Change Needed by U.S. in Iraq

Change Needed by U.S. in Iraq - Resistance to American Occupation is
Growing, Thriving on the Country’s Instability

by Scott Ritter

Published on Sunday, August 31, 2003 by the Baltimore Sun

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0831-04.htm

DELMAR, N.Y. - Nestled in the center of the Balidiyat district of Baghdad,
Iraq, the Canal Hotel was a distinctive landmark for those who traveled on the
major highway that swung through the eastern Baghdad suburbs.

A former tourist facility, the hotel was converted into a bustling home for
numerous U.N. offices in the early 1990s, when that organization increased its
operations in Iraq in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

One of these U.N. operations was that of the weapons inspectors, with whom I
served from 1991 to 1998. The Canal Hotel was our field operations headquarters;
to many inspectors (including me), it was our home away from home while in Iraq.

Security was always a concern. Unarmed U.N. guards, recruited from the
population, controlled the single entrance, making sure those who entered had
permission. Armed Iraqi soldiers patrolled the periphery.

The hotel was adjoined by a complex that housed the Military Hospital for
the Treatment of Spinal Injuries, and an aviation medicine unit of the Iraqi Air
Force.

In January 1998, my team and I inspected the facilities, concerned that
their proximity to our offices in the hotel posed a security risk. On Aug. 19,
someone else apparently reached a similar conclusion, driving a construction
vehicle filled with explosives into the parking lot of the Spinal Treatment
Hospital, detonating it with devastating effect on the Canal Hotel and those
inside.

The attack underscores the reality that resistance to the American-led
occupation of Iraq is not diminishing, but growing. The resistance is nebulous,
scattered and poorly defined, and yet seems to thrive on the instability that
exists in Iraq.

For the enemies of the United States in Iraq, the key to creation of a
sustainable popular-based resistance to the occupation rests in maintaining this
instability. The key to getting the U.S. military out of Iraq rests in killing
and wounding as many American soldiers as possible.

The attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad demonstrates sophistication,
not only in terms of ability to conduct a large terror operation, but also in
regard to ability to pick the right target. Those who launched this attack
appear not only to understand these two points, but also demonstrated through
their actions the ability to combine what appears to be two disparate objectives
into a single, horrible action.

In the aftermath, there is talk of increasing the U.S. military presence in
Iraq to more robustly confront the growing resistance. This might be exactly
what those who carried out the attack want.

The greatest recruiting tool for the Iraqi resistance effort is the presence
of the American military. Holed up in Saddam Hussein’s palaces, the U.S.
military has, according to news reports, simply replaced one form of tyranny
with another in the minds of many Iraqis.

Combined with an almost stunning inability to restore even the most basic of
public services, the U.S. military has squandered its honeymoon phase, during
which the goodwill of the Iraqi people would have tolerated almost anything as
long as life got better.

But life hasn’t gotten better. For many, it’s gotten worse, creating a
festering resentment from which those orchestrating anti-American activities can
draw willing recruits to their cause. The aggressive tactics of the American
occupiers in Iraq have backfired.

The American military presence in Iraq has, for the most part, become a
"Fort Apache"-type environment, with soldiers barricading themselves in heavily
fortified garrisons, emerging in heavily armed convoys to conduct their
operations, only to return to the safety of their bases at mission’s end.

The cordon and sweep operations that roust hundreds of men in the middle of
the night, subjecting them to humiliation in front of their loved ones, has
produced far more anti-American sentiment than captured anti-American fighters.

Confident-sounding American commanders speak of "owning the night," and
having "freedom of operations," but they are only renting those times and
spaces. Iraq belongs to those who occupy the turf on a continual basis, and that
is not the U.S. military. The harsh calculus of the anti-American resistance is
simple: Kill Americans.

For a few months, U.S. authorities in Baghdad have been trying to reduce the
American military role in Iraq, pushing humanitarian and basic civil and
economic administrative duties onto the shoulders of the United Nations and
civilian contractors.

The attack on the hotel was not an attack against the United Nations as an
organization. Rather, it was designed, along with recent attacks against foreign
civilian targets, to paralyze the nonmilitary organizations. The longer civil
operations are stopped, the more anti-American discontent will grow because
America, as occupying authority, is responsible for these, and all, operations
in Iraq.

To prevent this, the U.S. military will be forced to increase its presence
by providing security for these nonmilitary operations, or by assuming
responsibility for their work.

Either scenario results in the exposure of U.S. military personnel to
attacks on terms more favorable to the Iraqi resistance. As casualties mount,
American tactics will become more brutal in suppressing the resistance,
increasing the level of anti-American hostility and creating a vicious cycle of
violence from which the United States cannot hope to emerge victorious.

The struggle in Iraq centers on who can win the hearts and minds of the
people. Instability has created an environment conducive for the resurrection of
Hussein’s Baath Party.

The American military confronts a small, growing, insurgency with unknown
depth of popular support. If events do not change, it will soon face widespread
resistance with support in the general population. Something must change.

The Bush administration must swallow its pride and acknowledge that an
American-only solution in Iraq will not work. Political control of the
occupation of Iraq must be transferred to the United Nations as soon as
possible, and rapidly thereafter to the people of Iraq.

Isolation of the Baath Party must end. The net result of allowing the former
Baathists a role in the formation of a new Iraq would be to undermine those who
would resist the occupation by giving them a vested interest in cooperating.

Likewise, the U.S. administrators of Iraq should reverse their decision
regarding the dissolution of the Iraqi Army, resurrecting the Ministry of
Defense under the control of an interim Iraqi governing authority and
reorganizing the military into a security force inside Iraq that has the trust
and confidence of the majority of the Iraqi people. This would provide
much-needed Iraqi muscle to the governing authority, whether U.N. or Iraqi,
while removing a base of recruits from those who would resist change in Iraq.

Such policies do not represent a stepping away from democracy in Iraq, but
rather a recognition that the path toward democracy might be different than the
one now chosen.

Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and is author of "Frontier
Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America" (Context
Books).

Copyright (c) 2003, The Baltimore Sun