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The bad news that just won't go away
By David Isenberg
Will
things ever get better in Iraq? Most likely, but don't
hold your breath waiting because it is going to take a
while. Bad news seems to be the de jour specialty
when it comes to all things Iraq.
Consider, for
example, some of the newest reports and commentaries
that have been released. A draft report by highly
respected analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies on the asymmetric
conflict being waged between United States forces and
former regime loyalists and various Islamists finds that
"neither side can achieve their original grand strategic
objectives. This has forced each side to limit its
objectives to the point where neither side may be able
to 'win' in grand strategic terms."
In rather
blunt language, he notes that for the US this means:
The US cannot achieve the
objective of removing an urgent and imminent threat
because there is no evidence such a threat existed.
Ditto for linkages between Iraq
and the "war on terrorism". "Iraq at best played a
peripheral role in terrorism, with limited and
unimportant links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups
with limited operational meaning. If anything, the US
may have triggered more Arab and Islamic anger aimed at
the US."
The US will be unable to shape
Iraq into a modern democracy or free market economy. The
US will have to leave long before the political,
economic and energy issues in Iraq play out, and Iraq
will then face years, if not a decade, of instability.
Iraq will not become any
near-term example to the region of what a state should
be, or of the US ability to create a democracy.
The US will not win the hearts,
minds or friendship of the Iraqi people. The war will
generate as much anger as gratitude.
The situation in Iraq is far more likely to compound
US problems with Islamic movements than reduce them, and
will probably produce a significantly less secular
regime over time.
Put another way, the US is
caught between Iraq and a hard place. Writing in the
latest issue of the Washington Quarterly journal, Steve
Metz, director of research at the US Army War College's
Strategic Studies Institute, concludes: "The United
States faces an intractable dilemma in Iraq: in effect,
it is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. By
staying, the United States will face a protracted
insurgency, but by withdrawing before the new Iraq is
able to stand on its own, the ultimate strategic
objective - a unified, stable Iraq that does not
threaten its neighbors and does not support
international terrorism - will not be met."
Meanwhile, on December 2, in a little-noted
briefing at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC,
Charles Duelfer, former deputy director of UNSCOM, the
original UN weapons inspection agency in Iraq and a
supporter of the war, said: "It will probably turn out,
in my judgment, that there are no existing weapons in
Iraq, and that mildly surprises me." No doubt it will
also surprise the Central Intelligence Agency, which
insisted in a November 28 statement that its National
Intelligence Estimate issued in October 2002 was on
solid ground when it "judged with high confidence that
Iraq had chemical and biological weapons".
But
there's more. A just-released report, from the Fund for
Peace, found that things in Iraq have gone from bad to
worse in a significant way. The report, "Iraq as a
Failed State" finds: "In a brilliant demonstration of
the law of unintended consequences, the US-led invasion
of Iraq went far beyond its original goal of regime
change. It precipitated the final collapse of a state
that had been deteriorating for years. Shattered states
proliferate, not eliminate, threats, however, and that
is exactly what happened in Iraq. The security meltdown,
over the first six months of the occupation, is a
continuation of that persistent breakdown."
The
report covered a six-month period up until September and
noted that of 12 top indicators of state collapse, four
have worsened since the war - demographic pressures, the
provision of public services, factionalized elites and
intervention by external political actors. And three
others - the depth of group grievances, uneven
development and refugees and internally displaced
persons - remain at acutely high levels. For others -
brain drain, sharp economic decline, a security
apparatus operating as a "state within a state" and
delegitimatization of the state - improved only
marginally. Only one, human rights, improves
substantially, and that is still reversible because
newly found freedoms are not protected in law.
This affirms the Iraq risk assessment released
in July by the PRS Group's International Country Risk
Guide, which gave a rating of very high risk for Iraq as
of July and also predicted a likelihood of very high for
the worst-case scenario coming to pass in five years.
Meanwhile, despite talk from various US
politicians about the need to "internationalize the
occupation", it is unlikely that the United Nations will
be doing much any time soon. A report released on
December 10 by Secretary General Kofi Annan said that
more security and a clearer mandate were necessary
before the UN could return to Iraq. "It is difficult to
envisage the United Nations operating with a large
number of international staff inside Iraq in the near
future, unless there is an unexpected and significant
improvement in the overall security situation," the
report says.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
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