[Occupation will be bad. And the only thing worse than occupation would be no occupation. But hey, there must be third option we haven't considered.]
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: America's welcome may be brief in Baghdad
By Rashid Khalidi Financial Times; Mar 18, 2003
They welcomed American troops in Beirut in September 1982, just as they had earlier welcomed Israeli troops in South Lebanon. They may have welcomed General Maude when he entered Baghdad in 1917. Perhaps not, however, as the city was ravaged by plague and famine and, according to one account, its "outskirts were covered with corpses and bones of dead animals".
If war comes, they may indeed welcome US and British troops in Baghdad, if the streets are not covered with corpses. But it would be wise to recall what happened soon afterwards in every one of these military occupations that seemed to start so well. US troops unwisely took sides in Lebanon's civil war and suffered greatly in consequence; Israel's occupation of South Lebanon provoked fierce resistance; and Britain in 1920 faced a nationwide revolt in which 500 of its troops and more than 8,500 Iraqis were killed.
The past, of course, is no certain indicator of the future. But people do remember the promises made by new occupiers. General Maude told the Iraqis that Britain hoped that "the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown". President George W. Bush and his administration have been even more specific: they have promised democracy, the territorial integrity of Iraq and Iraqi control of Iraqi oil resources. Whatever the US does in Iraq will be judged by the Iraqis, and by other Arabs and Muslims, in the light of these promises.
The occupation of Iraq could be followed by a rapid handover to a democratic, independent Iraqi government and the speedy withdrawal of American troops. Do not bet on it. The neo-conservatives who pushed hardest for this war in Washington did not do so to allow a 60 per cent Shia majority in Iraq to ponder closer relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. They certainly do not favour American forces departing rapidly, leaving the Iraqis to their own devices.
Indeed, they have explicitly stated their plans for restructuring the Middle East, with Iraq as the strategic fulcrum for the extension of American power in every direction - towards Iran, Syria and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. In a recent pronouncement on the subject, Mr Bush repeated the neo-conservative thesis about "democratising" the Middle East that underlies these fantastic plans.
Americans underestimate the hostility with which people in the Middle East regard occupying powers. The neo-conservatives are largely ignorant of, or ideologically blinded to, the realities of the region. Members of the permanent bureaucracy in Washington who deal with the Middle East - intelligence officers and diplomats, and soldiers who will have to carry out the dirty work after the war - are more conscious of these things.
Europeans, who still have memories of what it was like to fight Arabs, also know what an occupation of Iraq may entail. It is not surprising that public opinion in Britain and France, the two old Middle Eastern colonial powers, reflects this. Conquering Baghdad, Jerusalem and Damascus was hard but holding them proved to be even more difficult. After the defeat of the Ottomans, France had to fight for control of Damascus in 1920, 1925-26 and 1945; Britain had to do the same in Iraq in 1920 and again in 1941 and in Palestine from 1936 until 1939.
Indeed, this projected occupation has ingredients that may make it worse than the old colonial occupations: Iraq's powerful neighbours, Turkey and Iran, have already begun preparations for direct and indirect interventions to protect their interests and support their protégés. Relations between the Turkish army and the Kurds in postwar Iraq promise to be difficult, with American troops holding the ring.
Iraq has an educated, politically aware population - the most avid readers in the Arab world. They can bring the country out of the nightmare produced by the current regime, its criminal wars and the devastating effect of a decade of sanctions. Such people can rehabilitate their ravaged country if they are free of external intervention and of a foreign military occupation that will quickly be perceived as intolerably oppressive.
If Iraq instead is ruled by military occupation, behind a façade provided by exiles in expensive suits who roll into Baghdad on the back of American tanks, history may repeat itself. That would be to the detriment both of the Iraqi people and of those who try to impose their will on them.
The writer is director of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Chicago