M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Although the prime
minister of Iraq Nuri al-Maliki has survived physically and politically in his
job, he looks unlikely to withstand the blow being administered to his
administration by U.S. president George Bush. Once the Status of Forces
Agreement (SOFA) gets signed between the governments in Baghdad and Washington,
not only al-Maliki but also other moderate politicians in Iraq could soon
become history.
From then onwards, public opinion in Iraq
will almost certainly turn in favor of those Shia and Sunni politicians opposed
to the pact, creating more followers of Moctada al-Sadr and the former
Baathists. Although as yet unity between these foes seems unlikely, the
incomprehension of the ground situation in Iraq by Bush and his vice-president
Dick Cheney may ensure an alliance, albeit tactical and temporary between the
Sadirists and the Saddamites.
Just as the effort by the U.S. and the
United Kingdom to ensure continued control of Iraq's oil assets will not
survive an actual assertion of sovereignty in that country by a homegrown
government, nor will the agreement now being foisted on al-Maliki.
Should SOFA be signed in its current form,
within months the insurgency will test new levels even while the democratic
political space gets evacuated by moderates, in view of public anger at the
concessions they would have made to the occupying army.
While SOFA can be implemented in Saudi
Arabia, where popular consent is irrelevant, the very processes of democracy
that the Bush administration is now touting as its primary justification for
remaining militarily engaged within the country would make it untenable.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
difficulties with selling the proposed India-U.S. nuclear deal to his people
and parliament ought to have convinced the White House to avoid saddling
friendly regimes with agreements that enjoy a hugely negative political impact.
His advocacy of the nuclear deal has made Singh and his Congress Party a lame
duck, with the party losing its sixteenth straight electoral contest in the
Indian state of Karnataka last month. SOFA has the potential to be a much worse
poison pill for al-Maliki, who is likely to witness a popular upsurge against
it as soon as the pact comes into effect.
Given the overriding imperative of U.S.
commanders to lower their own casualties to insignificant levels, the tactics
used would continue to be those that inflict substantial collateral damage on
civilian settlements, with corresponding impact on public opinion. Indeed,
helped by saturation coverage by local television channels, the conflict in
Iraq has inflamed Arab opinion in a way that decades of the Palestinian
intifada could not succeed in doing.
By occupying a large Arab country and
ranging freely through it, the U.S. military has caused a virulent reaction
across the Middle East barring Israel. While the Pentagon may be congratulating
itself for its "successes", the reality is that the mindset that
breed’s violent resistance has expanded exponentially in Iraq, where only those
public figures have backing who are seen as hostile to the U.S. Indeed, the
Bush-Cheney policies have converted President Ahmedinejad of Iran into a cult
hero throughout the Middle East, solely because of his ranting against the
U.S., the way they have Moctada al-Sadr in Iraq.
Elsewhere, both Hamas as well as Hezbollah
have benefitted electorally from the tailwind caused by their opposition to the
U.S. presence in the region, a boost that is growing with each month of the
U.S. military presence in Iraq.
Iraqis have been used to dissembling before
the strong and it is no surprise that there is a chorus of approving voices in
Baghdad calling for a continued U.S. presence in the country. However, the
reality is that the majority of Iraqis regard the U.S. military as occupiers.
For civilians caught in the crossfire, it
is a no-win situation. Soon after the fall of the Saddamites in 2003, public
order vanished making it imperative for citizens to rely on AK-47s to prevent
the rape of their sisters and the murder of their brothers. However, the
presence of such offensive weapons is usually taken by U.S. troops as a sign of
support for the insurgency, with the owner - or a bystander - getting hauled
off to one of several detention facilities for interrogation. More than half
languish in such conditions for a week or more, sometimes much longer even
though they have no connection to the insurgency beyond expressions of outrage
like disagreements on news broadcast by media’s such as Al Jazeera.
Bush and Cheney have seen from Gaza and
Lebanon the effects of democracy in a polity suffused with anger at their
military. Once SOFA comes into effect, Iraq is likely to go the way of Gaza and
Lebanon. Moctada al-Sadr must be hoping for an early conclusion of the
agreement that is likely to destroy the moderates in Iraq.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat
is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
No comments:
Post a Comment