London Sunday Times
September 19, 2004
Iraq: It's Not As Bad As It Looks
William Shawcross spent last week crisscrossing Iraq with Gen Sir Mike Jackson. He saw some terrible scenes but also grounds for hope

The suicide car bombers who have inflicted the recent terrible mass murders on Iraq are usually single young men. Lieutenant Dave Robison, a Texan doing guard duty at the heavily fortified entrance to the International Zone in Baghdad last week, told me: "We can sometimes spot them because they have purified themselves by shaving their beard and hair and their car is obviously very heavily loaded - often packed with artillery shells as well as high explosive."

So to avoid detection a few days ago, I was told, one man drove to his target to inflict his horrible crime with a woman and two children in his car. All of them were blown to tiny pieces, along with innocent bystanders.

Tactics like this, as well as the sustained attack on foreigners and Iraqis working for the reconstruction of Iraq, pose a serious threat to the US/UK-led coalition and its plans to bring democracy and the rule of law to the country.

It is often hard to be optimistic about Iraq. Security is worse than when I was last there in March. The snatching of hostages and their all too frequent murders are horrific. It is often difficult to see how anything good can come of it now.

But behind the headlines Iraq is not just a horror show. Inside the International Zone in Baghdad I went to the American headquarters, a jumble of partitioned offices spread through the vast halls of one of Saddam Hussein's grossly extravagant and vulgar palaces. Cables, screens, noticeboards, guards and metal detectors are everywhere. People are rushing back and forth beneath the garish marble and gilt, typing, shredding, meeting, talking. General David Petraeus, the American in charge of training Iraqi forces, said: "Iraq is more manageable on the inside than it seems in the media on the outside."

Petraeus also said, wryly, that working in Iraq is like being on a roller coaster. Now, despite appearances, he thinks that it is on the way up as more and more Iraqi police, National Guard and soldiers are being trained to take over from the coalition.

Will they be good enough, soon enough? That is the key question, but his cautious optimism is shared by General Sir Mike Jackson, Britain's chief of general staff, whom I accompanied to Iraq. At the end of his trip to Basra and Baghdad he said media claims that the war is being lost are "blatant hyperbole. Baghdad is not in flames. The insurgents do not represent the vast majority of Iraqis. They can be defeated. But it will be hard pounding".

I travelled first with General Jackson to the southern Iraqi town of Basra, where the 8,000-strong British contingent has its headquarters. There are 31 member countries of the American-led coalition but many of them are token or ineffectual or both. The British, fierce fighters and skilled in counter-insurgency, are absolutely vital.

Basra used to be one of the great trading cities of the Gulf. Now, after 30 years of Saddam's misrule, it is a pitiful slum. Still, since the invasion, economic activity has picked up here as everywhere else in Iraq. Merchants of washing machines, air-conditioners and satellite dishes are doing a roaring trade. Parked on one street is a white stretch limo that some enterprising driver imported from the Gulf and now hires out for weddings. If all goes well, he should have a successful car hire firm in a few years' time.

For that to happen the insurgents have to be stopped. The first and perhaps most dangerous are the Saddam supporters, known to the coalition as "former regime elements". They are based in the "Sunni triangle" north of Baghdad in towns such as Karbala and Falluja that are now off-limits to coalition forces and where the Americans have been hardest hit. They are well financed and organised.

Then there are the foreign Islamic extremists, loosely associated with Al-Qaeda. They are probably responsible for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq; their best known leader is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who last week issued another blood-curdling call to victory. He declared that the fight in Iraq was against "the tripartite satanic alliance of heresy and deceit . . . of Americans, Kurds and Shi'ites". He condemns the Shi'ites - the majority of the Iraqi people - as "the Sunnis' enemies, represented by the army of treachery, the party of Satan".

The Shi'ites have fighters, too. The largest grouping is around Moqtada al-Sadr, the intransigent young cleric who has a wide following among the undereducated Shi'ite youth who hated and feared Saddam but who also hate outsiders and are disillusioned by the slow pace of progress since the invasion.

Finally there are proliferating gangs of criminals for whom the lack of security is a fabulous boon. They have been behind many of the kidnappings of westerners in recent weeks. The victims are sold on as hostages: the lucky ones are bartered for large sums of money, the unlucky are often beheaded. Among those killed have been a group of Nepalese cooks. It is difficult to imagine a group more innocuous.

continued

This summer violence flared across the south, summoned by al-Sadr. He occupied the holy shrines of Najaf and his militias attempted to take control of several southern cities. British troops stopped them in their areas. In Basra, al-Amara and elsewhere, firefights were brutally intense. Three British soldiers were killed. During August British troops used up to 100,000 rounds of ammunition, a massive amount.

"Luckily the militia were **** shots," said Corporal Neil Green, from Babington in the Wirral. But they will get better. We flew by Chinook helicopter at treetop level to al-Amara. The poverty of the countryside is astonishing. The mud huts look more like the worst of India than an area in the heart of the Gulf. But now all the villages sprout satellite dishes.

Al-Amara has always been a lawless town. The first battalion the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment is based there and throughout August fought with al-Sadr's militia for control of the streets. Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Maer, its eloquent commander, described the intensity of the fighting. Every day there were scores of heavy-weapon attacks on the regiment's base in the town centre. One of its Warrior armoured vehicles slipped into a gulley filled with raw sewage. Getting it out under fire had been more than usually unpleasant.

Lieutenant Richard Deane, 29, from Londonderry, had joined the regiment because he was bored with working in a bank. Although twice wounded, not seriously, he thinks his new job is much more worthwhile. But he says: "People at home don't really understand what we've been doing."

