BRITAIN yesterday woke up to the brutal realities of its role in the continued occupation of Iraq with the killing of six military policemen in its worst day of casualties since the war began on March 20 – let alone the ‘peace’.
The killings come at a bad time for Prime Minister Tony Blair, just as parliament is roasting his administration for its sexed up ‘dodgy dossier’ on weapons of mass destruction, presented to the Commons in the run-up to the war, and liberally plagiarised from an 11-year-old PhD thesis.
Until Tuesday’s killings, the debate had been more political, fertile ground for journalists and rebellious MPs delighted at the opportunity to put the government on the ropes. A day of heavy casualties injects raw emotion into the debate.
Public opinion can accept (limited) casualties in war. It will find it much harder to take casualties in peace, especially when the original justifications for the war are appearing more and more flimsy as every day goes by.
So far, it had been the gung-ho Americans who were taking the peacetime casualties, while the British army had taken pride in the fact that its more sensitive policing of occupied areas was yielding results in terms of security – both for its forces and for the local populations.
Tuesday’s killings, and the fact that they took place far from the Saddam heartlands around Baghdad, and apparently at the hands of an angry mob furious at intrusive weapons searches, poses some difficult questions for British forces.
The fact is that, however sensitively or not they police Iraq, American and British forces are armies of occupation in a hostile country. British military commanders now face a lose-lose situation: they can retrench behind their armour like the Americans, making them less vulnerable (though not immune) to attack, but increasing local resentment as they muscle up on security; or they can continue their ‘hearts-and-minds’ campaign with a more ‘community-based’ approach, perhaps easing resentment among the majority of the population but laying themselves very open to attack from Saddam loyalists or other malcontents.
The fundamental problem is that British and American forces are policing Iraq in a political vacuum. Hardly anything has been done to re-establish any form of civilian authority; power and water have still not been restored to much of the country; soldiers and civil servants have been laid off and are now struggling to feed their families; there is no functioning health ministry to procure drugs and supplies for hospitals.
The United States’ overwhelming priority appears to be to catch Saddam, find the elusive weapons of mass destruction and ensure the security of its own forces. But catching Saddam or finding weapons will not solve the problems being faced in Iraq (though it will help the ratings back home). On the contrary, it is maintaining a warlike atmosphere that is only stoking tension in the population at large.
What initial relief there was at liberation from Saddam is very fast turning to anger. And Britain has now found that whether its soldiers wear helmets or berets, they are still seen as occupiers. Only by implementing a coherent plan to return Iraq to the Iraqis, to re-establish civilian rule rather than concentrating on military targets, will the US and Britain extract themselves from the increasingly dangerous quagmire of their occupation.
