Have you ever wanted to know much more about Iraq, and gain real background in depth to the current war and its worldwide repercussions? But perhaps you don't have the time to read lengthy history books? All the same, you probably realise that history doesn't just "happen"; it occurs against a wider backdrop of cultures and attitudes, personalities and policies. Plus of course past events, whether very recent or from decades, centuries or even millennia ago.

In the age of the high-speed Internet and unprecedented access to previously obscure information and source documents, it is now possible to combine history and current events in a way impossible in the past. By drawing from an unparalleled variety of worldwide resources and then compressing informed conclusions into a condensed HTML Web e-book, we offer below a unique resource, to be periodically updated. Below you'll find one of the few brief, online and current histories of Iraq now available on the Web.

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A brief
modern political
History of Iraq

by Bruce Preston

1900 -1920      1921 -1929     1930 -1939    1940 -1958     1959 -1970    1971-1979

    1980 -1988      1989 -1991      1992 -1996        1997-2000     2001-April 2003

       May 2003 - June 2004       July 2004 - 6 April 2005       7 April 2005 - June 2005

Origins

The land now known as Iraq and once called Mesopotamia played a critical role in the development of human civilisation. Apart from Egypt, no ancient land can begin to compare to it in significance. Here seven thousand and more years ago were some of the first human settlements as we know them in the modern sense. Nearly six thousand years ago the first city states emerged here. Here was the first writing and alphabet, the first written law, the first astronomy, philosophy, mathematics and science, even the invention of the wheel.

In this land of the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, developed the fabled "Ur of the Chaldees", the territories of the Sumerians, and the legendary city of Ninevah. Here was the first Empire - the dominion of the Akkadians - which under Sargon I reached to the Mediterranean. It was followed by the greater empires of Babylon and Assyria. The names of their rulers, such as Ashurnasirpal, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar and Assurbanipal, were names that brought panic in Egypt, Israel and Persia, all of which were at times conquered from here.

But as the poet says, "the glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things", and the conquerors of antiquity were themselves next to be conquered, in this most strategic crossroad of the ancient world. First the Persians overran the land, under their own legendary ruler Cyrus the Great. His successor Darius I reached through the land of two rivers to campaign as far as the Danube in Europe, and menaced the Greek civilisation of the Mediterranean. Against heroic odds the Greeks held the Persians at bay, and later their military hero Alexander the Great was to storm through Mesopotamia and shatter the might of Persia into impotence here, at the battle of Gaugamela (331BC).

After Alexander, the Romans in their turn seized Mesopotamia for the West, but encountered perpetual resistance from a resurgent Persian Empire under the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties. Throughout ages the struggle for this land continued, and here more than seven hundred years after the birth of Christ the remnant eastern half of the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, and the Persians, battled each other to exhaustion. Neither, though, was the victor. For from the south a new power seized upon this moment of weakness to sweep into the land and capture it. This was the new Islamic Empire of the Arabs. The Arab onslaught toppled not only Byzantine rule in Mesopotamia but struck east to overthrow the Persian Empire itself, an event not forgotten on either side. The Sunni fear of Iran manifest today in Iraq is deeply rooted in history, both in religion and in Arab nationalism.

The Arabs were no mere casual occupiers of Mesopotamia. From 762 AD they made Baghdad, and for a time Samarra, their capital, the seat of the Caliph, the Sultan, who as the successor of Mohammed was at least in theory the temporal and spiritual ruler of all Islam. And in this new era of the Abbasid caliphate, in which the terms "Arab" and "civilisation" were to become synonyms, Mesopotamia entered its era of greatest glory. Baghdad was not just the hub of a huge empire but also the location of a wondrous outburst of learning and culture; of art, literature, medicine, mathematics and much more.

But Mesopotamia as a purely Arab land was always a fiction, for peoples of the older eras and their religions remained within its borders. And about three centuries later a new people, the Seljuk Turks, were to pour across from Iran and enter Baghdad in 1055 AD. The change was not momentous though, for the institutions of state and religion continued much as before.

A much greater change came in 1258 AD, when the Mongols, under Hulagu, the grandson of Ghengis Khan, seized the land and sacked Baghdad, slaying the last Abbasid sultan. The focus of the Arab and Islamic worlds moved elsewhere, and Baghdad never recovered its prominence when the Mongols were finally ejected. In the sixteenth century AD the Ottoman Turks conquered the land between the two rivers, while the Caliphate moved to Constantinople. Mesopotamia became a backwater of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and slumbered on as such until the beginning of the twentieth century.

 

1900-1920

*In 1900, three provinces of the Turkish Empire are based around Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. They derive from ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers (Euphrates and Tigris), the cradle of all human civilisation.

*During World War I, British Imperial forces invade Mesopotamia (1914), as part of their campaign against the Turkish Empire. The British tell the inhabitants of Basra that they come as "liberators, not conquerors" (a handy line, dusted off for re-use in 2003). After several setbacks - the Basra cemetery contains thousands of British war dead from this period - they defeat Turkish forces in the south and centre, and finally occupy Baghdad (1917). After an armistice with Turkey in October 1918, British forces enter Mosul the next month. However the last is regarded by the Turkish government as a betrayal of agreements reached.

* Soon (1920) Iraqis stage an extensive revolt against British occupation, and are suppressed. About 6,000 Iraqis and 500 British Imperial troops are killed in the fighting. Later that year Britain gains a limited "mandate" from the League of Nations (forerunner to the UN), to rule Mesopotamia & bring it to independence.

1930 - 1939

*In 1930 Britain induces the Iraqi government to sign a 25 year Anglo-Iraqi treaty, promising independence. However the treaty also effectively maintains overall British dominance, with permanent British bases, British military and economic privileges & British control of Basra. King Feisal, a foreigner with little popular support, describes himself as "an instrument of British policy".

*In 1932 the British "mandate" is formally ended. Iraq is declared independent, & becomes a member of the League of Nations. Kurds object to the lack of any guarantees for them in the independence treaty, and revolt. Britain sends RAF planes to attack the rebellious Kurds, whose uprising collapses.

*In 1933 King Feisal I dies, & is succeeded by his 21 year old son Ghazi. However Ghazi is unlike his father, & attempts to assert more Iraqi independence. His anti-colonial stance becomes more effective when he encourages army officers to oust a Government particularly subservient to Britain (1936). An unstable series of administrations follows, as nationalism continues to spread in the Iraqi Army. Ghazi founds a defiant "Radio al Jazeera" in his palace, but is aware that British imperial power threatens any bolder move.

*In 1934 the export of oil begins. Oil is fully controlled by Western interests, but royalties are soon a major source of revenue for the Iraqi budget. Iraq is later found to have the second largest reserves in the world of easily extracted oil.

*In 1939, possibly motivated by the threat of war with Germany, the British Government moves actively to get rid of King Ghazi. The British Ambassador Maurice Peterson tells King Ghazi's brother-in-law Prince Abdul Ilah (brother of the estranged Queen), that the king "must either be controlled or deposed".  British Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs R. A. Butler (later a Conservative Foreign Secretary & British Deputy Prime Minister), tells Iraqi Prime Minister Tawfiq as-Suwaidi that the king is" playing with fire and might get his fingers burned". A few days later, Butler discusses with Ambassador Peterson the "relative merits" of other members of the royal house as monarchs "in case any emergency might arise".

*About a week later the young King is found dead in an "automobile accident", in a virtually undamaged car. Two others originally in the car have disappeared without trace. Anti-British riots erupt, & the British Consul is assassinated in Mosul.

*The apparent regicide is widely believed to have been organized in the interests of the British by the perennial Iraqi politician, Nuri al Said. Corrupt and generally detested, Nuri is reputed to have plotted with Prince Abdul Ilah and the prince's sister, the King's estranged wife Queen Aliyah. The latter is the mother of the small child now proclaimed king as Faisal II.

*Abdul Ilah is appointed regent, but the royal family is tainted in the public eye. A Nuri al Said government is later described by the British Intelligence service as an "oligarchy of racketeers".

1959 - 1970

· The new Government declares Iraq non-aligned, and withdraws from the Baghdad Pact. The oil industry is later to be nationalised. British dominance is abruptly ended.

· General Kassem, now President, purges Nasserite officers, including his deputy Colonel Aref, who is dismissed from all posts, then arrested.  In March 1959 northern officers supporting Aref attempt a coup, but are crushed.  Kassem is assisted by a Communist militia force in this suppression. However his temporary alliance with the communists is purely tactical. Aref is sentenced to death, but the sentence is not carried out.

· In October 1959 a special unit of the growing Ba'ath Party attempts to assassinate President Kassem, as part of a coup plot. A key member of the group is a young Ba'athist thug from Tikrit, named Saddam Hussein. General Kassem is badly wounded, but escapes. The Communist party again helps him foil the coup attempt.

· The Communist Party then demands some positions in the Government. Alarmed, the British Government now reverses its hostility to Kassem and resumes arms sales to Iraq for its army, to support Kassem against the Communists. Kassem then manages to split the Communist Party, and isolate it from any real power.

· In 1960 five political parties are legalised. However the Communists remain officially banned from formal politics. Meanwhile Kassem promotes land reform and other anti-oligarchical economic and social changes. These include: taxes raised for the rich, working hours regulated, the minimum wage raised, decent housing, schools and medical centres built for the poor, and tariffs introduced to protect fledgling local industries. These measures are greeted with hostility by powerful circles in the US.

· In 1961 Britain relinquishes its protectorate over Kuwait, which becomes an independent emirate under its traditional rulers, the al-Sabah family. Iraq then reconfirms a formal claim to Kuwait, an old Iraqi assertion. In response to an erroneous intelligence report of an imminent Iraqi invasion, Britain rushes troops to Kuwait in July. The British troops are later withdrawn. ·

·Also in 1961, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader, Mustapha Barzani, demands autonomy for the Kurdish area, as promised in the new constitution. When his call goes unheeded, fighting breaks out; first among Kurdish factions and then with the Iraqi Army. A Kurdish revolt in Northern Iraq, demanding an independent Kurdistan, seizes control of much territory and ties down a large portion of the Iraqi military. Fighting is to continue intermittently until 1975, when the Kurds are defeated, some fleeing and some accepting amnesty. ·

· In February 1963 the Nasserite Colonel Abdul Aref, who is free again, leads a coup against General Kassem, along with the anti-Communist Ba'athists. Kassem is captured, tried & executed. Colonel Aref becomes President.·

·According to various sources (including the late King Hussein of Jordan), the coup-plotting Ba'athists are in close contact with the CIA, which meets repeatedly with a Ba'athist delegation in Kuwait. ·

· On the day of the coup the CIA radios to the Ba'athists a list of names and addresses of key Iraqi Communists. Thousands of Communists are arrested and executed. This action apparently inspires General Suharto of Indonesia (again with CIA support & lists), to conduct an even larger-scale massacre two years later, when more than half a million people are killed. The future Ba'athist President al Bakr later admits that the 1963 Ba'athist coup succeeded "using an American locomotive".

· The new government is dominated by Ba'athists in an anti-communist coalition. However in October 1963, pro-Communists gain control of the Ba'ath party congress in Damascus, Syria. In November the principal party founder, Michel Aflaq, responds by mobilizing military supporters, who storm a following meeting and ensure an anti-communist leadership is voted in at gunpoint. A segment of Ba'athists in Baghdad opposes the decision, and attempts a quasi-rebellion. So President Aref decides to isolate the Ba'athists, and expels them from the Iraqi government.

· Michel Aflaq then takes temporary personal control of the Iraqi wing of the Ba'ath Party. He appoints the army officer Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr as head of the dominant military Committee, and effective leader. As Secretary of another party wing he appoints al-Bakr's cousin & rising Ba'athist figure, the young Tikriti Saddam Hussein. Together they restructure the party and purge its far-left element.

· However another failed Ba'ath coup attempt in late 1964 leads to Saddam's arrest. He is imprisoned until 1966. Released, he is appointed deputy-Secretary-General of the Ba'ath Regional Command by his cousin, Hasan al-Bakr. Saddam devotes himself completely to organising the Ba'ath party, and seeks a mass following willing to take to the streets, with "anti-communism" as a theme.

· In 1966 President Aref dies in a helicopter crash, & is replaced by his brother General Abdul Rahman Aref. The latter releases jailed Ba'athists, believing the party to be no longer a threat to the Government. His error is to determine Iraq's future for nearly four decades.

· On 17 July 1968 another coup occurs. It is jointly organized by the Ba'athists and non-Ba'athist dissident military officers. President Aref is exiled. The Ba'athist military leader, General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, becomes President, but shares power uneasily with non-Ba'athist officers. On 30 July the Ba'athist group stages a second coup, seizing full power. They then purge their opponents, 50 of whom are executed.

· The ideology of the Ba'ath Party reflects many of the influences founder Michel Aflaq was exposed to as a student in Europe in the late 1920s, political currents that were to dominate the turbulent 1930s. These include notions of a superior civilisation & culture (from France & Britain); a superior race and nationalism, & the triumph of the will (Germany, Nietzsche, Hitler); transcendent, semi-mystical historical forces (Manifest Destiny, USA); inevitable historical processes and the subjectivity of truth, and socialism (Marx, Lenin, Soviet Russia) ; fascism (Mussolini & Franco, Italy, Spain); and progress though brutal evolutionary selection (social Darwinism & raw capitalist economic theory).

· The resultant brew is as heady as that which stirred the Japanese militarists during their rise, and just as disastrous if taken too seriously. The essential Ba'athist theme is the previous glory of the Arabs and a modern quest to revive it. The Ba'athists are also keen on party organisation, and adopt features from both the Nazi & Communist parties to that end.

· When Shi'ite religious leaders refuse Government pressure to condemn Iranian territorial claims, restrictive and punitive measures are taken against religious Shi'ites, while 20,000 of Iranian descent are expelled. Conflict grows with Shi'ite leaders such as Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim. After the latter's death in 1970, Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr takes up the anti-Ba'athist Shi'ite struggle (he is finally to be executed by Saddam in 1980, but these family names are to be heard again in 2003).

· The Ba'athists now try to cultivate selected Shi'ite leaders and make some concessions to them, to "buy off" the boiling Shi'ite religious hostility to the secular, but Sunni-dominated, Ba'ath government.

· In 1970 the foreign-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) is nationalised. This has the effect of substantially increasing Iraq's income in a period when oil prices are soon to boom. Iraq is on the verge of an era of prosperity.

· Relations sour further with Iran in 1970, when the Shah's government is accused of complicity in an attempted coup, which fails.

· Relations also sour with Syria in the same year, after the Syrian wing of the Ba'ath Party is taken over by a military faction led by Hafez al-Assad, who becomes President of Syria & institutes a personal dynasty. Party founder Michel Aflaq flees to Baghdad, where he becomes the eminence grise of the Iraqi Ba'athists. The two Ba'ath parties split permanently.

