LONDON: The weekend battles in Samarra are likely to prove only a foretaste of what will follow in Iraq if and when George Bush has secured re-election.
Once casualties become less politically embarrassing, he will launch American troops on an intensified offensive to crush the insurgency in advance of the January elections.
The most plausible scenario is that the poll will take place as scheduled, but turnout will be so low that the result will lack credibility. None the less, in early spring Washington and London will attempt to wind down the coalition's military role and transfer security responsibilities to Iraqis.
This policy will fail, I think, because the new national guard will prove ineffectual. Thereafter matters will become much messier, the outcome hard to foresee. Tony Blair told the British Labour party conference last week that Britain should stick it out in Iraq "until the job is done".
If he really meant what he said, our troops would be there for a decade. The black hole in Blair's remarks is that he did not address what happens if, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the Iraqi people will not tolerate the coalition's presence for a tithe of that time.
Next year, a growing body of non-violent Iraqis will press for the withdrawal of the "foreign occupiers". Their demands could well become irresistible. It is implausible that, without allied firepower, either new Iraqi institutions or security forces will be strong enough to sustain the country's political integrity.
Visiting Iraq in September with General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, I found most British assessments of the political and military prospects hard-headed and realistic - not least the scepticism about US tactics and their frightful impact upon civilians.
I sat up sharply, however, in the midst of one briefing. After January's elections, allied forces are set to pull back rapidly from responsibility for combating insurgency.
The big HQ at Allenby Lines, outside Basra, will be abandoned as the British withdraw to their logistics base at Shaiba, 10 miles out in the desert. Only a single brigade of British combat troops is scheduled to remain in country, to provide arms-length support for Iraqi forces.
I asked a senior British officer if it seemed plausible that the troops of the Allawi interim government could provide effective security when the best of the US and British armies were experiencing such difficulties.
He responded brightly that the national guard would be operating in a much less violent environment, since most insurgents are motivated by hostility to the "foreign occupiers".
This seems a very doubtful proposition. The insurgents proclaim daily their hatred for the interim government and its agents. There is little reason to suppose that elections will strengthen the regime's legitimacy.
"There is a big job of public education to be done before the elections, and it can't be done by us," a British military adviser told me. Soldiers, however sensitive to "hearts and minds", cannot run political tutorials for millions of voters. Endemic violence makes it dangerous for British and American troops to communicate with the local population.
Political education depends on Ayad Allawi's government, whose interior ministry is notoriously inadequate. Among the citizens of Basra, impatience with the regime is becoming dangerously passionate. There is a widespread belief that the Shia population of the south is being neglected by Baghdad.
As long as coalition troops are contesting insurgency, no one can address routine law and order. The consequence is that in most of the country Iraqis suffer as much from non-political crime, especially kidnapping, as terrorism. This is why people find it so hard to perceive the benefits of the coalition presence.
It is a chronic weakness of western interventions that civil follow-up to military action is inadequate or non-existent. It remains so in the Balkans and Afghanistan. US and British troops in Iraq face no danger of battlefield defeat. The insurgents have been overwhelmingly successful, however, in frustrating even such half- baked reconstruction efforts as the Pentagon has attempted.
The catalogue of Washington's follies and lies is so extensive it is hard to know which to highlight first, but let us try. George Bush - and Tony Blair - persists in relating events in Iraq to Al-Qaeda and the war on terror, which is drivel unsupported by a shred of credible intelligence.
American strategy continues to focus on the exploitation of force to suppress armed resistance. Of course, it is hard to pursue political objectives when coalition troops have their hands full dealing with suicide bombs, kidnappings and ambushes.
In Iraq today, the vast majority of the population is standing aloof, awaiting events. Iraqis are understandably unwilling to commit themselves to the regime when it seems likely that Allawi will forfeit power sooner or later, and that coalition troops will leave
After hearing an eager British officer holding forth on the progress of his efforts at a police training school, I asked an impassive Iraqi colonel what he made of it all. He intoned mechanically: "I merely want to serve my country in any way I can" - much as he might have said "God is great".
Who can blame such a man, who has lived through 40 years of his society's turbulent history, for a reluctance to display commitment? And who can readily believe that several hundred thousand like him, who have accepted employment from the Allawi regime merely to earn a crust in desperate circumstances, will be capable of securing their country in six months? -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.