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Tears and
jeers in Japan's Iraq ordeal
By Axel
Berkofsky
With articles about the two Japanese
diplomats killed in Iraq still all over the media, only
a few Japanese die-hard optimists and defense hawks were
surprised that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
announced yet another delay of a cabinet decision to
endorse its basic plan to dispatch troops to Iraq.
The plan, authorized by the "Special Measures
Law on Reconstruction Assistance for Iraq" and providing
the legal basis for a troop deployment to Iraq "some
time next year", was originally scheduled to be endorsed
this Friday. However, only one day after the prime
minister announced that "terrorists will not bomb Japan
and the coalition forces out of Iraq", the plan was
pushed back and will now be endorsed "next week at the
earliest", Kyodo News quoted Koizumi as saying on
Monday.
Not even the smooth-talking Koizumi
seemed courageous enough to go ahead with sending his
troops toward the danger zone, with the public still
mourning the deaths of 45-year-old Katsuhiko Oku and
30-year-old Masamori Inoue. However, the Yomiuri
Shimbun, Japan's biggest daily and self-declared
defender of Japan's national security interests, thinks
there is no time for teariness now.
Calling the
killing a "heartrending sacrifice", it requested that
the government not cave in just yet, urging Koizumi "not
to quit the battle to rebuild Iraq". And instead, the
paper called for Japan's "decisive extension of its
support to postwar Iraq".
While the government
won't take the newspaper's advice just yet, cabinet
minister Toshimitsu Motegi followed Yomiuri's example by
resorting to high-sounding
"this-is-what-they-would-have-wanted" rhetoric. Running
away from the terrorists, Motegi indicated, is nothing
less than betraying the murdered diplomats' efforts to
rebuild Iraq. "I'm sure they'd be upset if their deaths
made Japan stop aid. Otherwise, what meaning was there
to their efforts?" Motegi claimed in a message
transmitted to a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Overblown ("pathetic", say some) rhetoric aside,
the prime minister, for his part, has to deal with the
here and now and sees himself confronted with a public
anything but ready to see their troops off to Iraq any
time soon. Indeed, recent opinion polls from Japanese
newspapers (the Yomiuri Shimbun excluded) reveal that as
little as 10 percent of the public is in favor of
sending Japanese forces to Iraq under the "present
conditions".
The killings of the two Japanese
diplomats came only two weeks after two London-based
newspapers received threats that the Japanese military
in Iraq would be targets of attacks if Tokyo went ahead
with its plan to deploy troops. Al-Qaeda, the Japanese
government decided, was the author of these threats,
which were sent via e-mail. Yet, even more
incomprehensible then that, are the actions of the
diplomats, who traveled without military escort and
found the leisure to stop for a drink on the road
despite embassy orders to request armed guards when
traveling in Iraq. Equally careless, commentators claim,
is that Oku and Inoue were allowed to choose a Toyota
over a more bullet-resistant Mercedes-Benz.
Their own precautionary measures, as Oku and
Inoue reportedly told their embassy colleagues, were
pretty much limited to "not drawing too much attention
traveling in [an] area that is a hotbed of support for
Saddam Hussein". Traveling without military escort was
seemingly part of that "strategy".
Oku, as the
Japanese media reported earlier this week, was "well
aware" that he could be a potential target of an attack
in his capacity as liaison officer between his
government and the US/British-led Coalition Provisional
Authority. As it turns out, Oku even told a reporter
from the Asahi Shimbun about a threat made against him,
although he stopped short of explaining when and by whom
exactly the threat was made.
In addition to
delaying troop deployment, Japan's plan to send
civilians to Baghdad to provide logistical and medical
services also seems to be on the back burner. Although
the government cheered only last week that Japanese
contractors were ready to reinstall electric power and
repair schools and hospitals in Iraq by the end of this
year, this week's announcements sound less optimistic.
"Although we are compiling a list of companies to
cooperate with the dispatch, there will probably be
nobody willing to go Iraq," a government official said
only hours after the killing of the diplomats.
Probably not, and if the reported outcome of an
"emergency meeting" of top Foreign Ministry officials is
anything to go by, Japanese funding to Iraq will
reportedly be limited to the "grass roots level",
focusing mainly on the construction of schools and
hospitals. The Mainichi Shimbun reported on Monday that
major infrastructure construction projects, carried out
by Japanese general contractors, are off the agenda, at
the least for the time being.
For now, Japan has
limited itself to providing cash for the construction of
schools in northern Iraq by the end of this month.
Initially, 45 million yen will be spent on the
construction of schools, and also in making sure the
money is reaching its recipients. Embassy staff are
required to monitor the distribution of funds by
traveling around northern Iraq - this time in a
bullet-proof Mercedes-Benz escorted by armed guards, the
government added.
In another move aimed at
playing it safer in Iraq and elsewhere, the Foreign
Affairs Ministry is planning to submit a law allowing
the armed forces to guard Japanese diplomatic missions
abroad. Getting rid of the restrictions of the
Self-Defense Forces Law to place armed soldiers in front
of embassies should be next on Japan's security policy
agenda, requested Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro
Aisawa.
"We need to establish a new legal
framework to secure the safety of Japan's diplomatic
missions," Aisawa said, announcing that the Foreign
Affairs Ministry should be submitting a bill to the
parliament "very soon". While Foreign Minister Yoriko
Kawaguchi promised to "think about it", Japan's Defense
Agency chief Ishiba chose to declare the armed
protection of Japanese embassies a "matter of national
security" instead.
Meanwhile, a Japanese
fact-finding mission, composed of 10 military officers
and charged with assessing whether southern Iraq is safe
enough for Japan's pacifist soldiers, returned to Tokyo
last Thursday. While the government is reportedly
studying information gathered by British forces in
southern Iraq "very carefully", Ishiba presented his own
conclusions only hours after his officers touched down
in Tokyo. "Southern Iraq is relatively stable," he
announced, basing his "analysis" on a "preliminary
report" from the Self-Defense Forces survey mission.
The officers caught up with Ishiba over the next
two days and confirmed that deploying ground troops to
Samawah is "feasible". The earlier deployment of Air
Self-Defense Force personnel to transport goods, the
officers added, is "one of a number of other options".
Yet another option is to stay home altogether, as far as
Japan's opposition is concerned. After the attack on the
Japanese diplomats, opposition parties accused the
government of failing to ensure the safety of diplomats
stationed in Iraq.
"We would like to question
the responsibility of the government for its lack of
safety measures and call for [their] summoning to
deliberate the matter in public," Katsuya Okada,
secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Japan
(Minshuto) said.
In a "normal" country, Koizumi
would now be charged with the task of explaining to the
opposition and the public that dispatching troops and
civilians could mean more body-bags and throwing
overboard what is left of Japan's pacifism. Luckily for
the prime minister, very little on Japan's security
policy agenda is "normal".
(Copyright 2003 Asia
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