Broken record day: Iraq

July 31st, US troops roll back leaving security operations in Iraqi hands. Five minutes later all hell breaks loose. Of course that is an exaggeration but in the 2 weeks since the withdrawal of US troops there have been no fewer than 5 separate bomb attacks in Iraq.

On Friday last week, 36 people died in a series of attacks in Shia areas.
Just another day in Iraq?
Pretty much.
A couple of days ago, two truck bombs exploded in Khaznah, near Mosul. 23 dead, 130 injured.
Meanwhile, two more bombs went off in Baghdad killing 16 and injuring 80 people.

A mere two weeks after US troops pulled back leaving security in Iraqi hands, bombs are going off, taking out houses in residential neighborhoods, targeting labourers gathering for work, killing pilgrims, ensuring normal life is still not an option in Iraq.

Of course they are trying to make a point.

The attacks are extremely well-orchestrated, with bombs going off simultaneously in disparate locations. And although the bombs seem to target Shias more than Sunnis, mixed areas are hit frequently enough to make the violence all-enveloping.

The challenge to the government is palpable.
Can they handle the security situation? They say they can. But if you are waiting for the next bomb to go off you may not feel that secure. But that's another day in Iraq. It's not like anyone has felt safe since all this started in March 2003.

First it was the invasion. Then it was the insurgency. Now we hear that it's al-Qaeda. That's right. Mosul is allegedly the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The frequent deadly bomb blasts that have been shaking Iraq since the withdrawal of US forces are attributed to that shady and seemingly omni-potent organisation. Elusive yet seemingly to blame for all ills and all ailments.

Meanwhile bombs explode in building sites and rubbish piles. The Iraqi government says this is the last of the insurgency. The European press says this is al-Qaeda fighting on. And the Iraqis just ask themselves when will this all stop?

Early in 2003, before troops were deployed into Iraq, George W. Bush speaking to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward (yes, Bob of Watergate fame) said that he expected that the war in Iraq would be over in a matter of weeks. Big cheese invasion general Franks concurred. A few weeks should do it.

We now know how much they didn't know then. How much they didn't understand, didn't take seriously, didn't think through. We know that the Iraqi exiles Bush's administration took advice from were horribly out of touch at best and severely biased at worst. We know that ORHA and subsequent reconstruction efforts were chaotic some of the time and shambolic the rest. We know the war was not over in a matter of weeks. And we know that although US troops are withdrawing – because Obama pledged they would – the war is not over yet. And reconstruction is but an elusive dream for all concerned.

So let's recap.
The US and their coalition of the willing went into Iraq in 2003 for four stated reasons:
1. To find and destroy weapons of mass destruction.
2. To remove Saddam from power.
3. To liberate Iraqis and bring them democracy.
4. To fight the war on terror and make the world a safer place.

So 1 out of 4.
Saddam is deposed and dead but on the rest, the scoreline doesn't look so good. Weapons of mass destruction simply did not exist and the capability for creating them was questionable at best. Iraqis are liberated from Baathist oppression but with constant violence and destruction every day over the past 6 years, liberty is not a word that springs to mind. As for democracy, we've talked about this again and again, democracy and war don't mix and while people fear for their lives and livelihoods, democratic participation and civil society are not an option.

As for making the world a safer place, well, definitions vary but however you define it and however much you stretch it, it hasn't happened.
And now they are withdrawing. Leaving behind them chaos, violence and destruction. Being none the wiser as to what it was that made the world so unsafe and so terrifying in 2001 and since.
We still don't understand so we still cannot prevent.
Meanwhile yet another country is left with smouldering piles of debris, fear and anguish.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like an improvement on the general state of the world to me. And until we realise that violence breeds violence and fear breeds pain and anger, we are not going to get very far fixing the mess we are in.
Bombing it didn't fix it.
Withdrawing from it won't fix it.
Somewhere in-between must be another way, the way that makes peace an option. We just need to stop shooting long enough before we start packing to figure it all out.

Iraq: it’s the long way home for coalition troops

Coalition forces have been slowly leaving Iraq for a while now. But now it's getting real as British forces have begun their official withdrawal from Iraq. Units stationed in Basra have handed over and are on their way home.
Only the handover was to a US general, not to an Iraqi one. A multi-national division has taken over. So the Brits left, someone else moved in and I am feeling like someone is playing me for a fool, thinking I can’t tell the difference between ‘leaving Iraq’ and ‘passing the parcel’.

