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WHEN the first US tanks rolled into Baghdad in April
2003, fierce emotions were in the air: joy,
disbelief, a willingness to celebrate the end of a
dark chapter and make a new beginning. Nothing, or
so it seemed then, could be quite as bleak as Saddam
Hussein's last embittered, sanctions-impoverished
decade.
Today, as the first free elections in Iraqi history
unfold under US sponsorship, the people of this
war-tormented country are unsure whether their long
nightmare has ended or deepened.
From the day when Saddam's statue was toppled from
its plinth in Firdos Square, almost everything that
could go wrong with the US blueprint has gone wrong.
Almost two years have slipped by and oil-rich Iraq
remains in ruins, the reconstruction effort stalled,
the shape of its future unclear.
But as Iraqis go to the polls, and democracy enters
their world, stage right, a new understanding of how
the West created its Iraq quagmire, and how
Washington's best intentions harmed Iraqi interests,
is beginning to dawn. Yesterday's vote, despite its
background of violence, may be a harbinger of hope.
Interviews and briefings with Western officials and
Iraqi political observers over the past week suggest
a new paradigm has developed, and with it has come a
new plan for the end-game in Baghdad.
When George W. Bush told The New York Times on
election eve that US troops would leave Iraq if
requested to do so by the new government, it was not
just a message to the US people that a costly
overseas commitment might end sooner than expected.
It was also a sign to Iraqi leaders that they would
have greater freedom of manoeuvre with Washington,
and clear proof that the US administration's view of
the deep causes of Iraq's woes had shifted.
The occupation itself is, for the first time, being
recognised by US strategists as part of the problem.
According to a senior member of the governing
council that oversaw Iraq in the first year of the
occupation, the initial US "view from the Green
Zone" was clear: US political and military control
over Iraq's reconstruction were essential for the
first few years of the post-Saddam era.
Now, US officials realise that Iraqis must take over
if the insurgency is to be defeated. The US
presence, in simple terms, has helped recruit
militants. US forces have become the focus of blame
for Iraq's lack of progress. There has also been a
fundamental Pentagon reappraisal of the rebellion,
which gathered force in the early months of last
year even as attempts to defeat it were redoubled.
Western experts then believed it was being directed
by Syrian and Iranian groups who wanted to resist
the spread of democracy in the Middle East, as well
as by committed Islamist factions.
The prevailing opinion now, based on fresh
intelligence assessments, is that the course of the
insurgency was planned long before the 2003
invasion, as part of the Ba'ath Party regime's
struggle to hold on to power in Iraq. Much of the
success of the insurgency can be traced to the long
delay between the first formation of US plans to
attack Iraq, and the actual assault.
In this interval, Iraqi Ba'ath leaders were able to
place their agents and assets abroad: and the
insurgency now under way is said to be following a
coherent timeable.
This revised assessment is helping forge a new US
blueprint: it envisages the stepped up "Iraqisation"
of the military effort to quell the insurgency. Only
Iraqi direction would be able to counter the direct
national appeal made by the militants to "free" the
country from occupiers.
The chief inspiration for the shift in policy comes
from Kurdistan in the north, the only area of Iraq
where the insurgents have made no inroads, and where
local forces maintain tight security control.
"Kurdistan is the model of how to do things in
Iraq," says one US official in the Kurdish enclave
for the election. "Everything happening here is
being firmly directed by the regional Government,
and the success of the election process results
directly from that security guarantee."
If local Iraqi control is now the priority, this
change stems from a twin shift in Western
understanding of Iraq's emotional climate.
The US has slowly begun to accept what everybody
else who enters Iraq instantly knows: the extent to
which US soldiers, once hailed as liberators, have
become hated throughout much of the country.
The extraordinary measures now being taken by US
forces to protect themselves, and to crush militant
strongholds, simply deepen this loathing, and
strengthen the desire of ordinary Iraqis to be free
from large-scale military occupation.
Startlingly high casualty rates in the general Iraqi
population are also fuelling anti-American
sentiment. The operations to stamp out rebel
footholds in Fallujah and Ramadi last month resulted
in heavy loss of life, and drove many Sunnis to
sympathise more keenly with the insurgent cause.
Yesterday's elections take on new importance in the
light of this revolution in American understanding
of the crisis. The vote is not just a fulfilment of
the pledges made when the invasion was launched; it
has also become the device that can help set the US
free to scale back its troop presence.
Although there is no serious likelihood that the
next Iraqi government will request a complete US
pullout, it is almost certain to demand, and
receive, some prudent reduction in force numbers, a
move that will allow the new ministers to drape
themselves with nationalist credentials.
These stakes set the solemn, serious mood that
attends the elections. They are a serious affair not
just for their democratic resonance, or because of
the risk faced by all those who took part in the
Sunni regions of the country.
They are a kind of circuit-breaker, offering Iraqis
a chance to escape from their present conflicts.
This seemed to be understood at a deep level by
those who voted yesterday.
An act of self-assertion is required as the new
Iraq's inaugural event: the country's renaissance
has been stillborn until now.
Just as importantly, the poll provides a new script
for the embedded superpower to extricate itself from
confrontation with the very people it intended to
rescue from dictatorship. The US, simply by allowing
the interim regime it helped put in place to be
voted out of power, is providing a glimpse of Iraq's
best future.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
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