THE ANGLO-AMERICAN COALITION DEFIED THE UNITED Nations to lay waste Iraq, had no qualms of how right it is, was sure the Shias in the south and the Kurds in the North would welcome them as liberators, but seven days into the war cannot even capture small towns without heavy losses. More than a hundred soldiers have died, half a dozen captured, several missing and hundreds wounded in a reaction that shocked it. The US and UK had stepped up the propaganda months earlier, about the new Hitler in the block, how dowtrodden and fearful his people were, how they could not wait for an Anglo-American force, with or without United Nations support, to destroy the leaders, and how the Iraqis would come out to greet them as liberators and join them to defeat the hated dictator in Baghdad. So widespread was this believed by President George W. Bush and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, that President Saddam Hussein was told bluntly he had better disappear if he valued his life. The propaganda ratcheted to a crescendo that when the bombing started, and the war began, the liberators found their way blocked by the very Iraqis they had come to liberate.

There is much talk of coalition forces in this battle to destroy the evil Saddam, and steal its oil. But there are no coalition forces. Even the 2,000 Australian forces in the Anglo-American forces are no more than water carriers. We are told of 60 nations who support this adventure, including several who dare not do so in public. But that is self-delusion than real: make no mistake, it is an Anglo-American adventure, in which even the United Kingdom would be shortchanged if, and after, it seizes control of Iraq. They opted out of getting UN support. Now they talk of involving the UN in the post-war rebuilding. But that is not going to be easy.

It does not matter now why Iraq is invaded. The reasons change with the moment, like a salesman with one product to sell changing his pitch as the man he wants to sell it to is averse to it. One views with astonishment the different versions by Mr Bush and Mr Blair for the war. Washington and London were shocked by the resistance. Their forces struggle to capture a small piece of real estate called Umm Qasr, the town of Nasra, and face fierce resistance in the towns along the way. The heavy fighting in Najaf and Kerbala, two holiest cities of the Shia faith. comes with it an built-in cluster bomb. Destroy the holy sites within, and Washington and London could never ever come back to the area.

The massive destruction the Anglo-American forces rained on Baghdad and other areas of Iraq, and the defiant response of President Saddam Hussein and his men, and the unexpectedly fierce reaction against them, is still only the easiest part of the campaign. They would have to capture Baghdad. It has to do that within a week. This is near impossibile. For if this war carries on for another two weeks, whatever political and psychological advantage the Anglo-American forces had would dissipate. The world's mightiest military power cannot even humble an Arab nation who cannot fight back as forcefully because its military arsenal is, with the help of that power, destroyed. What it has to fight against is the now-convinced Arab street that Iraq is attacked because it is an Arab state. Al-Jazeera and other Arab TV stations brought the destruction and the death into Arab and, feebly, into American homes, and united the Arab masses with President Saddam and Iraq as never before.

In other words, it has lost the propaganda war in the Arab world. The war planners assumed that there would be only one view of the war. Great care was taken to ensure that reporters did not stray on their own, but kept on a tight leash within the armed forces units. The death of an ITN correspondent, out on his own, by friendly fire raises doubts if he was not deliberately killed as a a warning to others who had the same idea. But in the end, they were defeated by an Arab TV station that reported on the effects of its bombing. The graphic pictures, including that of a child with her brain half-blown away, and the shocked state of captured American GIs suddenly brought the war into focus back home. It was no more the video games reality with which the war was reported. Great care was taken to not show blood and gore, only the ease with which the targets were targetted and hit. The Angl-American armada is stuck even before it has begun, as hard to move forward as to retreat.

The Iraqis react, apart from unexpected defiance in the cities along the Anglo-American march to Baghdad, in defiance. They know that in the end the fighting must be in the streets of Baghdad, but without knowing if the country would rise in revolt if Baghdad is seized. If this invading force is stretched thinly, from its support base, there is more trouble ahead. No one wants his country to be invaded, for whatever reason, and would fight to the death to repel the invaders. The US did against the British in 1812. The Soviet Union and Britain did against the Germans. When Pakistan tried to hold on to East Pakistan with force, Bangladesh was the result. And the heavier the bombardment and the siege, the greater the internal unity. Whether the leadership is hated or not is not the central issue any more. Through history, nations would rather be ruled by a cruel, sadistic, blood-thirsty dictator than a benigh foreign rule. And a nation which traces its roots to the city of Ur, which flourished around 8,000 BC, would rise against the invaders with more than nationalist outrage. When the invaders destroys the country in order to save it, the battle is all but lost. And the Anglo-American armada is close to that.

President Saddam and his Baathist leaders could well be destroyed. The odds are they might. But that matters not now. The longer Baghdad resists, the more damaging the Anglo-American raison d'etre. The more so if the Iraqi leaders survive it. Meanhile, misplaced fire kills civilians so frequently that if the Anglo-American adventure ends in occupying Iraq, it would be at a cost it cannot yet comprehend. The British controlled Iraq for 40 years, ensuring a regime as cruel as the one it now accuses President Saddam of. Now it returns to re-establish that control as the junior partner in the Anglo-American plan. The peace and freedom President Bush promised - the invasion is known as Operation Iraq Freedom - can only come after they are expelled, as they must.

Even before the Anglo-American armada was hatched, Washington had decided how Iraq is to be governed, had appointed its administrators, distributed lucrative construction contracts to favoured US arms, promised to cancel all contracts Baghdad had signed with Paris and the Soviet Union, pressured governments around the world to expel Iraqi diplomats so that after their victory they could appoint their own, and even had plans to re-order civil society to ensure democracy to flourish. That was its aim every time Washington intervened in the affairs of other nations. Not once did it succeed. Nationalism is a stronger force than democracy. And a society's inherent strength is not dictated by the number of McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in it. The Anglo-American force must now double the 300,000 it now has. If, as many expect, it lasts more than a few months, it could be as high as a million. And a rising toll of dead, captured and wounded.

It does not matter now if the Anglo-American adventure captures Iraq or not. The battle is lost. All it can now is destroy the country. If it does not rebuild it, as it would not, or if it seizes Iraq and governs by fiat, after the tumult and the shouting, the Arab world would be ranged against it. And its only ally in the Middle East, Israel, would find it politic to keep its distance from Washington and London. But it believes it can brazen its way through. It could at one time. Not any more. For it has burned its bridges with the international community.

The UN, formed so bigger nations would not bully smaller states, as the UK-US of Iraq or Indonesia of East Timor, lost its moral authority when the Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, ordered all UN staff to leave Iraq days before the onslaught began. They should have been ordered to remain. And force US and UK to react to that. Washington and London talks confidently of involving the UN in the peace. But the UN cannot now come in. Two veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council walked away when the other three permanent members threatened to veto its invasion plans. For if it does, it would approve what the US and UK did in Iraq. Which it cannot. As it would not when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and Indonesia East Timor. The UN must make it clear that in any dispute between might and right, it is right that must be protected. Mr Kofi Annan has much to answer for his dereliction. - 20030326

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my

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Terbitan : 31 Mac 2003

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