 

US Special Ambassador Donald Rumsfeld greets Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Dec. 20 1983

1980 - 1988

· In September 1980 Saddam renounces the 1975 border agreement with Iran, and declares his intention to regain the lost territory by force. Iraqi armed units cross the border, & their planes bomb Iranian air bases.

· A quick victory proves elusive. After initial defeats the Iranians free their imprisoned officers and rally their army, as nationalism & ethnicity soon outclass religion and politics as motivating forces in both countries. A greater population & resource base gives Iran advantages in the longer term. The "lightening war" is soon bogged down into an "unwinnable morass".

· The war drags on for eight years. After less than two years, the rest of the Ba'ath leadership in Baghdad has had enough. They overrule Saddam, and require him to offer Iran a ceasefire, on the "call it quits" basis of a return to the 1975 agreement. But Ayatollah Khomeini wants to defeat and overthrow the Iraqi Ba'athists instead, and rejects the offer. The war continues.

· In June 1981 Israeli jets, in a sudden, unexpected attack, destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, eliminating Iraqi hopes of developing nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. The Israelis regard Iraq as potentially the most dangerous of their Arab adversaries.

· In 1982 Iranian counter-attacks are successful, pushing Iraqi forces back out of Iran. Iraq is now in danger of the war being fought inside its own territory, as begins to happen in some areas.

· By 1984 Saddam himself wants an end to the fighting, his dreams of glory evaporated. He personally requests a ceasefire. The Ayatollah will not budge. So the war grinds on, with appalling casualties on both sides. Neither army can gain a decisive edge, as the battle lines flow endlessly back and forth.

· Iraq's difficulties are compounded by cynical outside interventions. Ba'ath neighbour Syria openly supports the Iranians, as does Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. "Arab unity" becomes a derisive catcall. Meanwhile Israel, avowedly Iran's worst enemy, secretly offers the Ayatollah's forces spare parts for tanks and jets. The Iranians accept these with equal cynicism, while still lambasting Israel in public. President Reagan's administration in the USA also covertly sells the Iranians weapons to gain the cash to fund counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua, but news leaks out, and the resulting scandal, known as the "Contra affair", rocks the US government.

· Gradually the Iraqis seem to be losing the brutal struggle. The US and Britain, happy for the two neighbours to weaken each other indefinitely, now become alarmed. They do not want the Ayatollah's militant regime to dominate the region. Both nations (and other European states also) allow their arms merchants to sell Iraq powerful weaponry. They also arrange for Saddam to be able to buy the precursors of weapons of mass destruction, to enable him to make chemical weapons for gas warfare, and to obtain germs (including anthrax and bubonic plague) to develop biological attacks.

· Chemical gas attacks on Iranian troops are a "great success", and kill thousands. The hard-pressed Iraqis now begin to make some overall gains. A special US envoy, a Donald Rumsfeld, visits Saddam to facilitate Iraqi war progress. On December 20 1983 he is photographed shaking Saddam's hand, and tells the Iraqi dictator that the US would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortune's as a strategic defeat for the West". Full diplomatic ties are now resumed.

· The US and British Governments do not object to Saddam's successful use against Iran of the weapons of mass destruction capability they have allowed him to buy. The US has another "regional pal", and some media friends of the Reagan administration perform amazing verbal contortions as they describe how such a brutal dictator as Saddam is quite a good guy, really.

· Finally a pro-forma statement against chemical warfare in general is made by the US State Department on 5th March 1984. However the statement then goes on to contrast Iran's "intransigent" regime with "the legitimate government of neighbouring Iraq". The message is clear. Saddam is onside, and a favoured US ally against Iran.

· In 1985 Iraq launches Scud missiles against Iranian cities, hoping to damage morale. However Iran responds in kind, and the tactic is abandoned. Both sides now use their air power to attack each other's oil facilities and shipping.

· The US and Britain, fearful of oil supplies, move to militarily dominate the Gulf waters with powerful naval flotillas. US forces clash repeatedly with Iranian naval vessels, and destroy much of Iran's naval capacity. They also shoot down an Iranian civilian airliner (never apologized for, in another unedifying example of great power double standards).

· The US now appears to be directly intervening to support Iraq. America is also supplying the Iraqi military with detailed satellite information, helping tip critical battlefield situations in Iraq's favour.

· Despite the US interventions, in 1986 the tide turns again. Iran now advances to capture Iraq's al-Faw peninsula, and menaces Basra. The Iranians hope for a decisive military push. However the Iraqi defensive line holds, and the war bogs down again.

· Meanwhile in the main Kurdish region, the Kurds take advantage of the war to make a tactical alliance with Iran, and once more stage a revolt. By late 1986 they control most of the Iraqi Kurdish countryside, and isolate the Government-controlled towns.

· Saddam prepares a counter-strike, and sends his cousin Ali Hasan al Majid (Chemical Ali) to suppress the Kurds. The ruthless attack begins in 1987, but is launched in a systematic way in February 1988. Rebel Kurdish villages are burned to the ground, and thousands slaughtered, in a "pacification" campaign that recalls those of the infamous English duke, "Butcher" Cumberland, in Scotland, centuries before.

· In March 1988, Iranian forces advance to support the Kurds at the town of Halabja.  In a ferocious response (the infamous Halabja incident), "Chemical Ali" gasses the town, killing up to 5,000 civilians. Many Kurds now flee their homes to escape further massacre. By the end of August 1988, organized Kurdish resistance is at an end.

· When US Senators unanimously pass a "Prevention of Genocide Act", to penalise Iraq for such behaviour, the Reagan White House campaigns against the bill, and succeeds in having it rejected in the US House of Representatives. Leading the White House campaign against the bill is then National Security Advisor, a General Colin Powell. His 2003 speech to the UN as US Secretary of State shows that - as with Donald Rumsfeld - where Bush Administration operatives and Iraq are concerned, hypocrisy knows no bounds.

· By 1988 the Iraqis, their armories bulging, are ready for major offensives. In April Iraqi forces recapture the al-Faw peninsula, & then successfully advance in other areas. It is clear that earlier Iranian hopes of final victory through a war of attrition now have no basis in reality. The Ayatollah's regime swallows a bitter pill and offers to accept an earlier UN ceasefire offer (Resolution 598 of 1987). Iraq quickly agrees, and the long war is over.

· Both sides now claim a victory of sorts. In reality however, Iraq and Iran alike are suffering from devastated economies, enormous human casualties, and mutual exhaustion from their gruelling and pointless eight-year slugfest. They have been set back a generation, and the flower of their youth are dead, maimed or embittered.

· However the US, British & Israeli Governments are quite pleased with the overall outcome. Iran's revolutionary Islamic militancy has been decisively blunted, and henceforth becomes token and defensive. Iraq meanwhile is apparently now an ally of the West, & in any case is in no shape to cause trouble.

· Or so the US and Britain believe. Late in 1989 the new US Republican President, George Bush snr, overrides objections from three government departments and orders still closer ties with Saddam's regime, plus a billion dollars of aid.

· The Kurds: After his devastating "pacification", Saddam now looks to the politics beyond. In September 1988 his mailed fist becomes an outstretched hand. An amnesty is declared, and Kurdish survivors are allowed to return to whatever, if anything, remains of their homes.

 

1992 - 1996

*The economic sanctions imposed against Iraq before the war are kept in place by US & British pressure, with little resistance from other states. Iraq is deprived of nearly all legitimate income from trade. A long list of conditions in the sanctions resolution can be used to extend them indefinitely. The idea is to "contain" Saddam by depriving him of the means to rebuild and grow powerful again, but it is ordinary Iraqi people who suffer most, and terribly.

*As a result of prolonged sanctions, the once prosperous middle class in Iraq is pauperised. Malnutrition & disease increase, & child mortality rises steeply. In a cruel gesture, sanctions even forbid the import of parts to restore the electricity & water purification systems. The moral injustice of this policy of harming civilians, coupled with the failure of the US to demand that Israel implement UN resolutions concerning the plight of the Palestinian Arabs, contributes to anti-Western radicalisation in the Arab world. Among the Wahabi movement of Sunni Islam in particular, militant leaders rally many adherents to believe in the justice of counter-strikes against the unrighteous behaviour of the "crusader West".

*Through a degree of smuggling & sanctions busting, Saddam is able to obtain enough income to continue to reward his key supporters, & maintain opulent lifestyles for regime leaders. Obsessed with maintaining a strong image and regional credibility, he prevaricates and argues about UN resolution compliance. As a result he ruins his chances of building enough worldwide support to deeply embarrass the US, which displays nil interest in ending the sanctions.

*Sensing possible danger from stronger Islamic currents in the Arab world, Saddam now adds a religious dollop to his speeches and writings and takes some steps to appear more supportive of Islam. Neither the secular Ba'athists who support him, nor his religious opponents who despise him, are taken in however.

*The Kurds, for once, surprise themselves by doing relatively well. For the first time they are able to maintain a quasi-independence without being attacked by the Iraqi government. Initially, Saddam enforces his own economic blockade of their autonomous area. Later a modus vivendi is reached, in which the Kurds draw revenue as middlemen from mostly illegal trade & outright smuggling, between Iraq and both Turkey & Iran. As long as the Kurds do not claim formal independence, Saddam decides he can live with this indefinitely.

*In May 1992 elections are held in the Kurdish zone, for a regional assembly. However old rivalries reassert themselves, and in December 1993 fighting breaks out between the KDP & the PUK. By December 1994, the PUK has gained the upper hand, & seizes the key KDP town of Arbil. Both parties then seek outside backers, the KDP looking to Turkish support & the PUK to Iranian assistance.

*In June 1992, an umbrella grouping of Iraqi exiles, the "Iraqi National Congress", is officially founded in Vienna. In fact the INC is organised by American PR company the Rendon Group, hired by the CIA in furtherance of President Bush's directive mentioned above. Rendon names the group, and funds it with $US12 million of CIA money between 1992 and 1996.

*Controversial figure Ahmad Chalabi, last in Iraq in 1958, is appointed to head the INC. He is heavily promoted by leading US neo-conservatives, such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, over the next decade. They even refer to him with a straight face as the "George Washington of Iraq". But Chalabi's dismal performance, unsatisfactory accounting for finances, & alienation of other Iraqi exiles, lead to the new Clinton Administration's support for a rival group, the Iraqi National Accord, in which former Ba'athist Iyad Allawi is a prominent figure. The latter is also ineffective, however.

*In October 1992 the INC establishes offices in the independent Kurdish zone near Arbil. However it soon falls victim to Kurdish politics, and is wiped out there when the KDP invites Iraqi troops to assist it in 1996.

*In 1993, in reprisal for an Iraqi revenge plot to assassinate US President Bush during his visit to Kuwait, the US launches a missile strike on Baghdad.

*In Nov.1994 Iraq recognizes the sovereignty and independence of Kuwait, ending the longstanding Iraqi claim. This fulfils another condition towards ending sanctions.

*Fratricidal fighting continues among the Kurds of Northern Iraq. Finally, in 1996 the desperate KDP turns to Saddam, for help against the PUK. Saddam relishes this opportunity to re-establish his influence in the north and annoy Washington. Thirty thousand Iraqi troops join an assault, which retakes Arbil for the KDP.

*The alarmed US launches more missile strikes against Iraq, and extends the southern no-fly zone. On the diplomatic front, the US mediates with the Kurds, & finally the Washington agreement of September 1998 restores peace to Iraqi Kurdish areas, in a power-sharing/zone division arrangement between the KDP and the PUK.

*UN economic sanctions against Iraq continue, causing great hardship and suffering. In 1996 UN resolution 981 allows some limited & strictly controlled Iraqi oil sales, to purchase quantities of essential civilian supplies. Saddam had earlier rejected such offers because they included war reparations, but these are now deducted from Iraqi revenue anyway. It is later to emerge that corruption in the administration of the oil sales allows Saddam to siphon off large amounts of
revenue for his own purposes.

 

2001- April 2003

*January 2001. Republican Party candidate George Bush jnr is declared US President-elect, with a minority of the nationwide popular vote, after an unprecedented delay from November 2000 caused by a controversial ballot count in the state of Florida. According to some sources, Administration operatives immediately commence planning for a possible invasion of Iraq. The issue is clearly high on the agenda of many Administration figures.

*September 11, 2001. Suicide squads of Al-Qaeda, an anti-western terrorist group of extreme Muslim fundamentalists, simultaneously hijack four US airliners within the continental United States. One is crashed into the supposedly protected Pentagon, two demolish the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and the fourth, apparently intended for the US Congress, crashes in a field, after passengers resist the hijackers. Despite later Bush Administration concern with weapons of mass destruction, the hijackers are in fact armed only with their beliefs and the most primitive hand weapons.

*The attacks are clearly a symbolic as well as actual strike against US military, economic & political power. They have been launched by religious extremists with both a profound sense of grievance and a sophisticated network of support. President Bush is hidden at an air base, in a momentarily stunned and frightened America.

*None of the hijackers are Iraqi citizens, and the majority are in fact from US ally Saudi Arabia. Despite this, nine days after "9/11", the PNAC sends an open letter to President George W. Bush. The group calls for action not only against Al Qaeda, but also against the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, against Iraqi neighbours Iran and Syria, and, notably, for war with Iraq.

*Al Qaeda is led by Arab veterans of the US-supported war against the Russians in Afghanistan, guerillas who have been previously trained & supplied by Pakistan and the United States, with much funding from Saudi Arabia. The organisation recruits from militant Sunni fundamentalist Islamists in many nations, but is based on extreme members of the dominant Wahabi sect in Saudi Arabia, & its foreign adherents, and is lead by Saudi millionaire & Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden. The latter has denounced Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his secular Ba'athist state in the fiercest terms.

*Bin Laden claims to be partly motivated by the "defiling" presence of US military forces at bases in Saudi Arabia, the Islamic holy land containing the sacred Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina. He is currently based in Afghanistan, where the governing Taliban, or party of religious scholars, shelter Al Qaeda forces and their bases in operations against the West. The Taliban have been promoted to power by Pakistan, with US acquiescence, to overcome a messy military stalemate between rival guerilla mujahadin factions, after the latter's success in driving out the Russians.

*The Bush administration, recovering its nerve and hot for revenge, soon bombs Afghanistan, and assists Northern Alliance forces to overthrow the primitive Taliban regime. They drive bin Laden and his supporters from their forward bases, and the militants are forced to hide out in wild tribal regions along the Afghan and Pakistani borders.  However a chance of dealing Al Qaeda a fatal blow later, after a major defeat for the group in the siege of Tora Bora, is to be missed. Key personnel hunting bin Laden and his cohorts are withdrawn, in preparation for an operation elsewhere. It is the invasion of Iraq.

