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Japan's dash to
Iraq
By Axel Berkofsky
One
thousand Japanese troops will be on their way to Iraq
before too long. Well, at least if it were up to Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi alone.
Japan's "Iraq
reconstruction bill", backed up by a United Nations
resolution calling for the reconstruction of Iraq,
Koizumi requests, should authorize Japan's military to
support US and British forces trying to establish
anything resembling stability in Iraq.
Although
the bill, which the cabinet hastily drafted a week ago,
only made it to parliament this week, the government is
already eager to compile guidelines for the dispatching
of Japan's troops.
It is hoped that Japanese
soldiers would show up in Iraq as early as October if
the controversial bill is turned into a controversial
law by the end of July. Japanese troops would then be
dispatched to central and southern parts of Iraq,
including Karbala and Basra, which is already
"relatively safe", the Yomiuri Shimbun found out.
Given Japan's constitutional restrictions,
however, soldiers, engineers and medics will mainly be
reduced to providing humanitarian assistance such as
medical care, assistance with refugee repatriation and
the distribution of food.
A couple of Japanese
C-130 carrier aircraft transporting medicines and
supplies to Iraq might even be dispatched earlier than
that, seemingly underlining the government's request to
play a "key role" supporting US military in Iraq. The
Japanese navy, which has flirted with the idea of being
part of the Iraq campaign for some time, might get busy
too. Leaving the Indian Ocean behind and sailing on to
the Persian Gulf, navy officers hope, should be Japan's
next contribution's to the so-called fight against
terrorism.
If lawmakers (really) make up their
minds by the end of July, the navy will be requested to
dispatch a large transport vessel to the Persian Gulf
transporting personnel and equipment.
Removed
from the list of possible assignment for Japanese troops
in Iraq, however, was the task of dismantling weapons of
mass destruction (WMD). Although the prime minister is
still convinced that "they must be somewhere" in Iraq,
the majority of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers
agreed that it is pointless to worry about WMD that
remain invisible even to the eagle eyes in Washington.
"Nonsense," said the Yomiuri Shimbun, dismissing
the government's decision to leave it up to the United
States to find (or not) and dismantle WMD. Japan seemed
to have forgotten the "great cause" it supported, the
paper complained.
The government remains
unimpressed, hoping to hammer the bill through both
chambers of parliament without much resistance. The
current parliamentary session was recently extended
until July 28 and deliberations have already turned into
a "heated debate" after two sessions, the Japanese media
report.
Replace "heated debate" with
"discussions bound to fail" and you know where
parliamentary deliberations will have led to by the end
of July, suggest many commentators in Japan.
In
the meantime, though, the LDP has turned to wooing the
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in trying to secure
support from the country's largest opposition party if
and when it comes to down to voting on the bill.
The DPJ, however, is not yet ready to give in to
LDP charm offensives, setting out preconditions for its
go-ahead for the bill instead. The party wants
parliamentary consent before dispatching troops to Iraq
(not within the 20 days, as the government proposes) and
does not want to authorize Japanese soldiers to
transport weapons and ammunition overland in Iraq.
If that is already hard to swallow for the
government, a DPJ request to delete wording from the
bills calling the US invasion of Iraq "justified" might
well go beyond what Koizumi might dare to report to
Washington.
Then again the opposition's
foot-dragging exercises and public opposition might not
worry the LDP much.
"We will have no choice but
to push the bill through the parliament," a senior LDP
lawmaker suggests, claiming that a majority in both
chambers of the parliament is justification enough to
send troops to Iraq, despite the opposition's whining
and public outcry.
The obstacles against getting
anything at all enacted in less than a month aside,
Koizumi appears eager to create the legal basis for
making Japanese global peacekeeping the rule and not the
exception. "Some people are insisting on establishing a
permanent law on Japanese peacekeeping missions, instead
of creating a special or temporary [one] every time such
a need arises," he said, putting himself on top of the
list of "some people".
Japan's neighbors, above
all China and South Korea, on the other hand, would
still opt for the latter version, fearing that Japan's
ambitions to keep the peace all over the globe might be
another step toward Japan once again becoming a military
bully.
Whereas Japanese peacekeepers were in the
past equipped with air-conditioned tents, Japanese-style
hot baths and everything else that was believed to be
"necessary" for a mission abroad, being far away from
flying bullets is the only luxury the troops require
this time.
Then again a "combat zone" is not
even a "combat zone" anymore as far as the Japanese
government is concerned. "If Japanese soldiers are
targeted in a shooting attack," the government explains,
"this will not constitute combat, but rather a
deterioration in public order, unless the attack is
carried [out] by a state or actor equivalent to a
state."
Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba adds
that the difference between a danger zone and safe haven
might only be a matter of semantics when push come to
shove. "For the US, a combat zone is defined as an area
where military forces carry out their mission.
Definitions of the same wording might be different in
Japan," he explained.
Besides, as Koizumi
thinks, these "details" can be discussed later now that
the government's "fact-finding delegation" in Iraq has
already found out that southern Iraq is safe enough for
Japan's pacifist soldiers. The delegation was sent to
Iraq last week and took only two days to come up with
the good news. Even better, of course, if the Japanese
public shared the government's enthusiasm to do its
share turning Iraq into a "model democracy in the Middle
East".
"It would be good [that] if the SDF
[Self-Defense Forces] go overseas, they are dispatched
amid applause from a large majority of the Japanese,"
Fumio Kyuma, chairman of the LDP's Policy Research
Council, said hopefully.
Although the country's
conservative media usually do their best to interpret
opinion polls as identifying "broad public support", the
public is unlikely just yet to trade reporting on failed
parliamentary debates for news on Japanese soldiers
getting caught in an ambush in southern Iraq.
Whereas the military requests that Japanese
troops should be allowed to defend each other and
comrades from other countries, legal restrictions limit
the use of military force to individual self-defense as
ever. In order to avoid any delays in the deliberation
process, however, the government does not directly
address the issue, announcing that "weapons are to be
used properly according to local conditions".
That's not good enough for the Japanese officers
who complain that "maintaining the morale of our men"
could become very difficult with the government being as
vague as possible on the details of whom and when to
shoot. Given the ruling coalition's determination to
mobilize the military as soon as possible, ambivalence
and rhetorical platitudes, however, will be the best the
country's policymakers have to offer.
The
Defense Agency, as usual, doesn't cave so easily and
proposes to equip troops with a "manual" on the use of
military force in Iraq. Whether such manuals are in
accordance with existing laws or are an attempt to
enable troops to pull the trigger as carefree as their
US comrades remains unclear for the time being.
As usual, confusion and controversy are
pre-assigned - although it remains to be seen whether
Japan's lawmakers have the heart to send troops off to
Iraq while they themselves head for their
combat-zone-free-guaranteed vacations.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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