Bombs, gun squads, burials ... one week in Iraq
As US troops fear a new onslaught, the head of the British army calls for a pullout, leaving Iraq’s future in the balance.
http://www.sundayherald.com/58553
By James Cusick
Last Tuesday night in Baghdad the Iraqi skyline was lit up. In what was believed to be one of the most sustained and ferocious mortar and rocket attacks in three years, there was widespread fear among senior US military personnel that the protected international zone (IZ), formerly the “green zone”, was about to experience a direct assault.
Major gun battles were being fought in two of Baghdad’s districts – Doura and Mansoor. Doura has a large oil refinery, Mansoor is technically an affluent area close to the IZ. Gunfire and explosions were louder than normal and then, at around 7pm, the first large rocket landed inside the IZ itself. Another hit came after 10 minutes, then another two minutes later. Then a series of explosions, different to the daily “normal” rocket attacks were felt. For those in the IZ, the explosions were so close and so fierce that, even for experienced military personnel, “you could taste the cordite in your teeth”.
The sustained attacks lasted for two hours, during which Camp Falcon, a major US ammunition and storage dump, was hit. The attack resulted in what one security official called “a fireworks display”. But the display wasn’t put on for entertainment. Immediate military feedback pointed to casualties.
With the IZ in blackout mode, specific troop and tanks movements were ordered, said to be a precautionary defensive measure. But there was high-level concern that the fireworks would be followed by something the US military fears – a large-scale assault on the IZ itself. Helicopters were all over the place trying to figure out what was happening and where the attacks were coming from. Tuesday in Baghdad wasn’t a good night if you needed to sleep.
The official US military line on Tuesday night was that fire had broken out at the weapons dump in southern Baghdad and that “ammunition cooking off” had caused the explosions. There were no official reports of casualties. The Iraqi interior ministry added little, saying only that neighbourhoods close to the Falcon forward operating base in Doura had been “shaken”.
What is happening in Iraq, even after three years of coalition presence, remains difficult to decipher. Reporting is limited outside the IZ and even the number of civilians who have died since the 2003 invasion is unclear. Suicide bombings are reported nightly on television. Troop patrols are also reported. But, three years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq is a battlefield without a known objective.
A study published in The Lancet last week estimated 655,000 people have died as a direct result of the coalition invasion. The Iraqi health ministry put that at 62,000. One of them must be wrong.
President George W Bush rejected The Lancet report as “not credible”. But then Bush had just dismissed a critical report on Iraq by the Pentagon, which described escalating sectarian violence and failing security. “Iraq is not descending into civil war … and America will not leave until victory [in Iraq] is achieved,” said Bush.
British defence ministers have been equally dismissive of any suggestion of imminent civil war in Iraq. The prime minister, in Manchester two weeks ago, repeated the Washington line. There will be no retreat from Iraq. Withdrawal would be “committing a craven act of surrender that will put our future security in the deepest peril”.
Blair has his critics, especially over Iraq. But he would have assumed he was safe from an open attack from senior military personnel still in the job. But in London on Tuesday, just as the explosions and rockets were about to rip through the IZ in Baghdad, General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, blew Blair’s assumption of safety out of the water.
MoD sources say it is highly likely that Dannatt appreciated that the situation in Iraq was returning to prime focus. The MoD knew the details of The Lancet’s report on civilian deaths. The Pentagon’s criticisms were also centre-stage. And the return of MPs to parliament last week after the summer recess pointed to a re-examination of Iraq and Afghanistan, both part of the narrative on Blair’s diminished authority.
Dannatt’s questioning of the government line on Iraq took place inside the Ministry of Defence. In an interview given to the Daily Mail, with MoD press officers present, the chief of the general staff said the presence of British forces in Iraq had effectively ceased to have a desirable effect. “I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning.”
He described the original intention as putting in place “a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East”. But he said that wasn’t going to happen. “I think we should aim for a lower ambition.”
Part of that process, he said, should include that “we get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems … we are in a Muslim country and Muslims’ views of foreigners in their country are quite clear”. He went on to describe the invasion in 2003 as when we “effectively kicked the door in”.
Des Browne, the defence secretary, knew Dannatt was talking to the Daily Mail. He had been notified of the request and approved it. But, as one MoD source said: “The secretary of state wouldn’t normally refuse such a request. He would have assumed the chief of the general staff knew what to say and how to say it. It is a relationship based on mutual trust.”