*Meanwhile an obsession with "terrorism" and an allegedly "changed world" is promoted by the Bush Administration in America. A series of dramatic, highly coloured "alerts" repeatedly alarms the population, raising emotions and fears; but all prove false. There are very real dangers, including a home-grown anthrax attack, but they are deliberately over-stressed by the "War President's" repetitive rhetoric. The effect is to prepare the ground for a roll out of the PNAC master plan, of which the next primary focus is not the defeat of Al Qaeda but war against the nation state of Iraq.

*The new US domestic atmosphere, intimidating voices of reason and perspective, is supported by draconian legislation, such as the "Patriot Act". The US population is mostly unaware that it is being primed for the kind of war previously deemed immoral and illegal. Namely, a "first strike" on a weaker nation that has made no hostile move against its attacker. Iraq has been "boxed in" and steadily debilitated for more than a decade, and has offered no external threat to other nations in that time. It does happen to have a huge supply of oil deemed important to the US economy in a government analysis, and a leader who the US President's family have a personal grudge against.

*In February 2002, it is reported that the Rendon Group is now working for the Pentagon, to help develop a new propaganda agency, the "Office of Strategic Influence" (OSI). When it is reported that the OSI's charter will allow it to feed false news stories to the media, an outcry causes its official disbandment. However the Rendon Group's contract with the Pentagon for "information" services continues. It becomes apparent that the group is working to support a "war on Iraq" PR campaign.

*In March 2002 it is claimed in the New Yorker magazine that INC-supported groups in Iraq have launched sabotage operations, including a rocket attack on the Baiji oil refinery complex.

*2002 also sees President Bush announce a strategy which he characterizes as a "war on terror" in response to September 11 2001. On closer examination, the real import of the plan is a design for American world hegemony, and a new pre-emptive military doctrine justifying unprovoked attacks on any country deemed appropriate by the President.  Indeed the strategy is actually one designed before "9/11", by the PNAC. It is in fact based on a PNAC report, blandly entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century", published in the year 2000.

*This PNAC programme is intended to assure unchallengeable US global dominance, by force, deception and ruthless manipulation as necessary, throughout the 21st century. The President has accepted the neo-conservative's blueprint. It allows him to characterise the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a "defensive" act, in the interests of "peace".

*Most non-Americans abroad are not deceived, however, and many intelligent, open-minded Americans, too, are alarmed. However the Bush Administration, dominated by corporate executives not averse to mingling their business and governmental agendas, are not interested in dialogue with the rest of the world about why the USA has become so widely resented. Instead they begin to push closed strategies to promote PNAC objectives, and to try and mould world opinion in support of those by elaborate PR campaigns. The immediate focus of these is Iraq.

*The US administration now openly prepares an invasion of Iraq. False claims are repeatedly made by US leaders, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, alleging links between Saddam's secular Ba'athist regime & the militantly fundamentalist Al Qaeda, when the two are in fact hostile to each other.

*The one piece of evidence offered to support the claimed link, an alleged meeting in Prague between later hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi official, collapses when the FBI discovers that Atta was actually in the USA, in Virginia, on the day in question. A man who resembled him in Prague was in reality a used car dealer from Germany, doing some sort of (shady?) car deal with the Iraqi official concerned. Frustrated, Bush Administration officials carefully fail to release the facts they are now aware of, and continue to promote belief in the false Atta story, as part of a propaganda web of deception.

*From July 2002, detailed planning begins in the White House for a campaign to "sell" a war on Iraq to US politicians, media and the public. A specially created "Office of Global Communications" (OGC) is also allocated $US200 million for a "PR blitz", to gather support worldwide for the forcible overthrow of the Iraqi government by means of a US-led invasion. The Rendon PR Group is reported again involved in these lucrative contracts. On September 12 2002, President Bush appears before the UN asking for a Security Council resolution that would in effect authorize such a war.

*In September 2002 it is also reported that a split has occurred among Iraqi exiles over oil. The Chalabi-headed Iraqi National Congress (INC) wants Iraq's oil industry to be taken over by Western oil interests including Chevron Texaco, Exxon Mobil and BP. However the principal Shi'ite Iraqi opposition movement, SCIRII, (The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) wants continued State control, and profits to be retained for Iraq, if the Ba'athists are overthrown.

*As war preparations intensify, A PNAC-devolved group, the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq "(CLI) begins working with the White House in November 2002. Some well-known Democrats are invited into the group for window dressing. The CLI's advisory board is however chaired by former Republican Secretary of State George Schulz, who says the CLI "gets lots of impetus from the White House".

Interference by PNAC members in intelligence operations leads to incorrect US WMD assessments. An *"Office of Special Plans", overseen by another Administration PNAC supporter, Douglas Feith, is set up in the Pentagon to bypass the established intelligence agencies. Vice-president Cheney directly supports it. False reports, often sourced via PNAC protégé Ahmad Chalabi, are accepted, while other intelligence is distorted or exaggerated. Intelligence questioning these claims is simply ignored. A number of known falsehoods are trumpeted in Administration speeches, and all qualifications or doubts suppressed.

*"Repeat the lie often enough and the people will believe it" appears to be the Bush Administration's strategy. This variation of Josef Goebbel's doctrine of propaganda is now aided by a largely compliant or supportive "patriotic" US mass media, particularly the TV networks and Murdoch-owned newspapers. The latter promote a war on Iraq worldwide, & in some major cities are the only significant print news source. Such media present as keen to serve the corporate interests of their now concentrated ownership, rather than genuine impartiality in news and a diversity of opinion. Their Iraq war coverage is to be carefully sanitised, and some, such as Fox TV, display overt jingoism and direct bias.

*A similar process of politicised & misrepresented intelligence on Iraq occurs in Britain and Australia. Political leaders are later to attempt to blame the intelligence community for the embarrassment of public awareness that they have misled their respective nations about WMD, in order to obtain support for war against Iraq. In reality, revelations from a long line of participants make it increasingly clear that it was the political leaders themselves who sought presentation of any shred of intelligence of any calibre, to support a war already decided upon.

*An example in Australia is how an Office of National Assessments (ONA) report on Iraq changes substantially a day after the previous one, without convincing explanation as to why. The changes are evidently in response to behind-the-scenes political pressure, although those responsible are careful not to write down their directives. Evidence is to steadily mount, however, of interference in intelligence matters in the US by Vice-president Cheney and other PNAC members in the Government.

*In Britain, similar revelations are to profoundly damage the credibility of PM Tony Blair. An example is the British "dodgy dossier", soon to be praised at the UN by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. This document is later found to contain no genuine independent intelligence input at all. Instead it has been mostly just plagiarised from the Internet. It contains material that generally covers a period no more recent than 1991, plus some interpolations that are unsustainable.

*Alarmed by the US & British buildup on Iraq's borders, Saddam Hussein agrees to readmit UN weapons inspectors, and allows them free access to wherever they wish to go. He agrees to destroy some missiles judged marginally illegal, and does so. The inspectors, under Hans Blix, find no banned WMD, and ask for more time to continue to search.

*The US and Britain, however, allow no credit for any of the concessions made by Saddam. It soon becomes clear to observers that the two nations have already decided to invade Iraq, no matter what. Australian Prime Minister John Howard is meanwhile so eager to participate that he dispatches Australian troops to the scene before he claims he has even made a decision on the matter.

*Major powers France, Germany, Russia and China are all opposed to an invasion, as are many other states. Undeterred, the Bush Administration seeks a UN Security Council mandate to attack and occupy Iraq, but is rebuffed. The US, however, finds a large number of allies among smaller governments, who agree to support the project verbally and in other ways not involving dispatching troops to an invasion force.

*However in nearly every case, the clear majority of the population in these other countries is strongly opposed to their government's policy, according to opinion polls. The US has never in its history been so isolated and unpopular, worldwide, in a planned act of foreign policy, as for its intended attack on Iraq.

*On 20 March 2003, without the support of the UN, and against a backdrop of unprecedented millions of people demonstrating worldwide in protest, a "coalition of the willing" invades Iraq. It is made up of US, British, and a few Australian forces. They win a quick military victory, and occupy Baghdad by April 9.

*In Baghdad, a crowd of 200 then gathers as American soldiers topple a statue of Saddam Hussein for Iraqis to rejoice over and attack, in an event carefully staged for the media, within a square ringed by US tanks. However the crowd expresses annoyance when a US soldier drapes the American flag over Saddam's face. The contrast with 1958 is instructive.

*The neo-conservative's protégé, Ahmad Chalabi, is flown into southern Iraq by the US in April 2003. He is later to admit he had supplied false intelligence to encourage a US attack. Before the war, he tells the US its forces will be everywhere garlanded with flowers and showered with sweets. The reality is starkly different.

*As Baghdad is occupied, "coalition" forces rush to secure the oil ministry, and oil installations elsewhere. Other government ministries are allowed to burn however, and occupation forces stand by as much of Iraq's priceless cultural heritage - a legacy for all humanity - is smashed, burned or looted.

*Despite claiming fears of a dangerous Iraqi nuclear weapons programme as one of their war justifications, coalition forces make no attempt to secure nuclear installations. The threat of Iraqi nuclear materials being passed to terrorists, sternly claimed by President Bush earlier as one of the most serious terrorist threats posed by Iraq, suddenly ceases to be a matter of concern. Village children play with nuclear wastes unadmonished, in now unguarded installations, until the revealing scandal is reported.

*The easy victory of the "coalition" has qualifications. Regime leaders were not captured, and Saddam Hussein himself has disappeared. His last coherent Republican Guard forces in the north were not defeated, but have instead melted into the local population.

 

 28 June 2004 - 6 April 2005

On June 28, 2004 "sovereignty" is handed over two days early, in an apparent attempt to forestall sabotage attacks. The circumstances of the alleged "transfer of power", from the "Coalition Provisional Authority" to an interim government selected by the US and a UN representative in consultation with the US-appointed "Iraqi Governing Council", do not inspire confidence however. Instead of a proud public ceremony, US governor Paul Bremer hands documents to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in a small secret gathering in a windowless room, inside the heavily guarded US-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad.

On 2 July Saddam Hussein and eleven subordinates face a preliminary arraignment before an Iraqi judge, remaining however in US custody.

Late in July a national conference of about 1,300 delegates is held in Baghdad to elect a 100-member National Council to oversee the interim government. The meeting is overshadowed by a second Shii'te insurrection by the militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This revolt encompasses the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the Baghdad Shi'ite district of Sadr City and several other mainly Shi'ite centres such as Kut, with a smaller uprising in Basra.

Although the al Sadr forces are again militarily ineffective against overwhelming "coalition" firepower, their bloody suppression at US hands threatens a further propaganda disaster for American policy. Moreover a full military strike against the core insurgents in Najaf would require an attack on the holiest Shi'ite shrine, the Imam Ali mosque, by either US troops or, as mooted, a Sunni/Kurdish force that would have aroused extreme anger among mainstream Shia. US attempts to shortcut the uprising by capturing or killing al Sadr fail. Ironically US spokespersons describe the insurgents as "anti-Iraqi forces", despite those so described being generally Iraqis killed in their own country by foreign invaders, and often being devout Shi'ites regarded by locals as resistance forces against an "arrogant, alien, infidel occupier". Indeed in Najaf the deputy governor and 16 of the 30 member Najaf provincial council resign in protest against " US terrorist operations" in the city.

It is a great relief to "coalition" commanders, then, when the leader of the majority Shi'ite religious faction, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, returns from medical treatment abroad and brokers a compromise settlement. The hard-pressed al Sadr militia withdraws from Najaf and Kufa, as do US forces, and the Baghdad interim government takes civil control there. US threats to al Sadr are again discreetly forgotten. Fighting continues in Baghdad however, but promises of millions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Sadr City tempt the rebels there towards a ceasefire, finally agreed to in October.

Meanwhile the Sunni insurgency continues unabated. Attacks on US forces rise to 2,700 in August 2004 from around 700 in March. By early September insurgents now effectively control many centres in central Iraq, dominating especially the cities of Falluja, Ramadi, Samarra and Baquba, and many smaller towns. In the north rebels maintain a strong presence in Mosul, and hold control of the town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, but are checked in a fierce battle nearby. US planes meanwhile regularly bomb Falluja - regarded as the prime centre of the insurgency by some US commanders and politicians - in an attempt to kill key rebels. However the strikes, predicated on possibly unreliable intelligence, have little visible effect except to inflict civilian casualties. A plan to again attack Falluja in strength is postponed till after the US Presidential election, although offensives are launched to reassert contol of Samarra, north of Baghdad, and centres immediately to the south of the capital.

A prolonged wave of hostage-taking now makes Iraq an even more dangerous locale for foreigners. In addition, the continued fighting takes its toll on other foreign forces, who have claimed to be on merely peacekeeping missions. These units are in general from nations where most of the population oppose their government's participation in the US-led Iraq adventure.

As a result the "coalition of the willing " begins to fray significantly. A number of participants variously announce plans to reduce their forces, plan to withdraw them early, or show other signs of eagerness to quit Iraq. By the end of July full withdrawals have been announced by Spain, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras. Later Costa Rica withdraws diplomatic support, Hungary's parliament votes to withdraw its 300 troop contingent by the end of 2004, the Czech Republic announces plans to pull out its soldiers by the end of February 2005, with Dutch forces to leave soon afterward. However some states also declare they will bolster their contingents, including Romania (a 730-member force) and Georgia (an increase from 159 to 850), while the Japanese government notably resists considerable domestic pressure to withdraw.

At a social level, conditions remain grim for many ordinary Iraqis after eighteen months of occupation. With unemployment possibly around thirty per cent or more, and more than forty percent of Iraqi families reported as having a poor standard of living, many citizens also face difficult power, fuel and water situations. A World Food Program (WFP) report in late September finds one in four Iraqis dependent on food rations to survive, with many of them having to sell some of their rations to buy basic medicines and clothes. Twenty-seven per cent of all children up to the age of five are reported chronically malnourished, and a UN food expert is later to report that the number of Iraqi children going hungry has almost doubled since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile, despite many sabotage attacks, Iraqi oil exports have climbed to about 1.9 million barrels per day, although locals are still finding obtaining supplies difficult. Overall reconstruction efforts have however achieved remarkably little progress due to the security situation, and billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds earmarked by the occupation forces for reconstruction are now redirected to "security" aims instead.

