IRAQ - FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES

There is something eerie about the appearance of Bush and Blair today. It is after their Camp David meeting. Bush repeats what he has always said: soon they would have freed the Iraqi people. “Slowly but surely,” were his words as if oblivious of the fact that this is the eighth day of a war we were given to believe would be two or three days, with crowds cheering marines and liberators hailed in Baghdad.

What we have seen is a stubborn fighting few of us expected. Whatever of the shock and awe billowing over Baghdad’s skies, what impresses many is that the quick capture of Basra has not materialised. The hailed uprising there announced two days ago was a squib and it is hard to believe that this is all because the Shiites in Basra are afraid of Saddam. It seems rather that Bush, believing that regime change in Iraq would be the walkover of regime change in Grenada, had underestimated both Iraqi nationalism and Saddam’s shrewdness. After the debacle of the Kuwaiti war of 1991, Saddam had replaced his local governors by trusted military men of the Baahist party. He used the clan system to ensure that loyalty would be kept in place by the clan itself. But beside this the Shiites where they had an opposition, this opposition was split between refugees America and Britain supported and refugees in Iran.

Even where they hated Saddam, they did not necessarily trust the “Grand Satan” of Iran’s revolution. It is to the military governors in cities in any case not necessarily loving the USA that Saddam obviously gave the orders no one expected and everyone secretly feared: guerilla warfare. Capturing would be one thing. Stabilising another. Whatever the eventual victory over Iraqi towns, the scenes of resistance as the scene of smart missiles nevertheless hitting a poor crowded slum area adjacent to a Baghdad market will hardly help convince the largest and most universal anti-war movement in history that they were wrong.

It is unlikely that these will be satisfied with the US charge that it was Iraqi missiles probably deliberately used by Saddam. There have been too many instances of proofs proved wrong in the buildup to this war. Rumsfeld comes particularly under their hammer. It was he who was sent by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to re-establish relations with Iraq. It is therefore believed that he was not absent from the arming of Iraq in the war against Iran nor in the silence on the use of gas against the Kurds which followed. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowtiz, Perle, Abrams and Jeb Bush, brother of the President, were part of the group which elaborated two key documents for the Project for a New American Century. It is these documents which were to be the policy guidelines for the “planetary pre-eminence” of the US. Saddam would only be “one of those opportunities” that the US should grasp, as is recommended in the documents.

The opportunity in this case was the use of the UN demand for the disarmament of Iraq in order to establish American bases and dominance in the Middle East and dominance over oil. This dominance over oil has been bitterly expressed by no less than Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia speaking at Cairo. Yamani was once strong man of OPEC and is still as far as I know in the good graces of the Saud monarchy. It is not surprising that whether in Indonesia or in Europe posters say, “No war for oil.” Indeed the conviction that the war is over oil, the anti-war position of many Christian leaders and above all the Pope’s call to Catholics, has seen the question of a Christian crusade rarely mentioned even by Fundamental Muslims, even where Muslims in general see this as an attack against Muslims. And this in spite of the fact that Bush is a convinced Born Again Christian. Blair emerging from Camp David comes on with his usual fast-talking optimism. He will be getting some UN Security Council resolution going — he seems always bent on Security Council resolutions — and he is on to the after war. As if that was an easy and settled thing.

Returning the Monarchy

Early in the war — about the second day — anti war demonstrations were shown in Jordan, the demonstrators almost overpowering the water-cannon shooting police. There is a lot to worry Jordanians. Iraq has so far been the main contributor of assistance to the Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Jordanians fear that with the US occupied with Iraq, Sharon will proceed with what they believe is Israel’s real policy, ie, the chasing out of Palestinians into Jordan and the consolidation of territory in the project Greater Israel. It has not helped that it is widely believed by Palestinians that there are contracts between the hawks in Washington and the hawks in Israel.

