Baghdad, city of bombs ( 2003-11-03 17:32) (economist.com)
When Paul Wolfowitz, America’s deputy defence secretary, toured Iraq last
weekend he was supposed to be talking up the progress made since the war to
topple Saddam Hussein. Instead, he got a first-hand view of the violence
wracking the country. Mr Wolfowitz was staying in the Rashid Hotel in central
Baghdad when a barrage of missiles struck the building on the morning of Sunday
October 26th. One floor below his room, an American colonel was killed. After
being hustled out of the building, Mr Wolfowitz vowed manfully that such attacks
would not deter America. “We are getting the job done despite the desperate acts
of a dying regime of criminals,” he said.
A U.S. Army tank guards a marketplace in the
Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, November 2, 2003. Locals said skirmishes
developed in a market area of the town for the second time in three days,
and military bulldozers later demolished stalls set up near the roadway.
[Reuters]
The violence promptly got worse.
Four more bombings, seemingly co-ordinated, struck the Iraqi capital during rush
hour on Monday (the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan). One, a
suicide strike at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, killed at least ten people, most of them Iraqis. Police stations were
also targeted, and one of Baghdad's deputy mayors was assassinated in a
point-blank shooting. All told, around 35 people died and more than 200 were
wounded. On Tuesday, another suicide attack, on a police station in Falluja (a
city west of Baghdad), killed at least four Iraqis.
The White House publishes Mr Bush's comments at his press conference on Iraq.
The US Central Command and the US Defence Department provide up-to-date news on
the security situation in Iraq. See also the US State Department's information
on Iraq and the UN's Iraq section. The Coalition Provisional Authority oversees
the reconstruction efforts.
As the attacks mount (there are now about 25 a day), America is putting on a
brave face. At a hastily called news conference on Tuesday, President George
Bush acknowledged the obvious, that “Iraq is a dangerous place”, but insisted
that America's strategy was unchanged. Some officials have dismissed the
bombers’ tools—improvised explosive devices, AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades
and the like—as flimsy when set against America’s high-tech arsenal. But even
these simple weapons have accomplished their goal of sowing discontent among
both American occupiers and Iraqis. Many Iraqis have admitted being afraid to
work for the Americans, and both the United Nations and the Red Cross will
reduce their international staff in Iraq further after Monday's bombings.
Moreover, the attacks appear to be getting more sophisticated, presumably as the
resistance organises itself. There may be fewer looting incidents now than there
were when Mr Bush proclaimed major combat operations over six months ago, but
there are more guerrilla attacks, and they are better planned.
Paul Bremer, America’s top administrator in Iraq, never tires of pointing out
that most of the country is improving fast. He is right. Almost all of the
attacks occur in a small section of central Iraq, known as the Sunni Triangle,
whereas Shia and Kurdish areas, in the south and north respectively, tend to be
calmer. Still, America has admitted that it was taken aback by the persistence
of militants. “We did not expect it would be quite this intense this long,”
Colin Powell, America’s secretary of state, told an NBC television programme. Mr
Bush's decision to call a news conference highlights his concern about the
political fallout back home. America is clearly struggling to penetrate the
guerrillas’ shadowy, diffuse network. Some of the attackers are remnants of
Saddam’s Baathist regime. Foreign fighters also appear to be involved. America
has accused Syria of allowing guerrillas to slip across the border into Iraq;
one of Monday's bombers (whose attack was foiled) was carrying a Syrian
passport, according to an American general.
When will the atrocities end? The answer seems something of a conundrum. The
attacks now target the American occupiers. But America may not leave Iraq until
it is satisfied that the security situation is stable. Already, the upsurge of
violence has forced America to put more troops there than military planners
originally projected. Moreover, even if America pulled out soon (which it will
not), the militants would almost certainly continue fighting, this time for
political control.
America has other worries on its mind besides security. Chief among these is
money. Rebuilding Iraq will cost $55 billion, according to projections by the
World Bank, the United Nations and American officials in Iraq. America expects
to stump up $20 billion of that; the rest must come from elsewhere. A donors’
conference last week in Madrid netted another $17 billion or so. That amount
still does not fill the gap. Moreover, aside from America's contribution it will
mostly come in the form of loans, not grants, thus adding to Iraq’s enormous
pre-war debt. (James Wolfensohn, the World Bank's president, said on Wednesday
that creditors should write off at least two-thirds of Iraq's debt.) Even if
America somehow manages to bring the attacks against foreigners and Iraqi
“collaborators” under control, it still faces a long and hard exercise in
nation-building.
