The Hindu : The menace from Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

The menace from Iraq

By Chinmaya R. Gharekhan

Instead of curbing terrorism, the military intervention in Iraq has caused, and will continue to cause, an increase in terrorist activities in different parts of the world.

THE INCREASING frequency and audacity of the Iraqi resistance in launching attacks on occupation forces and their Iraqi associates should be a matter of deep concern, not only to the coalition authorities but also to countries in the region and beyond. The military intervention in Iraq in the spring of 2003 was manna from heaven for terrorists around the world. Many of them have gravitated towards the country to join the patriotic resistance of the Iraqis and would migrate elsewhere when they would consider their mission there accomplished.

Few people in India, as undoubtedly is the case in other parts of the world, feel much genuine sympathy for the predicament in which the United States administration finds itself in Iraq. There is, in fact, a widespread sentiment that the Americans are entirely responsible for the mess in Iraq, which they have created by their high-handedness and pre-emptive unilateralism. The level of casualties, escalating by the day, cannot be sustained for long and must certainly come down, if not eliminated altogether, well before the next presidential elections in the U.S. On the other hand, the U.S. cannot simply walk away from Iraq before its stated objective of establishing democracy in the country is achieved substantially, without serious loss of prestige and other adverse consequences. By now, the war against Iraq, lacking as it did any basis in international law, has equally been shown up as devoid of any legitimacy. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction, while destructive of the legitimacy of the military intervention does not cause concern to the rest of the international community most of which had always been sceptical about it. Similarly, the failure to discover any link between the Saddam Hussein regime and the Al-Qaeda before the war hardly came as a surprise to anyone.

There is a widespread perception that the Americans do not have the stomach for casualties. This is not a fair observation. Given a cause that the American people can truly and passionately identify with, their capacity for sacrifice, human and material, is second to none, as evidenced by the enormous number of American lives lost during the two World Wars. Even the 15-year long Vietnam War claimed more than 50,000 Americans killed, despite deep misgivings sections of the American society had about it. The trouble about the intervention in Iraq is that the administration has not been able to convince the people about its case.

The current priority of Washington is to entrust security to the Iraqis so that the American military presence in the country can be reduced. The decision of Paul Bremer III to disband the Iraqi army was understandable from one perspective, since that army could not be trusted not to side with the remnants of the Baathist regime. Mr. Bremer's decision was widely criticised in the U.S. as well as by members of the Governing Council. Recent efforts to recreate the army, as an answer to the need to bring down the American troop strength, might have come too late, in view of the successes the resistance has been scoring in recent weeks. Should the Shia community actively join the resistance, the situation would become intolerable for the coalition authority and the security forces under its control.

Incidentally, by now, all remaining doubts about the wisdom of the Indian Government's decision not to send troops to Iraq should have vanished. Not just Turkey and Pakistan, even Japan has had second thoughts about sending a non-combat contingent to Iraq at this stage.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had said, before the war was launched, that a military intervention against Iraq would create a thousand Osama bin Ladens. He was perhaps prophetic. For the present, they have a most desirable target in the form of the coalition authority and the occupation forces. They evidently encounter no difficulty in recruiting volunteers for their cause from among the Iraqi population, enough numbers of which are determined to resist the occupation no matter what the cost. Once the occupation ends, as it must sometime, probably even before achieving its declared objectives, the foreign terrorists will look for fresh pastures.

Instead of curbing terrorism, therefore, the military intervention in Iraq has caused, and will continue to cause, an increase in terrorist activities in different parts of the world, including in our region. Consequently, what is happening in Iraq should be a matter of serious concern not just to the coalition authority but also to the entire international community. Far from deriving satisfaction at American discomfiture in Iraq, the rest of the world ought to deliberate about bringing an early end to the explosive situation in Iraq. Unilateral withdrawal, like unilateral intervention, is not the answer. The chaotic conditions will not permit the emergence of a genuine representative government in Baghdad any time soon. The only way out is to transfer the problem to the United Nations. The transfer must be of responsibility as well as of authority and the requisite resources. In other words, the U.N. must be fully in charge — politically, militarily and financially. The U.S. will have to take a larger view of its national interests and cooperate fully with the U.N. Some at least of the billions it is prepared to spend on its own will have to be funnelled through the U.N. Since India and all other countries have a vested interest in containing the negative fallout of Iraq, they should all prod the U.S. along this route. Misreading of the menace from Iraq will have disastrous consequences for the world.

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