Trapped in Iraq

The Malta Independent 

 
I am getting the impression that the US-led coalition forces that invaded Iraq are feeling trapped, with no exit or escape route in sight. It seems that they are losing by staying, unwanted and distrusted as they are by those who are keen to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam`s fall. They would also lose by leaving an unfinished job which they have little to show for in spite of the great expense and sacrifice since the invasion force was put together.     

Somehow there is a feeling that the US are being paid by their own coin. It seems that this is a replay of the Afghanistan war which brought down and disintegrated a super-power in the 1980s. Could it be that Iraq will be the cause of disintegration of the other super-power and the end to a uni-polar world?

The irony of all this is that the common personality in both wars that exposed the practical limitations of military superiority is none other than Osama bin Laden.

In the 1980s, the US – directly and through Muslim countries, particularly Saudi Arabia – was instrumental in building the Muslim resistance movement which defended Afghanistan from Soviet forces. Osama bin Laden led the Islamic fundamentalists that economically brought the USSR to its knees in that it kept financing an expensive and endless war in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The USSR finally gave the country over to the mujahidin.

Little did the US realise at the time that the trap into which they had forced the USSR, while delivering the expected weakening of the competing super-power leading to its economic and political disintegration, would give untold strength and war experience to the most Islamic fundamentalist grouping. These are now using their strength against the very same force that brought them together, the United State which, in their fundamentalist view, is perceived as the great satan symbolising the infidels, both Christians and Jews.

I do not know if it is reality or perception, but I am getting the impression that the fundamentalists, having got rid of the USSR by tricking them to invade Afghanistan, seem to have played the same trick again by inducing America to invade Iraq.

There is hardly any doubt that the biggest victor in the invasion of Iraq has been none other than Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group of Islamic fundamentalists. By forcing America to focus on Iraq and use most of its military resources there, they have spared themselves the discomfort of being bombarded and pursued in their Afghan hide-outs from where they continue to put together their strategy of terror.

They have forced the American military to leave the Islamic holy lands of Saudi Arabia. They have got rid of a dictator like Saddam who ruled Iraq as a lay state oppressing the Shiite Islamic majority. They have brought America’s best military resources to Islamic lands where they could be attacked without much risk and often with impunity, avoiding the need to organise massive excursions as that of 11 September. They have split Nato right down the middle. And last but not least, they have infiltrated Iraq and obtained fertile grounds for new recruits among those who have suffered from the US-led occupation.

Yet for all the complexity of the situation, compounded further by revelations of Saddam-like torture by coalition forces on Iraqi prisoners – permitting the fundamentalists to project the coalition forces in the same repressive colours as distasteful Saddam – there is no exit route out of this mess.

A quick and rushed exit would be the optimum prize for which Osama & co aspire. Such an exit will give them a chance to control Iraq or create sufficient instability there so that they have a base from where they can then set their sight on their ultimate objective. This is nothing short of destabilisation of the Saudi Arabian ruling family and the occupation of the holy land of Mecca and Medina which happen to sit upon the richest oil reserves in the world. Any disruption of oil flows from Saudi will send the price of crude oil soaring to stratospheric levels, bringing untold wealth to the fundamentalists which they will use for their cause to free Palestine and annihilate the state of Israel. These are enough ingredients to set the whole Middle East on fire.
This grim scenario may not be as improbable as seems and it takes doses of wisdom and fortitude which are sadly missing in the current US president who seem to have been outclassed on the geo-political chessboard by resource-less religious fundamentalists.

In choosing their next president, the American voters have the responsibility to put a man in the White House who can do what is good for the development of a new world order and who understands the great responsibility which unilateralism brings.