Much of the money actually spent on reconstruction has been wasted in any case, for example new electric and water plant equipment installed by US corporations without consultation and then unable to be maintained by insufficiently trained local personnel. As a result electricity production remains below prewar levels and ill health due to a unsafe water supply continues to be a major problem.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, tensions flare as a" Kurdification" campaign by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) attempts to reverse earlier dilutive "Arabisation" programmes, by transferring Kurds back into Kirkuk. Rising conflict with ethnic Turkomen and Arab residents creates violent outbursts, but the Kurds respond by declaring their willingness to fight other groups if necessary to achieve an undeniably Kurdish city.  It becomes clear that any breakdown in central authority in Baghdad might result in an ethnic war in the Kurdish area, and that the Turkish government will seriously consider intervening in that event. Indeed the Turkish Parliament even votes for an invasion if an independent state of Kurdistan is declared in Iraq.

The Kurdish situation is exacerbated by the fact that a large proportion of the new " Iraqi National Army", founded and controlled by US forces, actually comprises Kurdish peshmerga enlistees. Many combat desertions show that Sunni Arab forces cannot be relied on to attack Sunni cities, nor Shi'ite soldiers to attack Shi'ite areas. The resulting situation leaves an emerging "national army" actually dependent on a non-Arab minority willing to assault Arab settlements, a situation fiecely resented in some quarters. The strains of this tension show when the Iraqi "interim President" Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab, denounces a Kurdish " Referendum Movement" that is calling for a self-determination vote in the Kurdish north. He describes it as as "an act of national treason of the Kurds against Iraq" and threatens to forcibly suppress any further manifestations of the movement.

In the US presidential race the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry (endorsed at the end of July), criticises Republican President Bush over the origins and conduct of the Iraq war, but offers little in the way of policy differentiation and holds diminished credibility due to having himself voted to authorise the invasion. His campaign fails to gain critical momentum, despite many passionate supporters.

A signal that an unpopular Iraq war would not, after all, fatally undermine the three national political leaders involved in the Iraq invasion coalition comes with the Australian federal election in October 2004. Australian Prime Minister John Howard is returned to office comfortably against an opponent offering to withdraw Australian forces by Christmas.  In Britain, polls confirm that PM Tony Blair remains tarnished in the public eye by for his deceitful selling of the war, but Blair faces an exceptionally weak Opposition, and seems liable to endure politically through lack of a popular alternative.

A primary plank of the claimed justification for invading Iraq is definitively removed in October 2004, with the release of the substantive report of chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer. Duelfer concludes that Saddam Hussein had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before the 2003 US-led invasion, had destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had "progressively decayed".

In the critical November 2 US Presidential election, incumbent "war President" George W. Bush improves his situation to achieve an actual majority of the popular vote, despite the fading popularity of his Iraq policies. A strong Republican electoral showing in accompanying Congressional votes also strengthens his hand in the short to medium term. So it is no surprise that a planned all-out assault on the rebel Sunni centre of Falluja, viewed as of great symbolic as well as actual significance, is launched shortly after the election.

The November attack on Falluja, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, is preceded by a heavy artillery bombardment. Advancing US forces use overwhelming firepower, including 500 & 1,000 pound bombs dropped from fixed-wing aircraft; helicopter gunship attacks; tank and artillery fire; heavy mortars and heavy-calibre machine guns. The city is devastated. Fortunately most of the civilian inhabitants have already fled, so non-combatant casualties are slight compared with the earlier failed attack in April. As well, a significant number of insurgents, probably including many leadership elements, have withdrawn from the city prior to the assault.

An overwhelming concentration of forces and firepower leads to US casualties in the successful assault being somewhat lighter than the earlier failed attack, despite much heavier engagement. Although widespread Iraqi Sunni and foreign Arab resentment is evident, US commanders view the battle as a great victory. As in Ben Tre during the Vietnam War however, the city of Falluja has been essentially "destroyed to save it". The mass of inhabitants are forbidden to return for an indefinite period, and weeks after the initial blitz stubborn localised resistance continues, some fighters even re-entering the city to engage the occupying Marine forces. Five months later only a third of the inhabitants have returned and reconstruction has hardly begun.

Meanwhile the gloss peels off the US victory celebration when, far from being demoralised, insurgents elsewhere temporarily overrun much of Iraq's third largest city Mosul, routing local security forces and necessitating a US rescue assault, while other redeployed rebels launch strikes in Ramadi, Baiji and other centres. From the "coalition" side the Falluja attack is soon followed by Operation Plymouth Rock, a large-scale sweep of the so-called "triangle of death" area south-west of Baghdad, in the province of Babylon, a region effectively controlled by insurgents. The Pentagon also announces it will deploy an additional 12,000 US troops in Iraq to improve election security, bringing US forces there to a peak level of 150,000, the highest number since President Bush misguidedly declared an end to major combat.

In a grim statistic for the US, by early December 2004 US combat fatalities in Iraq have passed the thousand mark, with nearly ten thousand wounded. The first anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein by US forces, also in December, shows clearly how deluded the Bush administration belief was that his apprehension would effectively end the guerrilla insurgency. It remains to be seen how much more of US strategy will be proved unsound in 2005.

A November boost for Iraq's future is an agreement by nineteen countries, the" Paris Club," to cancel 80 per cent of the debt Iraq owes them. The deal reduces Baghdad's debt to the 'club" creditors from $US49.5 billion to $US9.94 billion, ironically helping to finally remove a prime motivation for Saddam's attack on Kuwait. It is followed by a US agreement to forgive all of its $US4.1 billion in Iraqi debt.

Preparations continue for elections now scheduled for 30 January 2005, to elect a 275 member National Assembly that will select a new government and oversee the writing of a permanent constitution. However, with preparation so far inadequate and in view of the bad security situation, many Sunni & Kurdish parties call for an election postponement, but are rebuffed by Shi'ite groups. Overall it is unclear how representative elections could be, especially in Sunni areas. Successful or not, the elections seem likely to crystallise major political dilemmas for both the various participating Iraqi groupings and the continuing foreign army of occupation.

Amongst many party lists the religious camp of Shi'ite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani forges a unified ticket from diverse elements, to maximise Shi'ite political clout. The 228 member list, called the United Iraqi Alliance, includes the leading Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Dawa Party, Shi'ite Kurds, various Shi'ite individuals and even Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, while some token Sunnis and members of other groups are also included.

However militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is not, having declared a boycott, and appears to have been marginalised for the moment (although about twenty members of the UIA list are in fact his supporters. They are later to expand to form an Independent National Bloc of around 24 members, the fourth largest Assembly grouping).

From the religious Shi'ite point of view, this alliance is a decisive opportunity to redraw the political map of Iraq and gain primary executive power. Many Sunnis by contrast fear that the election may formalise their political dispossession, and some threaten a boycott. Meanwhile the Kurds are fully aware that a solidification of political power in other hands might precipitate an open struggle for control of the oil wealth of the north and the destiny of the key city of Kirkuk.

While the carnage and chaos still unleashed daily by persistent insurgents gains more immediate headlines, the greater danger now posed by the "coalition" foreign intervention is that the attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force will generate uncontrollable political instability, leading to inter-group violence that may degenerate into a large-scale civil war. Indeed the "security forces" being trained by the allies might easily end up being reconstituted by local leaders into independent, hostile militias. While it is unlikely that the rest of the world will forgive them in this event, the possibility appears to be growing that 2005 will show that the interventionists truly "know not what they do."

The election of 30 January is generally viewed as a success under the circumstances, being held without major disruption despite vigorous threats from various insurgent groups. Indeed the participation rate of about 58 per cent - around 8.5 million votes out of over 14 million eligible voters - is similar to that of a US Presidential election. However this figure is misleading, in that participation in the Shi'ite and Kurdish areas is much higher, while Sunni participation is extremely low. In fact in insurgent-dominated Anbar province only 2 per cent of voters take part. The new National Assembly will therefore formalise a dispossession of Sunni power, a situation making a stable political outcome extremely difficult to achieve.

The boycott by most Sunnis produces a skewed result in the final election figures. Although the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance wins less than half of the national vote with 48 per cent, it can claim a small Assembly majority, with 140 seats out of 275. The Kurds, achieving a vote of nearly 26 per cent for their own joint ticket, have a substantial 75 seats. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi does poorly however, his list gaining only about 14 per cent and some 40 seats. Sunni representation is negligible.

Following a brief election calm, insurgent violence soon returns at a high level. There are many deadly strikes at Iraqi police and military forces, and a bombing in the mainly Shi'ite town of Hilla, near Babylon, on the last day of February 2005, is also the most lethal since the insurgency began. Coalition anti-insurgency efforts do have some successes however. These include the transference of Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam Hussein's half-brother & a possible paymaster for pro-Baathist forces, who is apparently captured by Kurds with Syrian connivance; and the apprehension of some aides of leading al-Qaeda aligned militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Meanwhile, in the so-called "coalition of the willing", there are signs of further unravelling. Portugal quietly announces the withdrawal of all but four of its 130 odd contingent during February; and following the accidental shooting of a Bulgarian soldier by US forces, Bulgaria announces that its 450 strong unit will leave by the end of 2005. A withdrawal of the 1,650 Ukrainian force by the end of October is announced, as is a one-third reduction in the 2,400 Polish force. However Australia bucks the trend, the already announced pullout of the 1,400 Dutch military contingent occasioning a surprise increase of 450 troops in Australian forces in Iraq.

 Elsewhere, the tragic bungling of the release of an Italian hostage, whose Italian secret service guard is shot dead by American soldiers while the hostage is wounded, reinforces public opposition in Italy to Prime Minister Berlusconi's participation in the "coalition".  Italian outrage culminates in an announcement by Berlusconi about a partial withdrawal of the 3,300 Italian force after September. The agile Berlusconi soon qualifies his decision into meaninglessness however, after apparent strong US and British counter-pressure. Overall, these withdrawal trends are responses to popular feeling in those countries, and underline the fragility of President Bush's claim of broad international support even at governmental levels.

Within the USA, news that in February 2005 the US Army has fallen short of its monthly recruiting goal for the first time in nearly five years, and that Reserve and National Guard recruiting is also substantially below target, is attributed mainly to increasingly less favourable perceptions of the war in Iraq, another indication that time is not on the side of US policy. The March Army recruiting figures which follow, falling short of their goal by 32 percent with Army Reserve short by 46 percent, confirm the trend.  Military analysts report that with a continuing major presence in Iraq it will be difficult to sustain US armed forces beyond mid-2006 without reinstating the draft.

 By March 2005 total US losses in Iraq in two years are now more than 1,500 killed and over 11,000 wounded, with equipment losses including 79 aircraft and enough armoured vehicles to equip three tank companies and three Bradley vehicle companies. More mundane equipment is in increasingly short supply, and overall military resources are stretched thin.

However American combat casualties do fall sharply in March, with fewer attacks and a switch in focus by the insurgency notable. There are also early indications that a move to the larger-scale "stand and fight" operations of a more developed insurgency may have begun. Meanwhile the US Army reveals plans to embed 1,800 company-level officers with 10-man units within Iraqi forces, allegedly to supervise training & operations but ensuring a US controlled Iraqi military.

UN Security Council Resolution 1546 declares that the US military presence in Iraq will conclude at the end of 2005 (or earlier). However a statement by senior US Army operations officer Lt.-General James T Lovelace that the US will likely keep 120,000 troops in Iraq for at least two years, and another by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, predicting a longer insurgency than that, indicate that the Bush Administration nevertheless has no intention of abiding by the UN resolution.  Gen. Richard Cody, U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff, also says in March 2005 that he expects the number of US troops in Iraq to remain constant for at least another year.

Iraqi political developments: While the Shi'ite grouping has achieved a slight technical majority in the new National Assembly, a two-thirds majority is needed for political control. That proportion is required to elect the President and two Vice-Presidents, who then choose an executive Prime Minister and Government, as stipulated by entrenched clauses in the interim constitution (the "Fundamental Transitional Law" devised by the occupying "Coalition Provisional Authority"). The Prime Minister & his government then require only majority support in the Assembly, but the initial two-thirds vote is critical to obtaining any outcome. This result can be readily obtained by a Shi'ite-Kurdish alliance, and some commentators predict that this will quickly be concluded.

·However the Kurds are well aware of their bargaining power. Their demands evidently include that Kurds assume the Presidency and chair the committee for a new constitution, full Kurdish control of Kirkuk, autonomy for three northern Kurdish provinces, the right of return for Kurdish refugees and that Islamic law not be applied in Kurdish regions. If they do not get what they want they can simply refuse an alliance and move to consolidate their own practical independence by other means.

The Kurdish demands are galling to Arab pride and Shi'ite sentiment, and such an agreement will be difficult for any Arab leader to justify to his constituency. The situation is also complicated by both leadership rivalries within the United Iraqi Alliance and an attempt by incumbent interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to retain power by offering a rival alliance with the Kurds, while hoping to secure enough defectors from the UIA to achieve a working majority. His bid is unlikely, but adds to political confusion.

·Within the UIA a determined but improbable leadership bid by former US protégé Ahmad Chalabi soon founders, and contention among the more likely rivals for the Prime Ministerial nomination is resolved in favour of Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Negotiations with the Kurdish leadership drag on inconclusively throughout February, and by early March Ayatollah Sistani openly indicates his annoyance at the delay.

Authorities then declare that the National Assembly will convene on 16th March 2005, with or without an agreement on a governing coalition. The Assembly meets, with no government announced.  However some reports indicate an agreement favourable to Kurdish demands may be possible within a fortnight, allowing for a government that may also include places for a few members of the interim Allawi regime.

By the end of March no government has yet been announced. A second meeting of the Assembly on 29 March attempts to elect a Speaker but instead dissolves in farce. A new broad Sunni political grouping, the National Front, then proposes as a Sunni Speaker a former Baathist, Mishaan Juburi, but the United Iraqi Alliance bloc rejects him, proposing instead tribal leader Sheikh Fawaz al-Jarba. In a third meeting on April 3 the Assembly finally elects as Speaker Sunni politician Hajem al-Hassani, who is Industry Minister in the Interim Government and an ally of interim PM Allawi. The way now appears clear for formation of a coalition government, although one of uncertain prospects.

On 6 April the National Assembly confirms the final agreement between the UAI and the Kurdish list by electing as President of Iraq the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani (head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK). As the two Vice Presidents stipulated in the interim law they select Adel Abdul Mahdi (a Shi'ite, and interim Finance Minister), and the interim Sunni President, Sheikh Ghazi Yawar. This trio, to be known as the Presidential Council, confirm the UAI candidate for executive Prime Minister ( Ibrahim al-Jaafari), who reports he will likely announce a cabinet within two weeks.

The final agreement contains most of the Kurd's demands, including the recognition of the Kurdish "peshmerga" militia, now to be regarded as part of the Iraqi armed forces though under the control of the Kurdish regional government. The latter is to be led by Talabani's traditional rival, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani.

Control of the security agencies is likely to be the first difficult issue for the new government. The Shi'ites are deeply anxious to purge the agencies of former Ba'athists, who were recruited by US operatives for their apparent effectiveness and possibly to help limit future Shi'ite influence. By contrast the Shi'ite position is to ensure the agencies are controlled and represented by people who will never favour Ba'athist, Wahabist or any Sunni concerns above their own.

