[A-List] Iraq: the quagmire deepens

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

Bloodiest day for US as violence grows

Helicopter crash kills 31 Americans
· Bush pledges to stay despite setbacks

Rory Carroll in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

The US yesterday suffered its worst day in Iraq since the war began when a
marine helicopter crashed in the western desert and insurgents launched a
new wave of attacks, leaving a total of 37 Americans dead.

George Bush declared it "a sad moment" but called for patience from
Americans and courage from Iraqis at Sunday's elections. He claimed he had
"firmly planted the flag of liberty" with his commitment to spread global
democracy, and ruled out a quick exit for US troops after the Iraqi vote.

"We value life and we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life," the US
president said at a White House press conference. "But it is the long-term
objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom."

Yesterday early reports suggested there had been no hostile fire at the
helicopter crash site near the Jordanian border, and that desert fog may
have contributed to the accident. A military inquiry was launched into the
crash.

The 30 marines and one sailor who died were carrying out security
preparations for Sunday's voting, General John Abizaid, the head of the US
central command, said. There were no reports of survivors on the
three-engined CH-53E Super Stallion, the biggest US helicopter in military
service.

Four marines were killed in combat in the Anbar province in the heart of the
Sunni triangle, a soldier was killed in north Baghdad, and another died in a
roadside bombing in the capital.

For US troops, the death toll was heavier than their bloodiest day of the
2003 invasion, March 23, when 31 were killed.

The run-up to the elections has shown itself to be even more dangerous than
the first few chaotic days, and this time it appears the insurgents, not the
Americans, have gained the initiative.

Late yesterday 15 Iraqis were killed and at least 30 wounded when a suicide
bomber detonated a fuel tanker near the offices of the Kurdish Democratic
party in the north-western town of Sinjar. The insurgent group led by the
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it carried out the attack.

In coordinated attacks, three suicide car bombers targeted an Iraqi army
post, a police station and a road in the northern town of Riyadh, killing
nine people and wounding at least 12, police said. A US patrol which went to
the scene was ambushed by small-arms fire. In Baquba, north of Baghdad, one
policeman died and at least eight people were wounded when gunfire raked the
offices of three political parties.

In Mosul a video filmed by insurgents showed three hostages, who were
described as electoral commission officials. Insurgent groups kept up their
threats warning Iraqis to stay away from the polls, or face retaliation for
collaborating with the US-led occupation. "Oh people, be careful ... not to
be near the centres of infidelity and vice, the polling centres. Don't blame
us but blame yourselves," said a statement released on the internet.

President Bush urged Iraqis to vote and "defy these terrorists". He said:
"They're afraid of a free society." Asked what turnout rate would be a
success, he did not give a figure but said: "The fact that they're voting in
itself is successful."

He rejected claims that the vote would be a signal for the US to pull out,
and would not give a timetable for withdrawal. "I think the Iraqi people are
wondering whether or not this nation has the will necessary to stand with
them as a democracy evolves. The enemy would like nothing more than the
United States to precipitously pull out and withdraw before the Iraqis are
prepared to defend themselves."

Mr Bush portrayed the Iraq polls as a step towards the goal of defeating
tyranny around the world as he pledged in his inaugural address last week.

"I firmly planted the flag of liberty for all to see that the United States
of America hears their concerns and believes in their aspirations," he said.
"And I am excited by the challenge and am honoured to be able to lead our
nation in the quest of this noble goal, which is freeing people in the name
of peace." He reaffirmed the goal of spreading democracy elsewhere in the
world.

Meanwhile, one of the architects of the Iraq invasion, Douglas Feith,
announced his resignation yesterday, saying he would leave his job as chief
policy adviser in the summer. He is the first neo-conservative to leave the
administration, which has seen moderates leaving since Mr Bush's
re-election. Pentagon critics blamed Mr Feith's office for passing on bogus
intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

In Baghdad, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, tried to calm the
nervous population and project his authority. "I promise you I will build a
strong Iraqi force, able to take full responsibility for Iraq's security and
its citizens."

------

Arab leaders watch in fear as Shia emancipation draws near

David Hirst
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

For the first time in centuries, Shias are about to come into their own as
the rulers - or at least the politically dominant community - in a key Arab
country.

In principle, the Iraqi elections will ratify and lend constitutional
legitimacy to a transformation inexorably under way since the fall of Saddam
Hussein.

In the Arab world, except for Lebanon with its largely Christian population,
the rulers of all 22 states have traditionally hailed from the orthodox
Sunni majority. But until now that has included two countries, Iraq and
Bahrain, where, against the broader trend, Shias compose the majority.

The correction of this anomaly will be momentous, given Iraq's history and
geopolitical weight, and the tumultuous conditions in which it is taking
place.

