Is the World Safer Now? (The Independent)

A review article of the Iraq war's consequences and outlook.

Is the world safer now?

The Independent
28 January 2005
(excerpts from article:)

As war ended, our correspondents examined key questions about Iraq's future. With the elections looming, the updated answers highlight the global impact of the conflict

Analysis by Rupert Cornwell, Andrew Grice, Patrick Cockburn, Anne Penketh, Andrew Buncombe, Ben Russell, Stephen Castle and Elizabeth Davies


WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?

As we know now, they were never in Iraq, cutting away the rationale for going to war. But next door, Iran, the state most feared by Saddam Hussein, is now accused of being less than a year from a "point of no return" in building its own nuclear bomb - a direct result of the Iraq war. It has also emerged since the war that the Americans turned a blind eye to the export of nuclear parts by the top nuclear scientist in Pakistan, a major US ally in the "war on terror". The network of A Q Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was in the business of selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder, including the arch-enemies of America - Libya and North Korea. Even South Korea has been conducting clandestine nuclear experiments, fearing its northern neighbour may have built six nuclear bombs. Far from shutting down the nuclear peril, the Bush administration has actually increased the global threat.

WHO ARE THE INSURGENTS AND ARE THEY LINKED TO AL-QA'IDA?

The presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq was cited by President George Bush as one of the main reasons for going to war, even though there was never any proof of a link to Saddam Hussein. Iraq, back then, was devoid of terrorism. How times have changed - again, as a direct consequence of the war.

There is no single resistance movement. It is made up of different groups - many of which only operate in a single district. The US has sought to portray the insurgents as consisting of either foreign fighters or bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics, though US military intelligence admits that 95 per cent of fighters are Iraqi. The common element among the different groups is opposition to the US occupation. And they are bent on disrupting the elections to speed up the Americans' departure.

The military backbone of the resistance which developed with great speed after the fall of Saddam was made up of former members of the security forces and Baath party. But they could not have gathered support and sympathy from the population so swiftly if the US administration, devoid of a post-war plan, had not so rapidly discredited itself. Most Iraqi men have some military training. They are traditionally armed and after the war Iraq was awash with weapons.

The resistance rapidly took on an Islamic colouring, the very aspect the US feared. Since August 2003, there has been a wave of suicide bombing unprecedented in history. Here, the foreign volunteers were important and they appear to have provided the bulk of the bombers. Islamic fundamentalists outside Iraq provided large sums of money.

The insurgents have become more expert. There are greater signs of co-ordination. A few days after the US Marines started their assault on Fallujah in November, the resistance attacked Mosul and captured most of the city.

How sectarian is the resistance? The Salafi or militant fundamentalist Sunni wing of the insurgency has repeatedly targeted Shia with suicide bombs in Baghdad, Najaf and Kerbala, causing horrendous casualties. These attacks ensured that the uprising remains confined to the Sunni Arabs.

Since early 2004 the US has promoted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the man behind the uprising. This probably began as a propaganda ploy but Zarqawi revelled in the publicity and American denunciations meant local groups began to call themselves al-Qa'ida.

At any rate, the invasion - and the lack of planning - has created the very conditions the US cited as reason for going to war. Trouble was, they never existed then.

DO IRAQIS FEEL LIBERATED?

The key question, and the one answer showing the biggest change since our investigation in April 2003. Just after the war, polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided about whether they felt liberated or occupied. We said back then that Iraqis have a strong sense of nationhood, and predicted that any sense of being subjected to American hegemony would be strongly resisted. By the time the US ended direct rule of Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority in the summer of 2004, only 2 per cent of Arab Iraqis supported the occupation. The overthrow of Saddam had brought none of the political and economic benefits they expected. Today, the only large group in Iraq which still overwhelmingly feels liberated is the Kurdish community, which makes up about 17 per cent of the population.

Despite the supposed handover of power to an Iraqi interim government last year, Iraqis see the US as the controller of the government. Many of them this week referred to the election as "a movie" staged for the benefit of the outside world. Significantly many of those who say they will vote also blame the US for their woes. This is the greatest mistake made by US analysts: the belief that because the Shia are increasingly hostile to the Sunni this means that they accept the occupation. The prestigious Brussels-based International Crisis Group sees the growth of hostility to the US as the most important development in Iraq since 2003. It says in a recent report: "Of all the many changes that have affected popular attitudes since the fall of the Baathist regime, perhaps the most notable has been the precipitous drop in the confidence in the US."