The Kurdish position is more complex however - the Kurds are concerned to avoid clashes with their US sponsors, but not at the expense of their own security.  In the long term, they may also view a more effective alliance with the Shi'ites as a better guarantee of their future position than excessive subservience to US policy, given that great powers have always betrayed them in the past.

Lastly, the Kurds have succeeded so far in pushing a coalition position of "alliance from strength" rather than from accommodation. Whether the security forces issue could be an early flash point between the coalition partners depends therefore on whether the Kurds respond more to US or Shi'ite concerns. Indeed, although the outcome may prove a decisive moment in the life of the new coalition, the Kurds play from a strong hand. They may well win out if they can demonstrate to the Shi'ites that their actions are motivated more by their common interests than by the desires of the foreign forces, who remain supreme in the Green Zone and are still effective masters of Iraq, whatever the official fiction.

7 April 2005 - June 2005 Negotiations for a Jaafari cabinet are unexpectedly long-winded. It becomes clear that the Kurds, feeling their influence at a peak and the tide still running their way, are engaged in playing political hardball. In the event, the Kurdish leaders push their hand too far. As negotiations drag on and on without result, rumours begin to circulate that the Kurds intend to use the contentious issue of Sunni Cabinet positions to continue to frustrate PM-designate al-Jaafari until his month-long mandate to form a government expires, in the hope of preventing his leadership altogether. Negotiations with the Allawi alliance also get nowhere, due to perhaps excessive demands by the latter. At this US leaders lose patience, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US Vice President Richard Cheney openly intervene. Rice pressures hardline Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, and she and the Vice President meet with Shi'ite vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi to forcefully convey their point of view. At a minimum, being talked to forcefully by Dick Cheney is a bruising experience, and both Kurds and Shi'ites bow to American pressure for a quick resolution of the Cabinet issue. Within 24 hours Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari has readied a broad-based 36 member Cabinet proposal to discuss with President Jalal Talabani. A day later a draft Cabinet list is made available. Meanwhile the second anniversary of the capture of Baghdad by US forces, April 9 2005, is marked in the capital with a large anti-American demonstration by supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr has been building his support in southern Iraq, although his constituency is clearly still smaller than that of Ayatollah al-Sistani, except in a few areas. The various militias of the factions - al Sadr's own Mahdi Army, the SCIRI Badr Brigades, the Kurdish peshmerga and others - retain their potential to undermine national unity.  Indeed it is unclear whether various training efforts, such as that of the additional Australian forces, will not in fact lead to the unwitting preparation of militia reinforcements as much as progress towards unified national security forces. A few last dramas play out before the proposed new Government is finally created. For instance three Sunni MPs, Fawaz al-Jarba, Mudhar Shawkat and Abd al-Rahman al-Nuaimi, who had fought the 30 January elections on the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance platform to help make it more inclusive, now resign instead from the UIA. They are protesting both what they claim is an attempt to marginalise Sunni Arabs, and foreign interference in ministry appointments. It is not until May 3rd that thirty Cabinet members are sworn in, but six posts intended for Sunnis are unfilled due to disagreements with Sunni groups, and several others have only temporary appointments. Finally on Sunday 8 May a full Cabinet list is submitted to the National Assembly, and approved. After over three months of disarray, Iraq has a new Government. It is the third local political "governing body" since the invasion, and still operates within a US-drafted transitory law. Indeed, despite being three months in the making, the new government is intended to last only until after a permanent Constitution is prepared for a referendum, and further elections are scheduled for December 2005. However a strict adherence to that timetable looks questionable at this point, in view of the delays that have already taken place. The Cabinet comprises 36 positions in addition to the Prime Minister, of which Shi'ites take 17. These include the key Oil Ministry (to Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a technocrat who previously held the same post in the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council); Interior (Bayan Baqir Jabra, earlier minister of housing and reconstruction in the IGC); Finance (Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi , who is related to both former interim PM Ayad Allawi,a cousin, and to Deputy PM Ahmad Chalabi, his uncle on his mother's side. Allawi is a wealthy businessman, Harvard and MIT graduate and former World Bank consultant); Justice (Abdel Hussein Shandal); Education (Abdul Falah Hassan); and National Security (Abdul Karim al-Inazi). Kurds have eight positions, including the Foreign Ministry (Hoshyar Zebari again - he is the uncle of KDP leader Massoud Barzani); the Trade Ministry (Abdel Basit Karim); Planning and Development (Barham Salih ) and the Labour & Social Affairs Ministry (Idris Hadi). Sunnis are given six posts, although it is the Shi'ites and Kurds who exercise a final choice on who is acceptable among them. These positions are Defence (Saadoun al-Dulaimi, an ex-Ba'athist officer, in exile from 1984 - 2003), Industry (Osama al-Nujaifi), Culture (Nouri Farhan al-Rawi), Women Affairs (Azhar Abdel-Karim al-Sheikhly), and Provincial Affairs (Saad al-Hardan). The sixth, the proposed human rights minister Hisham al-Shibli, rejects the post. The new cabinet includes six women, three of whom are Kurdish and one Christian, and there is a minister of Turkoman origin in the Shi'ite ranks. Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis are each also given a Deputy Prime Minister position. Underlying Shi'ite-Kurdish tensions are revealed in the Government's swearing in ceremony, when PM Ibrahim al-Jaafari avoids referring to the federal character of Iraq, a slight duly noted. KDP leader Massoud Barzani then leaps into the affair, warning that "the removal of this phrase… constitutes a serious threat to the alliance… There will be no compromise on this issue".  In the resulting brouhaha the Kurdish leaders force a second ceremony the next day, in which the federal words are finally uttered by the reluctant Dr Jaafari. Whether the Shi'ites will be so accommodating when the struggle over a permanent constitution begins in earnest remains one of the key Iraqi political questions of 2005. On 26th April the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers - perhaps in line for the title "the Westmoreland of Iraq" - claims the US side is "winning" the war, and that "probably the back of the insurgency has already been broken." Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody also predicts that US troop levels will "probably decline in early 2006". However this mood of optimism is soon dented by reports from field officers in Baghdad, and some other Pentagon military. Five high-ranking officers, speaking anonymously, talk of a disappointing situation in which any US withdrawals could be years away, that the American effort in Iraq could conceivably even "fail," and that Iraq might descend into more chaos, and civil war. American Centcom (Central Command, Middle East) military commander, Gen. John Abizaid, also acknowledges that Iraq's police force has not developed as quickly as U.S. generals had hoped. And Retired US Army Lt. Col. Charles Krohn's comments that "The war we have now is not the war we started off with. It's much more serious" bear examination. His statement points to the fact that the US blitzkrieg of 2003 was the beginning, not the end, of a war, a war in which the long-term drawbacks to the US position might eventually overwhelm their massive initial advantage. If such predictions are correct, 2006 will be a crunch year for the Bush Administration's Iraq venture. According to many analysts America's military choices by mid 2006 will be stark and few. Reintroduce the draft, or withdraw most forces from Iraq, or decimate other forces worldwide. The fourth "Star Wars III" solution, in which a conniving master politician contrives to be granted indefinite imperial powers to "defeat the enemy" is not widely mentioned except in jest, although it can be noted that the general situation of America does bear some passing similarities to Rome at the end of the Republic. The momentous month of May: Insurgents greet the new government with a horrific blizzard of suicide bombings that kills over 500 people during the next three weeks. This sustained bloody assault underlines the overall failure of the coalition forces to establish security even in urban centres, at least in Sunni areas, after two years of occupation. Operation Matador, a Marine offensive along and north of the Euphrates river towards the Syrian border, is a powerful US counter-strike. It meets heavy resistance, but challenges the rebels in some of their strongholds. Nevertheless, without garrisoning the area such operations may be futile in the long term. Numerous precisely targeted assassinations of important officials also indicate that, as in the Vietnam struggle in an earlier generation, Iraqi government security organisations are significantly compromised. Current US strategy also appears to be based partly on the "Vietnamisation" tactic of President Nixon, which lacks any pedigree of success. However the community divides in Iraq are quite different, although it is difficult to see how the tactic can ever work in the Sunni areas. The level of insurgent attacks has also risen back to that of a year previously, about 70 a day, after a significant decline earlier in the year. American counter-efforts are not without successes, and the possibility of apprehending or killing leading rebels like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi remains strong (it transpires that Zarqawi was almost captured in February, and a May report has him as now seriously wounded). Nevertheless it is not clear that the coalition forces and the Iraqi units they are training are in fact winning against the Sunni insurgency overall. Indeed a plausible case is made by some commentators that the opposite could be the case. The prognosis is not for any possibility of the rebels gaining control over Iraq, but rather that a Shi'ite-Kurdish dominance of the Sunni regions is unlikely to be successful in the longer term. It remains difficult to see how the new government can cause its writ to hold in Sunni areas other than by force, or how the latter tactic can succeed in the long run without a continued heavy US presence. Yet newly enunciated American military doctrine appears to call for a progressive reduction in American forces from April 2006, with departing US forces to be replaced by Iraqi units. Indeed the extreme recruiting and political liabilities inherent in committing US soldiers to a third tour of duty in Iraq make an American presence at the existing level extraordinarily difficult to sustain beyond then, without the reintroduction of conscription (the draft) in the United States. Meanwhile the recruiting situation has worsened even further in April. US Army signups fall short by 42 per cent, and the May figures that follow them are also down 37% on the original target. By mid June 2005 the regular US Army is 17% down on its annual goal so far, and the Army Reserve 20% down, while the Army National Guard is 24% percent behind for a year ended May. However recruiting for the smaller Marine Corps contingent, which has nevertheless seen some of the heaviest fighting, is unaffected. Navy and Air Force recruiting - two military services which have suffered few casualties in Iraq - is not suffering either. The next few months include the American summer, normally a peak recruiting period, and if an enlistment surge fails to materialise in this period then an-all volunteer Army becomes problematic from mid 2006 without extraordinary steps or at least a partial withdrawal from Iraq. A formal June 2005 review of troop levels and the overall situation is scheduled by U.S. Iraq forces commander General George Casey, in the hope of clarifying the basis for future policy. Meanwhile a number of top Pentagon officers backtrack from earlier predictions of likely large-scale reductions in US forces in Iraq during 2006. The US force has been bolstered by up to 15,000 mercenaries, known euphemistically as private security contractors. Their occupation represents Pentagon out-sourcing aimed to cover hazardous guard duties. For their very high pay they can expect a higher casualty rate than the regular forces, with no assurance of backup. An International Institute of Strategic Studies report also released in May warns that it could take at least five years before Iraqi government forces are strong enough to impose law and order.The report adds that Iraq has become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaeda, and that far from defeating terrorism in Iraq the American intervention is having an inspirational effect on Islamist terrorism. There also seems to be no "viable exit strategy" for foreign troops. With the previous US ambassador John Negroponte now departed (promoted to the post of US Director of National Intelligence), the acting chief of mission James Jeffrey also due to leave, and the designated new ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad not yet confirmed officially in his job, a vacuum has developed in Baghdad for US political leadership. The American administration however is evidently alarmed by the intelligence it is receiving. In mid-May Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is stirred to immediate action. She pays a surprise visit to Iraq to assess the situation firsthand, "discuss ways to move the political process forward" with Iraqi Govt leaders, and perhaps assess the prospects of implementing the ideas of her special Iraq envoy and policy coordinator, Richard Jones.  Mr Jones has been visiting Germany, and appears to be enthusiastic to create an Iraqi system in which federal provinces will be based on the German "lander". Secretary Rice urges the new Iraqi leaders to try to bridge sectarian divisions by including more Sunni Arabs in government, especially on the committee to draw up a new Constitution, where they have only two representatives. Rice is quickly followed by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, who also calls for "an inclusive process", and urges movement in preparing a new constitution. The American pressure soon pays dividends. Meanwhile furious insurgent attacks continue unabated. The US forces death toll in the war now passes 1,600. American-sponsored Iraqi government security forces have lost more than 2,000 members in the same period, and insurgents a larger number still. Iraqi civilians are victims to a far greater extent. Whatever the US has brought to Iraq in two years of intrusion, peace, security and stability are not included. In broad terms the reconstruction has also been a failure so far, as numerous depressing statistics confirm. Indeed the US official in charge of reconstruction efforts, William Taylor, admits that the US is " far behind" in that process because it is bogged down by the insurgency, and that it is still too early to predict when Iraqis will enjoy adequate electricity and other essential services. Completion of a major electric substation at Al Ameen in Baghdad by early June is a rare highlight of reconstruction; the project had first begun in 1993. Even oil production has fallen recently (southern Iraqi output stood at 1.88 million barrels per day in April, of which 1.43 million was exported, compared with 1.75 million bpd exported a year before). In the north, oil production has been averaging only 500,000 barrels per day, most of it used for domestic consumption. In late May northern oil exports to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, always irregular at best, are suspended due to production shortages caused by sabotage. The conditions needed for a sustained rise in production are absent under existing circumstances, due to the insurgency with its regular attacks on installations and pipelines, the lack of security to repair, improve and develop infrastructure, and the uncertain future political status of the Kirkuk oilfields. Experts indicate that the existing Kirkuk fields alone could produce enough increased oil to drop the world oil price within a year. The difficult situation is ironic. Iraq has potentially the most easily exploitable oil in the world (only 17 of 80 known fields have been developed), and costs of new production are potentially very low compared with other areas. If the overall goal of US policy is really a "grab for oil", then so far it has been a huge failure. Said one observer " For a Texan oil man, President Bush in Iraq is one heck of a ballerina". Riots at Baghdad University causing classes to be cancelled and the Dean of Pharmacy & Sunni professors to flee the campus follow the killing of a Shi'ite student leader, Masar Sarhan, early in May. The violent outburst is an indicator of how the January elections have inflamed rather than assuaged sectarian tensions in the capital. Militant insurgent groups such as Ansar al-Sunna and the al-Zarqawi-led "Al Qaeda in Iraq" faction deliberately attack civilian Shi'ites in addition to security forces. This "low blow" tactic seem to be designed to provoke inter-communal warfare, which already exists to some extent in Baghdad and other mixed areas. Aside from the headlined car bombings, individual murders and assassinations are now increasing in an escalation that has all the hallmarks of a slide into civil strife. These killings include the targeting of clerics on both sides, for example the slaying on Sunday 15th May of Shi'ite Sheik Qassim Gharawi, a senior aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and the apparent revenge killing of Muslim Scholars Assn Sunni cleric Hamid Mukhlis Duleimi. Shi'ite militia forces appear to have participated in the latter, and these two deeds are followed by the murder of more clerics in the ensuing days. In the week beginning 15 May 2005, civil war appears imminent. About 50 corpses, both Sunnis and Shias, are found in and around the capital. On Tuesday these include 15 Sunnis, of whom Sheikh Hassan al-Naimi and three others are prominent Muslim clerics. Two Shiite clerics, Mani Hassan and Muwaffaq Mansour, are also killed on Tuesday. At one funeral on Wednesday Harith al-Dhari, secretary-general of the Association of Muslim Scholars (aka the Muslim Clerics Association) accuses the Interior Ministry of "state terrorism" via the Wolf Brigade and the Badr Brigades. He