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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Special Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Generating hatred
Arab and Western analysts tend to agree that the US has no clear strategy on Iraq apart from the strikes it has been launching nearly every day. Washington and its sole ally, Britain, have apparently failed to draw any useful conclusions from the past eight years. The military strikes have only increased sympathy with the Iraqi regime at the domestic and Arab levels, especially when Iraqis can see clearly that not only military targets, but also milk factories, food stores and oil refineries are being attacked. None of Iraq's neighbours is willing to see either an independent Kurdish entity in the north, or a pro-Iranian Shi'ite south. So do the strikes have any clear purpose? Are they intended to topple the Iraq leader? As a matter of fact, Washington's explicit intentions toward Baghdad, and its financial and military backing of opposition groups that most Iraqis have never even heard of, can only backfire as far as Washington is concerned.The United States, having dealt with this "volatile" region for so long, should know by now that neither Arab regimes nor Arab peoples will ever support a coup d'état in Iraq that is orchestrated and financed by the Americans.
In his latest tour of the Gulf region, US Defence Secretary William Cohen managed to achieve one of the main goals of his visit: selling arms worth billions of dollars to nearly all the Gulf countries. But he was also told in abundantly clear terms that any plans which might threaten Iraq's territorial integrity will be strongly opposed, even by America's closest allies. If Cohen is unwilling to listen to Arab words of wisdom, maybe he should pay closer attention to what America's own Western allies, such as France, are now openly demanding -- that the daily attacks against Iraqi targets halt immediately, and that the sanctions, which have lost their meaning and result only in the death of more and more Iraqi children every day, be lifted now. Those Iraqi children who do not succumb to the sanctions, Washington can be sure, will have no words of praise for the world's sole superpower when they grow up and become their country's rulers.
