| |
No end to US
troubles
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Despite a two-week public-relations
offensive designed to persuade the world and the US
public that it knows what it is doing in Iraq, the Bush
administration appears increasingly at sea.
That
was made clear by a number of developments last week,
which were capped Saturday by the killings of two US
soldiers in an attack near the northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk, and four others killed on Friday, bringing the
number of US troops slain since President George W Bush
in May declared the end of major hostilities in Iraq to
103.
Passing the particularly disturbing
benchmark number of 100 led the television news Friday
night, dashing administration hopes that the week would
be remembered more for the unanimous United Nations
Security Council approval Thursday of a new resolution
that officials in Washington depicted as international
endorsement of the US-led occupation.
But even
that achievement proved anticlimactic, as countries
voting for the measure, including France, Russia,
Germany and even Pakistan, made clear that they were not
yet ready to contribute troops to Iraq and remained
doubtful that Washington's strategy for restoring
security to the country - if it actually had one - was
working.
While the administration made it clear
that the resolution would not necessarily provide troops
to take the place of the 130,000 US soldiers in Iraq,
Pakistan's announcement that it would not do so came as
a particular blow.
On the other hand, that
Washington is still negotiating with its handpicked
Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) over the deployment of up
to 10,000 troops promised by Turkey, suggests that
Pentagon planners still are not very clear on what
purpose foreign troops could serve in Iraq anyway.
The IGC has made it increasingly clear since the
Turkish parliament approved the deployment - after
Washington signed off on an US$8 billion loan and
promised to disarm Turkish rebels based in Kurdistan -
that Turkish troops are simply not welcome, not in
Kurdistan, nor in the rest of the country.
The
IGC, from which the ardently pro-US Kurdish leader
Massoud Barzani threatened to resign if the Turkish
deployment proceeds, has by all accounts become
increasingly restive and resentful, particularly of the
often high-handed behavior of Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) chief L Paul Bremer, who has demanded
that the IGC formally invite the Turks in.
The
growing friction between Bremer and the IGC has become a
source of embarrassment. So have the ongoing frictions
in Washington between the Pentagon on the one side and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and the State
Department on the other.
The latest incident
began after Rice briefed selected media on the creation
of the "Iraq Stabilization Group" (ISG), a new mechanism
overseen by her to which Bremer and the CPA are to
report.
Seeing in the move an implicit but
high-profile criticism of the way the Pentagon had
handled the CPA, if not an outright power grab, Pentagon
chief Donald Rumsfeld reacted with thinly veiled
irritation, which lasted the best part of a week and was
capped by a contemptuous reference to those "little
committees of the NSC [National Security Council]".
Several days later, Rumsfeld's office struck
back with the announcement that it will soon set up its
own project management office in Baghdad that will take
over the awarding of contracts for reconstruction
projects from the US Agency for International
Development, which is run out of the State Department.
The sequence of events left many observers
scratching their heads, uncertain as to what precisely
will be the ISG's mandate. "We don't know what, if
anything, has changed," noted one congressional aide.
"Nobody has explained any of this to us in ways that
make sense."
The impression of disarray was
further compounded by the revolt staged by a significant
number of Republican senators Thursday, against the
administration's demands that Congress provide $20
billion in grants for Iraqi reconstruction as part of an
$87 billion appropriations bill to fund US operations in
the occupied nation through next year.
In a
51-47 vote, the Senate approved a provision that would
make one-half of the reconstruction aid a loan, thus
adding to Iraq's accumulated foreign debt estimated at
between $150 billion and $200 billion.
Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney pulled out all the stops in
lobbying for the original plan, but eight Republicans
deserted the president and joined 42 Democrats to thwart
Bush in what the Los Angeles Times described as "the
latest sign of eroding public and political support for
Bush's Iraq policy".
The loan provision might
still be stripped from the bill when members of the
House of Representatives - which rejected a similar
provision by a 200-226 vote Thursday - and the Senate
meet to hammer out a final version, but the unexpected
outcome in the upper chamber suggests that Republican
discipline is breaking down over Iraq.
The most
serious signs of trouble for the administration last
week were probably in Iraq itself, especially in the
Shi'ite-dominated southern part of the country which,
until now, has been relatively quiet compared to the
central Sunni triangle region where insurgents have
caused the vast majority of US casualties since May 1.
Three of the four soldiers killed Friday were
involved in a shootout with unknown assailants in the
holy Shi'ite city of Karbala. It was by far the worst
incident in a series over the past month that reportedly
involves a major power struggle between at least two key
armed Shi'ite factions.
Recently. two other US
soldiers were killed in what the CPA described as an
ambush in Sadr City, a Shi'ite-dominated part of Baghdad
in which the factional struggle has also increased.
That US troops might now be targeted by one of
the factions - associated most closely with Muqtada
al-Sadr, who has called for the establishment of an
independent government - is particularly disturbing to
Iraq specialists in Washington.
While Sunnis,
who were generally favored under British colonial and
Ba'ath Party rule, constitute about 20 percent of Iraq's
population, Shi'ites are thought to make up as much as
65 percent. Any fighting or breakdown in order within
the Shi'ites or between Shi'ites and occupation forces
would make it vastly more difficult to restore security
to the country.
It would almost certainly pose
new questions as well about what US troops are doing
there, a question that is apparently being raised with
increasing frequency and intensity by soldiers
themselves.
A survey based on almost 2,000
questionnaires distributed by the Pentagon-funded Stars
and Stripes newspaper in August found that one-half of
those questioned described their unit's morale as low,
their training irrelevant or inadequate, and their
re-enlistment plans non-existent.
The troops
also complained about the tours provided by the Pentagon
to visiting dignitaries, including top military
officers, congressmen and senators. They said visitors
were generally shown only hand-picked troops who could
be relied on to show enthusiasm for their mission and
who did not represent the views of most troops.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
