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LONDON: Reality is fast puncturing the Bush administration’s visions of a new Middle East order.
Chaos in postwar Iraq, suicide bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca and relentless Israeli-Palestinian violence have torn holes in US hopes that the toppling of Saddam Hussein would deal a blow to international terrorism and promote peace in the Middle East.
Middle East analysts said the situation was not beyond repair, but expressed little confidence that it would improve.
“The acid test will be Iraq,” said Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Iraq could be the collapse of the American dream in the Middle East.”
Having pursued a high-stakes strategy of invading Iraq without international or popular legitimacy, the United States won a military victory, but now faces the much harder task of rebuilding a country from the ruins of tyranny, he said.
“The signs are not encouraging,” Alani declared, adding that the Americans appeared unable to exert control.
They were reluctant to commit their own forces on the streets of Baghdad, but could not revive Iraqi security or military institutions. They had failed to provide the security, basic services and salaries that were a far more urgent priority for ordinary Iraqis than democratisation.
Yossi Alpher, an Israeli security analyst, said US war aims had been only partly achieved. Saddam was missing. No banned weapons had been found. The transition to democracy remained uncertain. But it was too early to pass judgment.
“One can still imagine a scenario in six months’ time where Iraq settles down, democracy takes root and starts to make waves in the Middle East,” Alpher suggested.
ROADMAP HOPES FADE: But there was no guarantee that Israelis and Palestinians would progress towards peace even if all went smoothly in Iraq.
He said the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister and pledges by President George W. Bush to act on the “roadmap” to peace had raised brief hopes of movement.
Yet President Yasser Arafat had retained too much power for Abbas to implement sweeping security changes, and there were few signs so far that Bush would push Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to carry out Israel’s parallel obligations under the roadmap.
This meant there had been little change in a “triangle of gloom” comprising three leaders — Bush, Arafat and Sharon — who, in Alpher’s view, have no realistic strategy for peace.
Lebanese commentator Khairallah Khairallah said it was not too late for the United States to impose its will in Iraq and on the protagonists in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“They are still in Iraq and they can still control Sharon,” he said. “Extremists in Iraq are trying to take the initiative, so the Americans must restore order and show they are calling the shots. Otherwise there will be chaos in the area.”
Khairallah said that blaming Arafat for suicide bombings against Israelis was to “play Sharon’s game”. The Americans should recognise that the radical Palestinian Hamas group was the problem. The only response was to revive peace efforts.
However, last week’s bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco may increase Bush’s emotional sympathy for Sharon, who has sought to identify Israel’s struggle against Palestinians fighting occupation with the US “war on global terror”.
US ELECTION: Jonathan Stevenson, of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, said that by deferring action on the Middle East conflict until after the Iraq war, Washington has found itself under more pressure to do something now.
“Despite the pressure, the indications from Washington are that the administration will be very risk-averse,” he said.
With a US presidential election in November 2004, Bush’s advisers may urge him not to upset Jewish and right-wing Christian voters by making demands on Sharon.
Stevenson said the Iraq war had refocused Al Qaeda on soft targets in the Middle East, where America had “enlarged its footprint” despite pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia.
“The United States calculated that there would be increased postwar terror activity in the short term, but that they could contain it. They believed the democratising effect of regime change would greatly outweigh this in the long term.”
The Iraq war had certainly changed the political status quo in the Gulf, but whether for better or worse was an open question. “It’s a high-risk strategy,” Stevenson said.—Reuters
