IRAQ. Patrick Cockburn

that is why they will leave.

      Tuesday, 3 July 2007

IRAQ INVASION STRENGTHENED THE MILITANTS

      Car bombs have almost as long a history as the car. What has changed since the invasion of Iraq is that bombers targeting civilian targets in the West now have a popular base and access to expertise in the Sunni community of Iraq.

      The invasion was seen as an attack on Muslims as a whole by at least some Muslims in every country, who are willing and able to construct and deliver bombs. From the moment foreign armies were ordered into Iraq, al-Qa'ida was bound to be the winner. US spokesmen have long blamed al-Qa'ida for every attack in Iraq but in fact the Salafi, proponents of a puritanical and bigoted variant of Sunni Islam, and the Jihadi, willing to wage holy war, belong to many groups.

      The al-Qa'ida of Osama bin Laden was a surprisingly weak organisation in Afghanistan and Pakistan before 2001. To make the blood curdling videos of militants training that are frequently shown in documentaries, al-Qa'ida had to hire local tribesmen.

      It is in Iraq that al-Qa'ida has come into its own. The US proclamation of the group as its most dangerous enemy served only as effective advertising among young Sunni men. Such denunciations also made it much easier for al-Qa'ida to raise money in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

      The three car bombs used in Glasgow and London are far inferior to anything used in Iraq. This is an ominous pointer for the future because Iraq is now full of people who know exactly how to make a highly-effective bomb - and the means to detonate it. It is only a matter of time before this knowledge spreads.

      The expertise of the Iraqi bombers attained a high level almost as soon as the first explosions occurred in Baghdad in August 2003. The Jordanian embassy was attacked and then the UN headquarters. Assassination by suicide bomber began with the killing of Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the largest Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, along with 85 of his followers in Najaf. By November, Jihadists were able to attack half a dozen targets at the same time.

      There also appeared to be an endless supply of suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and almost every state in the Arab world. The one Muslim country that suicide bombers did not come from was Iran, though the Iranians have been far more vigorously denounced than the Sunni states that produce the bombers.

      In the immediate aftermath of the latest bombings in the UK, there were immediate suspicions that Iraqi methods had spread. The opposite is true. It is surprising, given that one of the alleged bombers comes from Jordan, home to one million Iraqi refugees, that they did not know more about making a bomb. It is the political not the technical influence of the Iraq war that we are now seeing.

      Car bombs have almost as long a history as the car. What has changed since the invasion of Iraq is that bombers targeting civilian targets in the West now have a popular base and access to expertise in the Sunni community of Iraq.

      The invasion was seen as an attack on Muslims as a whole by at least some Muslims in every country, who are willing and able to construct and deliver bombs. From the moment foreign armies were ordered into Iraq, al-Qa'ida was bound to be the winner. US spokesmen have long blamed al-Qa'ida for every attack in Iraq but in fact the Salafi, proponents of a puritanical and bigoted variant of Sunni Islam, and the Jihadi, willing to wage holy war, belong to many groups.

      The al-Qa'ida of Osama bin Laden was a surprisingly weak organisation in Afghanistan and Pakistan before 2001. To make the blood curdling videos of militants training that are frequently shown in documentaries, al-Qa'ida had to hire local tribesmen.

      It is in Iraq that al-Qa'ida has come into its own. The US proclamation of the group as its most dangerous enemy served only as effective advertising among young Sunni men. Such denunciations also made it much easier for al-Qa'ida to raise money in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

      The three car bombs used in Glasgow and London are far inferior to anything used in Iraq. This is an ominous pointer for the future because Iraq is now full of people who know exactly how to make a highly-effective bomb - and the means to detonate it. It is only a matter of time before this knowledge spreads.

      The expertise of the Iraqi bombers attained a high level almost as soon as the first explosions occurred in Baghdad in August 2003. The Jordanian embassy was attacked and then the UN headquarters. Assassination by suicide bomber began with the killing of Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the largest Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, along with 85 of his followers in Najaf. By November, Jihadists were able to attack half a dozen targets at the same time.

      There also appeared to be an endless supply of suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and almost every state in the Arab world. The one Muslim country that suicide bombers did not come from was Iran, though the Iranians have been far more vigorously denounced than the Sunni states that produce the bombers.

      In the immediate aftermath of the latest bombings in the UK, there were immediate suspicions that Iraqi methods had spread. The opposite is true. It is surprising, given that one of the alleged bombers comes from Jordan, home to one million Iraqi refugees, that they did not know more about making a bomb. It is the political not the technical influence of the Iraq war that we are now seeing.

      Friday, 13 July 2007

BUSH’S OPTIMISM IMPOSSIBLE TO SQUARE WITH IRAQ SITUATION

      Scrambling to shore up crumbling support for the Iraq war, President George Bush released a report yesterday claiming sufficient political and military progress to justify the presence of 170,000 US troops in the country.

      Mr Bush said he still believed victory in Iraq was possible. "Those who believe that the battle in Iraq is lost will likely point to the unsatisfactory performance on some of the political benchmarks," he said.

      "Those who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause of optimism." He added it was too early to say if his new strategy in Iraq was working.

      But in Iraq as in the US there is a sense Washington is playing its last cards. "I assume the US is going to start pulling out because 70 per cent of Americans and Congress want the troops to come home," Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi politician, said. "The Americans are defeated. They haven't achieved any of their aims."

      And to underline Mr Othman's comments, last night the House of Representatives approved legislation, by a vote of 223-201, to bring combat troops out of Iraq by 1 April 2008, despite a White House veto threat.

      The report itself admits to a sense in Iraq that the US, one way or another, is on the way out more than four years after its invasion in 2003. It says that political reconciliation in Iraq is being hampered by "increasing concern among Iraqi political leaders that the United States may not have a long-term commitment to Iraq".

      The White House yesterday sought to suggest possible change for the better in Iraq by saying that there had been satisfactory progress on eight of the 18 goals set by Congress. Unsatisfactory progress is reported on six, unsatisfactory but with some progress on two and "too early to assess" on a further two.

      The picture it hopes to give - and this has been un-critically reported by the US media - is of a mixture of progress and frustration in Iraq.

      The wholly misleading suggestion is that the war could go either way. In reality the six failures are on issues critical to the survival of Iraq while the eight successes are on largely trivial matters. Thus unsatisfactory progress is reported on "the Iraqi security forces evenhandedly enforcing the law" and on the number of Iraqi units willing to fight independently of the Americans. This means that there is no Iraqi national army but one consisting of Kurds, Shia and Sunni who will never act against their own communities. Despite three years of training, the Iraqi security forces cannot defend the government.

      Set against these vitally important failures are almost ludicrously trivial or meaningless successes. For instance, "the rights of minority political parties are being defended" but these groups have no political influence. The alliance of Shia religious and