Browne was in Ayrshire and Blair in St Andrews when the first edition of Thursday’s Daily Mail appeared on Wednesday night. Downing Street were in no position to respond to immediate media requests for how they viewed the general’s comments. Number 10 said nothing and no minister, not even home secretary John Reid, was put up to show the government was unnerved.
DESPITE Number 10’s denials, it is understood the White House called for clarification of whether they had a rogue general on their hands. Dannatt’s unambiguous words made the crisis doubly difficult for Downing Street and the MoD.
Sacking a chief of the general staff for speaking out on a military matter would damage Blair more than Dannatt. An apology from Dannatt would look like political coercion and leave him unable to do his job. Through long phone calls that lasted well into Thursday morning, it was decided that Des Browne would contact Dannatt and order him to “explain” himself.
In a series of interviews at the BBC and outside the MoD, rather than clarify, Dannatt appeared to expand on what he had said. He told the BBC: “I am a soldier speaking up for his army and just saying, ‘Come on we can’t be here for ever at this level’.” He also said he had an idea of what he wanted Britain and the army to be like, and that those values and standards were being threatened by other people and other influences.
For one MoD adviser, the comments were “Cromwellian and uncomfortable coming from the mouth of a general and not an elected politician”. Despite having responsibilities to both the government and the armed forces, Dannatt appeared to lean to his soldierly role, telling the BBC: “I have an army to look after … but I want an army in five, 10 years’ time, don’t let’s break it on this one.”
If Downing Street and the MoD were looking for back-tracking clarification, they got determined confirmation instead. It left Downing Street with no exit. And rather than seek a fight, the PM said he “agreed with every word” Dannatt had said. “What he is saying about wanting the British forces out of Iraq is precisely the same as we’re always saying. Our strategy is to withdraw from Iraq when the job is done … we’ll withdraw completely from Iraq as the Iraqi forces are able to handle their own security.”
But are there indications that Iraq, as far as its citizens are concerned, is nearing the day when it will be able to handle its own security? According to security sources close to the US administration, that day is no closer now than it was in the first months of 2003. One source said: “If US and British troops were to withdraw today, there would be a bloodbath. The civil war we see today would explode in its magnitude. There is no solution on the horizon, period.”
The infiltration of insurgents and militias into the formal Iraqi police forces and Iraqi military is difficult to estimate, but nobody dismisses it as a reality.
As Dannatt and Blair were each giving their “clarification” on Thursday, a new TV station in Baghdad was being visited by a line of police cars and men in police uniforms. The men entered the al-Shaabiya offices at around 7am. The station’s staff had spent the night in their offices due to the Baghdad curfew that bans traffic overnight. Camp beds and sleeping bags were dotted about the offices. Neighbours near the station said they heard nothing unusual.
But using silencers on their weapons and knives, the “policemen” shot or slit the throats of all those inside. Eight people were killed as they slept, including the station’s general director and the general secretary of a small, secular political party, the Progress and Justice Movement. Two guards were also killed.
Saad Saleem, a teacher who lives nearby, said police eventually came and cordoned off the area. But the killers had gone. Saleem said: “These police arrived only later. For us Iraqis, we cannot tell the difference.”
Al-Shaabiya had not yet broadcast a programme and was only playing nationalist tunes. One theory is that the tunes had already defined the station as favouring Iraq’s Sunni Muslims. But all those slaughtered inside were Shia.
Another theory is that militias connected with Shia groups had infiltrated the police, or were working with police approval, to carry out the raid. Police in Iraq are predominantly Shia, but where official police authority ends and the lawless militias begin is of no comfort to the relatives of those slaughtered.
The Pentagon’s report acknowledges such hidden chaos in Iraq: “Conditions that could lead to a civil war exist in Iraq and concern about civil war among the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months.” But ask the MoD about Iraq being on the verge of a civil war and the answer is clear. One minister said: “Civil war is when the law of the land has broken down, where the law is not recognised and there is no authority to back up the law. That situation does not exist in Iraq and therefore talk of civil war is nonsense.”
Washington and London appear to agree on one objective; coalition forces will not surrender in Iraq. Amid all last week’s wordplay Dannatt said what the White House will have wanted to hear to ease their concern that a rogue general was in charge. “British troops will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans … and see this through,” he said. But see it through to what and when?
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