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The US loses control of Iraq

The United States has fought a war on two fronts. Now they are desperately trying to save the stumps.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

If there is one person who has reason to hover now, it must be General Eric Shinseki. The former US military chief said in February last year that the occupation of Iraq would require "many hundreds of thousands of soldiers." It made both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his lackey, Paul Wolfowitz, look red. Shinseki was more or less forced to resign, and a long military career was practically over.

Over a year later, the Pentagon estimates sending tens of thousands more troops to Iraq. The number of armored vehicles is on the rise; from two hundred last fall to over four thousand by the end of September this year. Dozens of M1-A1 tanks are on their way or have already been shipped from bases in Germany. Soldiers are no longer to drive around in lightly armored Humvees, but in 19 tons of heavy, eight-wheeled fortifications that can roll effortlessly over most types of explosives.

Boring military data? Absolutely not. The order of "hardware" shows that at least the generals understand which way it carries…

A war on two fronts

The United States has had the war they had not expected. They have also received the war they did not receive when they invaded Iraq in March last year.

It; the war thus, floating around as a constant nightmare for the Americans. No sooner have they calmed down the situation in one place, then it raises military attacks and rebellions in another.

In part, it is a classic war, as it occasionally is in Fallujah. In part, it is quiet before the storm, as in Najaf where the Americans have put an iron ring around the followers of the Shiites' "enfant terrible:" Moktada al-Sadr.

It took no more than two drops to make the cup overflow in early April. One was the murders of four American civilians whose dead bodies were mutilated at its worst on the last day of March. The scene: Fallujah, and the Americans were quick to swear revenge.

Afterwards, it emerged that the four "civilians" were not civilians at all, but Blackwater-employed security personnel with a past in the American elite forces. But the paramilitary dimension did not soften the shock as the pictures triumphed in almost all the world's news channels.

The other thing that happened – at about the same time – was that Coalition Provisional Authority Moktada al-Sadr's militant weekly newspaper closed Al Hawza, with the result that the insurgency flared from Baghdad in the north to Basra in the south. Furious Shi'as in al-Sadr's Mahdi army stormed several cities in the Shi'a belt and were close to occupying Sadr City in Baghdad. But the worst stumbling block for the Americans was that al-Sadr sent both parts of the occupation force and the so-called Iraqi Civil Defense Corps on the run. And not only that: parts of the ICDC went straight to the enemy after being trained, armed and employed by the Americans.

It gave a serious blow to the bow to the idea of ​​a gradual transition to purely Iraqi security forces. And that's why the Americans have turned around several times over the unresolved situation in Fallujah: should you storm the city, negotiate with the rebels, try to calm it all down by having joint US-Iraqi patrols, or should one simply hand over the entire smear to a former general in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard?

First came the message that American soldiers should storm Fallujah. Then they walked away from it and said they would rather patrol the city with Iraqi security forces. Then that idea fell, too, and Baath General Jasim Mohamed Saleh was given the honorable mission of entering Fallujah with a small group of Iraqi soldiers. Then came the criticism, because Saleh was suspected of playing a role in the crushing of the Shia rebellion in 1991. Thus, they chose Muhammed Latif, who unlike Saleh does not belong in Fallujah and thus has no legitimacy there.

"The worst thing," thunders Republican Senator John McCain, "is that we are not acting decisively. And that is the greatest sin of omission in any war. "

From defeat to defeat

The war is like most wars, not reminiscent of Vietnam, but of Chechnya in a thousand powers.

What it says politically about it is that it has killed more than 150 American soldiers since the beginning of April. What is morally inflamed is that it has also killed the lives of hundreds of civilians, one in five of whom are women and children.

But the big question is how it will affect the winding up of the Occupation Board, as President George W. Bush says is firm. On June 30, the occupation force will cease to exist, Coalition Provisional Authority will be rigged down, aristocrat L. Paul Bremer III will probably be sent home and the interim area will be thanked for his efforts.

In recent months, Americans have been flipping around on everything they previously thought. Bremer has gone from defeat to defeat and would probably have been kicked had it not been for him to have only a few weeks left anyway.

First, he had to change the basic rules for the elections and the drafting of the new constitution, after massive opposition from the Shiites in the south – led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Then the Americans had to crawl to the cross and invite the UN on the journey. Next came the turnaround operation in relation to the Ba'ath party and the Iraqi army. The first thing Bremer did when he took over from Jay Garner was to fire thousands of teachers and state bureaucrats who had the slightest connection to the regime. The army was dismissed in disgrace, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, officers and generals were put on the streets without pay or hope of future employment.

Today they are on their way back again. One year after Bremer's plunge into Iraqi reality, the facet is that the purges created just the fertile soil for the revolt that is now being seen in Fallujah. US intelligence now believes that Saddam's old anti-terror forces, elite soldiers and intelligence service are behind the coordinated and highly professional military attacks against the Sunni Triangle occupation force. It's a turnaround there too; away from the claim that foreigners, terrorists, Islamists and criminals are waging war on Iraqi soil.

In other words, the war is home-bred, and you reap what you sow. Therefore, in recent days, Bremer has made it clear that the "bureaucratic obstacles faced by old officers, teachers and government employees from the Ba'ath party will be eliminated." It is not a change in practice, just an adjustment of the rules, it is said from the White House. Which, of course, made the video an overnight sensation.

The truth is that Americans are trying to save what can be saved. But it's too small and it's too late. As with many major reforms through the ages, these small reforms come too late for their encounter with history. When the Sunni Muslims began to murmur last year, the CPA decided that deposed officers should be paid anyway. Now that they have started wars, they will get their jobs back.

