timing of
the exit from occupation is going to be determined not
by progress in restoring security in Iraq but by the
date of next year's mid- term congressional elections in
the US.
Newspapers Limited 2005
Robin Cook was Tony Blair's first Foreign Secretary
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