No troops for Iraq: Don't sanctify US empire!

As early as May 6, it permitted US embassy officials to meet Indian military personnel. It's President Bush decided on the Pentagon team's June 16 India visit. There's growing pressure on India to send 17-20,000 soldiers to Iraq.

The US wants to get India involved in "stabilising" Iraq's occupation. The Anglo-American coalition has got bogged down. All its plans for Iraq have come a cropper. Its first pro-consul, Lt Gen Jay Garner, quit in disgrace. His successor Paul Bremer has failed to establish a nominally viable government.

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There's a near-total breakdown of services in Iraq and growing resistance to Anglo-American troops. They are badly overstretched.

The US is losing one soldier every other day. Casualties will rise with "Operation Desert Scorpion" and mounting resistance, as in Balad. The US desperately wants other countries' troops in the firing line.

The US' close pro-war allies (barring Britain) have together promised to send only 15,000 troops. The maximum for any country is 3,000 -- Italy.

Thus, India is being asked to show greater loyalty than America's military partners, including even Britain!

The US will use Indian troops as cheap cannon fodder. Even if it eventually "compensates" them on a par with United Nations peacekeepers ($1,000 p.m.), that'll cost five percent of the expense on every US soldier abroad.

India is politically useful. It's being asked to use the goodwill it enjoys in the Arab world to legitimise the loathed occupation.

The US is anxious to obliterate the circumstances of the Iraq war -- especially, the absence of a casus belli or rationale. That's why it stresses "stabilisation" and "reconstruction", including lucrative contracts.

However, not a single Indian soldier should shed blood for America in Iraq. Indian troops won't be "peacekeepers". They will have to impose order on behalf of the occupation powers -- in ways that suit those powers' interests. This will bring them into hostile confrontation with Iraqi civilians.

They will also be exposed to highly toxic material like depleted uranium, which caused the post-1991 "Gulf War syndrome".

A military occupation which follows an unjust and illegal war cannot be just or legal. India criticised the war through a unanimous Parliament resolution. Its rationale was the absence of conclusive evidence that Iraq had operational weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq's WMD programme didn't pose a credible threat. Further UN inspections could have detected and dismantled it. The US and UK bypassed the Security Council and violated the UN Charter.

The invasion breached every criterion of "just war", including military necessity, non-combatant immunity, proportionality of force, etc. This rationale cannot be negated even if the Security Council makes a request for troops from other countries, as with the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Therefore, no political party should dilute its opposition to Iraq's occupation by invoking the UN. The UN can be manipulated.

The government is wrong to substitute secondary issues -- the line of command for Indian troops, length of stay, arrangements for eventual transfer of power to Iraqis, etc. -- for the primary question: should Indian troops at all be sent to Iraq?

Recent events have greatly reinforced the anti-occupation argument. No WMD have been found in Iraq -- more than two months after Baghdad fell. We know the US and British governments greatly "sexed up" and distorted intelligence reports on Iraq's WMD. This embarrassed even the Defence Intelligence Agency, the CIA and MI-6.

Apart from plagiarising an academic paper, the Blair government ran "Operation Rockingham", designed "specifically to produce misleading intelligence" and create an "excuse to wage war", according to Britain's Sunday Herald.

This credibility crisis has sharpened US-Europe differences -- handshakes at Evian notwithstanding. Mr Tony Blair has survived the war. But he won't be able to lend British support to another US-led invasion.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz now admits that the (hyped-up) WMD claim was an "excuse". US official jargon has shifted from on Iraq's "WMD" to the more ambivalent term, "WMD programmes".

This further discredits the idea of legitimising Iraq's occupation. Yet, some Indian policy-makers are keen to send troops there. They fall into three groups.

The first holds that Indian and US interests largely coincide today on "terrorism" and "Axis of Evil". Sending troops to Iraq is a "test": rather than whine about hegemon-ism, India must "daringly" show it's a major US ally and a Great Power.

The second group is obsessed with business. It believes troops should be sent if the US awards generous reconstruction contracts to India. It bandies about spectacular figures for reconstruction like $200 billion, even $500 billion.

This is pure hype. The highest contract so far is $680 million. Huge deals won't materialise unless America can pump much more oil out of Iraq. This seems near-impossible for a couple of years. Big contracts will first go to US giants like Halliburton and Bechtel, and then to British firms, leaving small crumbs for India.

The third group advocates the Advani line: troops in exchange for US promise to pressure Pakistan to end supporting terrorism. But to smash Al-Qaeda, America needs Pakistan as an ally. This limits the pressure it can put.

And what if Pakistan too sends troops to Iraq -- as Gen Musharraf declared he could do on June 12? This will completely neutralise India's diplomatic "advantage".

The Advani line is based on trading India's policy independence for US favours -- an idea repugnant to a self-respecting democracy. This means India won't stay independent vis-à-vis an imperial US.

All Opposition parties must take a categorical, unconditional stand against troops despatch -- with or without a UN request. Our citizens mobilised themselves strongly against Iraq's invasion in 500 cities and towns. They must oppose Iraq's occupation too with serious street-level action.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.