Indefinitely at war
To avoid being dubbed an occupying force, the US administration has delayed declaring the end of the war, Khaled Dawoud reports from Washington
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HUSSEIN BESIEGED: For the first time since Saddam became president, some 25 years ago, Shi'ite Iraqis undertook processional worship yesterday in Karbala, the site of the siege and martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein. They are there to mark not only the end of the annual 40 days of mourning for the Imam but to protest against the continued presence of Anglo-American forces in Iraq.
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Two weeks after the fall of Baghdad and the ousting of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, US President George W Bush has not yet declared the war to be over. He is unlikely to do so in the near future. According to US officials and experts alike, such an official declaration would require the US to uphold the articles of the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of people under occupation.
Notwithstanding its disdain for the United Nations because it dared to challenge US war plans, being dubbed an "occupation force" would undermine the US administration's official line -- that the military campaign was intended to "liberate the Iraqi people". Even more important is that once the war is officially over, the United States will be held fully responsible for its acts on the ground in Iraq, and could be prosecuted for possible war crimes.
Informed US sources indicate that, in the light of the current vacuum of power and until a provisional Iraqi government is formed in Iraq, the United States could continue to claim that the war has not officially ended. Once an Iraqi government is formed, an agreement could be signed to legitimise US presence based on the necessity of maintaining stability and security in Iraq. This would place the US in a better position for arguing that it was not an occupying force.
When asked when President Bush would officially declare the war over, during a news conference on Monday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the matter was being discussed within the administration and with other coalition allies. Conceding that such declaration would put "additional obligations on the coalition", he added, "Ultimately at some point, it will be over. But is it over now? No." At the same news conference, he angrily denied a report in the Monday The New York Times, quoting "senior Bush administration officials" as saying the United States planned to maintain four permanent military bases in Iraq.
"We literally have not considered that," Rumsfeld told reporters. Yet other military sources confirmed that such proposals were circulated in the Pentagon as part of a broader plan on the redeployment of US troops in the region following the war. With the Iraqi regime no longer posing a threat to any of its neighbours, the United States was expected to reduce its forces in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, turning Iraq into its principal base and closest ally in the region. The same military sources added that in view of US plans to reduce the size of the Iraqi army, the United States would need to maintain a military presence in Iraq, mainly, they said, to deter neighbouring states from meddling in Iraqi affairs and threatening Iraq's territorial integrity. In this respect, the US is concerned about Iranian influence over the Shi'ite south and Kurdish aspirations for an independent state.
This week it also became clear that the United States was planning to form a government and manage the Iraqi economy on its own, thereby disregarding the concerns of the United Nations and European opponents to the war. In the first UN Security Council meeting since the end of the war, on Tuesday, the United States made it clear that it would not accept the return of UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, and his team. John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN, insisted that this job would be reserved for US experts alone. "For the time being, and for the foreseeable future, we visualise [inspection] as being a coalition activity," he said, adding that "the coalition has assumed responsibility for disarming Iraq." Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been widely criticised for failing to find any of Iraq's alleged arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, particularly given that finding such weapons was presented as the major pretext for the war. Now that US experts will be undertaking the search alone, it will be even harder for the rest of the world to verify US claims.
On the economic front, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) this week granted one of the largest US companies, Bechtel, the first major Iraq reconstruction contract. The contract will initially pay Bechtel $34.6 million that could be increased to $680 million over 18 months. Awarding this lucrative deal to a company that has close ties to President Bush's Republican Party has set off a heated debate not only among other influential American construction companies, but also among major companies based in coalition countries, particularly Great Britain. But US officials said this initial amount was only a fraction of other contracts worth billions of dollars that would go towards the reconstruction of Iraq. They added that the Bechtel contract was financed by US taxpayers' money, and was part of $2.5 billion approved in the $76 billion supplemental budget requested by President Bush from Congress to pay for the costs of war. Other countries could offer their own contributions to rebuilding Iraq, in addition, although US officials were reticent in response to the question of whether countries like France, Germany and Russia -- which have been against the war from the start -- would be allowed to take part in the proposed endeavour; this, the officials in question stated, would be up to the new Iraqi government. Countries like Iran and Syria, both on the State Department's list of regimes accused of supporting terrorism, on the other hand, would be prevented from participating in reconstruction projects in Iraq, a USAID official said.
Triumphant following the US's easy victory in Iraq, the neo- conservatives backing the Bush administration sharply have in the mean time criticised Secretary of State Colin Powell for planning a visit to Syria in the near future. Powell had announced his intention to visit Syria after Washington issued a string of tough warnings over Damascus's alleged ties to the ousted Iraqi regime and support of so-called terrorist organisations. In response to criticism, Bush told reporters on Sunday that he believed Syria had started cooperating with US demands, and that "they got the message."
