The Hindu Business Line : Cutting the Iraqi Gordian knot<br> US must think the unthinkable

All signs are that the US is preparing for a U-turn in Iraq. It is no longer keen on sticking to its "stay the course" policy and is ready to look at new options. It will be statesmanlike for the US to admit its mistake, and make amends by involving Saddam Hussein in negotiations for a voluntary and graceful retreat. It is not as unthinkable as it seems, says B. S. RAGHAVAN.

There is a common human allergy to going back to Square One. Understandably so, since backtracking is not a pleasant experience, especially after putting in a lot of time, effort and expense. But when all other available options are reviewed and found unsuitable, impracticable or unrealistic, voluntarily going back to Square One may actually square with one's best interests.

There is no better example than Vietnam. There the Americans undertook what to them was the noble and sacred mission of rescuing it from `the evil' of communism. It will be hard for the present generation to comprehend the monstrous lengths to which they went in terms of frightful atrocities tantamount to genocide they committed against suspected communist (Viet Cong) infiltrators, the numberless lives of their own flower of youth they sacrificed in a prolonged war, the many billions they spent in vainly pitting their military might against primitively armed Viet Cong, and the many years during which they were devastated in a maelstrom that was becoming more and more unmanageable.

Eventually what happened? The Americans had to drop everything and flee South Vietnam in a mad and messy stampede, the descriptions of which even today excite disbelief. In other words, both America and South Vietnam were back in Square One. This had the desirable effect of leaving the Vietnamese free to sort out their affairs among themselves. Today, Vietnam stands out as a country that has made good in ways that could be hardly imagined when it was passing through the horrors of American misadventure. Former enemies are now ardent friends with flourishing trade and commercial relations.

"Kicking the door in"

With this in the background, a look at the predicament of the US in Iraq. At least, in the case of South Vietnam, the Americans had a notional invitation to justify their presence, but they entered Iraq "kicking the door in", to use the pithy and picturesque metaphor of the British Army Chief, General Sir Richard Dannat, to describe their illegal invasion and subsequent occupation. Their simplistic view of peoples and cultures of other countries led them to believe that Iraqis would throng to the streets in their thousands singing their hallelujahs and showering them with bunches of flowers, and that the metamorphosis of Iraq into a beacon of democracy in West Asia would be a breeze.

The US, and its dogged disciple, the UK, are realising after three years of travails and turmoil, the loss of many lives and a drain of $300 billion, that the end to their painful entrapment is nowhere in sight. The Iraqi Government, elected last January, is in control of only two of the 18 provinces, and even within that limited territory, has shown itself utterly incapable of even the simple tasks of governance like keeping law and order, and undertaking elementary construction works.

The amount of $30-40 billion claimed to have been spent on so-called reconstruction has very little to show for it on the ground in the form of physical or social infrastructure. Not a single hospital has been built since invasion, only 3,000 out of 18,000 schools are usable, with 5,000 new schools urgently needed. Iraq has truly become a killing field with insurgents, sectarian militias and suicide bombers having a field day and taking a heavy toll in terms of military and civilian casualties. All analysts are agreed that restoring normality in the foreseeable future is not within the capabilities of either the Iraqi Government or its mentor, the US.

"Foreign policy disaster"

There is mounting evidence of demoralisation caused by the events in that hapless country among the highest levels of both the military and the Government in the US and the UK. Last April, seven retired Generals of the US Armed Forces, including the normally tight-lipped Marine Corps, castigated the Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, for his mismanagement. In the UK, the Army Chief, General Dannat, in an unprecedented breach of protocol and discipline, went public demanding that that the pull-out of troops had better begin "sometime soon."

The deterioration in the situation has forced the British Foreign Secretary to characterise the invasion as "a foreign policy disaster for Britain". In two opinion polls in the UK, a preponderant majority (60-62 per cent) of respondents expressed itself in favour of a pullout of British troops either immediately or by Christmas.

The US Administration is reportedly so unnerved by the loss of grip on the happenings in Iraq that Mr Bush himself surprised America and the world community by conceding that there were growing similarities between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. A senior State Department official has bluntly laid the blame for the horrible conditions in Iraq on the "arrogance and stupidity" of the US.

All signs are that the US is preparing itself for a U-turn. It is no longer keen on sticking to its "stay the course" policy and is ready to look at new options. It has declared its willingness to open a dialogue with any insurgent group except al-Qaeda to reduce sectarian bloodshed. Efforts are under way, with its blessings, to work out, for the explicit purpose of achieving an "effective Iraqi national reconciliation", the modalities of an understanding even with rabid insurgent groups such as the Islamic Army and the 1920s Revolutionary Brigades which have been responsible for most killings.

The climb-down does not stop there. A report in The Times makes the startling revelation that "American forces are negotiating an amnesty with Sunni insurgents in Iraq to try to defuse the nascent civil war and pave the way for disarmament of Shia militias". Knowing the number of fatalities the US troops have suffered at the hands of these insurgents, anyone who mooted the idea even a few months ago would have been taken to be out of his mind.

It is clear that the US and its main ally, the UK, are desperately casting about for ways to extricate themselves.

The US has already set up a 10-member bipartisan commission chaired by a former Secretary of State, Mr James Baker, to appraise the Iraq imbroglio without blinkers and suggest alternative courses of action without hang-ups.

Making exit statesmanlike

Although its report is not due until after the November elections for the US Congress, reliable sources ascribe to it the view that staying the course until democracy is established in Iraq and insurgency stamped out is out of the question. It will call for preparations for an early exit, even if it entails entering into an accommodation with insurgents and forging an alliance with Iran and Syria, once the bugaboos of the US. It is entirely probable that the US Administration and the newly-elected US Congress, whatever its complexion, will jump at this arrangement which is midway between sticking it out and cut-and-run and lets it off the hooks besides.

If the US is willing to go thus far, why should it not walk the extra mile and restore the status quo ante bellum? Saddam Hussein may not have run Iraq as a democracy in the classical sense, but all said, he was totally free of any trace of religious bigotry and maintained peace and order among the disparate Islamic groups. He was an effective, if absolute, ruler, under whom Iraq was making headway in a variety of directions. He dealt with Western powers fairly so long as they dealt with him fairly.

Like all rulers, democratic or dictatorial, he committed excesses, but on the whole, he was a modernising influence, giving women access to higher education and jobs in government and industry, doing away with Sharia law courts (the only country to do so in the whole Muslim world) and establishing a legal system based on Western jurisprudence. The US has been found to be in the wrong in respect of the only excuses — possession of weapons of mass destruction and links with al Qaeda — on which it invaded and occupied Iraq.

It will be statesmanlike for the US to admit its mistake, let bygones be bygones and make amends by involving Saddam in negotiations for a voluntary and graceful retreat. It is not as unthinkable as it seems: The British have shown the way in India and Ireland and in the process, made friends of erstwhile arch rebels whom they had demonised and thrown in jail, just as the Americans have done with respect to Saddam and Ba'ath party leaders.

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