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PETER ARNETT'S "IS BAGHDAD ANOTHER GAZA STRIP?"


BAGHDAD -- On April 9 I watched as enthusiastic Iraqis and American soldiers pulled down the bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Paradise Square, signifiying the end of the Baathist regime. There was a jubilant victory celebration, captured live by the TV cameras of the international media from the roof of the nearby Palestine Hotel, and I was swept along by a happy Iraqi crowd.
Now, nearly six months later, there is more jeering than cheering in Paradise Square. Just hours before writing this story, I was mobbed by angry demonstrators as I was leaving the Palestine Hotel. They were several dozen unemployed young men who earlier in the day had been turned down for jobs at a police recruiting office. I was the first American they saw as they rampaged down Sadoun Street, and they made their anger clear, trying to pummel me with their fists and kicking my pants.
My driver and translator quickly rescued me, and the mob surged past, torching two automobiles further down the street. The mob quietened down only after local police, who arrived with American soldiers, fired shots at them, injuring two. The volatile mix of angry arabs and impassive heavily-armed western soldiers brought to mind another regional crisis, Palestine.
"This place is getting more like the Gaza Strip every day", said my journalist colleague Robert Fisk, from the Independent newspaper of London. Fisk is a biting critic of Israeli and American policy in Palestine, and he told me, "The Americans here are even getting lessons on crowd control from the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces)."
I have been to the Gaza Strip many times and I am hesitant to compare Baghdad with that troubled Palestinian enclave along the Mediterranean coast. For one thing, the Palestinians don't bully reporters. But in terms of United States political expectations this year, the bright hopes for stability in Baghdad have become a casualty, just as the Bush Administration's Middle East Road Map for Palestine independence has become a casualty with no longer of any value in bringing about peace. And more and more observers, who are anxious about the growing instability in the region, are blaming America for failing both Palestine and Iraq, but for very different reasons.
First, the parallels. In a few short months the United States seems to have lost the moral high ground in both Palestine and Iraq. And part of the reason for America's declining international standing is the war on terrorism, launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Few would argue that the attack on Afghanistan was wrong, because it was clear from the start that the Taliban government supported Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorists. But President Bush has equated Palestine's legitimate national struggle with America's continuing global war with Al Qaeda and that organization's ideological reign of terror. Consequently, The United States tends to side with the Israeli government's view that a committment to Palestinian statehood would be rewarding terrorism. Many observers in America and probably the majority of others everywhere else believe the Bush Administration's timidity in dealing with Israel has doomed any hopes for peace.
The war on terrorism also loomed large in America's official reason to go to war against Iraq. But it is now clear that this was a war of choice, not necessity. The alleged presence of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction was the primary argument unsuccessfully used by Washington to enlist international support for the war. Months of searching the terrain of Iraq by teams of American inspectors have failed to find any such weapons, further distancing America from the skeptical rest of the world and embittering some Iraqis who, while they opposed Saddam Hussein, feel that the stability he brought to the country is preferable to the chaotic environment that now exists.
"Saddam's biggest mistake was letting the UN weapons inspectors into Iraq last year," a former brigadier general in the Iraqi Army's planning staff, Kutaiba Al-Azawi, told me the other day."Had Saddam held fast, America would never have been sure if he had them or not, but the UN inspectors cleared the way for the war by showing that none existed. Will Bush attack North Korea if he is unsure about that country's nuclear capability? I doubt it."
Another "war on terrorism" argument for America's Iraq war was Saddam's possible connection to the 9/11 terrorism attacks,and his considerable contacts with Al Qaeda. These have yet to be proven. For what it's worth, when I interviewed Bin Laden in Afghanistan in March, 1997, I asked him his opinion of Saddam Hussein and he called him "a bad Arab" and a lackey of the United States.
A second parallel between Iraq and Palestine is that the actions of the US-backed Israeli forces and the Americans are seen by the Arab world as military occupations, with the frequent bloody encounters between the military forces and civilians adding fuel to the political fire. But it is here that the similarities between the two countries end. While many in the world are convinced that Israel has embarked on an expansionist policy that aims at extinguishing Palestinean national existence, America is making clear that it eventually wants out of Iraq.
