The Road Out Of Baghdad

 Vijay Prashad

 
TWO polls say it all: just about half the US population is in favor of a quick withdrawal from Iraq, and over seventy percent of Iraqi lawmakers want the US troops to leave immediately. If the US people and the Iraqi elected officials want the US troops to depart from Iraq, what keeps the Occupation going?
 
Recent polls shows that while a large plurality of Americans feel the war is a disaster, a significant number are cautious about withdrawal for two reasons. Some feel an obligation to a country that the US devastated. Others feel that the departure of the troops will result in a Civil War, and in a nightmarish security situation for both Iraqis and for the US. These are legitimate fears, particularly because little in the mainstream media offers a window to counter them. We only hear of Iraqi sectarianism: the resistance has been reduced to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the suicide bombers have come to represent the mayhem. Fear is a natural consequence of alarmism.

WHO CREATED THE DEMONS

(1) If the US troops leave, Iraq will collapse into Civil War. The US Occupation instead of creating fellowship in Iraq has intensified sectarian differences. The US Occupation purged the Ba'athists, then reintroduced some of them, brought the pro-Iranian parties to power, and then began to demonise them, painted the "Sunni triangle" as the natural home of the resistance, and then linked them, against all evidence, to the Islamism of al-Qaeda. The US Occupation made al-Zarqawi into a legend, when in fact he is reviled by many sections of the resistance who have attacked al-Qaeda redoubts in Husaybah and Ramadi. What the US Occupation claims to prevent is what is has promoted.
 
(2) US Troops can only leave when the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over. In October 6, 2005, President Bush said, "As Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down". Al-Zarqawi has a strategy the mirror image of Bush’s: the latter won't allow the US to leave Iraq unless the Iraqi army stands up, and the latter will attack the Iraqi army to make sure the US will not leave Iraq. Before the US invasion Iraq possessed 115 army battalions and many detachments of its police force. A year ago, the Pentagon stated that three battalions were in frontline operations, but by October, this number had slipped to one. Al-Qaeda and al-Zarqawi are working to a plan: they want to make Iraq the Afghanistan of the US. If al-Zarqawi believes that al-Qaeda bled the Soviet Union with its guerrilla war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, he believes that it can do the same to the US now. As long as the US Occupation continues, al-Qaeda's strategy will operate in Iraq. As the forces withdraw, and the Arab League and the Iraqis are able to take up security, and al-Qaeda will have to move on to its next battleground (Jordan, Saudi Arabia). In other words, as the US stands down, the Iraqis can stand up.

 
(3) If the US withdraws, its prestige will be damaged worldwide. But according to the global surveys done by the Pew Global Attitudes Project; US prestige is already at an all-time low.  The slip has been dramatic:

• In 1999-2000, for instance, 75 per cent of Indonesians had a favorable attitude to the US,

• In 2005, the number has dropped to 38 per cent.

• In Germany the decline has been from 78 per cent to 41 per cent, and

• In Britain from 83 per cent to 55 per cent.

• When Bush went to Mar del Plata to the Summit of the Americas, he was jeered. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez used to call Bush "Mister Danger," but he has now demoted him to "Mister."

• When Bush went to Asia after that failed summit, he received verbal brickbats from erstwhile stalwart allies of the US.

While in South Korea, Bush was embarrassed by a national discussion for the pullout of South Korean troops (the largest contingent in Iraq after the US and UK). While no one doubts the US ability to bomb any part of the world to smithereens, there is, however, a common belief now that the US is not any longer capable of pacification.

 
In the US, there are concrete proposals for a withdrawal. In November the fracas in the US Congress in November importantly posed the question, and for their forthrightness, a section of Democrats received the scorn of the President, the Republicans and the so-called Dinosaurs (DINOS- Democrats in Name Only, such as Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman). One among them, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of California, convened an informed hearing in late September that took up this question. The Woolsey hearing produced five concrete steps toward withdrawal:

 
(1) The US President must make a public statement that the US has no strategic interest in permanent bases or oil. The Iraqi people must control their own oil resources.

(2) The US Occupation must pull troops back to their barracks, and all offensive operations cease. Operations Phantom Fury and Steel Curtain in Fallujah, for instance, deeply scarred the reputation of the US forces. The use of White Phosphorus is only one part of the scandal, another is the widespread revenge attacks on Fallujah for the acts of the resistance. Currently, Saddam Hussein is being tried for a revenge attack on the village of Dujail in 1982, where 143 dead. The death toll from Fallujah is easily in the thousands. Where US troops move, attacks follow. Resistances to these attacks are followed by a maximum force response on the part of the US forces. This is no climate for the construction of democracy.

(3) The US Occupation must begin a dialogue with the non-al-Qaeda resistance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the resistance has "no political program, but [they] simply want to destroy innocent life." Coming from Condoluza Rice, this is classic. It is contradicted by no less a person than the former Electricity Minister Ayham al-Samarrai, who is in touch with currents of the Islamic Army and the Mujahideen Army, and stated that both of them revile al-Qaeda and possess there own political program.

(4) An appointment of a Peace Envoy. The US government can turn to a credible Arab leader, or else a senior Scandinavian diplomat, someone like Erik Solheim of Norway, who is currently at work in Sri Lanka. This person can be a go-between to talk to the various factions and parties, and continue a regional political dialogue for the future of Iraq. The Arab League's Amr Moousa convened over hundred Iraqi leaders in Cairo on November 21, for a Reconciliation Conference, at which the parties demanded "a withdrawal of foreign troops on a specified timetable, dependent on an immediate national program for rebuilding the security forces." In this climate, the Arab League or its head, could be the peace envoy.

(5) A commitment to reconstruction of Iraq based on Iraqi economic needs, with US funding and loan guarantees. For those who feel an obligation to Iraq, and others who fear a further Halliburton-style cannibalization of Iraq, this is a crucial point. After the Ba'ath chaos, the Iran-Iraq war and the long US-Iraq war (1990 onward), Iraq will need measured social development. Part of this development lies in the best use of resources under a people's agenda, and for the reformation of Iraqi nationalism.

 
While, not surprisingly, the Woolsey plan has been buried, many are trying to revive it. The plan is a very good baseline for the necessary march out of Baghdad. If the US Occupation does not end now, it is likely that in some decades, will come another photograph of disparate people standing on a building (this time in the Green Zone) trying to get onto the last US helicopter out of Iraq.