It is also known that Born Again Fundamentalist Christians back Israel, believing that not only is Israel’s right to Greater Israel inscribed in the Bible, but that “the Jews are scattered shall be regathered” must be fulfilled before the Messiah returns. Bush’s plan for a Palestinian settlement brought out just before the invasion of Iraq, was partly destined to quiet Jordanian fears. It could hardly have been to warn Sharon. There in Jordan, Saddam is not the tyrant of Tony Blair or George Bush. He is that Arab leader who has managed to face up to the US over more than a decade of what has been undeclared war. In this war he has already lasted longer than the combined Arab force against Israel.

They were defeated in six days. Moreover, unlike the more wary — some would say less foolhardy — Assads of Syria — Saddam has made no bones that he saw himself as the successor of Nasser. Nasser is having something of a revival in Egypt and among the most strange of groups: the left, socialists and communists which he had often silenced or imprisoned. That is at the level of the people in the streets. These are suspicious of Jordan’s ties to the US and have for months been concerned that perhaps there were secret American army’s goings on in Jordan. There is no love lost between the King of Jordan and Saddam Hussein. Indeed the King of Jordan had his own plan for avoiding war. It was exile for Saddam Hussein and the reinstallation of the Hachemite monarchy in Iraq. It is this that was expressed by Bahrain before the conflict. President Bush’s 48 hours to get out to Saddam Hussein may have been as much a nod in Jordan’s direction as an ultimatum to Saddam. Mind you, Chalabi, widely believed to be the American choice to succeed Saddam, and scion of the Hachemites, would nevertheless be something of an embarrassment to Jordan. He has been sentenced by Jordan in absentia to 34 years in prison for corruption.

The restoration of the Hachemite monarchy may flatter Tony Blair, it certainly would have flattered Margaret Thatcher. The Hachemite monarchy was a British creation as was Iraq. Then too, as the British wrenched the three provinces which they would knock together as Iraq from the Ottomans, the question was oil. It was Iraq that was important to British economic expansion after the First World War. One impact of this taking in charge was ending the beginning of Arab nationalism emerging as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. With that ending one of the attempts of Arab intellectuals to posit a modern Islam was scuttled. It is the fall of this Hachemite monarchy which sees Britain lose its dominance over Iraqi oil.

A Euro War?

But there are other things to worry Blair as he emerges from Camp David. The question of Iraq has split Europe and not only over oil. The more serious split and perhaps the most serious attack against US interests is over the payment for oil. This throughout the world is paid for in dollars. Saddam changed that. He demanded payment in euros. This opened the door for the euro to be a parallel currency to the dollar for the important payment of oil, threatening the dominance of the dollar in world trade and permitting oil-rich countries to cycle what is now petro-dollars, as petro-euros.

Britain has not changed to the euro. Beside this there has been the widespread unpopularity of the war throughout a Europe infuriated over the failure of the Koyoto Environmental Agreement and suspicious of genetically modified foodstuffs. Whatever their leaders say, this opposition to the war — fiercest in Spain and Italy — embraces the population of “new” Europe as old. In the case of Turkey it is queuing up for EU membership. Its present government includes Armenians and Kurds. It considers oil-rich Northern Iraq as an Ottoman province. I more than suspect that its entry into the war will hardly make Turkey, or Blair its ally, popular in Europe. He must be worried too as a Labour leader. The anti-war movement embraces most of Europe’s large trade unions. Nor did his well publicised visit to the Pope, his Catholic wife in tow, help. Papa, treating him as a son, gave him the fatherly advice: don’t go to war.

Both Blair and Bush must be worried about other things too. The first swing upward of the stock exchanges as war started, and cheap petrol seemed assured with a short war, has been replaced by market uncertainty. Already airways, barely recuperating from September 11, are hit again. It is not only our BWIA. The first contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq not yet conquered have been made. They are to American firms. One, to put out the oil fires, result of the war, is no other firm but Halliburton of which Cheney was once CEO. The estimation of the cost of the war has mounted. No one dares estimate the cost of the peace. Asked how long the war will last, Blair replied, “As long as it takes.”