Still, by the end of May Britain will withdraw more than 3,500 troops, leaving only 400 in training and HQ positions.

This is good, of course. This is no time to count the dead, assess what has been achieved. And what hasn’t. No time to think unhappy thoughts. But I can’t help it.
179 British dead since 2003. Of course it could have been worse. It was worse for Iraqis. And for every person dead, dozens are left bereft and crushed. Those are the mathematics of war and we ought to always remember. One death is one death too many.

Now obviously I was against going into Iraq in the first place.
But once there you can’t just pack up and go whenever you feel like it. Realities on the ground cannot be ignored and whatever the reasons for going in, Basra is just not safe enough to leave just yet. Partial withdrawal is possible but total coalition withdrawal is not an option. Yet the presence of Western troops is part of what makes the place unsafe, the thing that rebels fight against and suicide bombers launch themselves at.

Now Maj Gen Salmon says that Iraq is in a much better place than it was under Saddam. It’s more stable, he says, and freer. Investment is pouring into the country, the Iraqi security forces are gaining confidence, free and fair elections have now been held. Iraq is a new country. He says.
How much of this is true?
How much of this will still be true when the US forces finally withdraw, when the cat’s away for good and the mice can run riot if they so will?

In Basra, the hand-over won’t change that much as the Brits were a shadow force letting the Iraqi Army and police remain the most visible presence on the streets and the Yanks will do the same. Coalition troops are not that visible. But they are still there and everyone knows it. They provide a security blanket for some, a red rag for others but even when they stay at home, they are very much still there. And part of the reason they are still there is that they are propping up structures that would cave in without them.
I’m not talking semantics here.
British troops in Basra spent time and effort training the Iraqi army. But they lacked the bandwidth to train police officers and as they withdraw, Maj Gen Salmon deplores the lack of resources to build up a credible police force in Basra. So yes, Iraqi police remains visible. And ineffectual. But backed by the big boys with the big guns.

And US troops will be there until the end of 2011.
How entrenched will they be by then?
How essential will they be to any equilibrium that has been created?
A post-war situation is an explosive chemical compound and any ingredient to stability may be more important than even its core players realise. What if the US presence becomes such an ingredient – by design, flaw or default?
Once the equilibrium has been achieved, you make changes at your own peril.
And as change goes, it doesn’t come bigger than withdrawing a foreign army.

But there is always hope that the new systems and structures will be robust enough by then to survive this change and the complete US withdrawal.
Naturally, the coalition forces have been training Iraqis to replace them. Of course they have. They’ve been working on infrastructure and preparing for transition. Ignoring the elephant in the room that is the future legitimacy of any organisation and structure that has been touched by the invasion forces.
Let’s face it, Saddam was a blood-thirsty dictator. But he had been backed by the Americans for years and although they deposed him in the end, the freedom rhetoric seemed an afterthought at best. Nobody will forget the tenuous Al-Qaeda links and tall WMD tales spun by the Bush administration to justify the invasion. And after 6 years of war and occupation, the question to ask is whether what the US forces help build will be tainted by virtue of having been built by the invaders?

I’m speculating here. But it’s happened before.
Meanwhile 2 days ago another suicide bomber struck Mosul – 7 dead and 15 injured.
All of a sudden the Coalition’s optimism sounds hollow.
Yes, Mosul remains a problem child. Yes it’s believed to be the last remaining urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
And yes, as British forces withdraw from Basra, a suicide bomb goes off in Mosul.

All I’m saying is, they haven’t finished what they started and I don’t know what’s worse, withdrawing before it’s done or staying around and doing it themselves, thus creating a normality that relies on their initiative and depends on their presence.

A lesson in losing perspective: Muntadhar al-Zaidi

Remember Muntadhar al-Zaidi?
We all cheered him when he threw a shoe at Bush in December last year. Some of us even thought ‘oh man, I wish I had done that’. We cheered him and we forgot about him. And when he was sentenced to three years in prison a few days ago, for attempting to assault a foreign leader, nobody really noticed.

Zaidi, a journalist, pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of assault, considering his act a reaction to the violence he and his people had suffered in the hands of the American invader. But as it often happens with these things, if you have an army, your trespasses are discussed in round tables, if you protest on your own, you soon find that most of what you can think of doing breaks the law. So Bush is sitting at home and Zaidi is going to jail.

