The US confronting 'Mogadishu syndrome' in Iraq?

This is patent response of the great powers to looming disaster in such situation. Even as their adventure goes awry and the cost of occupation increases disproportionately they are unable to call it a day for it amounts to conceding defeat. So they keep raising the stake and get inextricably mired in the quagmire. With regard to much-publicised transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis by 30 June the core of the US' dilemma is its intention to retain control over Iraq while it is to perforce transfer power essentially to assuage the Iraqi anger even if that power will be vested with a pliant body.

The whole exercise is a pack of deceits. Amidst the promises of power transfer only weeks later the plans are afoot to ensure permanent presence of US power in Iraq. The Pax Americana is indeed digging its heels for a long haul presence in Iraq as the construction of as many as fourteen military bases across the country is proceeding apace. These 'end wing' bases are built to 110,000 US troops that will be stationed on Iraqi soil for 'at least two years' to start with. According to General Mark Kimmil, deputy head of military operation in Iraq, these bases will be "blue print for how we could operate in the Middle East," Paul Bremer has already decreed that the troops so stationed will be under US command and answerable only to it. Other measures being put in place are also to ensure that an 'independent' Iraq will be little more than a vassal state of the US.

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The most visible symbol of Pax Americana will however be the American embassy in Baghdad, already touted as the largest US diplomatic mission in the world with a staff of over 3000 personnel. To give the mission real teeth and muscle the 18.4 bn Iraqi Reconstruction Fund will be the mission's sole privilege to handle over the next five years. The generous allocation from the US Congress is flaunted as 'gift from American people to the people of Iraq.' But in American perception, obviously, a gift must still be subject to the will of the donor.

So a wholesale loot of the Iraqi resources is planned in the garb of utilising the gift for the reconstruction of Iraq's mangled and severely crippled infrastructure by awarding contracts to the consortium of American companies. Also by giving over Iraq's natural resources to foreign ownership Bremar is making sure that a 'sovereign' Iraq would be at the mercy of foreign masters, especially the US and take lead from Washington on everything from awarding a contract for oil exploration to building a school.

There are the kind of the grabs of the country's wealth or their ominous prospects Muqtada al-Sadr has been denouncing from his pulpit and through the press. Obviously the occupation forces consider him a nagging problem in realising their game plan. Queerly in line with zionist policy of targetting the key leaders of the Palestinian resistance the US is threatening Muqtada with death. Paul Bremer has issued the warrant of arrest for him. But Muqtada is as defiant as before and so are the militants loyal to him. In the meantime the occupation force has intensified its repression to break their spirit of resistance, but to no avail.

Although whole of Iraq is aflame with the eruption of anti-US violence the situation obtaining in the town of Falluja has been particularly grim. It is where amidst fierce fighting the coalition forces killed 400 Iraqis in a mosque -- an event that infuriated Shias and Sunnis alike for fitting reprisal. The unprecedented brutalities witnessed in Falluja early this month was described as a 'slight uptick in localised engagements' by Brig-Gen Kimmil. However the observers found it much more than that. To them the murder and mutilation of four American civilian contractors could not be mere 'slight uptick' in the violence of Iraq. It was the manner of their death -- set on fire, beaten with pipes and mutilated by the local crowd who then dragged charred bodies through the street and hung them upside down just above the roadway on old railway bridge across the Euphrates -- that made all the difference to remind the people back in the US of the dead American soldiers being dragged through the street of Mogadishu by cheering crowd in 1993. This was the footage that led directly to the withdrawal of US troops from Somalia.

But fortunately or unfortunately the American viewers were shielded from the real ugliness of the killings of US contractors in Falluja by their television networks. Had they seen what others could see -- the obscene enthusiasm of the crowd, the blithe disregard with which local people were driving under burned American corpses half and hour later -- then President Bush would have had his Mogadishu moment instantly. But it was made sure that the Americans would never see it, but will the scar go away? At what price the American people decide that the price of occupation is too high and pull the plug on this foreign adventure -- are now the questions.

In the mid-90s there used to be a phenomenon called 'Mogadishu Line" which the US military was never supposed to cross. Rounding up from eighteen US soldiers who were killed in one day in Mogadishu in 1993 it was a doctrine which ruled that the US armed forces should undertake no overseas mission that was likely to cause death of more than twenty American soldiers except vital national interests were involved. It was however not so much the number of dead Americans but the dishonour to their mortal remains that turned the US public against Somalia. For the same reason even the Falluja episode may mark a turning point. Nearly 500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since George Bush flew on to an aircraft carrier last May to declare the end of the 'major combat phase' of Iraq operation and their body bags despatched to the US must have affected the American psyche profoundly. Notwithstanding the varied manner in which they died the 'Mogadishu line' has since been crossed.

It is now to be seen when and how the American public acts. There are however instances of their acting positive even before Mogadishu took place. They did it on the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Lebanon intervention in '80s and then, of course, Somalia intervention. They will almost certainly do it on Iraq, too, in the end. The brutalities perpetrated by the occupation force will be followed by similar reprisal. Today it is almost forgotten that Mogadishu fury was preceded by the killings of a thousand Somalis by the Americans on the same day. The cycle of violence now experienced even in Iraq will only thicken up Mogadishu syndrome in the country and will perhaps hasten the exit of the occupiers.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.