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The decision by the US and its allies to withdraw a UN Security Council resolution authorizing war after failing to win sufficient support to pass it, and President Bush’s final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave their country within 48 hours, marked the end of diplomacy and a new chapter in the history of regional and international relations.3 For the first time in its history the US was engaged in a war in pursuance of a doctrine under which the US claims its right to attack nations that have not attacked it, but who might, who could, who would, if it does not strike first. In other words, it is “a war fought in the subjunctive, based on a string of ‘ifs’.”4
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A new occupied Palestine is in the making.
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Despite the similar American ambitions in both the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, manifested in the US desire to secure oil reserves and restructure the region on more favorable terms, there are many striking differences between both wars.
The 1991 Gulf War was when the US took the lead in applying the UN's collective security principle, leading a broad and diverse coalition forged on the principle of protecting the sovereignty of a nation that had been invaded by its neighbor.
The 2003 Gulf War signals an end to the collective security principle and qualifies as a unilateral preemptive attack rather than a response to any specific aggression – it is being launched without UN authorization and over an unprecedented degree of opposition from world public opinion and traditional allies. More importantly, the new war threatens to bring a colonial mandate to a major Arab state5 – a new occupied Palestine, albeit a much larger one, in the making.
The Perils of War – The Afghan Experience Revisited
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| Afghani women visiting their dead in the cemetery |
The World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated that 100,000 Iraqis would be wounded and another 400,000 hit by disease after the bombing of water and sewage facilities and the disruption of food supplies. Although Iraq's population, at 26 million, is almost the same as Afghanistan's, UN agencies say the effect of war in Iraq could be much worse. Afghanistan is relatively rural and its people have long traditions of coping mechanisms, whereas Iraq's population is highly urbanized with some 16 million depending on a monthly “food basket” of basic goods supplied free by the Iraqi government.
In Afghanistan it is calculated that US bombing directly killed about 5,000 civilians and up to 20,000 others through the disruption of drought relief and the bombing's other indirect effects. It is estimated that bombing in Iraq would probably produce similar proportions of direct and indirect fatalities.6 Other reports suggest that roughly 10,000 Iraqi civilians will be directly killed by US-UK bombing – more than three times greater than those killed in the attacks of September 11th.7
| After wars, US troops remained for:
- 57 years in Germany and Japan
- 50 years in Korea
- 5 years in Bosnia
- 11 years in Saudi Arabia
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Economists predict that the economic costs of war would range between $100 billion and $1.9 trillion if the occupation drags on and US troops never seem to come home. One only has to note that US troops remained in Germany and Japan for more than 57 years after the end of World War II, in Korea for 50 years after the end of the Korean War, in Bosnia for 5 years after the end of the Yugoslav civil war, and in Saudi Arabia 11 years after the end of the Second Gulf War.8
If the presence of 10,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan is generating resistance with hundreds of shooting and bombing incidents against US troops, one can only speculate what the presence of more than 250,000 US soldiers would do in Iraq. 9 The perception of the US as an occupying force in Iraq, its unequivocal support for Israel and the daily images of civilian casualties in Iraq and Palestine, is definitely bound to fuel Al-Qa'eda's cause. Another possibility is that a paramilitary movement would develop from within Iraq itself aimed at fighting US occupation and a possible US-imposed client regime.10
Afghanistan was supposed to be the model for democratization and nation-building that the US adopted when it went to war against Al-Qa'eda. Statements from senior US officials were fraught with phrases such as the “liberation of Afghanistan,” “the creation of representative national institutions,” “human rights” and “women's rights.” Ironically, it seems that with the new focus on Iraq, “Afghanistan has already dropped off the radar screen” as Senator Joseph Bilden said in a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was addressed by Afghani President, Hamid Karzai.
