The powers that be

The United States and Britain have once again embarked on a dangerous course of action in Iraq. Without a UN mandate Washington and London are pressing ahead with the creation of an international force to establish law and order and ensure security. Just as the US-led aggression against Iraq flew in the face of international law so the international stabilisation force for Iraq is being pursued in the absence of international legitimacy.

Arab troops are conspicuously absent from the international stabilisation force; so too those of China, France, Germany and Russia, all countries that opposed the British and Americans in the UN.

Iraq is to be divided into three administrative zones. The US is to control and oversee the central section of the country, including the capital Baghdad. Britain will administer and police southern Iraq while the Poles are to run the north.

The US is obviously punishing those countries that dared to oppose its war plans. Yet excluding leading critics of the aggression against Iraq from the process of reconstruction can only serve to undermine Washington's already tattered credibility.

Might does not make right. Without a proper UN mandate the stabilisation force will be illegal under international law.

US President George W Bush has announced that Paul Bremer, former head of counter-terrorism at the US State Department, will be the top civil administrator in Iraq. According to US plans Bremer will oversee Iraq's transition to democracy. A career diplomat who served in Afghanistan and a protégé of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it is Bremer -- ominously described as a hard-headed conservative -- who will chart Iraq's political future.

What will be the verdict of the Iraqi people? This remains to be seen. The omens bode ill.