declares that his Association will pull out of the political process and begin to "defend ourselves" if the killings do not stop. Also on Wednesday (18 May), al-Dhari in a bitter television exchange publicly accuses the SCIRI Party Badr Brigades of responsibility for killing several Sunni Arab clerics. The Badr leader Hadi al-Amri angily calls in to deny the charge, and make counter-accusations that al-Dhari is a supporter of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The social temperature appears to have reached critical level, but the next developments are political rather than military, and if a civil war has begun in reality it is still on slow burn. Meanwhile on Monday 16 May PM Jaafari has met with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and reports that the supreme Iraqi Shi'ite cleric has urged him to grant Sunni Arabs a key role in drafting the constitution. To cool tensions, the new Iraqi Defense Minister, Saadoun al-Duleimi, also issues an order that Iraqi troops will no longer be allowed to enter mosques, churches or universities. However US commanders immediately indicate they will seek to have this ban overturned. But an unlikely balm is soon to appear in the person of militant Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. A major political development occurs on 21- 22 May, when a coalition of Sunni Arab groups form a new political alliance. Sunni leaders at a conference attended by more than a thousand religious, political and tribal delegates agree to now participate in the political process, including the drafting of a new constitution and the next election ( the latter is scheduled for December). The meeting is supported by three important Sunni institutions, the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Waqf (Sunni Endowment, responsible for mosques). A statement drawn up at the end of the meeting also says that "resisting the occupier is a legitimate right", and a call is made for the resignation of the interior minister, indicating that Sunni hardliners are certainly present in the grouping, later named The Gathering of the Sunni People. However some militant Sunni Arab groups such as the Religious Guidance Organisation do not attend. On 29 May representatives from the (Shi'ite) SCIRI Party Badr Brigades and the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars meet under the improbable auspices of Moqtada al-Sadr, radical leader of his own Shi'ite militia the Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr has rallied to Ayatollah al-Sistani's call to resist civil war, and his rhetoric is now clothed in Iraqi unity, although still fiercely anti-American. The meeting appears to go well, and further gatherings are planned. It is relevant to note here that inter-communal warfare would almost certainly have broken out earlier if not for extraordinary Shi'ite patience and forbearance borne of more than a thousand years of martyrdom. In the midst of continuing carnage on the streets, Shi'ite spiritual leader Ayatollah Sistani is reported stressing brotherhood and unity among Shi'ites and Sunnis, and also giving " very useful advice" on drawing up a permanent Iraqi constitution. If the Shi'ites grew up with the expectation of victim status, then the same is not true of the Sunnis, many of whose leaders show no sign of any willingness to accept a situation in which they lack power even in their own regions. The Shi'ites, as election victors, have been relatively generous to their former Sunni oppressors so far, but there is little sign the feeling will be reciprocated. Whether Shi'ite patience will last indefinitely is also questionable, as is the issue of whether they will long accept a lack of control over key elements of the security forces. Al-Sadr, meantime, says he now wants to solve problems "politically, socially and peacefully." His anti-US tactics of verbal denunciation, rallies and the burning of American and Israeli flags are mild given his previous history. When U.S. and Iraqi Govt. forces detain 13 of his supporters during a raid on a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, however, al-Sadr replies by urging his followers to paint American and Israeli flags on the ground outside mosques, to be stepped on, a mortal insult. He follows this up with demonstrations against the US-led occupation in Nasiriya, Kufa and Najaf. A small armed clash in Nasiriya near the governor's office, when the governor's bodygurds open fire to disperse the crowd and instead are fired on in return, shows the potential of his group for new confrontation in the future, making it perhaps unwise for the US to provoke him further. Al-Sadr also seems to be on good terms with Ahmad Chalabi, the supreme opportunist of Iraqi politics, perhaps the most surprising alliance yet in modern Iraq. Early in June al-Sadr dips another toe in the political waters, calling on Iraqis to reject federalism, which he says would divide the nation. Meanwhile intelligence suggests that the Ba'ath Party is still active and even recruiting new followers. There are claims that a major Ba'ath Party meeting took place in Baquba in June 2004, and of a rival, pro-Syrian wing gathering in Hasaka, Syria, in October of that year. Reports that the new Iraqi police and military are infiltrated by Ba'athists meanwhile seem undeniable, given the obvious inside information involved in many assassinations of senior officials. Given the previous necessity of belonging to the party for advancement, it is difficult to assess who are convinced Ba'athists and who only paid lip-service. On that basis former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi exempted 8,000 former Ba'ath Party members, and allowed them to resume Government jobs. Now under the new Government the de-Ba'athification Commission is once more active and determined. They face opposition however from US officials in Iraq.   US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also exerts pressure against the further removal of Ba'athists, telling Iraqi officials during an April visit to Baghdad that they should avoid unnecessary changes in the country's armed forces and the defence and interiorministries that supervise them, if based on political considerations. In this regard, the CIA retains control of Iraq's intelligence service in a major impediment to the credibility and power of the new and supposedly independent government.  In fact, recent national intelligence archives are even removed to inside US headquarters in Baghdad to frustrate Shi'ite access. Intelligence operatives have previously been split between the Interior and Defence ministries, both sections being led by Kurds. A third intelligence arm, the Mukhabarat or secret police, is led by a Sunni.  General Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani is a "firm asset" of the CIA and a former Baathist army officer who had taken part in a failed coup plot against Saddam Hussein, while his effective deputy is a Kurd. Shahwani has in the past claimed that Badr militia forces have killed a number of his agents, and it is clear that there is considerable tension between his command and the Badr forces. Overall, the control of Iraqi intelligence by others poses an unacceptable situation for Shi'ite security in Iraq, and it is not clear how long the Shi'ite leaders will tolerate this situation. In fact they have already moved to tip the balance in the Interior Ministry. According to a Sunni official there, over 160 ministry officers have been dismissed since the new government took office, and many police commanders replaced by Shi'ites, who include a number of Badr Brigades members. Already at least six provincial governors are reported to be Badr men, including the governor of Baghdad. A definite problem for the new government therefore is that the sectarian genie seems to be escaping the bottle already. Measures to restore order in lawless zones may in fact provoke further clashes, as happens for example when the dispatch of predominately Shi'ite units to keep order in Sunni towns such as Ramadi stirs further sectarian hatred and ambushes. The options of the new government seem limited - unleash its militias to restore order with an iron fist, thereby alienating most Sunni opinion, or continue hopefully on the present course while relying on American assistance, and appear ineffective at best.  In the event they opt for a middle course of larger and higher profile operations which are yet relatively restrained. The options for the American forces seem to be narrowing even more. If the predominant aim is exit for their forces within a restricted time period, they may leave behind a civil war and have to wear the world's opprobrium for doing so, while having no assurance that the outcome will be in any way to their liking.  If they wish to defeat the insurgency convincingly and leave the Shi'ites and Kurds in firm control of a pacified Iraq however, then a long-term commitment of a strong, & perhaps larger occupying force is required as a necessary but by no means sufficient precursor for success. Neither outcome is in any way palatable. It now becomes possible that President Bush will be caught in a trap of his own making. Unless the insurgency can be largely neutralised in less than a year (something many of his own generals doubt), and at the same time an inter-communal breakdown avoided (no mean feat), the American administration may be caught between a rock and a hard place in Iraq. Small wonder that some US leaders now begin to refer to the struggle as one that will have to be won or lost by the Iraqi government and not the US military, statements differing sharply from the bold "mission accomplished" claims of earlier times. This political kite-flying perhaps represents the beginning of disowning a situation that may be unwinnable for the US under the ways it was previously defined. It is also noticeable that at least three of the original gung-ho second-level advocates for the invasion have left their original Government positions for situations removed from an Iraq association. Internationally, the "coalition of the willing" now claims only 26 members, and continues to show volatility. A major player gives notice in the shape of the Italian government of PM Silvio Berlusconi, whose trenchant support for President Bush inIraq was fiercely at odds with majority opinion in his country, and whose policy is further undermined when US soldiers shoot an Italian agent dead. Italians are furious when an American report exonerates US forces in the shooting incident, and the Italian Government rejects the US report in its entirety. Berlusconi announces that Italy will withdraw its more than 3,000 troops from Iraq at the latest in January or February 2006, and possibly earlier. Reports that Japanese forces will be withdrawn in December are not confirmed yet however, and the Danish Government decides to extend the deployment of its force of 530 soldiers until at least January 2006. The Romanian Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu opposes the suggested immediate withdrawal of his country's 860 troops following a hostage drama. Meanwhile Georgia increases its force by 558 troops, to 898. The "coalition" is also buoyed by the arrival of 36 ethnically integrated Bosnian soldiers, a remarkable circumstance given that Bosnia itself is still garrisoned by foreign peacekeepers. Recent coalition additions have mostly tended to be small, e.g. Armenia contributing some 46 troops in Jan. 2005 and Albania increasing its force by about 50 in April, while some withdrawals have been equally miniscule, e.g. that of the contingent of 12 from Moldova withdrawn in February 2005. Of the 26 current non-US participants left, only nine field forces of more than 500 members and only five more than 1,000. Of original invasion co-participants, the UK Govt announces troop numbers are to be increased (by 400, to 8,500), allegedly for increased training efforts so as to pave the way for an eventual UK withdrawal. Australian Prime Minister John Howard also refuses to set a timetable for the withdrawal of Australian troops from southern Iraq. His Defence Minister Robert Hill however says they "could" be withdrawn within a year, although his vague statement may be keyed more towards hopes of influencing the release of a hostage than anything else. Iraq continues to affect domestic politics in the three nations who invaded in 2003. In the May 6 2005 British general election, Iraq dominates the closing stages of the campaign. Calculated leaks by his opponents add further solid evidence to charges that Labour PM Tony Blair wilfully misled not only the British public but even the Parliament and most of his own Cabinet on the war issue. For example a leaked Downing Street memo records that in April 2002 Mr Blair told President Bush at the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, that "the UK would support US military action to bring about regime change", a very different line from that presented to the public at that time Reports from UK cabinet minutes now also show that the US and Britain coordinated a deliberate policy of military provocation by air in 2002, to try and goad Saddam Hussein towards war. For example they dropped bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 at four times the rate of the previous year. Such reports further illustrate the governmental duplicity involved in the build up to the war, provoking further outrage in Britain and Europe but little response in a desensitised USA. In the British electoral outcome, the Labour Government is returned to power but has its majority slashed by 100 (to 67). In starker percentage terms Blair's party polls only a humiliating 36% of the vote (3% above their Conservative challengers). Meanwhile the third party, the Liberal Democrats, who are determined Iraq war opponents, rise to a startling 23%. It is clear that despite the British Government's popularity in other fields the electorate has censured Blair heavily. The glib, ebullient UK PM now proclaims an intention to "move on" from the Iraq issue. But with many within his own party determined to punish him further and a capable and ambitious deputy eager to replace him, it appears that Blair might have no options left except to resign or be overthrown should the Iraq issue become even more of a personal debacle in the future. Allegations against British MP George Galloway, triumphantly re-elected as an anti-Iraq War independent in a slap in the face to British PM Tony Blair, backfire by contrast when the Scot appears before a US Senate committee in mid-May, and turns the tables on his questioners. Accused of oil corruption and consorting with Saddam Hussein, he points to the total lack of evidence on the first charge, and for the second the fact that he met Saddam the same number of times (twice) as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but under considerably less murky circumstances.   " Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong," he tells Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Norman Coleman of Minnesota, with some accuracy. In another revelation from the UK election campaign, MI6 head Sir RichardDearlove, (Britain's chief intelligence officer) is shown to have told a July 2002 military and intelligence meeting with Mr Blair about Iraq that in Washington "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". This illuminating insight into parallel US political deception was not surprising news abroad, but the American people have in the past seemed much more gullible overall concerning the Iraq issue than the inhabitants of other nations. However within America disillusionment has finally led a disgruntled public to begin to desert the reported "fix". Support for the Bush Administration over Iraq continues to slide. A joint CNN/ USA Today/ Gallup telephone poll at the end of April shows only 41% of those polled saying it was worth going to war in Iraq, compared with 48% in February 2005 and 73% in April 2003.   56 per cent thought things are going "badly" for the United States in Iraq, up from 45 per cent in March. While the recently re-elected President and Senators might be able to ignore public opinion for some time yet, it was clear that a crunch could be coming for the political viability of their strategies. In the first sign of serious congressional resistance to the Iraq war, 128 members of the US House of Representatives, including five Republicans, vote on 25 May for a budget amendment calling on President Bush to devise a plan for a withdrawal from Iraq. The fact that one of the five is Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, a conservative who had led a 2003 campaign to rename what Americans call " French fries" as "freedom fries", indicates some disillusionment with US policy on the traditional Republican right. The measure is however defeated by a substantial margin of 172 votes. Also in US politics, state Democratic parties in California, Massachusetts and New Mexico pass motions calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Although this position is still far from Democratic Party policy at the national level, it does seem to be a straw in the wind, indicating that the President is in for a tougher time politically on the Iraq issue as each month passes. Meanwhile a defence appropriation bill passed by the House of Representatives adds a further US$45 billion to allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which evidently increases the total cost of these wars to the US taxpayer to more than US$300 billion. Figures for the cost of the Iraq war alone so far are not published by the US government, but one estimate is around US$161 billion or more. In the smallest of the three invading states, Australia, a lengthy hostage drama in which an Australian Muslim cleric flies to Baghdad to attempt to gain freedom for the victim, underlines the fact that there is plenty of potential downside yet possible for the Australian Government in the Iraq issue. The fact that the Australian expeditionary force has been uniquely without fatal casualties so far among significant participants in the "Coalition of the Willing", indicates not only exceptionally skilled soldiery but also a degree of good luck that cannot be relied upon to last. A parallel to Blair also exists to a limited degree in leadership tensions between Coalition PM John Howard and his Liberal Party deputy, Treasurer Peter Costello. Whether the potential challenger might at some point decide to strengthen his own candidature by repositioning himself on the unpopular Iraq troop despatch issue now poses an open question. PM Howard, although an exceptionally astute politician, appears to have no obvious strategy available to deal with such an eventuality. He seems to have painted himself into a corner by a fervent and uncritical echoing of the current American line no matter where that takes him. So unless the line changes to allow him to withdraw his forces, the Iraq issue may yet become something of a personal albatross. However his stronger party following and more effective electoral performance than Blair's allow him the luxury of more breathing space meantime against any future challenge. He has also succeeded in sudden reversals of policies before without undermining his leadership. Within Iraq, the rise once more of disgraced Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi raises intriguing new questions. He is appointed one of three deputy prime ministers in the new Iraqi government, and briefly acting Oil Minister.  