The situation might have been different if they had gotten their jobs back right away. Maybe.

Exile Iraqis are going out

It is pure amateurism, and US leaders should read some history of imperialism before plunging into Iraq. Or maybe they should rather read some post-war history.

The truth is, whether you like it or not, there is hardly the war that has not sought to bridge the old regime's professional and bureaucratic inputs. This was done in Nazi Germany, and it was done in Japan when retaining Emperor Hirohito.

In Iraq, absolutely everything was rigged. Threw it overboard, in a fierce idealistic and ideologically motivated revolution.

Iraq can therefore not be put in line with what happened in 1945, but more in line with what happened in 1789 and in 1917 – when everything went horribly wrong.

And as if that wasn't enough, you have to rig everything down until June 30. And who is to govern then?

What is clear is who should not rule. Ahmad Chalabi from Iraqi National Congress, The Pentagon's mascot before and after the invasion will be removed along with the other members of the interim area. Instead, something completely new is to be stacked on its legs; a kind of government – for the time being too – that is less dominated by exiled Iraqis.

At present, one does not know who will sit in this government, or the council, or what it will be. The UN's Lakhdar Brahimi is working on that bit, and he has said he will have something clear by the end of May.

Lakhdar Brahimi and Ahmad Chalabi are bitter enemies today, not least because Brahimi has made it very clear that Chalabi will leave – almost at any cost. At the same time, Chalabi is in armor over the fact that the Americans will allow old Baath party members to return.

The new government will be supplemented by a president and two vice presidents. But the final elections that will give Iraqis real autonomy will not be held until January 2005. Until then, Americans will continue to rule the country. Not through the CPA, but through the new US embassy in Baghdad under the leadership of John Negroponte.

At least that's the plan. But the reality is that Americans can rule Iraq much further than that.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib

The war makes political considerations a game for the gallery. It is quite irrelevant who sits in Baghdad and pretends to decide as long as the real rulers are in Washington and the war is in full swing.

Most are spinning out of control in Iraq. Rational assessments of power relations and political motives have been bypassed by developments on the battlefield.

For example, it is certainly true that Moktada al-Sadr has limited support among the Shia in the south, who rather listens to the moderate Ali al-Sistani. It is also conceivable that he released the rebellion for the purpose of positioning himself in advance of June 30.

But rationality and cynical calculations play little role if the people rise up in furious protest. And in al-Sadr's case, one is talking about an army – the Mahdi army – which during "no time" occupied three cities in the south and thus took the inside turn on the numerically superior occupying force. Where Ali al-Sistani has previously demonstrated that he can pull the people out into the streets, al-Sadr has shown that he can let go of the mob if he feels like it.

The same type of question can be sent north. How much support does the Sunni guerrilla have in its own population? Nobody knows. On the other hand, you have knowledge of the most important thing: the war is spreading to ever larger areas, more and more are participating in it, and Sunnis and Shia have started to cooperate.

The latter is crucial to whether it all evolves into two wars: the fight against the occupation og civil war, or whether the various peoples will gather against the common enemy.

But it has no relevance to whether or not there will be war. The war has come to end, though it will ebb and flow; race and silence each other for the next few years.

Americans know it too. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now says that it will not be appropriate to withdraw forces from Iraq, as was the plan. He also says that the generals will have more soldiers if they ask for it.

The final message about this came after the US showed its true face in Abu Ghraib prison. The United States is nervous about the reactions, and for all reason. Forcing Iraqi prisoners to masturbate, simulate sex scenes and lie naked on top of one another is probably not something you do in a Muslim country.

It remains to be seen how the images of these atrocities will turn out in Iraq. But the destructive potential is enormous.

Will it also be able to trap George W. Bush? Not at all impossible if the scandal turns out to be general and not specific.

Attacking the logistics

Barely five days into the last war, the figures showed that 460 Iraqis were killed in combat operations, including 280 in Fallujah. Number of US soldiers killed in April: 152. Number of soldiers killed since the war started: 754.

It's bad. But other things are worse. Insurgents attack supply lines on main roads into Baghdad, with the result that food, military equipment, fuel and spare parts do not reach the occupation forces.

In other words, they attack logistics; the Achilles heel of any army operating in a war theater. It also indicates military expertise among the rebels, which reinforces the suspicion of Saddam's old elite forces.

The war causes companies and contractors to retire and leave, as German Siemens and US General Electric recently did. It threatens the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure.

Terrorists, Islamists, ex-soldiers or others continue to bomb oil installations, police stations, US headquarters, hotels and whatever may be available. Members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and officers in the new Iraqi army continue to desert or go over to the enemy.

Think about it; that the Americans are training and arming the members of the nascent resistance movement! There are two hundred thousand people who can ultimately – if the war takes more form of a classic fight against the occupation – go over to their own.

The United States makes friends sympathizers of the rebellion, and sympathizers of activists, writes The Economist. But do they have any exit strategy?

Certainly. The exit strategy is to spread responsibility thinly across a number of actors, as they tried when they hit all the states that contributed to the war last year. With the United Nations as the formal commander of the occupation force and Iraqis in the leather position, the United States is out. It's on paper, of course, and there will still be Americans fighting in Iraq. But they will fight under the UN flag, and the command will be NATO.

The only thing missing now is a Security Council resolution. But will the UN be willing to take on the role?

Hesitantly, they throw themselves into the quagmire of Iraq, where the horror scenarios are in line…

If there is one man who has reason to go, it is Eric Shinseki. But he probably doesn't.

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