The Fruit of a Poisonous Tree

For those seeking different and deeper reasons why Iraq ended up where it is today, other than the often-cited but somewhat clichéd list of blunders like the disbanding of the Iraqi army and dissolving of the Baath party, Jonathan Steele's "Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq" is a must-read. His book is a moralistic indictment of Iraq's occupation by the United States and Britain, arguing that it was doomed to failure from the beginning. An award-winning journalist, Steele's extensive reporting from Iraq and the region for years as a senior foreign correspondent for London's Guardian gives him the undisputed credentials to write on the subject authoritatively. It is a convincing, well-argued account of the misery unfolding in large parts of Iraq over the past five years, and Steele is a firm believer that all mistakes emanated from the "original sin" -- the misguided occupation. "My thesis is more fundamental. The occupation was flawed from the start. No matter how efficient, sensitive, generous, and intelligent the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority had been, it could not have succeeded," Steele says. "The central problem was not that Americans made mistakes. The occupation itself was the mistake." George W. Bush and Tony Blair misconstrued Iraqis' antipathy toward Saddam Hussein as an endorsement of an invasion, and the population's presumed acceptance of an ongoing military presence. Steele takes his readers on a long journey from one part of Iraq to another to show how US-British insensitivity to Iraqi culture and their underestimation of the country's nationalistic pride and Islamist fervor led to an increasingly bloody conflict. Said one Shia man to Steele on the road that stretches from Baghdad to Karbala: ''If al-Hawza (the Shia religious and educational establishment) orders us to turn ourselves to bombs, we can make the US leave Iraq. We say, ''Thanks to you for getting rid of Saddam, now goodbye'.'' Steele shows how reckless US actions in Falluja turned the population against it and how, in an attempt to retake control of the small town that became an icon for all that wrong with the occupation, created even more hatred and resistance. He illustrates how US miscalculations turned an unknown cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, into a popular leader and symbol of anti-occupation resistance among Shias. Nightly home searches and the routinely abominable treatment of men in front of their families by Coalition soldiers further stirred the wrath of Iraqis. Steele's interviews with many Iraqis before and after the war show how Iraqis -- some fervently and some cautiously -- supported the removal of Saddam Hussein, but most, if not all, were against the idea of having foreign armies present on their soil for a long time. The similarities between post-2003 Iraq and Iraq under British colonial rule are striking. Many of the same old colonial attitudes -- like racism and arrogance -- and policies -- sectarian division -- wittingly or unwittingly, were still in place, Steele says. The understanding that many officials in Washington and London had of the complex nature of Iraqi society was pretty shallow. In the run-up to the war, for example, Blair invited six experts on Iraq and international security to discuss the situation. While the experts focused on proving to Blair that "Iraq is a very complicated country, there are tremendous intercommunal resentments and don't imagine you will be welcomed," Blair, in a clearly detached mood, exclaimed: ''But the man is uniquely evil, isn't he?'' in a reference to Hussein. One wonders what could be the second-most irrelevant question Blair could ask. In Washington, neoconservatives were living in their own world too. ''They always wanted a prolonged occupation'' to put pressure on Iran and Syria, establish military bases in Iraq and "send a message of dominance across the Middle East," Steele writes. The fact that about three-quarters of Iraq's population is Arab and Muslim should have made the Coalition think twice before deciding to stay after regime change was achieved. Muslim Arabs, whether Shia or Sunni, have had strong feelings of resentment toward western occupation ever since the time of the Crusades. Years of colonialism and direct or indirect control of their lands and resources and the persisting Israeli-Palestinian conflict had all created an unfavorable view of the west among Arabs. Feelings of anger, humiliation and shame at the hand of west were common. The US and Britain might have taken these feelings and sensitivities into consideration, but they did not. Crucially, the Coalition failed to comprehend Iraq's class politics, a major source of division among the ranks of Shias after the invasion, when many poor urban Shias joined al-Sadr, the anti-US Shia cleric. Instead, they viewed Iraq in sectarian terms, with each sect presumed as a united bloc, Steele points out. The seeds of sectarian tensions in Iraq were sown during Hussein's reign and especially his ruthless suppression of the Shia uprising in the wake of Kuwait War in 1991. Still, there were many mixed marriages and neighborhoods where people coexisted peacefully. Steele puts the bulk of blame on occupation policies ''that played a role, though not the only one, in increasing Sunni-Shia tensions, thereby contributing to the appalling sectarian violence of the last few years.'' The US distributed the 25 seats on the Iraqi Governing Council, a ruling body appointed by US civilian administrator Paul Bremer, on a sectarian basis, as were the ministerial portfolios in the future government. Although one does agree with the reasonably compelling points Steele makes in the book, he falls short of examining the important role of Iraq's neighbors and how their involvement contributed to the situation. He also engages in highly hypothetical predictions based on equally hypothetical premises that are impossible to test. He argues that if the US had withdrawn within a year or so after toppling Saddam's regime, there would have been less bloodshed, and Iraq's political class "would have come forward readily to work out a new social compact and form a government.'' The fact is that Iraq witnessed several insurgencies by Kurds and Shias under its own nationalist governments from the 1960s to the 1990s. And they did not revolt because Iraq was under foreign occupation. The same could have happened after Saddam Hussein's fall due to sectarian and factional struggles over power, territory and resources. Steele also overlooks Kurdistan, and how US-British treatment of it could have made a contribution to improving the situation in the rest of the country. While Iraqi Kurdistan suffers from its own problems, like corruption and mismanagement, it enjoys relative internal peace. At the end of the day, the Iraq depicted in Steele's book is a story of shattered dreams, broken promises, gross mismanagement, countless tragedies and above all, strategic blunders, one after another.