US officials including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney are once more speaking with their former protégé.  As well, the new Iraqi President and the Foreign Minister, both Kurds, plead in a visit to Jordan for a "resolution" of Chalabi's conviction there for corruption and embezzlement (of $US288 million), suggesting that "the cleverest Iraqi politician since Nuri al-Said" has also cut a hidden side deal with Kurdish power-brokers. Chalabi's status in the National Assembly and as a Government Minister seems to be currently invalid, as it is in violation of Article 31 (6) of the Transitional Law, which says nominees to the National Assembly "shall not have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude and shall have a good reputation", another possible reason for Chalabi's concern on this issue. In response to the official plea, the Jordanian government drafts a law granting amnesty to Chalabi, but its presentation to the Jordanian Parliament late in May is received with some hostility. Chalabi has so far avoided his 22 years prison sentence and JD$350 million restitution order for his conviction for embezzlement from the Petra Bank, but wants not just a pardon but rather a new trial exonerating him. As intrigued observers watch with interest, Chalabi is also noticed forming an unlikely friendship with radical Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Another issue in Iraqi political currents in mid-May is the issuing of arrest warrants for two former Allawi cabinet ministers, on charges of corruption. Former Transport Minister Louei Hatim Sultan al-Aris (who has fled the country), and former Labour Minister Leila Abdul-Latif are charged with administrative or financial corruption. Former Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan has also been prevented from leaving Iraq, possibly in connection with the transfer of $US500 million to a Lebanese bank in an alleged weapons deal. In addition, the former interior and health ministers also appear to have left Iraq with question marks raised about their financial dealings in office. It has become clear that the deep pockets of the US public may have been taxed by more than their own government as a result of its "Iraq adventure". Meanwhile the overthrown former dictator Saddam Hussein is reported to be writing his memoirs in his US-controlled prison cell at Camp Cropper. Whether the document - which might embarrass many people from Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani to some leading Republican figures in the USA - will ever see publication, however, seems doubtful. Saddam's concern for posterity is not before time, as the denouement of his personal drama appears to hasten forward. On June 1st President Jalal Talabani claims in a CNN interview that Saddam will likely be on trial within two months. Meanwhile an unseemly jail photograph of the ex-Presidental tyrant in his underwear is printed in a British newspaper, and creates a minor uproar. More worrying for Saddam is a call by a Shi'ite cleric early in June for him and his aides to be executed as soon as possible, and indications that a campaign to that end may be launched by hardline Shi'ites unless Saddam's long-awaited trial becomes a prompt reality. On June 10 however, PM al-Jaafari indicates a more vague "before the end of the year" timetable for any trial. From the installation of the new Government on 28 April until the end of May, more than one thousand Iraqis die as a result of the conflict. These include more than 150 police, over 85 Government soldiers, more than 450 civilians and over 300 insurgents. In May coalition casualties are the highest in four months. With 80 dead the US forces also suffer their third highest monthly losses in a year. Thirty members of US National Guard and Reserve units are among the May fatalities, a figure that bodes ill for continued recruitment to and use of these forces in Iraq. They now include five National Guard infantry brigades, and total about forty percent of the American force. Total U.S. losses in the conflict reach 1,665 armed forces personnel and around 250 civilian contractors and civilians by the end of May 2005, with over 12,000 wounded. The British force has lost 89 soldiers, and other "coalition" nations a further 96 lives. The U.S. military also report a record 143 car & suicide car bombings in May, as the tactic becomes an insurgent weapon of choice. Meanwhile Iraqi government forces casualties in May are the highest in 2005, and in one month more than ten percent of their total.  US military claims, echoed by President Bush, that insurgent successes prove their "desperation" seem self-serving at best. Insurgent attacks are back up to around seventy a day, although whether this can be sustained remains to be seen, a pattern of upsurges at symbolic times being perhaps more likely. However rebel attacks have grown more sophisticated, and tactics steadily evolve in the face of immense US counter-pressure, showing typical hallmarks of a developing insurgency. Assassinations such as that of the new Iraqi counter-insurgency chief Major-General Wael Rubaye highlight the rebellion's continued lethal clout. Nevertheless, at the end of May President Bush claims to be "pleased with the progress" the new Iraqi government is making, and declares he is confident the Iraqi military will eventually be equipped and trained to defeat the insurgency. In a press conference on May 31st Bush even defines Iraq as "America's golden moment". The reason, he claims, is through introducing a democratic movement that will bring peace to the Middle East.  Given the bloody strife stirred up so far, however, doubters wonder if Bush had "black gold" more in mind in his reference. Vice President Dick Cheney, earlier one of the leading invasion advocates, now goes further than Bush and claims that the insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes". However given that he not only insisted that WMD would definitely be found in Iraq but described their purported locations, among many other false or inaccurate claims, the Vice President's credibility on Iraq is to say the least limited. President Bush is careful, when discussing any future American withdrawal, to say "hope that's sooner rather than later", instead of using the word "soon". His caution seems to indicate the lack of a "Plan B" exit strategy if things remain sour for the US in Iraq. It is not clear, however, that US politics will allow him the option of an indefinite major US presence in Iraq, in which his nation haemorrhages blood and treasure with no obvious victory in sight. Constitutional developments: The "transitional administrative law" or TAL introduced by US viceroy Bremer provides for a draft constitution to be completed by 15th August 2005 (although this period can be extended for six months if necessary).  After that, a national referendum is supposed to be held to vote on the draft by 15th October, with elections for a new permanent Assembly within two months following (by 15th December) However a provision to protect the Kurds allows for a veto of the draft constitution by two-thirds of the voters in three (or more) provinces, a veto which could potentially also be exerted by three Sunni provinces. If the constitution is rejected, the National Assembly must be dissolved and fresh elections held for a new National Assembly, no later than 15 December 2005. The initial procedure must then be repeated, with a second draft of a permanent constitution being written within a year. The Bremer law, a large document longer than many constitutions, can only be amended by a three-fourths majority of the members of the National Assembly plus the unanimous approval of the three person Presidency Council. The 55 member committee drafting a new permanent constitution is headed by a Shi'ite cleric, Hummam Hamoudi. There are only two Sunnis among the members, although one, Adnan al-Janabi, is a deputy chairman. (A second deputy Chair, Fouad Massoum, is a Kurd). To avoid charges that the Constitution will be a Shi'ite-Kurdish document, the Kurdistan Alliance proposes adding a further 46 members, including perhaps 20 Sunni Arabs. This proposal finds favour with the Shi'ite list, conscious of the fact that a Sunni "no" could sink the document when put to referendum because of the "three province veto" provision in the Bremer Interim Law. The National Assembly however will have the final say over all draft clauses. In drafting the new constitution many had thought the Aug. 15 timetable unrealistic. However rapid progress is made by the expedient of "lifting" whole sections from US governor Bremer's Interim Law, and then making a few modifications. Although this leaves Iraqi legislators open to the charge that the document remains an American one, the constitutional committee agrees on fifteen basic articles by the end of May. The Federal issue: In a study entitled "Power-Sharing in Iraq" released early in May by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based "think tank", it is proposed that Iraq be split into five or six federal states under a central national government. The regions would have substantial powers under this development, and the report suggests two or three southern Shi'ite states, a central-western unit, a Kurdish one and another for Baghdad. The scheme appears to be a variation of the tripartite state federal solution (Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurdish) mooted elsewhere. However the report specifically opposes that concept as fuelling sectarianism. A criticism is that as one of the states suggested is essentially Sunni and another Kurdish, apart from Baghdad the proposal seems to imply dividing Shi'ite strength as its main underlying concept. As well, the report suggests that all Iraqi oil revenues go first to the central government, and then the major share be returned to the federated states on a population percentage basis. The report is to be translated into Arabic and distributed to the Iraqi government and National Assembly, and its promotion may represent the Bush Administration's reply to charges that it has no meaningful ideas for a viable political future for Iraq. Meanwhile federative events on the ground are moving faster. The Kurds of course have already established their own de facto Kurdish mini-state, which predates the invasion. In the Shi'ite south the governor of Basra province, Muhammed Musbih al Waely, Dhiqar province governor Aziz Kadhim Alwan and many others are actively promoting the idea of a federal state based on the three adjacent provinces of Basra, Dhiqar (capital Nasiriya), and Maysan (which borders Iran). The governors of the three provinces intend to take their concept to the national constitutional committee during June, in the hope that it will be defined within the permanent constitution. Previously in early 2005 Sheik Fasal al Goud, then governor of Anbar province, had proposed a Sunni regional government in western Iraq, but failed to gain much support for the idea. Most Sunni Arabs see federalism as a means of confining and controlling them and reducing their access to Iraq's oil income, and their interpretation may well be accurate. From abroad the International Monetary Fund declares Iraq is too dangerous a place to open an office, but says it will soon make its first regular annual review of the Iraqi economy for 25 years and begin negotiations towards the kind of loan for which it is well known. In the southern Iraqi marshlands meantime, uncontrolled re-flooding of some of the area by jubilant local officials has caused considerable problems. The area was largely drained by Saddam to thwart resistance by the Shi’ite Mad’an (Marsh Arabs). Some of the Mad'an have returned from exile in Iran and are endeavouring to reestablish themselves around the marshes. A date palm rehabilitation programme is reported to be doing well, with new farming and fish projects also looking hopeful. New dams witholding water in Turkey and Iran mean however that a full restoration of the marshes is now unlikely. And ironically, reports that the marshlands cover one of the largest prospective oil fields in the world also mean that international oil companies might eventually pose a greater threat to the Mad'an than even Saddam, unless any development is strictly controlled to protect Mad'an interests. Also in May, a detailed UN survey report is released and shows deterioration in the life ofordinary Iraqis since the US-led invasion. The UN Development Program report, "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004," was conducted in cooperation with Iraq's Ministry of Planning, and surveyed over 21,000 Iraqi households. It estimates 24,000 Iraqis dying as a result of the invasion and first year of occupation, and over 140,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes during and following the attack. 23% of Iraqi children between six months and five years of age are gauged to suffer from chronic malnutrition, 12% from general malnutrition, and 8% from acute malnutrition. 39 percent of the country's total population are children under 15, and years of sanctions followed by the war and subsequent bad conditions have made them the primary victims of Western attention to Iraq since 1990, other than the adult dead and maimed. The health system, one of the best in the Middle East in the 1980s, is now in a pitiful state, with destroyed hospitals & health centres, non-functioning medical equipment, lack of medicines and even disinfectant, and lack of health personnel among the major problems. An infant mortality rate of 32 per thousand is also at third world levels. Other civilian infrastructure, including electricity supply, water, sanitation and communications, remains degraded or disrupted. For example average electricity production in May 2005 is 3,700 megawatts, compared with 4,400 megawatts before the March 2003 invasion. 78% of households connected to the electricity grid report "severe instability" and low quality in the service. Only 54% of households nationwide have access to a "safe and stable" supply of drinking water, and sewage in the streets is common in many urban areas. Cholera was reported in the al-Amil district of Baghdad in May, with both water pollution and unsolved sewage difficulties continuing to cause many health problems in the capital and elsewhere. Unemployment, meanwhile, is put at 18.4%, far less than many estimates, but qualified by a figure of over 50% for under-employment. While some Iraqis have made money and even become prosperous since the invasion, far more appear to be bitterly disappointed by the social and economic results of the occupation. In an unexpected consequence of the "born-again" President's war, 20,000 Iraqi Christians are reported to have fled to Syria, where they have been welcomed in poor but religiously tolerant Damascus. Under the more secular Saddam they were not religiously persecuted, but since the US invasion, viewed as a "Crusader" attack by a strengthening Islamic fundamentalism, life has been fraught with hazard for Christians in Iraq. A May report from a British Musuem expert, John Curtis, says that half of 40 key missing items from Baghdad's Iraq National Museum displays have now been retrieved, while about 8,000 of over 15,000 items looted from its storerooms have yet to be traced. 1,000 of those found have been confiscated in the USA, raising interesting questions, while about 4,000 have been recovered in Iraq itself. Western soldiers have also been caught with items pilfered from historic areas such as Nimrud and Babylon. Meanwhile the Iraq National Museum has been forced to re-seal its storerooms and postpone a Unesco survey because of security dangers. Still, a retrieval of nearly half of missing items means that the enormous damage to Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage unleashed by the US-led invasion has at least been wound back to a useful extent. Kurdistan: For the Kurds, the crunch issues of control of Kirkuk and the powers to be allowed to their devolved federal state in the permanent constitution are the immediate key focus for the period just ahead. Another important Kurdish development at this time is a definitive deal between rival leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Talabani, apparently content with his Iraq Presidency, confirms that Barzani may head the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq for the next four years. As a result, the Kurdish regional assembly - hamstrung by party disagreements since the January elections - begins its meetings on 4 June, with both leaders attending. 111 members are sworn in beneath Kurdish national flags, and it is of the greatest significance that no Iraqi flags are anywhere to be seen. In New York, at the end of May 2005 the Jaafari government asks the UN Security Council to extend the mandate granted to the U.S.-led force after the invasion. In response, the mandate as currently specified in Resolution 1546 is extended from June 8 2005 "until the completion of the political process".  