You are NOT welcome here

This came from a mixture of genuine concern that Iraq would collapse into a bloodbath as soon as coalition troops left, and the incredibly patronising and parochial belief that we (The UK) could make even the slightest difference to that inevitability.



So then; Iraq.

I find myself following a rather odd school of thought these days when it comes to Iraq. On the one hand I still believe that the whole war was not much more than a fairly shabby land grab. The Hutton enquiry is starting to hint at just how many lies and half-truths we were told by our government in order to get support for the war. The various reasons that were used to justify it have been all but discredited (WOMD: Where are they? Links to Al-Quaida: there are now more Islamic militants operating in Iraq than there were before the war. Liberating the people of Iraq: How come the US and UK are happy to support other brutal dictators across the world?), and we are left with the rather depressing sight of politicians using smoke and mirrors to try and help us forget just how questionable all of the evidence actually was. If you've been following the '45 minutes' row between the BBC and the government you might have noticed that...well, its not hugely important. Happily the Hutton enquiry might help bury that little bout of handbags and allow more investigation of how questionable the intelligence was in the first place

Okay, so that's a quick summary of why I don't think the war should have happened in the first place. With all that said, I also find that I don't actually want the coalition troops to leave Iraq now that they're there. And why not? Well, not because I'm taking smug satisfaction in seeing the UK troops making a far better job of peacekeeping than the US army (though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't...patriotism sometimes shows itself in the most absurd ways). No, it's because I'm inclined to think that the whole country would collapse into a pretty spectacular bloodbath if our troops did just pack up and leave.

I've arrived at this conclusion for a number of reasons. Firstly, despite what those war-hungry little bags of sh*t on the political right would have you believe, I'm immensely happy to see the end of Saddam's regime in Iraq. However, the one advantage to having he and his delightful family in charge of the country was that it kept a lid on all of the other tensions that were simmering away. Admittedly, he did this by torturing and murdering large numbers of people, but because of his organised brutality a lot of disorganised brutality didn't happen.

Now that Saddam has gone, what is to stop that disorganised violence from taking a grip of Iraq? I mean, what would stop the Kurds and Arabs in the north of Iraq from continuing the ethnic battles that have simmered since Iraq's creation? What would stop Turkey taking what it sees as it's dues in Northern Iraq? What would stop the Shia and Sunni Moslems from extending their disagreements on the best way to love ones fellow man, to the violence that is a hallmark of religious disagreement?

The only thing at the moment that would stop it is the coalition troops. We've not heard much from the Kurdish area of Iraq, and that is thanks in the main to the presence of the troops. So far, Turkey have been discouraged from making any aggressive moves by the presence of US soldiers. And although the Arab population are being none-too-gently persuaded by the Kurds to get off their land, it is at least being done with a certain measure of restraint (certainly compared to the poison gas that Saddam used to persuade the Kurds to move in the first place) thanks to the presence of American Troops. Neither have we heard much about religious strife, though the continuing and increasingly confrontational proclamations of the Shia clerics in Iraq make it pretty clear that it is still an option.

In fact, all we generally do hear about in Iraq is the mounting body count of allied troops, or the absolute ineptitude of some or them in their peacekeeping duties. With regard to the former, more troops have died since the war ended than did during the war itself. Many people on the political left are using this as ammunition for their belief that the war should not have happened. To an extent, I agree with them. But it's also being used to justify why the coalition should pull out of Iraq altogether. Now to me this seems like cutting off ones nose to spite ones face. The political left gave several very valid humanitarian reasons in the arguments as to why the war should not start. Yet some of them seem happy to ignore the inevitable humanitarian disaster that would occur if the troops did leave. I like to win arguments (no, really), but I stop short of wanting to win them at the cost of thousands of innocent dead. That seems a high price to pay for the privilege of saying "I told you so".

As to the ineptitude...well, lets not mince words here; most of those accusations have been levelled at American troops in central Iraq (particularly Baghdad). It's unfair to say that they are the only troops at fault; anyone familiar with the UK's history in Northern Ireland will have little difficulty believing that the killing of UK troops in Basra was due in part (or perhaps in it's entirety) to heavy handedness on the part of the soldiers. But by and large, the media are concentrating on the US troops.

Now I'm not going to defend them; they've made some horrendous cockups (at the cost of innocent Iraqi's being killed; not an ideal way to make the locals think well of the troops) and I would hope that the troops involved will be held accountable. Neither does the claim "Well, they're soldiers and not peacekeepers so what do you expect?" hold much weight with me. Peacekeeping duties are part of a soldier’s role in peacetime, so if it's a part of their job then it's not too much to ask of them to do it properly.

However, I am going to sympathise with them to a certain extent. Iraq is a powderkeg of a country, and keeping a lid on it using methods other than the brutality of Saddam must be one hell of a difficult task. All in all, it seems to me that the incidents where troops sow more fear and mistrust in Iraq are outweighed by the (largely unreported) incidents where there is no trouble to speak of. Admittedly, I could be wrong in that regard; maybe the troops are endlessly adding to the tension in Iraq. But the fact that there have so far been no en masse riots running for days would seem to indicate that most of the troops are doing a good job most of the time.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that although the legality of the war and continued occupation is questionable at best, the reality of the situation is that somebody's troops need to be there. Not that anyone should expect either the US or UK to be too concerned with trifling little niggles such as international law; Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi (the two British civilians held at Guantanamo Bay) are apparently about to confess to a war crime. Bearing in mind that America is denying that the conflict in Afghanistan was ever a war? There have been great pains taken to describe the men held in Guantanamo Bay as "Illegal combatants", thus allowing them to be held without any reference to the Geneva Convention. If they have to confess to war crimes, does this mean that they or any other interested party can also have members of the US government arrested for the war crime of Mistreatment of Prisoners? America is successfully applying the rules to others but not to themselves.

Anyway, griping aside the reality of this situation is that the UN still don't have a role, so for now it has to be the coalition. The alternative is not a very pleasant thought.