| US soldiers frequently open fire at hungry Afghani civilians to scare them off. |
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According to a UN report, women's education was only slightly expanded in Kabul with few women regaining their professional positions. However, in all other cities and rural areas, women were afraid to take new jobs and hardly any girls' schools have been opened since the fall of the Taliban. Other reports indicate that Afghanistan has now become the world's number one producer of opium and that sexual molestation of children is on the rise. Very little has been done to alleviate poverty in Afghanistan as US soldiers scuffle everyday with hungry Afghans who show up to collect scraps of food from the Baghram Air Base garbage dump. US soldiers frequently open fire at hungry civilians to scare them off (sometimes using dogs) and destroy the homes of locals when conducting house searches.11
In terms of the prospects for stability in Iraq, one can only note that the interim government of Afghanistan experienced the assassination of a cabinet minister, a vice-president and at least two attempts on the life of Hamid Karzai himself (known to be protected by 200 American soldiers).12 Last month, when Hamid Karzai paid a visit to Washington to ask for further aid, not a single question was asked to him by reporters, and Bush's 2003 budget plan did not even ask Congress for money the US pledged this year for Afghanistan's reconstruction.13
The Middle East – The Day After
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| With the fall of Baghdad, a US Marine covers the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s statue with the US flag in what many observers considered a highly symbolic scene. |
The US war on Iraq is a very precarious operation in which success is as fearful as the prospect of failure. The “rubble of victory” will now involve the economic burden of occupation, dealing with competing ethnic and religious factions, and an outraged Islamic world witnessing the first direct occupation of a major Arab country in almost 50 years. The end of 24 years of Saddam's centralized order will definitely ignite sectarian struggles as multiple groups with conflicting interests seek to fill in the power vacuum. Some predict that the hundreds of thousands of US troops will, in effect, become just another faction in that country's violent politics. 14 Neighboring countries would be drawn into a civil war to support one of several Iraqi factions struggling for power. 15 The result would be domestic anarchy and more regional instability as a protracted civil conflict rages and mass refugee flows would ensue.
The Bush administration is characterized by the presence of a determined and increasingly influential core of activist conservative foreign policy ideologues promoting a doctrine of unabashed American empire and advocating the preemptive projection of power to prevent the emergence of any military challenges to American dominance. 16 Grand designs on the Middle East and the idea of US unilateralism in foreign affairs are not the product of today, but rather part of a wider effort that sought to establish the 21st century as the “American Century.” 17
Shortly after the 1991 Gulf War ended, Dick Cheney asked Paul Wolfowitz to overhaul the Pentagon's basic strategic-planning document, known as the Defense Planning Guide, in which he called for the use of all means necessary to prevent any challenges to the US by means of preemptive action – most notably against Iraq and North Korea. For pro-Israeli neo-conservatives, the issue of multilateralism in international affairs or UN approval before military action is insignificant. In 1998, Wolfowitz joined other neoconservatives in signing a letter to Clinton arguing that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The signatories further argued that the “the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from power…needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”18 Out of the 18 signatories of that letter, eight now hold senior positions in the Bush administration.
| The US war on Iraq is Israel's war by proxy. |
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The radical transformation of the Middle East being considered by the Bush administration involves the greatest prospect for change since the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty in which victorious Britain and France carved up the Ottoman-ruled region. Now that the US has overthrown Saddam Hussein, it will use its victory to redraw the map of the Middle East, put it under permanent US control and establish unrivalled control of its oil reserves. Washington's most powerful lobbies – for oil and Israel – are urging the US to seize Middle East oil and crush any regional states that might challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly or regional dominance.19
In many ways, the US war on Iraq is Israel's war by proxy. In fact, Israel is an important behind-the-scenes player in this war. US military planners had pledged that Western Iraq, though to hold Scud missile launchers that could reach Israel, would be one of the first targets for US troops.
| US forces have been receiving insights on urban warfare from the Israeli military. |
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US officials had arranged to give Israeli military leaders access to part of the Pentagon's classified communications network so they could monitor the war in real time.20 In return, US forces have been receiving insights on urban warfare in an Arab context from the Israeli military. Close to 1,000 US soldiers were sent to Israel for joint maneuvers at the beginning of the year and others were sent to a mock Arab town in the Negev desert to draw on Israeli experience in using bulldozers to demolish homes and clear streets. Pentagon strategists have repeatedly watched videos of Israel's bloody military assault on Jenin and have focused on learning Israeli tactics of blowing holes in houses to facilitate house-to-house troop movements. 21 Also, the US used Israeli-manufactured drones to reveal sensitive information behind Iraqi front lines.