The United States remains reluctant to share control of rebuilding the country and it wants international help on American terms, but there is little doubt that growing political realities require that an Iraqi regime be soon created to replace the Americans. The wildly escalating financial costs dictate it, the continuing deaths of American soldiers dictate it, and a looming US presidential election next year make it all but certain. President George W Bush knows that he could follow his father into premature political oblivion if an American military withdrawal is not underway by this time next year, and that can only come with the selection of a new government supported by most Iraqis, and with a well-funded reconstruction program well underway.
That much time has already been wasted is apparent any day in Baghdad. Thousands of unemployed soldiers line up near Al Zawra Park outside an army headquarters, waiting to collect a pittiful allowance of 40US$ for three months living. "I'm willing to serve in a new Iraq army but nobody wants me," Salman Talib, who was an infantryman in the old regime, told me. "So we wait here for basically nothing."
The former soldiers who had manhandled me outside the Palestine Hotel were shouting, "Listen to us, we want jobs. The leaders are not producing jobs. We have nothing." And the following day the impatience with the Americans blossomed into yet another demonstration in the streets of Baghdad, this one organized by the "Iraqi Free Society Party" that claimed solidarity with demonstrators around the world who had recently protested events in Iraq.
This strident impatience that resounds throughout the country threatens American hopes to create an Iraqi regime that will give an example of democracy and moderation in the Middle East. Already there is rising discontent over the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council that was apppointed two months ago by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American governing body in Iraq. Most of the council members have been drawn from political opposition groups that functioned for years outside Iraq, and for that reason there is little local loyalty.
"We want people to represent us in government who suffered like we did under Saddam," Rami Mizher told me. He is a young computer specialist who is making ends meet by publishing a free weekly advertising newspaper. "And the council is not proving itself. Most of them seem to be political opportunists."
Ironically, the Governing Council is making more headway on the world stage than at home, taking a seat at the United Nations, and joining the Arab League and OPEC. And the recent assassination of council member Aquila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on the council, brought international sympathy.
The struggle to win over public opinion at home is proving more difficult. One reason is that security considerations have walled off the council from the rest of Iraq. The headquarters is a luxurious building heavily guarded by American troops, and local media write sarcastically about the newly installed airconditioning and marble floors, the many cell phones that are not available to ordinary Iraqis, and the comparatively high salaries and entertainment allowances enjoyed by the council and staff.
There is also the perception that the council has too little power, a frustration for the council members themselves who are calling for more authority and a guarantee from the United States that full Iraqi sovereignty be restored as soon as possible. Council members are expressing unhappiness over a decision by the Americans to open Iraq to foreign investment in all sectors other than oil and gas. But the Americans are concerned about some decisions the council has the ability to make, including restrictions on the Iraqi coverage of the Arab TV news organizations Al Jazeera and Al Arabia, and an attempt to control the product of other foreign journalists working in Baghdad, reminders of the restrictive press laws of the old Saddam regime.
Ahmed Chalabi, who has been holding the rotating presidency of the council in September, believes more authority will help the situation. He says, "It is clear that there are security problems in Iraq and that is mainly because Iraqis are not taking a major part in handling security." The US agrees to some extent, and is training large numbers of Iraqi police and militias.
Chalabi would also like to see the council become a sovereign and independent government until a constitution is written and new elections held. But the more realistic council members, such as Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister, says "we don't claim to be anything but a transitory authority."
The United States view is that a quick political transition could destroy the opportunity for the growth of a real democracy, and still require America to fight that war against the remnants of the Saddam Regime and the foreign militants who may be joining them. The American occupation chief, L. Paul Bremer, envisages a seven-step process that includes the drafting of a constitution and its ratification by a popular vote and the staging of elections, all within a year. All, of course, is up for negotiation.
There is a way for America to improve its fortunes in the Middle East, and that is to convince the international community of its willingness to share the burdens of responsibility. In Palestine, that would mean making a much tougher assessment of the ambitions of Israel's governing right-wing Likud Party than it is now doing. And in Iraq, American should be less dominating and more flexible about involving the United Nations in Iraq's immediate future, particularly the supervising of a political transition.
Maybe those moves will get the demonstrators off the streets of Baghdad and other world cities.