Meanwhile the Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari meets with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who presses him on that political process before pronouncing herself "very comfortable" with the commitments given to the process being "inclusive". News from the field during May is worrying to US commanders. In the north-western deserts close to the Syrian border the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment has been attempting pacification, with limited success. New "Iraqi Army" units now deployed there are not well received in this fierce region. Towns such as Bi'aj and Rawah are in insurgent hands, and the major city of Tal Afar, although seized by US forces in September 2004, remains essentially uncontrollable. As if to emphasise the disarray in the area the latest governor of Anbar province, Raja Nawaf al-Mahalawi, is kidnapped during May and later found dead. Meanwhile on the battlefronts Vietnam-era usages begin to re-emerge, e.g. the release of body counts of enemy soldiers to create an impression of victories, and the use of dramatic, large scale "sweeps" to give the impression of superior force being effectively deployed in an overwhelming manner (in fact if the territory is not then garrisoned the whole operation becomes more public theatre than effective military solution). Large Marine offensives in the cities of Qaim and Haditha in May are such operations. In the capital, Operation Squeeze Play employs four Iraqi Army battalions and three special police commando battalions, under the guidance of US forces, to sweep the western outskirts of Baghdad, especially the Abu Ghraib neighbourhood. Iraq Government ministers soon pick up the beat of this drum, culminating in the proclamation of a "40,000 Iraqi troop operation" intended for Baghdad, a numerical impossibility given forces available. Operation Lightning is nevertheless substantial, with a claimed 675 checkpoints set up and more than 500 suspects soon arrested. The reported plan is to split Baghdad into seven areas of operation, impose strict security measures and eventually extend the operation country-wide. A US military intelligence source declares "they are going to sweep Baghdad and make sure that the insurgents are run out of the city", but the unimpressed rebels strike back with numerous attacks on targets that include several police stations and an army barracks. The most effective Government force is the "Wolf Brigade", a derring-do unit of about 2,000 Iraqi police commandos. It was formed in October 2004 by former Ba'athist General Mohammed Qureishi, known as Abu Walid, who is however a Shi'ite and government supporter. The Brigade is hated by many Sunnis and allegedly collaborates with Shi'ite militias, but has much support among Shi'ites and has its own popular TV show, "Terrorists in the Grip of Justice". "  Another successful force is the 5,000 member Special Police Commandos unit, commanded by General Adnan Thavit. The General is a Sunni who is a former Air Force intelligence officer and coup plotter against Saddam Hussein. Most of his men are former Republican Guards, and as such highly trained and disciplined though brutal soldiers. Most other official units are much less effective. Total Iraqi Government security forces are now estimated at around 167,000 men. This is now a higher figure than the US expeditionary force (although there are claims that as many as 50,000 of the figure are bogus), and in May 2005 they suffer more casualties. However unlike the American forces, which continue to do most of the fighting, the majority of the Iraqi casualties are suffered in attacks against their passive positions and not in active combat. By early June, Operation Lightning is reported as having captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants around Baghdad. As the insurgency pauses in the capital however it strikes new blows elsewhere, and to those who remember the Vietnam War many events have a familiar ring to them. The classic Maoist guerilla dictum of "when the enemy advances we retreat" also seems to be in play here, and any complacency felt at lowered attacks in Baghdad is soon dented when a former Wolf Brigade member turned insurgent penetrates the Wolf Brigade HQ and causes carnage with a suicide bomb. A huge difficulty with combating insurgency is that measures strong or ruthless enough to make significant inroads at the military level usually generate a backlash of enormous resentment in the community where they are employed. This may produce a strong flow of recruits and more local assistance to the rebels, while helping to ensure that many supposedly 'loyal" officials cannot be relied on and may work secretly for the insurgents. Twentieth century insurgencies have defeated amongst others the French in Algeria and Indochina, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the United States in Vietnam; while the Portuguese in Africa voluntarily withdrew from their own nightmare following a revolution at home. Even the Israelis, who have shown the most adaptive, if ruthless, local tactics of all, combined with a far superior use of intelligence, have still been unable to secure peace so far on their own doorstep. Only the British in Malaysia, Kenya and elsewhere have shown recent clear cases of an imperial power waging a successful counterinsurgency in a foreign land, and those successes were combined with their political withdrawal from the territories concerned. President Bush's naïve and simplistic characterisations of the Iraqi Sunni insurgency appear to be designed primarily to maintain sufficient political support in the USA. This is a tactic that can perhaps work to some extent in the short term but in the longer tem is likely to rebound with a vengeance, as it makes the insurgents appear not only incomprehensible but also superhuman, and like the Vietcong "tougher than our guys". To that extent a long war against them will seem both endless and unwinnable, an impossible proposition to sustain within a nation's domestic politics if anyone offers an alternative. It is also one likely, in any case, to make people eventually tire of it all and want to vote for those less associated with causing it in the first place. In other words, a drawn-out but still bloody and expensive war in Iraq probably represents political death for the Bush dynasty, whose evident hopes of a continuance in the Presidency under Governor 'Jeb" Bush have now been openly expressed by the present President's father, President George Bush Sr. In this context, the Hamid affair seems to epitomise all that is wrong in the US approach, and to show how the American presence in Iraq may create an insurrection more than quell one. As head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Mohsen Abdel Hamid is a key Sunni bridging figure. He is a former member of the "Iraqi Governing Council", yet has strong Sunni credentials, and has in recent weeks urged Sunnis to join the political process to prevent a civil war. In a display of exceptional incompetence in intelligence matters, US forces raid Hamid's Baghdad home at 4am on Monday 30th May, smashing doors and windows to gain access. They seize and blindfold Hamid and three sons, and take him away for a day's interrogation, physically and emotionally humiliating him in front of his family and all Sunnis. Fortunately for local politics, both (Shi'ite) Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and (Kurdish) Iraqi President Jalal Talabani criticise the American action, limiting the immediate political damage to the new government. US authorities in Iraq then term the whole matter "a mistake." However they make no actual public apology, only a private one. To " regret any inconvenience", as they do instead here, seems to be their limit within a mental framework of military supremacy and effortless assumptions of moral and cultural superiority. In other words, they act like the ruling class of any old-fashioned empire. In an earlier instance (9th May) US forces raid offices of the National Dialogue Council. The Council is a moderate Sunni group involved in political dialogue (as its very name suggests), and has as a consequence been the target of car-bomb attack by insurgents. That circumstance does not stop American troops detaining, interrogating, humiliating and threatening some of its officials. This is not the way to win local friends, but on the contrary an easy route to obtaining floods of new recruits to the insurgency. Whether America's gung-ho approach to urban warfare is in any way appropriate to winning hearts and minds is an open question, but such actions as the Hamid & NDC affairs are certainly an excellent means of dismaying and alienating potential allies and assuring new enemies. Worse, the incident shows clearly how - whatever the public fig leaves - the key decisions in Iraq are still being taken by Americans, and any Bush Administration desire to appear "supportive but unobtrusive" in Iraq is little more than a fantasy on the Potomac. Prominent insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who has affiliated his ruthless group with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, is meantime reported injured, then perhaps fatally wounded, or even in Iran recuperating among his mortal enemies, then declared well and in control of his forces again. The see-saw of publicity about the lethal Zarqawi indicates how little is known for certain and how little can be trusted in the battlefield "information" released by both sides. Meanwhile on the US side, Pentagon plans are reported to build permanent structures at four US Iraqi bases, located around airfields at Tallil (in southern Iraq), Al Asad (the west), Balad (centre region) and either Irbil or Qayyarah in the Kurdish north, as large heavily fortified, strategic hubs. The sites, originally termed "enduring bases," are now referred to in Pentagon-speak as "contingency operating bases", and are allegedly to be built in preparation for a future US withdrawal. U.S. forces at present occupy 110 bases and detention facilities in Iraq. The latter currently hold a reported 6,000 US detainees, who are not treated as prisoners of war but interned under no apparent legal basis, even though the Bush administration claims to no longer be an occupying power. As the war grinds on, a prominent Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Ali Abdul-Hussein, is shot dead in Basra. On 3 June another Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Muhammad Taki al-Mowla, representing the Shi'ite SCIRI party at prayers at the Baratha Mosque in Baghdad, calls on the Iraqi government to execute Saddam Hussein and his aides as soon as possible, which he says will deflate the insurgency. Such calls indicate that Shi'ite patience may be near its limits in at least some parts of their constituency, and that the possibility of "rogue action" by some groups has become increasingly likely. Indeed a Sunni Muslim cleric in Basra is reported taken from his home on 5 June by men in police uniform, and his body is found the next day in what looks like a revenge killing for the Ali Abdul-Hussein murder. In fact the chief of police in Basra, General Hassan al-Sade, says that religious militias - the Mahdi army and the Badr Brigade - now control the city. As regards the insurgency Basra is an oasis of peace compared with Baghdad - in confirmation of which Basra airport reopens on 4 June to civil flights, under the supervision of its British controller. But the city is also in essence now a religious state. Speaking freely in apparent anticipation of his imminent recall, the General reports that half of his police take their orders from (religious) political parties, and even use their positions to assassinate political enemies. In Sunni Falluja by contrast, where only half of the population has yet returned and most of the city is still in ruins, movement is only possible with US Marine permission in this "compulsorily gated community". Yet a muted echo of the old resistance emerges on 4 June when tribal leaders and politicians meet in a cement factory for a conference termed " The Unity of Iraq and Its Independence". A list of demands is agreed upon to present to the US and Iraqi Governments, including a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, release of political prisoners and no more purges of former Ba'ath Party members. Near the city rebels are still capable of sharp attacks against US forces, and the furious US assault on Falluja in November 2004 does not seem to have solved any problems for the US military in the longer term. By 11 June Operation Lightning is reported to have killed 36 insurgents in Baghdad, and 1,318 suspected insurgents have been captured. However although this latter figure is impressive if they are indeed mostly insurgents, it also reveals that the rebels have active adherents available in very large numbers. Meanwhile British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visits Baghdad to promote an international conference on reconstruction and development in Iraq, to be sponsored by the European Union. The event is to take place on 22 June in the EU capital, Brussels.  Some reports suggest that Bush Administration officials hope to use the conference to put additional pressures on the Iraqi government to allow a larger political role for Sunni Arabs. The US goal now appears to be to offer, via the Bremer transitional plan, a path to a political solution hopefully acceptable to the Sunnis and welcome to Shi'ites and Kurds. If all goes well this would lead to a new federated state which would be favourable to US regional policies and to American economic and oil interests. Meantime, the apparent new war aspiration is to hold down the insurgency as much as possible while training Iraqi military and police forces to do most of the anti-insurrectionary fighting by some not too distant time in the years ahead. The evident aim is to then eventually wind down to a small permanent garrison force similar to the British presence under the Iraqi monarchy, or even just "oversee" Iraq with units based in nearby Kuwait, if things went exceptionally well. While the security forces training appears to be making poor headway, political developments look more promising for the US so far, but at this stage are tenuous at best. The US difficulty is to convince the Sunnis it does not aim to humiliate them and give others power over them, while at the same time pleasing the Shi'ite -Kurdish majority who now jointly wield political power within the framework of the "informal occupation". Adding to the problem is that the Shi'ites are not a natural ally for the US, with their moderate wing wanting the Americans to leave as soon as the insurgency is dealt crushing blows, while the radicals want no US presence at all. Only the Kurds favour a permanent US connection, but due to their justified mistrust of greater powers even they have always been willing to switch alliances if another more satisfactory foreign sponsor can be found. All sides fear US betrayal in the course of the political process, and both US action or inaction in any direction will likely be seen as such by at least one party. To thread a successful path through this labyrinth of negotiation without Ariadne's proverbial ball of string will be difficult indeed, especially for a nation whose officials are unused and perhaps psychologically unsuited on the whole to the devious finessing of policy at which the British, by contrast, have historically been past masters. The difficulty of the situation is understood by at least some US leaders however. On 8 June an AP report from an unnamed "senior U.S. official" in Baghdad says that American officials are negotiating with Sunni Arab leaders to try and persuade some insurgent groups to enter the political process instead.  What the Americans could offer, except in the line of individual bribes, that could both interest insurgents and be acceptable to the new Government was not revealed. The reported talks do indicate, though, that the private US Administration view of the military situation is probably a lot less rosy than the line given out for public consumption. Therefore any means of lessening the insurgency and increasing the possibility of US military disengagement appears to be of considerable interest to the Bush Administration. The latter must by now be aware of the possibility that the home of the ancient clay tablet might also supply, unbidden, the writing on the wall. Their task is made a little more difficult early in June by the irrepressible Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Talabani salutes his own comrades of the Kurdish peshmerga plus the Shi'ite Badr Brigades at a congress of the Badr movement, and declares "there is a still a role for you... to defend your people ".  In so doing he is thumbing his nose at both US officials, who have always maintained that Iraqi militias must be either integrated into national security forces under (US) command or disarmed and disbanded, and those Sunni Arabs who are fearful of the Badr forces. Another initiative supported by US officials for Iraq is the proposal to bring more Sunni Arab representatives onto the committee drawing up a new constitution. This move highlights the dilemma posed by any multi-communal Iraqi political process. If the Sunnis are merely tolerated as witnesses and bystanders then their cooperation is unlikely to hold, and the constitution may fall at the referendum hurdle. If they are allowed to genuinely participate, however, agreement on any constitutional document may be exquisitely difficult to obtain. Anyone who has ever been to the movies with friends knows that it is far harder to get three people, even three close companions, to agree on a choice of film than with just two participants. Where three political communities are involved who are mistrustful if not paranoid about each other, and who see their interests as different and in all likelihood opposed to those of the others, the difficulties are multiplied almost infinitely. The "innocent enthusiasm" for democratic discourse espoused by US leaders for Iraq has yet to deal with the passionate depths of allegiance characteristic of many Iraqi communities, and it remains to be seen how bruising their encounters with those realities will be for the Americans who hope to shape the new Iraq. Two additional committees are now set up early in June in connection with the constitutional process. One is a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni Islamic consultative committee to discuss constitutional issues. It is made up of political party members from the Dawa and SCIRI Shi'ite parties, plus the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party and some Sunni clerics. The other is an international consultative committee under the auspices of UN representative Ashraf Kadi, intended to monitor and encourage political developments. Yet another leaked document which emerges in June 2005 is a UK Cabinet Office briefing paper from July 2002. It shows how PM Tony Blair had already agreed to support military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at an April 2002 summit with President Bush, subject to favourable conditions, and hangs the British PM out to dry in regard to his truthfulness on the subject. To most of the British public this is no revelation, but the document also establishes that there was no legal basis for the UK to take part in such action at that time, and that it was therefore planned to induce Saddam to ignore or reject a United Nations ultimatum to try and obtain such a basis. The subsequent events establish clear-cut untruthfulness on the part of the leaders of the three participating invaders, in that they claimed to be approaching the UN to avoid war and seek peace when their hidden goal was instead to induce the UN to authorise a war already decided upon. All three leaders (the memo writer already knows that "Australia would be likely to participate on the same basis as the UK") are therefore clearly guilty of a concealed conspiracy to start an aggressive war (i.e. one in which the nation attacked was not posing any direct, immediate or even plausible threat of attacking them). The UK leader has suffered only censure since, and the Australian leader has been returned to office with a larger majority than before.  In the USA, where President Nixon was once driven from office for lesser crimes than this, it seems unlikely that the now largely corporatised US media or a Congress controlled by the President's party will directly challenge the US President over his malfeasance.

top & contents

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Updates will follow periodically. As an e-book, this is a living work.

Copyright (c) Bruce Preston 2004 & 2005.

This is an Internet-only resource. It may be freely quoted from, provided acknowledgement is made.
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Reproduction as a whole work without permission is forbidden.

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*We wish the Iraqi people the best. They will need a lot of luck, and good will, to overcome the ills that have been done them these last hundred years. As for foreign interference, they have probably had more than enough of it.

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