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Iraqi inferno will engulf ME

BRIG GEN JAHANGIR KABIR, ndc, psc (Retd)
WHAT was planned and executed almost as a bloodless occupation by the cutting edge war machine, turned out to be a nightmarish experience right after 'the mission was accomplished'. This debacle in victory had taken the top brasses of Pentagon by surprise and ridiculed the Us political decision-makers. With a one-sided war, and very little resistance from saddam's forces, victory had conjured itself for a fiasco right from the outset.
in a post 9/11 scenario, a worn-out and exhausted saddam was dramatized by a set of brilliant people like defense secretary Rumsfeld and vice president Dick Cheney. The oil lobby in Washington, Chairman (General) Myers and his soldiers played as dummy, at the most pawns, in the hands of businessmen turned politicians. President Bush never reads history or cares to know people outside his constituency. Demography, culture, national pride & prejudice have neither the power of bullets to him nor of dollars. Most of his cabinet members are aggressive business executives with proven records but lack the savvy depth of wily politicians. it was a wrong cause, in the wrong hands, at a wrong time backed by the full blast of American power that blinded them to the reality.
When President Bush boastfully said, 'mission in iraq was accomplished' there were celebrations in two places outside the beltway of Washington. One was in Texas, the oil capital of the world, with the prospect of windfall profit coming from the occupied iraqi oil fields. second, of course, was in the cabinet room of Tel Aviv under sharon, an ex general turned hard-hitting politician. Deceptively smiling also, at a man-made act of Allah, was the extended royal family of saudi Arabia. israel and the absolute royalists never felt comfortable with the radical dictators of the Arab land. it was a mean combination of self-interest and hatched up conspiracy of insatiable greed, violating all cannons of international law and justice. it was not so much that saddam had to go but the second largest oil fields in the Middle East had to be grabbed.
But the iraqis, who refined the art of agriculture and domestication of animals in the swamps of the Euphrates and the Tigris, known as the sumerian civilization, at the dawn of history, and many times ever since at the creative edge, were not ready to succumb to the brute force but waited to exploit the weaknesses of the occupation forces. And mistakes were many, combining those into blunders of today. Americans and their friends were indeed in the quicksand of iraq.
To start with, it was violation of the United Nations Charter and brazen disregard for international public opinion to occupy iraq in the name of finding WMD and chemical weapons. By not finding the alleged weapons
after occupation, Americans themselves denied the battle cry of getting into iraq. spinning stories of Al Qaeda connections to find a lame duck excuse, it is bad luck for Bush that the 9/11 Commission has pronounced that saddam had no connection with Al Qaeda. in the eyes of the world the invasion of iraq was unjust and illegal.
For the 13 years under UN embargo, iraq turned into a profitable business for the Europeans, headed by the powerful economies of France and Germany. They had over $ 90 billion of investments and lucrative business contracts. With vengeance in mind for the failure of Europe to support Us war efforts, the victorious Americans declared that they were under no obligation to honor agreements with the erstwhile saddam regime and quickly dished out multi
By trying to cleanse the civil administration of the Baathist elements, nearly everybody in the erstwhile government had to go. All members of the erstwhile armed forces, civil administration and political activists, just about everybody in iraq had been pushed to pick up arms for their survival and for the national cause, in that pulverized society of denial. if one does not want to term secretary Rumsfeld a smart fifth columnist he will certainly go down as a great spoiler of a military victory.
Demographically, iraqis are divided in three distinguished political shades with centrifugal tendencies. in the hilly northeast the Kurds had been continuously at war with the centre, for independence. From Karbala in central iraq, all the way up to the Persian Gulf, the vast land is occupied by the shiias
trigger of the bomb, unwittingly.
saddam knew he had no chance in case of an open war against the Americans. so, he prepared iraq for post war resistance. With 50 millions Katyushas, Ak-47s, mortars, anti-tank mines, rocket propelled grenade and launchers, shot range missiles and thousands of tons of ammunition and explosives post war iraq was awash with weapons and doomed to a civil strife before it could make a new start. Torture, humiliation, sexual abuse, gross violation of human right, in the style of Abu Gharaib, had snapped the last straw of the iraqis. Most potent of the weapons were the thousands of 'kamikaze' volunteers for whom American presence provided a noble cause to blow themselves up. Fear and anger provided an appropriate cause for the nationalist on one hand
billion dollar contracts to Halliburton and other favoured companies. Even the UK, the staunchest ally, was hurt by these actions. Talking purely on the law of convenience, Americans simply failed to share and care about the Europeans on the cadaver of iraq. The blunders were smouldering but nothing yet could match the blunders with the aggrieved iraqis.
The occupation forces wanted to take out every saddam supporter on the pretext of building a democratic iraq. They outlawed over a million strong armed forces, reservist and paramilitary included. in the chaos of occupation without consolidation, thousands of tons of arms, ammunition and explosives percolated into the society. The Baath Party, the only political tool since the days of Karim Kassem, was everywhere down to the villages. They were trained and armed.
with Basra to the east along the iranian border as their political and spiritual hub. The shiias are the majority in iraq but had never enjoyed their legitimate political rights proportionate to their numbers. it is in central iraq that the minority sunnis lived and enjoyed political patronage under saddam. Americans could not push the shiias to the driving seat due to fear of iranian influence on the Arab land. Kurds could not be rehabilitated due to the opposition of Turkey, a life long and trusted American ally. And the sunnis could not be taken into confidence due to the saddam factor. With the aggrieved sunnis, the restless Kurds and shiias, no central authority, and abandoned arms and ammunition, it was a bomb about to explode. iraq was total chaos after saddam was gone. And the occupation forces pulled the
and international Jihadis on the other. Clearly, Jihad had spread from Afghanistan to iraq on the trail blazing Americans and now fearsomely knocking at the neighbours' doors.
Like President Bush's Roadmap, half a century of American geostrategic gains in the Middle East is on fire. An unjust war, which had been won by technology, was lost by the arrogance of power. if Bin Laden has to give a pat on the back of anybody certainly Rumsfeld deserves the most, for nobody could do better, turning the sympathies of 9/11 into the hatred of today.
The author is a columnist on defence matters.