Iraq, after all, is where, in the bloody struggle over the prophet's
succession, Islam's great schism first took root; where, for centuries,
Shias under Sunni Ottoman rule bore the brunt of its conflicts with Shia
Persian empires; where, in the 1920s, Shias led the rebellion against
British mandatory rule, but ended up grossly underrepresented in the modern
Iraqi state; where, under Ba'athism, Sunnis turned minority rule into
despotism of the most chauvinistic and brutal kind.

The idea of electorally established Shia dominance of Iraq deeply troubles
Arab regimes, with or without Shias of their own.

Jordan's King Abdullah has most publicly declared what others keep to
themselves. For him the great peril is Iran, the world's only (apart from
Azerbaijan) Shia-majority state that is also Shia-ruled - and clerically,
militantly ruled to boot.

Iran's "vested interest", he says, is "to have an Islamic republic of Iraq;
if that happened, we've opened ourselves to a whole set of new problems that
won't be limited to the borders of Iraq". He warned of a Shia "crescent"
stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, destabilising Gulf
countries and posing a challenge to the US.

"This is the first time," said the Lebanese commentator Joseph Samaha, "an
Arab official has used such crude, direct and dangerous language to publicly
incite against a particular confession and warn that it may turn into a
fifth column to be used against the majority."

For other Arab commentators, what such remarks indicate, at bottom, is fear
of democracy, and the prospect that Iraq will now demonstrate what Palestine
already has - that in the Arab world people have more electoral choice if
they are occupied rather than sovereign.

"They are terrified," said Salama Ne'mat, "lest elections prove contagious
and spread to Iraq's neighbouring states and peoples.

"The danger to certain Arab governments is the democratic 'weapon of mass
destruction' that could destroy the structure of tyranny and backwardness
that weighs heavily upon the chests of their peoples."

Any Iraqi democracy is bound, at first, to assume the "sectarian" character
King Abdullah deplores.

The ruthless, discriminatory exploitation of sectarianism that was the
foundation of Saddam's rule has to give way to a system whose primary
building block is the fair and representative stake which the country's
various communities acquire in it, the Shias acquiring the largest.

Inevitably, too, Iran, for which the emancipation of its Iraqi
co-religionists is a great potential enhancement of its own regional
influence, is Iraq's only neighbour to be happy about that. Ironically, it
was much quicker than Arab friends of America to "recognise" the new
American-installed Iraqi order and is the most ardent supporter of
American-sponsored elections.

Arab regimes with Shia citizens, especially in the Gulf, perhaps have most
grounds for alarm, because, like Saddam, they have in varying degrees
discriminated against them. The quest for equal rights has been common to
Shias in every modern Arab state.

The only one in which they have basically achieved them, through civil war
as well as that country's unique, confessionally organised political system,
is Lebanon. "Iraq could represent a democratic model for the Arab-Muslim
world which has experienced futile and utopian conflicts for 14 centuries,"
said Sheikh Ali Salman, a Shia leader in Bahrain.

Though Shias constitute 60% of Bahrain's population, they do not apparently
aim for an Iraq-style change of regime, only for greater representation than
they have achieved so far.

But Iraqi Shia emancipation is also disturbing to a non-Shia country such as
Jordan, because, small and fragile, it is deeply affected by any political
upheavals in neighbours more powerful than itself, and its relatively benign
autocracy does depend on discrimination of a kind, favouring Transjordanians
over Palestinians.

In multi-confessional Syria, minority Alawites dominate the regime; Shia
triumph in Iraq might encourage the majority Sunnis to regain the ascendancy
which - the opposite of their co-religionists in Iraq - they lost with the
rise of Ba'athism.

It is obvious that all these regimes, like the Iraq insurgents themselves,
hanker after a restoration of the old Sunni- or Ba'athist-dominated order,
or even some Saddam-like figure to preside over it - or, at least, as King
Abdullah once put it, "somebody with a military background who has
experience of being a tough guy".

Equally obviously, however, the Shias, recalling what happened in the 20s,
will not have it. So, like the Americans, the regimes have now calculated
that, while holding elections, which a large part of the Sunni community
might boycott, is a grave risk, not holding them would be a graver one.

They are all - even Syria the US accuses of abetting the insurgency - urging
the Sunnis to lend their vital sanction to the kind of popular consultation
they would never permit in their own countries.

For what makes Arab regimes fear an Iraqi democracy makes them fear civil
war more; and while quite possible with elections, that would be even more
so without them.

The Shias have so far been remarkably restrained in their response to the
anti-Shia terror that seems to be a secondary part of the Sunni resistance
to American occupation; their mainstream religious leaders clearly want to
keep their distance from Iran, and, according to a recent opinion poll,
Sunnis are twice as much in favour of a fully fledged "Islamic government"
of some kind as they are.

But, if they cannot come into their inheritance by constitutional means,
they will be all too likely drawn into unconstitutional, violent means
instead. And Iran would get deeply involved in that.