Still violent
As Iraq underwent one of its bloodiest weeks since the start of the war, the new US strategy of containing violence was met with serious misgivings, writes Doaa El-Bey
There are hardly any signs that violence will subside in Iraq any time soon under the new US strategy to increase American troops. This week's violence left hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of Americans dead. Meanwhile, US President George Bush renewed his vows to confront Iran if it continues supplying Iraqi militias with weapons and continues interfering in Iraq, another sign that violence could further escalate.
Abdullah Al-Ashaal wrote in the London-based daily Al-Hayat that the new US strategy aims to have Washington accomplish its mission in Iraq successfully, rather than save Iraq.
The US success in Iraq means allowing the Shia majority to rule and marginalising the Sunni minority, thus cutting all ties between the Shia in Iraq, and those in Iran, as well as keeping the least number of US forces in Iraq. However the Shia-Sunni division in Iraq will not end the civil war and could open the door for a wider war that could involve Iran, Turkey and other neighbouring states.
Al-Ashaal criticised the Arab states that support the US strategy in Iraq. "Bush, who is currently blundering, does not want to be solely responsible for destroying Iraq. He wants the Arab states to be involved in destroying not only Iraq but their own interests as well. The Arab states fail to realise the simple fact that what Bush regards as US success totally contradicts with the effort to save the Iraqi people."
Mohamed Moro questioned whether Bush's new strategy would help save US face and save Iraq from falling in a state of complete strategic defeat that would threaten the future of the US and the West as well.
Moro wrote in the London based daily Al-Arab that in his strategy Bush acknowledged that the US administration made big mistakes in Iraq. However, he ascribed these mistakes to the fact that the administration was not acting according to a vision. "Bush tried to say that in order to compliment the Iraqi government, the US had to be lenient with the Shia. That allowed the formation of Shia militias, who control the army and the police, to commit ethnic cleansing. He asked: since US troops would no longer follow such a policy, would that herald a potential confrontation between the US troops and the government-backed militias, or an all-out American Shia confrontation?"
The United Arab Emirates daily Al-Khaleej regarded the US invasion and stability as two parallel lines that will never meet. It wrote in its editorial the more US troops dispatched to Iraq the more violence would escalate; and it is only the Iraqi people who are paying the price for bloodshed.
"The only way to save Iraq is in the hands of the Iraqi people. They need to sit down and reach an agreement. The Arab countries should wake up and support Iraq to extradite itself from its current crisis and work out ways to resolve all other issues," the newspaper said.
Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashed believed the new American strategy of pursuing the followers of militia leaders rather than the leaders themselves would fail. He wrote in the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat the only way to spare Iraq more bloodshed is to control the leaders who espoused the policy of ethnic and political cleansing in Iraq. He attributed the present havoc to granting the militia leaders who support the government immunity .
"First the US did not question these leaders and granted them immunity because they were backed by the Iraqi government. Now they want to leave them and pursue their followers. Without pursuing these leaders, there is no hope in containing violence, as the leaders and not the followers are the perpetrators of violence," Al-Rashed said.
Samir Qatami wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Ra'i that given that the US had the most sophisticated weapons, the most modern intelligence systems, and the latest research centres and expertise, one should expect that its political and military plans should be 100 per cent correct. Thus, the success rate of its policies in the Middle East should be at least 90 per cent. As a result, Qatami believed that its repeated and absolute failure in Middle East policies is surprising and incomprehensible.
He pointed to the fact that the US should have had a detailed map about the population of Iraq and the danger of changing its demography and dividing the population into a Shia majority and a Sunni minority before the invasion.
Four years after the invasion, he wrote, the US recognised its failure in Iraq and is trying to introduce a new strategy to sedate its friends in the region. "Is it possible to attribute what happened in Iraq to US ignorance? Or it is an Israeli plan drawn up by [Henry] Kissinger and other Zionists who had been planning for a long time to destroy Iraq, the only state in the region that posed a threat to Israel?" he questioned.
Ghassan Al-Amir compared the American failure in Iraq and its success in rebuilding the economy with rooting democracy in Europe and Japan after World War II.
In Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Amir wrote that unlike the US leader after World War II, today's leaders lack the power to deal with different cultures. So, instead of understanding the nature of Iraq, "the US handed Iraq to militia groups imported from Iran and parties that believe in the theocratic experience in Iran with all its economic and social failures."
However, Al-Amir did not heap all the blame on the US, but on Arab leaders as well as the opposition. Despotic regimes, like that of Saddam Hussein's, who ruled for 35 years, leave their countries in a state of division and economic and social depletion. There is no hope in the future of opposition, he added, that aims to establish small and weak states without any regards to the rotation of power via ballot boxes and the potential economic progress within a big and powerful state.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/829/pr2.htm