Leaving Baghdad once again, Lara Marlowe reflects on the political shambles to which an incoherent US policy has condemned Iraq
America's road to hell in Iraq is paved with good intentions, the promiscuous use of lethal force, and the absence of a coherent strategy. If there is a well-defined plan for restoring security, rebuilding the country's infrastructure and achieving the transition from occupation to self-determination for the Iraqi people, US officials are doing a good job of keeping it secret.
The US already had former Ba'athists and Fedayeen Saddam, non-Iraqi Arab and Islamic extremists to contend with. Tension between the Americans and Shia Muslims loyal to the radical cleric Sheikh Muqtada Sadr came to the fore in recent days, with a firefight between US soldiers and Sadr's militiamen in which four died. Sheikh Muqtada has since announced that he does not recognise the US-appointed Governing Council (GC) and is forming a shadow government. The circle of enemies is widening, and US officers routinely predict high casualties for the foreseeable future.
On the US side too, the cast of characters is murky. Westerners in civilian clothes, flak jackets and sunshades who show up after every bombing are assumed to be FBI and CIA. The Baghdad Hotel, where six Iraqis died in a double suicide bombing on Sunday, was widely rumoured to be headquarters for the CIA, Mossad and its Arabic-speaking helpers from the former South Lebanon Army militia. It was heavily barricaded, and few had the special clearance badge required for entry. In the aftermath of the bombing, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) denied reports of a CIA presence, saying the Baghdad Hotel housed members of the GC and US contractors.
The lawlessness that claims hundreds of civilian lives every month is the primary concern of Iraqis. The mass rehiring of policemen has slowed the bloodbath, but not enough to convince the population that the US really cares about their safety. At the same time, violence increases against US occupation forces and their police proxies. The clatter of low-flying helicopters gives Baghdad an Apocalypse Now feeling. The letters IED (Improvised Explosive Device) punctuate every conversation with US soldiers. Hesco bastions - the earth-filled steel and canvas containers that have replaced traditional sandbags - are a prominent feature of the urban landscape. Mr Hesco, if he exists, must be raking in millions.
On a broader level, the dark future many Iraqis fear for their country risks engulfing the region. With his "for us or against us" philosophy, George W. Bush is forcing everyone to take sides. The polarisation is painfully obvious from Baghdad, where it's the US, Israel, the Kurds and a handful of gung-ho pro-Americans like the convicted fraudster 'Ali Baba' Chalabi versus die-hard Saddamists, Islamists, Palestinians, Syria and Iran. Most Iraqis don't want any part of such a conflict, but they will be the ones to suffer.
The US wants to bring more foreign troops in, though numerous examples show the near impossibility of imposing a solution through military means. It didn't work for the French in Algeria, the US in Vietnam, the British in Northern Ireland or the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza. US officials are gambling that the Iraqis will help them defeat those they sloppily label terrorists, resistants and even freedom-fighters. It's a long shot, and if it were going to work, the US would have to offer Iraqis something more concrete than the CPA's unfulfilled motto of "equality, security, liberty".
Six months after Saddam Hussein's wretched regime fell, Baghdad gives the superficial impression of becoming a consumer paradise. My local supermarket in Karrada offered frozen chicken from Brazil, apple juice from Austria, Perrier water and Danish lumpfish - at prices few Iraqis can afford.
Iraqis are accustomed to a centrally planned economy with a social safety net, and they see no improvement in their daily lives. Six months of a US-style free market economy have had the predictable result: rich Iraqis get richer, and the poor are hungry and homeless.
The CPA's failure to restore electricity in the capital for more than 12 hours a day is the second grievance of most Iraqis, after security. A US business executive and former adviser to the World Bank who is assessing the Iraqi grid told me there were three obstacles to solving the problem. "Security, funding and the lack of a plan. CPA experts think it's too dangerous to visit the sites. There's no funding for power plants, and there's not a proper plan yet. Whatever is done is patchwork."
"Patchwork" sums up the US handling of the occupation so far. The first US administrator, a gaffe-prone retired general named Jay Garner, accomplished nothing and openly allied himself with Israel and the Kurds. The Pentagon replaced him with a smooth-talking career diplomat, Mr Paul Bremer. At a press conference marking six months of occupation on October 9th, Mr Bremer upbraided journalists for not reporting on the restoration of schools and the graduation of the first battalion of the new Iraqi army. He repeatedly referred questions to the CPA press office or the Governing Council, though Mr Bremer holds veto power over all GC decisions.
The proverbial buck does not stop with Mr Bremer. The problem is that the buck doesn't stop anywhere in Iraq; no one is accountable. US soldiers on either side of the same street give opposite versions of regulations on press access, but refuse to talk to each other. An MP at Abu Ghraib tries to send a truck-load of prisoners back to the capital because some of their documents have not been translated into English. The platoon sergeant, who has invested a day's work in the transport, holds out his orders, saying documents could be in either language. "The problem," the platoon sergeant tells me, "is people. The guys at the top don't see what's happening at the bottom."
In a tacit admission that Iraq strategy is adrift, the White House has just shifted responsibility for postwar Iraq from the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. If the situation is to improve, the CPA must be consistent.
On May 23rd, the US announced it was disbanding the Iraqi army. A month later, after two Iraqi soldiers were shot dead by US forces in a demonstration outside the CPA's presidential palace headquarters, Mr Bremer decided to build a new Iraqi army. Back in April, Mr Rumsfeld allowed arsonists and looters to ransack Baghdad. That negligence was criticised, so Iraqi police and US MPs now waste time and resources arresting petty thieves, while powerful gangs continue murdering and raping. Iraqis have learned that violent street demonstrations pay; the CPA has often caved in to protestors' demands.
Few Americans observe the courtesies so essential to smooth relations in the Arab world. Merely by saying hello, introducing themselves, shaking hands and spending five minutes over coffee, much of the Iraqis' resentment could be dissipated. Instead, there's a tendency to bark orders. "The Americans don't feel they're foreigners in Iraq," a British expert at the CPA explains. "In their eyes, everybody else is foreign - including the Iraqis."
Iraqis, CPA employees and US military told me they believe the US wants to spin out the political process as long as possible, so the US has a pretext for staying in Iraq. Mounting casualties and next year's US presidential elections provide arguments to the contrary. But a corollary assumption is that the occupation serves the interests of big US companies with close ties to the Bush administration - the oil company Halliburton, its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, and the construction giant Bechtel. These companies have already won billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts.
Suspicion about ulterior motives in Washington is a feeling shared by occupiedand occupiers. "The UN doesn't own any arms factories or oil companies," an Iraqi university professor said, arguing that US troops should be replaced with a UN peacekeeping force. "Of course they're demoralised," a high-ranking US officer said bitterly when I asked how his men felt. "They're dying. For Halliburton and Bechtel."