WASHINGTON: The situation in Iraqi is still very fluid. On Wednesday, crowds gathered in Baghdad’s streets to cheer US marines as their liberators. On Thursday, two of the same marines were killed and several dozen injured in firefights throughout Baghdad and around the country.
Two more were killed when a man strapped with explosives approached a US checkpoint in Baghdad and set off the bomb.
In southern Iraqi, a Shia cleric who had welcomed the US invasion, and his aide were killed, apparently by the supporters of a rival cleric.
In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces took over the city of Kirkuk but their victory became a source of concern for their American patrons when Turkey said it would not accept Kurdish domination of the Iraqi town because it may stir separatist tendencies in its own Kurdish enclave.
Seen in this backdrop, it is still too early to say that America’s troubles in Iraq are over. The United States and its allies, however, have won the battle for Baghdad. And the way the Iraqi capital capitulated before the coalition forces it shocked Iraq’s Muslim and Arab supporters across the world.
There is no question that the fall of Baghdad has been a blow to Arab and Muslim pride. The Arab and the Muslim countries are humiliated not because they wanted Saddam Hussein to win, or believed that the poorly equipped, half-fed and ill-paid Iraqi troops could have prevented the coalition forces from taking Baghdad. In fact, the Muslim and Arab crowds were not supporting the Iraqi president when they came out in the streets to protest the US invasion.
They were simply expressing their frustration and anger against the invasion of yet another Muslim nation.
And when the war started, they wanted the Iraqis to put up a better fight. They were waiting for the battle of Baghdad that President Saddam and his aides had promised. And it hurt them when — like Kabul in December 2001 — another legendary Muslim capital crumbled without much resistance.
But will anger and shame increase the Arab world’s mistrust and suspicions for the West?
That will depend on how the victors treat the vanquished. As the war for Iraq comes to an end, Arabs and Muslim nations will be silently watching every major and minor move made by the United States and its coalition partners in the defeated country.
For those looking for a symbolic moment, it happened at Baghdad’s Firdaus Square on Wednesday afternoon when a US Marine Corps armoured recovery vehicle toppled a giant statue of Saddam Hussein at the urging of local people. People cheered as the vehicle brought down the heavy metal statue from its marble plinth.
But before that there was a difficult moment. A Marine perched on the end of the crane covered Saddam’s face with an American flag. Nobody booed, but the uncertainty in the crowd was evident. Immediately an old Iraqi flag materialized as if from nowhere. Symbolically, it was the “illegal” flag, the one used in Iraq before the first Gulf War.
The Marine switched flags, tying the Iraqi flag around President Saddam’s neck. What followed next surprised Muslim and Arab supporters of Iraq around the world.
The Iraqi crowd pounced on the statue, wrenched it to pieces and then small groups paraded Baghdad’s bazaar, each dragging behind a piece of Saddam. Small children came running to hit it with shoes, the ultimate insulting gesture for Arabs.
And all the while the crowd chanted a slogan, which — more than any other gesture — depicted the extent of hatred and fear Saddam had instilled in his own people.
The outburst of hatred from the Iraqis revealed a major disconnect between the crowds celebrating Saddam’s fall and those other Muslims and Arabs protesting against the US invasion of Iraq. The Iraqis, the nation that had actually suffered under Saddam, made it obvious that they couldn’t care less who rid them of the dictator as long as they were rid of him.
Non-Iraqi Arabs and Muslims had other concerns. They wanted Saddam to go but through an internal change, not by an outside force. But the way Iraqi hammers failed to bring down Saddam’s statue at the Firdaus Square, the Iraqis needed outside support to topple his regime.
Saddam was too well entrenched to be pulled down by popular uprisings. The Shias tried that in 1991 and failed because the Americans failed to come to their aid, as they had promised. Even the Kurdish guerrillas could not topple it. The Kurds even needed US and British air protection to maintain their own autonomous northern enclave.
So the Iraqis, more than anybody else, knew that only a force larger than that of Saddam could have brought him down. And that’s why they flooded Baghdad’s streets, cheering the coalition forces, when liberation came.
But the euphoria could be short lived. The cheers can very quickly turn into boos if the United States and its allies stay there a little too long. Like the marine who put and removed the American flag from Saddam’s face, they will have to act quickly in restoring Iraq’s sovereignty. Otherwise suicide attacks could become a regular feature and Iraq could turn into America’s West Bank.