Now, I'm not saying that chucking shoes at people you dislike is an acceptable form of political disagreement. I am saying that, in the context of Iraq, war changes the normal rules of the game.
Of course there is a debate to be had here about the limits of lawful protests and the boundaries of legitimate expressions of disagreement. But this debate cannot be had in war-torn Iraq, not yet. Not while the US occupation forces are still on the ground. Not while democracy and civil society are still just words in textbooks.
But rather than admitting that the debate regarding acceptable limits to freedom of expression cannot be had in the context of a war and what Zaidi did cannot be judged as if it were done in peace time, the court ploughed on ahead regardless.

Surely, when shoot-outs on the streets are a daily occurrence, the boundaries of what constitutes ‘violent behaviour’ ought to be slightly adjusted to fit reality?

But even if context is not taken into account, a three-year jail sentence is radically out of proportion with the nature of the crime, if flinging a shoe can be described as a crime at all, raising important questions about the sobriety, independence and reliability of Iraqi courts.

It is telling that Zaidi’s lawyers failed to convince the court to reduce the charge of attempted assault to insult. The courts were evidently making a point, still the tragic irony of the terminology is way too poignant: In the context of an on-going war, you would expect people to know the difference between a flying loafer and mortar. But everyone is in a flap over insulting the Americans and moderation has gone out the window. Premier Nuri Al-Maliki described the throwing of the shoe as a ‘barbaric act’ in December, earning himself universal scorn for having no sense of perspective. Obviously the sentencing has done his reputation as an American mouthpiece no favours.

The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory is shocked and dismayed at the harshness of the decision. Public opinion in Iraq, however, remains divided, some believing that a foreign guest should not be insulted under any circumstances and a journalist should be able to keep a cooler head. Others of course have hailed Zaidi as a hero.

The court had a chance to diffuse this situation without taking sides, but the harshness of the sentence imposed shows they have no such intention.
The anti-American Shiite factions have already accused the pro-US factions of leaning too heavily on the judges while the response form Maliki’s party was the incredibly callous: “If this case was politicized, the punishment would have been harsher.”

And the Americans?
Desperate to leave Iraq, they have stopped caring about their legacy.

This was a unique opportunity to lead, to inspire, to show what democracy, free speech and toleration look like in practice.
Maybe they did lean on the judiciary to get retribution of sorts – and if that happened it shows a complete lack of vision, humanity and imagination.
But maybe they didn’t lean on the judiciary at all. They left the Iraqi judges to fret over expunging the insult and placating the Americans on their own and, in doing so, they missed a momentous opportunity to lead, teach and inspire.

So Zaidi is going to prison for throwing a shoe at Bush.
Bush goes home to tend to his presidential library after carpet-bombing Zaidi's country.
And ‘democracy-building’ in Iraq has gone from being an empty shell to a hollow promise, not even symbolically upheld by those who made it.

So when we start wondering when America went beyond caring about democratisation in Iraq, remember Muntadhar al-Zaidi.

Remember Fallujah?

In March 2004, four Blackwater men went into Fallujah and never returned.
Their convoy was undermanned and under-armed. They did not even have a map. Yet they went into the most dangerous city in Iraq regardless, on what sounds to me like a non-critical assignment (kitchen equipment was involved) never to return alive. We all remember. Who can forget the image of the charred bodies swinging from the bridge?

It has taken their families four years to even be able to sue Blackwater for what they and many others perceive as their loved ones’ wrongful deaths, but now a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed the legal battle to begin. Blackwater will be held to account over the lack of maps, equipment and adequate training. It’s a start. But it’s not enough.

What came after the horrible deaths of the Blackwater men was the April 2004 siege of Fallujah by the US military during which more than 600 Iraqis died.
If Blackwater are found guilty of putting their men in harm’s way due to inadequate preparation, intel and equipment, then will they be also charged with being the catalyst that led to the April siege? And while we are at it, will accountability extend to the US authorities that put Blackwater in this position in the first place?

If Blackwater are found guilty of the death of 4 men who knowingly agreed to take on the danger that working as a hired gun in Iraq entails, then what of the 600 Iraqis who had no choice in the matter?
Deplorable collateral damage, I hear you say? I think not. More of a monumental lack of foresight on behalf of decision-makers.

