inamerrata

I’ve got no idea what’s going on in Iraq; but my impression is that things will suddenly appear orders of magnitude better than they do now once the US and Iraqi elections are out of the way — the former’s a problem because people are inclined to emphasise the bad news to defeat Bush, and the latter’s a problem because the terrorists causing the problems want to avoid them happening. The real question is whether “orders of magnitude better” will actually equate to something good, or something bad. For future reference, here’s what people are saying now:

[…] Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. [If Iraq is an imminent threat now, by the end of January the form of that threat should become clear; eg Iraq being a hostile nation, terrorists launching attacks against America from Iraq, etc — aj]

Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health — which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers — has now stopped disclosing them. [How many cities the Iraqi government “controls” should be clear when the elections are held — aj]

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

[…]

America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day — over 700 to date — and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. […] [It’s unlikely that Bush is looking for a quick exit, that’s Kerry’s schtick. A rate of “dozens every day” adds up to around 3000 by the end of January, which ought to be verifiable — aj]

As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here. [The $18.4 billion was appropriated in Nov 2003, less than one year ago, not two years. Similarly, the “spent” money doesn’t seem to include the cost of contracts that have already been signed, but not yet completed or paid. Anyway, if all projects have stopped, there shouldn’t be many entries in Chrenkoff’s Good News from Iraq round ups over the next few months. — aj]

[…]

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.“

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if anything could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle. [So, if the downward spiral continues for a few months from something that’s already beyond salvation, by January we should see some decent riots and ideally some government buildings stormed. If things are really this bad, we should either see the US military restarting “major combat operations” before the elections, and if not we should certainly expect the majority of Iraq to be unable to hold elections. Comparing the turn out to participation rates in the November American election should be instructive: if there’s anything wrong, the turn out should be significantly less. — aj]

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

[…]

Some other notes. What’s the point of having reporters in Iraq that’re scared to leave their homes? What sort of crazy person thinks visiting Iraq’s a risk-free place, or that a good way to manage your personal risk is to visit troublespots, then stay indoors as much as possible?

And naturally, the groups that’re cooperating with Al Qaeda, kidnapping and beheading reporters, killing hundreds of police and civilians, and preventing free and fair elections have to be described as “insurgents”, even in emails. After all, what if they’re successful, and end up appointing a dictator we need to cosy up to later? Note also the purported cooperation between Baathists and Al Qaeda — this is the sort of cooperation we were told was impossible a while ago, Saddam being too secular for Bin Laden to ever have anything to do with. Unless the Baathists have undergone a conversion to fundamentalist Islam, apparently “enemy of my enemy” alliances aren’t so out of the question.

Yeesh.

What else is there? Oh yes: 87 attacks on Americans a day. Australia and Iraq have about the same population, and if Australia was occupied I could imagine being involved in some sort of violent resistance. I’d imagine it might take as many as, say, twenty people to organise an attack (a couple of people to actually do the shooting, others to provide lodgings, cover, planning, whatever), and maybe spending five or six days to regroup and relocate before the next attack, for about 120 people to organise one attack every day, multiply by 87 to get around 10k people being involved in armed resistance, including passive involvement. From a population of 20M, that’s one person in two thousand or 0.05% of the population, which doesn’t seem like particularly many — I’d certainly expect more Americans or Australians to resist an armed occupation than that, but then, we’re already democracies, so whatever we’d end up with would be worse. Perhaps Iraqis aren’t that efficient, or the American response is so effective that a week isn’t long enough to regroup; but “most Iraqis are willing to give it a go, while a small group of terrorists causing as much chaos as they can” sounds like a better explanation to me.

In closing:

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote.

Every time Iraq’s had elections in recent years, Saddam Hussein did get the majority of the vote.

(BTW, aren’t most Iraqis educated? 56% of Iraqi men are literate according to the CIA, at the very least.)