The British have now handed the town over to the new Iraqi police service. But although the militias have suffered heavy casualties, they have not been destroyed.

In the past fortnight the British sector has been remarkably quiet. On the day I arrived there were only four shooting incidents reported across the whole zone, three of them in Basra. General Bill Rollo, the British commander, said that if elections were due tomorrow he would be happy about holding them in three of the four provinces under British control.

Elections are crucial to enable Iraqis to feel that the government is theirs. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ites, has insisted that the first round must be held in January. His continued tacit approval of the coalition is essential to its success.

here have been municipal elections in many towns already, but the turnout has been low - rarely above 15%. To make sure the turnout rises, security will have to improve markedly in the next few months. Nobody in Iraq has any experience of polling booths, of one man or woman/ one vote, party manifestos or free choice.

The responsibility for security lies more and more with the new Iraqi security forces: police, National Guard and soldiers. There are now about 96,000 of them; by January there should be 145,000 and by the end of next year 234,000.

They are not of uniformly high standard but training is continuing apace - as are the terrorists' attempts to intimidate or kill as many recruits as possible. In Basra we watched British soldiers training the new police by simulating a riot against them and pelting them with rocks. In Baghdad we travelled by Black Hawk helicopter outside the International Zone to visit the new military academy which is to be modelled on Sandhurst. Workers were rushing to rehabilitate the building. The first 90 students arrive at the end of this month.

There is fear here as elsewhere. An instructor refused to give us his name and would not be photographed for fear of reprisal. A young Iraqi checkpoint guard said he told his family and neighbours that he worked in the market - he would be killed if people discovered he worked for the Americans.

But al-Zarqawi knows the threat that the new Iraqi forces pose. He has said: "The American army has begun to disappear from some cities . . . An Iraqi army has taken its place and this is the real problem that we face."

Nobody doubts that the coalition has made and continues to make serious mistakes. American military action is sometimes much too heavy-handed and alienating. Disbanding the entire army and purging the ministries too harshly lost months of time and much goodwill. The huge $18 billion fund that Washington has pledged for Iraqi reconstruction has been spent much too slowly - partly because of the lack of security, partly because of bureaucratic delays in Washington. Now $3 billion of that is being diverted from water and electricity into security.

The United Nations, which must supervise the elections, is very wary of Iraq. Last year Sergio Vieira de Mello, its principal representative there, was murdered with many of his colleagues by a suicide bomber. Since then the UN presence has been minimal.

The UN has requested soldiers to defend its vital electoral work in Iraq. Shockingly, no countries with suitable armies, such as France and Germany, have responded. This failure was condemned last week by George Robertson, the former secretary-general of Nato. Sometimes it seems that some western governments, out of opposition to Washington, just do not want the new Iraq to succeed.

Conversely, American soldiers of all ranks seem utterly committed. Many of them see this as an existential war. General Thomas Metz has on his wall in Saddam's palace a collage of pictures of 9/11. In his soft Texan twang he says: "The insurgents know that Iraq has a great future - it has water, oil and a hard-working, educated population."

General Jackson agrees. But he knows the time lines are tight. As well as producing good Iraqi security forces fast, he says, "we must accelerate the economic progress so that people see they have a real stake in the future". Only employment and improvement can really end the attraction of the militias to the young Shi'ites.

Jackson, Metz, Petraeus and Robison all understand that the victory of the car bombers and other nihilistic murderers is too terrible to contemplate - for Iraq, the region and the world.

let those that think being proactive is beneficial to our way of living, enlist. not wednesday nor the day there after. put your signature where your beliefs are.

amen, brother.

Let's see now ....Kevin Powers .....ahhh Congratulations your #1 in the Draft Lotto and Michigan Mat....wow can you believe this your #2 in the Draft Lotto

True. A few here have used the term 'traitor' in referring to Kerry & McCain, but those same people don't seem too upset about Robert Novak uncovering a CIA operative -- a move that may have cost several lives and set back our knowledge of Iranian weapons programs.

Nor do they sem upset about forged documents claiming Nigerian uranium sale negotiations...

It could happen. And it's "you're" for "you are", not "your". You can't even diss properly.

That's right, but the CIA was VERY UPSET about one of their own being outed by the administration, Karl Rove in particular. And leave it to the CIA agents, a good many of them Republicans to make no bones about their discontent with Bush, et al. They're like a brotherhood, and did vow in inflection a certain vengeance against Bush.

So I guess this leaked document is it, huh?

TSK TSK TSK ...Michigan when you play with me you play with fire...and when you play with fire you should be carefull....Ask around...

i love it when their, there, or they're are thown in the mix. lotto me? nope, way outside that wild and crazy window. i would be refusing induction anyway. unless those 2 drunken little bushs were in front of me. ;)

Oh, you mean that CIA agent...the one whose poilitical operative husband (ex-ambassador Joe Wilson) who lied about his little investigation (playing spy in Niger) in an attempt to emabarrass the administration...after he was recommended for the job by his CIA wife. Any reasonably intelligent CIA agent would know that they should stay out of politics if they want to keep their cover.

I don't know, Fint. The administration played some dirty pool IMO. Plus they endangered the agent's life.

I didn't hear if they ever found out who outed Val P to Novak..did you? Yes, if so, that was dirty pool...
But what Wilson and spy wife did was probably worse....damaged the reputation of the US with politically motivated lies...also outed..

Bob Novak is a doosh