[A-List] Iraq: the quagmire deepens

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Uprising a drain on military resources
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, March 16 2004

On the second day of The Herald's review of hostilities Ian Bruce counts the
cost in cash and casualties

IRAQ was the classic small war with not many dead. But it is destined to
become the new Northern Ireland, a running sore in the side of the West and
an open-ended drain on the overstretched military resources of both the US
and Britain.

Like Ulster, Cyprus and Bosnia, it will be a commitment which will
inevitably soak up manpower and treasure for a decade and perhaps more. More
painfully, it seems destined to add the bodybag factor to politics for the
foreseeable future.

The Americans won an easy victory in the first instance. Now they are
heading down a familiar road, ignoring the warning signs of their own recent
history, into an endless cycle of insurgency, expense and military angst.

Colonel John Paul Vann, a respected US military commentator, once remarked
that America did not fight a 10-year war in Vietnam, but 10 separate wars
for a year at a time. His reference was directed at the policy of rotating
entire units annually and replacing them with fresh troops.

It was a policy popular with reluctant conscripts, but it cancelled out the
value of the hard-won combat experience of those who had already spent 12
months "in-country", forcing their successors to re-learn the same, bloody
lessons over and over again.

In the end, it was a policy which helped fill Arlington cemetery without
having the slightest impact on the strategic outcome of the conflict.

If anything, the public antipathy it generated guaranteed that America would
ultimately lose.

Although the shockwave generated by September 11, showing US vulnerability
for the first time on home soil, has yet to abate, the public's appetite for
absorbing casualties to no measurable effect is not unlimited.

A steady, drip-drip of sons and daughters arriving back from foreign wars in
sealed caskets at remote airbases will be a major factor in future
presidential elections.
It would have suited White House global and domestic interests if the
guerrilla campaign which has claimed almost 500 American lives since the
official end of hostilities on May 1 could have been tied to the al Qaeda
terrorist network.

While there are undoubtedly foreign insurgents who trained in Osama bin
Laden's Afghan camps behind some of the suicide bomb attacks in post-Saddam
Iraq, the bulk of the resistance is home-grown.

Most are cells of the former ruling Ba'ath party's Saddam fedayeen, a
militia force formed to act as the local party muscle in towns and cities
from Basra to Baghdad. The Ba'athists' ambition is to regain their status
and perks. In military terms, they are nothing more than a well-armed mafia.

They can be countered with enough money, a swift return to at least
ostensible local control of government functions, and smart-targeting of
guerrilla fighters.
The basic, pre-war American mistake was lack of research into the complex
relationship inside Iraq between state, tribes and ethnic groups.

The military strategy worked. The Iraqi army collapsed or voted with its
feet.

The follow-up strategy which should have begun reconstruction and stifled
dissent simply did not exist, or was implemented too slowly. It also failed
to take account of local sensitivities.

Iraq was, in any case, an artificial country created by post-first world
warWestern colonial interference. It is really three separate countries,
based on ethnic population, with a majority Shi'ite south, a dominant,
though minority Sunni middle and a separatist Kurdish north.

Its closest Western equivalent is perhaps what used to be Yugoslavia, a
hotch-potch of ethnically alien states held briefly together for five
decades by the glue of communism and the single-minded willpower of
President Josip Broz Tito.

The US sees Iraq as the linchpin of Middle Eastern stability. It is
positioned strategically to dominate all of Arabia.

It also has something unique in the region - both oil and water in plentiful
supply, making it a ripe target for envious predators.

If the US and the UN can install a democratic regime which reflects the
interests of Iraq's diverse peoples, that goal is achievable long-term.

If they fail in that mission, or allow insurgency to prise America's grip
loose, then Iraq has the potential to be a humanitarian disaster area of
epic proportions.