[NYTr] "Turning Point" in Iraq? Wishful Thinking... Or Blarney

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Oct 11, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2188370,00.html

Claims of a turning point in Iraq are just wishful thinking

In spite of the impact of the surge and US-armed Sunni groups, 
resistance is bound to continue until the occupiers leave

by Seumas Milne

It would be easy to assume from the reaction to Gordon Brown's
announcement this week of planned Basra troop reductions that Britain's
involvement in Iraq was as good as over. "Iraq: the end" was the Daily
Mirror's take, and the response from the Arabic press was pretty
similar. "Brown has decided to jump the US ship as it sinks in Iraq",
declared the pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi. That is certainly the
impression Brown wanted to create, as he struggles to repair the damage
done to the government both at home and abroad by what Ming Campbell,
the Liberal Democrat leader, called the "catastrophe" of Iraq.

But in reality the British occupation goes on. By next spring, five
years after - in the words of General Richard Dannatt, head of the
British army - "we kicked the door in" of a sovereign state in defiance
of the will of the UN, there will still be 2,500 British troops in
Iraq's second city "on overwatch", protecting US convoys and patrolling
the Iranian border. And even that level will depend on "conditions on
the ground".

Senior military officials have meanwhile let it be known that all
British troops could be out of Iraq by the end of 2008. But the odds
must be against that. The prime minister has already made it clear he
is not prepared to make the popular break with US policy that would be
necessary to call time on the British occupation. So long as US forces
and their trigger-happy mercenary surrogates continue to roam the
streets of Iraq's devastated cities - and there's no sign that
occupation is going to be brought to an end any time soon - the
pressure on Brown to provide continuing political cover for the White
House with at least a token presence will be intense.

What does, however, seem to be taking place is a redrawing of the
division of labour between the US and Britain in their war on terror.
As the British force in Basra is drawn down, its counterpart fighting
another lost war in Afghanistan is being expanded. At the same time,
George Bush has used last month's upbeat report by General Petraeus to
announce a gradual reduction in US forces to their pre-surge level and
create the sense of a momentum towards withdrawal that isn't in fact
taking place.

Most Iraqis believe that security has deteriorated during the six-month
US military surge, according to opinion polls. But the impression of
success given by Petraeus has helped blunt the political pressure for
early withdrawal on Capitol Hill. It has also fed a renewed spirit of
triumphalism among a few brave outriders of the discredited neocon
project who now claim the Iraq war is turning into a success after all.
The Times, for example, this week declared that "Iraq is moving
irrevocably in the right direction" and argued against any "premature
British departure" because it might undermine "real internal political
progress" allegedly taking place.

Now the foreign editor of the well-connected Prospect magazine has gone
one step further, reviving Bush's much ridiculed slogan of "mission
accomplished" and declaring the Iraq war all but won. The Sunni Arabs
are begging for a deal with the US, he claims, now the "insurgents have
recognised there is little point fighting" such a powerful enemy, and
the country has embraced democracy; what violence remains is largely
local and criminal.

The evidence offered for this miraculous turnaround includes a recent
drop in attacks on US and British forces, new local alliances between
some Sunni tribal leaders, ex-resistance fighters and the US military
against al-Qaida, and the participation of the popular anti-occupation
Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in the US-sponsored political process. But
the argument is wishful thinking on a grand scale.

It's true that the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq last
month, at 66, was well down on this year's peak, but higher than the
figure for August last year. Attacks on British troops fell much more
sharply last month, but that followed the British withdrawal from Basra
city and a prisoner release deal with Sadr's Mahdi army, which is in
any case now on a six-month national ceasefire.

No doubt the ability of resistance groups to operate freely has been
hampered by the flood of US troops and the carve-up of their cities
with Israeli-style walls and checkpoints. Just as serious have been the
divisions on both sides of the sectarian divide, fostered by the US
since the surge began as it tilts this way and that in a classic
divide-and-rule strategy. In the Sunni camp, that has been achieved
mainly through US arming and financing the "tribal awakening" movement
against al-Qaida, which has spread from Anbar province and drawn in
some on the fringes of the resistance who now regard Iran rather than
the US as the main enemy. It's the principal reason why the launch of
an alliance bringing together all the main Sunni-based resistance
groups has been delayed.

'We don't want to have a clash with those who have become involved in
the awakening campaign," a spokesman for the 1920 Revolution Brigades,
one of the largest guerrilla organisations fighting the US occupation,
said yesterday. "We will give time to people who have been harmed by
al-Qaida and its violence. We are now fighting the Americans more
outside the cities." But he dismissed as disinformation a claim in last
week's Economist that members of the Brigades now "accompany the
Americans as guides on patrols", pointing to a video of a successful
attack by the group in the past week on a US humvee just broadcast on
al-Jazeera as his answer. "Resistance will continue until the
occupation forces leave our country."

That is surely the case - including in the British-occupied south.
Supporters of the Iraq war have consistently underestimated the
resistance campaign, which has in the words of a Brigades statement
this week demonstrated that a "self-sufficient movement" can
"destabilise the most powerful opponents". It's hardly surprising that
more US troops and better tactics would have at least a temporary
impact on the resistance. But the idea that it's about to fall into an
American embrace because of an occupation-sponsored vigilante movement
is as preposterous as the pretence that a prime minister who says he
cannot "move a single company without coalition approval" is in charge
of an independent democratic government. The tragedy is that the price
being paid to win Iraq's independence is so horrifically high.