Deaths are inevitable as rebels vie for control

General (ret.) Wesley K. Clark

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Times of London

The ambush and shootings in which six British soldiers were killed and another eight wounded on Tuesday were deadly warnings of the risks in postwar Iraq.

Military service there is dangerous and further casualties are inevitable.

It could even be that the US-British "reconstruction" mission will fail.

Urgent measures are needed.

With each passing week, evidence of organized resistance to the American-led occupation has grown. At least 17 Americans have died and dozens have been wounded in attacks largely north and west of Baghdad. Industrial sabotage is now obviously going on, especially against oil and power facilities.

A shadowy organization called The Return is at least partly responsible. Saddam and his sons have not been found. And there remain stubborn tribal authorities, seeking to regain the power that they lost to the Baathists.

The Baathist movement should be no real military challenge for US and British arms. It lacks the weapons, strength and organization to inflict significant losses or seize and hold urban areas.

It is also likely to be controlled by Sunni Muslims, who are in the minority, and thus without widespread support -at least, not yet, although coalition tactics are increasingly alienating the population.

The Baathists know that time is short because they are not the only ones who are organizing and fighting for their survival. Their time for action is now, while the memory of Saddam's regime of fear still lingers, and support from Syrian and other Arab elements is strong. They don't have to win militarily. They have only to inflict enough casualties and cause enough mischief to dishearten Western public opinion and so weaken its support for the occupation.

The Baathists will fight now, seek support abroad and try to drive out the Americans and British quickly because they also know that, amid everyday life in Iraq, Shia Muslims are struggling to organize themselves into a political force and prepare for a future in which they will lead Iraq.

The Shias do not want a Baathist return, so their strategy will be to organize and wait, encourage the coalition to fight it out with the remnants of the old regime, and hope that both sides become exhausted in the process, with the eventual departure of the Americans and British.

After months of violent incidents and dozens of casualties, will the Americans and British really want to stay if tens of thousands of Shia Iraqis take to the streets, urging them to leave?

When open Shia resistance to the occupation shuts down commerce and communications with strikes, shop closures, public demonstrations and even violence? When a few suicide bombings underscore the Shia imperative for self-rule?

In the north are the Kurds, seeking as a minimum some kind of federal system and hoping for more, in the aftermath to come. For now, they will work against the Baathists, seeking to determine the best means to gain their long-term aim. But they are armed and organized, and will be prepared to fight for their dreams at the opportune moment. So now we face the postwar reality that so many wanted to avoid. We see the possibility of another disastrous Western mission in the Middle East, with all its adverse implications for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, prosecuting the War on Terror, and launching a wave of democratization and reform throughout the region.

But there are still opportunities for success if we act boldly and well.

With effective intelligence, enhanced security measures, and occasional offensive operations, the coalition should be able to keep the Baathists off balance until they are defeated and lose their will to fight.

At the same time we must move quickly to create representative Iraqi institutions, to channel and co-opt public representatives into legitimate politics, and to put the Iraqis in charge of their own security.

This should be done as a matter of urgency. This means taking risks comparable to the risks of the war itself.

The grand strategy must be to help the Iraqis to pull together, and find common interests. There must be no more divide and rule. Drafts of constitutional principles, organizational procedures, methods for criminal justice and political rules-of-the-road must be prepared and presented to the public for their support.

Security problems cannot excuse delay. Nor can we make the mistake of assuming that economic reconstruction must come first. Reconstruction of every kind should be simultaneous.

As for security, there should never be a patrol dispatched that cannot communicate with the local people. We should have thousands of translators working with us. We need to localize the security effort rapidly by recruiting an Iraqi auxiliary force and bring its members on patrols alongside our forces.

Just one more thought: as one of my old bosses used to say, "Don't worry about what headquarters thinks -just take charge; headquarters ought to be worrying about you!"