WHAT WAS THE WAR REALLY ABOUT?

Astonishingly, two years on there is no clear answer. The Bush White House claimed the invasion was to get rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and destroy a regime that was linked to terrorism. When the WMD failed to materialise, the war was justified (on legally shaky grounds) as a mission to remove an odious and repressive regime, the first step in a democratic transformation of the Middle East.

In truth, Iraq was at the top of the administration's hit list long before 9/11. The neo-conservatives in charge of US security policy had been calling for Saddam's overthrow for five years or more. This they argued, would give the US a new strategic base in the Gulf to replace Saudi Arabia. It would place the region's second oil producer firmly within the US orbit. It would step up the pressure on Iran, meeting a longstanding desire of Israel. Finally, there is a family factor: did Bush the son invade to finish the job started by Bush the father? Somewhere in this mixture of fear, grand strategy and blinkered ideology lies the explanation for the war.

IS THIS THE FIRST STEP TO REORDERING THE MIDDLE EAST?

That was, and remains, Mr Bush's goal, as his extraordinary second inauguration address shows. Turn Iraq into a functioning democratic regime, the theory runs, and the Islamic extremists and insurgents "who hate our freedom" would be on the retreat across the Muslim world.

Seduced by a benign version of the domino theory, Washington imagined that other authoritarian regimes would realise there was no alternative to liberalisation and democratisation. Thus would be achieved an economic and political rebirth of the Middle East, including the most elusive prize of all, a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine.

But even if the Iraqi election on Sunday goes (relatively) smoothly, those ambitions now appear to be hopelessly overblown.

The initial goals of Mr Blair's Palestinian conference in March have been watered down under Israeli pressure. Mr Bush's once-trumpeted Greater Middle East Initiative, designed to foster free thinking, free markets and free media across the region, has been drastically scaled back after complaints from allies such as Egypt that the US was trying to impose its views.

WHAT ABOUT SADDAM?

Saddam Hussein is in custody awaiting trial in the US military base at Baghdad airport. But his appearances in court have not benefited the interim government as much as they had hoped. His capture has, surprisingly, highlighted difficulties, and his is the spectre overhanging the elections.

His strong, defiant demeanour before his accusers last year quickly replaced in the public psyche the earlier images of a bedraggled and beaten former Iraqi leader dragged from his hole in December 2003. His trial will be difficult to arrange if it is to appear in any way fair. Nor will it be easy to find evidence of Saddam directly ordering massacres. And controversy has already engulfed the trial. Salem Chalabi, initially in charge, was accused of murder and dismissed.

Saddam's prosecution will cause division. The Kurds want to execute the man who oppressed and slaughtered them. The Shia, too, want him convicted for the killings after their uprising in 1991 and the murder of their leaders. But the Sunni are more ambivalent, not because of loyalty to Saddam, but because they see a trial as a veiled attack on their community. Many Iraqis also feel that however bad conditions were under Saddam they were better than today. The destruction of Fallujah by the US Marines and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib have made them less willing to condemn Saddam, a feat most would have found incredible two years ago.

IS NORTH KOREA NEXT ON THE AMERICAN HITLIST?

No, for the simple reason that the Americans are more concerned about stopping countries from obtaining a nuclear weapon rather than going after those that have one. Experts agree North Korea probably has half a dozen nuclear bombs, or enough to deter an American attack. So Iran - which is suspected of developing a nuclear bomb - is now "top of the list of potential troublespots", according to the American Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

It is also the reason Iraq was a target in the first place, rather than North Korea, which from a nuclear perspective was a far more dangerous threat. Iran must have realised it would be safer from attack the sooner it developed nuclear capability. In that sense, the invasion of Iraq has made the world much less safe.

The countries that the Americans want quaking in their boots have been branded "outposts of tyranny" by the new US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. The list is Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, and Zimbabwe. She did not indicate an order of priority, and left off her list other states which happen to be US allies.

Taking strong-arm action against a geo-strategically important state like Iran will be tricky: Iranian officials say Tehran would respond vigorously to any military attack by the United States or Israel. "Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not North Korea," said an Iranian diplomat.