Blackwater are paid to provide security. Policy is not their domain.
They provide security for politicians, reconstruction workers, humanitarian aid agencies, diplomats, facilities and the armed forces themselves (it’s called force protection and it allows the soldiers to take a nap while private guards pull sentry duty). The maths behind this is simple: more contractors = fewer soldiers = less political discomfort around body bags, as dead contractors are not included in the official death toll.

So, Blackwater’s business is security.
But as a commercial entity, their main business is more business.
So security in Iraq is placed in the hands of private businesses that above all else want more business. And I am not suggesting that the security personnel or their bosses sabotage the war. I am suggesting that they have no reason, incentive, interest, ability or authority to carry out their duties in a way that will go beyond security provision and towards peace-keeping and peace-building.
Keeping someone or something is a very different kettle of fish to keeping the peace.

So. Do we see the flaw in the plan yet?

We have neglected peace-keeping in the name of fragmented security provision, contracted out bit by bit to disparate corporate entities that sell security and have a vested interest in sticking around to provide more of it.
Sustainability is not a problem. These companies have shown themselves capable of swift expansion whenever needed. And as each bit of infrastructure, each army base, each UN agency, each high-ranking diplomat is protected under a different contract, security becomes a very narrow concept in Iraq.

If you are paid to keep someone safe that’s what you do. That's all you do. If you are paid to keep something safe that’s all you focus on. Everything else is assumed to be someone else’s responsibility, someone else’s problem.

So more security provision ends up meaning, by default, less safety for those not under contract, those who (even if not targeted) happen to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It so happens that most of those are Iraqis.

So more security provision in Iraq ends up meaning less peace for Iraq.

We may have just shot ourselves in the foot there, right? Only our failed policy is someone else’s ravaged homeland. Right?
Right. And so very wrong.

The magic of accountability

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi threw a shoe – and then another – at G.W. Bush many people thought ‘oh man, I wish I had done that’.
If only.
But if we threw a shoe for every mistake the Bush administration made in Iraq, the White House would drown in an avalanche of footwear simply over the review of the disastrous first weeks when the wrong people were given the wrong jobs, the wrong tools and no clear instructions or leadership.
By the time we start looking at the failures of post-invasion reconstruction efforts, I suspect we’ll be running out of shoes.

But now things will change, right?
Even though we know that Obama is inheriting the biggest US-made mess both at home and abroad, we still hope he has a charisma-infused magic wand that will allow him to fix things so we can all live happily ever after.
In reality of course, Obama will be constrained by what is already there and may not actually have the luxury of his convictions when it comes to Iraq.

That much was obvious when he failed to publicly denounce the privatisation of the war – a trend that has become coterminous with the Bush administration but was actually gathering momentum already under President Clinton – and promised a focus on accountability instead. Obviously, with no magic wand at his disposal, things can't be fixed overnight. But there may be magic hiding in this statement all right.

Since Paul Bremmer’s Memorandum 17, private contractors have been pretty much exempt both from Iraqi and home jurisdiction (wherever that may be). Although the tide is turning and lawsuits are currently being filed in Iraq and in the US against both individual contractors and the companies that employ and deploy them, private security firms remain a prime example of power without responsibility. Unsurprisingly, private security spokesmen dispute this, pointing out that the market has its own standards and, as commercial entities, it is in the private security firms’ interest to ‘get the job done’ as doing so gets them repeat custom. What these spokesmen fail to dwell on is that not getting the job done simply loses them a client, while it loses other people their sovereignty, their dignity, their life.

‘Get rid of them’ is obviously the simplest solution to all this.
Simple but not practical.
Limiting the use of private contractors would entail withdrawing from Iraq and/or Afghanistan or replacing them with more soldiers on the ground. With private contractors carrying out security and training operations on behalf of the US across the globe, 'getting rid of them' would also entail a radical re-think of US interventionist politics worldwide. Courtesy of Donald Rumsfeld, privatisation has gone so far, that reversing the trend will take years.

So wand-less Barack Obama promises us accountability rather than miracles.

And we all know that accountability could be an empty word and a series of committee meetings. Hardly the stuff of magic.

Yet accountability could also represent a first step towards regulation, so that the likes of Blackwater don’t get away with murder; control over the tendering process and a closer look over the complex nexus of interests served by the current arrangement.
Accountability could actually allow us to ask ‘what is it we are trying to achieve in Iraq and are these guys helping or hindering us?’.

Accountability could be an empty word. Or it could mean brining the whole force of democratic process to bear on the problem. And that would be magic the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while.