| Iran and Syria might be the next targets for the Likud-minded US administration. |
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On the strategic front, Iran and Syria are the primary victims of a US presence in Iraq, as they might be the next targets for the Likud-minded US administration. It is no coincidence that in recent days, Bush administration figures have repeatedly warned Syria and Iran – the two remaining threats to Israel – of unpleasant consequences should they not follow what Washington deems “acceptable patterns of behavior.”22
Iran's strategic lifeline is already cut off given the presence of US troops on all sides: the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. Short of direct military action, the US could work to encourage an uprising against Iran's Islamic regime, replacing it either with a royalist government or one drawn from US-based Iranian exiles. 23 Israel then would be able to pressure Syria to dismantle Hizbullah and impose upon it a settlement that could lead to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.24 Given the US threat of “regime change,” Syria would not be in a position to resist Israeli troops in the Golan and American troops in Iraq. The threat of an Israeli attack on Hizbullah forces that involves an attack on Syrian troops in Southern Lebanon opens up the prospect for an escalation of the conflict into a direct Israeli-Syrian confrontation.25
In addition, war on the Iraqi front would affect the internal cohesion of the Syrian society, which presupposes the quiescence of the Kurdish minority. The fragility of the Syrian economy is a factor which will be adversely affected if the Iraqi oil and trade were to be cut off. In such chaotic circumstances, Israel might seek to end the “Palestinian problem,” once and for all, by implementing a long-awaited plan, euphemistically called “transfer” by the Israelis. Other ambitious designs on the region involve partitioning Saudi Arabia and making the oil-rich Eastern province an American protectorate.
Oil – The Ultimate Prize
| The known reserves of oil in Iraq are greater than they were a decade ago. |
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All of this must be put in the context of world oil trends where two features are relevant. The first is that global oil demand will grow 1.6% annually through 2030, or increase to 120 million barrels of oil a day (mb/d) from the current 75 (mb/d). By that time, the US Department of Energy estimates that 53% of US petroleum supplies are expected to come from OPEC, including 26% from the Persian Gulf alone. 26 The most promising area for oil prospecting is the Persian Gulf region, and the oil that appears available there is of a relatively high quality, is easily recoverable so that production costs are low and is close to major sea-lanes.27 The known reserves of oil in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are both greater than they were a decade ago in spite of substantial annual production from both states – the discovery of new reserves is actually exceeding production, in marked contrast to the situation in the United States where domestic oil production will fall 12% over the next 20 years.28
Secondly, new oil fields being discovered and developed outside the Middle East tend to be small, expensive to develop, of relatively lower quality and require high transportation costs.29 Within this outlook there lies the belief that the US occupation of Iraq will ensure that other states in the region will acquiesce to US interests in the face of this determination. Thus the region will be made safe for the West in general and the United States in particular. More importantly, there is a chance that another 100 billion barrels of oil lie undiscovered in Iraq's western desert and some estimates predict that Iraq's oil wealth may well rival that of Saudi Arabia. Hence, controlling Iraqi oil reserves would enable the US to not only secure its increasing demands of oil, but have a say in oil quantities going to China, which is expected to double its imports by 2030, and the European Union, expected to import 92% of its oil by the same time. 30
Conclusions
- Israeli supremacy
- Fighting Islamism
- Oil |
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The regional fallout from the war on Iraq amounts to nothing less than a political earthquake in the Middle East – a region already suffering from years of bloodshed and warfare. The lines drawn in the Middle East by old imperial European powers are now being redrawn by the world's newest imperial power, the United States. 31 There is no doubt that the US has no intentions in establishing democracy in the region or launching a war that would eventually “win the peace.” The goals are the same: Israel's supremacy, oil, and fighting the rising tide of Islamism – the only language of opposition in the region to America's reign of terror. The gruesome reality of US ambitions was understood by average Iraqis who welcomed US troops with AK-47 rounds rather than with flowers. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm to topple Saddam, the hawks in the US administration erred miserably when they based their assumptions on unverified testimonies from Iraqi defectors who, in turn, belittled the impact of the average Iraqi's sense of loyalty to his/her homeland when faced with invasion by infidel troops.32
The US has mounted many coups in the Middle East to topple regimes in Egypt, Iran and Iraq itself. It has used the second Gulf War to gain permanent bases in the region. In Lebanon, it once shelled an Arab capital and landed several hundred marines. But never has it launched a full-scale invasion to overthrow a ruler in a major country. Even in Latin America and the Caribbean, US interventions were against weak opponents in small states. 33 The scale of American forces involved in this invasion amounts to nothing less than a repeat of the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, which led to the destruction of the glorious Arab Abbasid Caliphate by the barbaric Mongol Hordes. 34 Will history repeat itself? The moment of truth will come, sooner rather than later.
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