- The occupation of Iraq continues to get worse for George
Bush and Tony Blair. The deaths of at least 20 people in a suicide bomb
attack outside the coalition headquarters in Baghdad yesterday morning
underlines the spiralling unrest in the country. The toll of US casualties
since Saddam Hussein's capture is higher than in the same period before
it. Angry protests over unemployment and petrol shortages have erupted
in several cities in the south, in areas under British control.
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- Above all, Washington's plans for handing power to an
unelected group of Iraqis is being strongly challenged by Iraq's majority
Shia community. The occupiers who invaded Iraq in the name (partly) of
bringing democracy are being accused of flouting democracy themselves.
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- Oh yes, and then there's the small matter of the weapons
of mass destruction on which Saddam increasingly appears to be the man
who had truth on his side. When he said he had destroyed them years ago,
he, rather than Bush and Blair, was the man not lying.
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- While the Hutton inquiry looms as the main Iraq worry
for the prime minister, the primary problem for Bush is the chaos in Iraq.
His plans for minimising Iraq as an election issue are in tatters. They
relied on three things: the capture of Saddam; a reduction in the toll
of US dead and maimed; and the start of a process of handing power to Iraqis.
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- The first was accomplished in December when the former
dictator's successful eight-month evasion of massive hunting parties came
to an end. But instead of it leading to a collapse of resistance, US casualties
have gone on growing. Bush's always dubious argument that Saddam was running
the insurgency from various well-hidden quarters has fallen apart.
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- Baathists who did not want to be seen as defending a
hated leader were freed from that image. Other branches of the resistance
were never Saddam supporters. It also transpires that Saddam rejected part
of the resistance. Although he called for jihad against the occupiers in
the tapes slipped out to al-Jazeera and other Arab media, he was writing
more careful private notes to his friends. He urged them to beware of the
fundamentalists - an ironic sign that even in his months of beleaguered
clandestinity, he remained faithful to the secular principles which had
made him attractive to western governments in the 1980s, when the main
enemy was seen as Iran.
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- With casualties stubbornly continuing to remain high,
the US is now banking on its project for transferring power to Iraqis this
summer. This is an acceleration of Washington's earlier plans. The UN security
council resolution it pushed through unanimously last October called on
Iraq's governing council to draw up a timetable for drafting a constitution
and holding elections. It also called for the UN "to strengthen its
vital role in Iraq".
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- But the White House has a habit of ignoring the UN resolutions
it sponsors. Just as it went to war without a second resolution, after
getting unanimity on one which most member states did not feel contained
a trigger, the October 2003 resolution was also ignored. A month after
it was passed, the US came up with a plan which made no mention of any
role for the UN and cobbled together an extraordinary process of "caucuses"
to pick a government.
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- At least in Iowa, the Democratic party caucuses involve
elections. Not in the US plan for Iraq. The US is proposing that "notables"
in each province attend these caucuses to appoint an assembly which would
select a government. Not surprisingly, the Shia leadership smells a rat.
After generations of being excluded from power, first by the British occupiers
in 1920, and then by successive Sunni governments up to the one led by
Saddam, they are angry.
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- Their spiritual head, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
has repeatedly denounced the plan. He wants direct elections. His legitimate
fear is that the US wants to control the selection of a government because
it thinks the wrong people will win, in particular the Shia. Washington
is also worried that Sunni fundamentalists and even some Baathists might
do well in the poll.
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- The other new element in the US plan was that power would
be transferred to the new government at the end of June. This would allow
Bush to claim mission accomplished. Barely a year after the invasion, Iraqis
would have a legitimate government at last. It would invite US troops to
stay, but these could gradually be reduced in number or pulled back to
bases in Iraq, as new Iraqi security forces were built up. US casualties
would fall, the invasion would have been legitimised, and Messrs Dean and
Clark would have to shut up.
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- Now the whole thing is in ruins. Ayatollah Sistani refuses
to drop his opposition, and people were out on the street in Basra last
week to support his line. Protests may spread to other Shia cities. The
latest allegations of US and British torture of detainees will only inflame
passions. Worst of all for Washington, Sistani has made it clear that no
government which is undemocratically appointed will have the right to ask
American troops to stay.
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- Washington is trying to argue that if there are to be
direct elections, the transfer of power will have to be delayed. Sistani
rejects that. His supporters say the oil-for-food ration-card lists which
covered the whole Iraqi population can easily be used in place of the poll
cards which Washington says would take at least a year to prepare. Unlike
Afghanistan, with its remote villages and months of snow which make polling
stations hard to deploy and staff, Iraq's geography is no obstacle to quick
elections.
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- The moment of truth for the administration is also one
for the United Nations. Having snubbed the UN for so long, the White House
is turning to Kofi Annan at a meeting in New York today to bail it out.
Like his Shia forebears who refused to meet the British after 1920 for
fear of being denounced as stooges and sell-outs, Sistani refuses to talk
to Paul Bremer, the top US envoy, or his British colleagues. He meets Iraqis
who bring messages from the coalition authorities, and he meets the UN.
So Washington is pressing the UN either to go and persuade Sistani that
elections are impossible, or to monitor the caucuses and give them its
seal of approval.
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- Annan should resist the poisoned chalice. He should support
the concept of direct elections. It need not mean a delay in sovereignty
for Iraq. Five months are not too long to prepare a vote. Alternatively,
the UN should offer to take over responsibility for the entire transition
to Iraqi rule, as many member governments originally hoped.
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- Washington's plan for a transfer of power is a facade.
The real intent is to get Bush re-elected and continue the occupation by
indirect means. The UN should have no part of it.
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- - j.steele@guardian.co.uk
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1126178,00.html
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