THE IRAQI NIGHTMARE

America has no answer to the escalating violence. Europeans now offer their help.

By Matthias Nass

[This article published in: DIE ZEIT 21/2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://zeus.zeit.de/text/2005/21/01_Leiter_2.]




As if to personally stamp out the flames of rebellion, Condoleeza Rice rushed to Baghdad for a lightning visit on Pentecost Sunday. The signal should be: America has the situation in Iraq under control. However a Secretary of State in a steel helmet and bullet-proof vest is hardly assuring, particularly when the corpses of 41 men were found the same day, victims of three new massacres.

The truth is: Nothing is under control in Iraq. The number of suicide attacks, surprise assaults and car bombs has doubled since February to 70 per day. Despite this horror, the Pentagon exudes confidence. America has a “strategy for victory,” Donald Rumsfeld’s close assistant said indignantly, not an “exit strategy.” With the precision of a PowerPoint presentation, he outlined the four stages of this strategy: first, liberation; second, occupation, third, partnership (the current phase) and fourth, self-assertion.

However the “strategy for victory” is breaking down because Iraqi conditions are not going forward economically, not only because the terrorist rebellion takes a dreadful toll and many Iraqis hardly venture outside for fear of criminals. Unemployment is at 30 to 40 percent. The electricity supply still does not function reliably and a quarter of the children suffer under malnutrition.

At the end of January, things seemed to be changing for the better when millions of Iraqis went to the polls. Their courage and firm resolve not to be intimidated were impressive. However this happy moment was soon past, lost in a three-month poker game over power and the formation of the new government.

The Iraqi s have “dedicated themselves to democracy,” Condoleeza Rice said before her flight home. “That is the message that I take home.” Does she really believe this? The democratization of the Middle East is the only legitimation for the Iraq war left to the Bush administration after not finding the weapons of mass destruction and the unproven collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Hasn’t Iraq, as Bush predicted, become a “light tower” for the voters in Palestine, the demonstrators in Lebanon and the opposition in Egypt? Hasn’t the “fall of the autocrats” begun as the Lebanese Middle East expert and instructor at Johns Hopkins University Fourdc Ajami wrote in Foreign Affairs?

One should wait before putting great sums on the triumph of democracy in Arab countries. America has no interest in its most important allies – from the reactionary House of Saud to the police regime of Egypt’s Mubarak – being expelled by uncontrollable freedom fighters.

In the past the Iraqi lighthouse was a flickering spark. According to estimates, 20,000 rebels are now fighting against the government and its protector the US, including 2000 foreign Jihad-terrorists.

Even the sharpest critics of the Iraq war have no interest in America’s debacle. Europeans are inviting participants to an Iraq conference on June 23 to Brussels. Under the chairmanship of the EU and the US, Iraq and its neighbors, the G*-states, the World Bank, the IMF and the UN will be represented. Rebuilding, political reforms and the security of the region are uppermost. Europe’s money and political credibility are sought.

Yesterday was yesterday should be the message of Brussels. Isn’t security of Iraq and Arabian democratization worth every American-European effort? Terrorists are still more easily recruited in Iraq than democrats. There doesn’t seem to be an “exit strategy” in the pentagon from the Iraqi nightmare much less a “strategy for victory.” Therefore all European assistance is welcome.