Terrorist carnage continues to bloody the streets of Iraq. The unfortunately much-delayed formation of an Iraqi Government two months ago brought an upsurge in violence which, in defiance of a massive security operation, has intensified in the run-up to today’s first anniversary of the handover. Within 60 days more than 1,200 Iraqis have been killed. US military casualties have averaged two a day, testing the limits of what Americans can accept when few voters seem to believe President Bush’s claims that there is “progress” in Iraq.
The insurgents have made headway in pursuit of one of their goals – persuading nervous outsiders that Iraq is such a cauldron of rivalries and hatreds that the idea that it could ever be a stable democracy is a pipedream. Moreover, that because terrorists will keep these hatreds at the boil so long as Iraqis feel themselves to be under alien occupation, the Western military presence may be making it harder, not easier, for Iraqis to arrive at a post-Saddam consensus. Disengagement from this conflict, it is being whispered even by Republicans, might be the least dangerous course.
The unease is understandable; but cut-and-run is not an option. At its most negative, the case for staying the course is that because this is a test of strength between two irreconcilable opposites, between the politics of democratic consent and despotism in the name of religion, Iraq is a strategic battleground that the West cannot abandon without great peril to itself.
But the more positive reason for perseverance is that the rebels have no “war-winning” strategy, only the ability to aggregate atrocities. As Iraq’s Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari argued in The Times yesterday, only the fight for democracy can secure peace, and thousands of ordinary Iraqis, as well as foreign soldiers, are dying in that fight. This is no nationalist liberation movement. Renegade Iraqi Baathists attempting a comeback by means of civil war share nothing with the jihadists led by the Jordanian terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but the goal of making Iraq ungovernable.
This, against the odds, Iraq is not. Last week’s agreement by Sunni leaders to take more seats on the council drafting the constitution suggests that they now see that Iraqis must hang together. The political timetable is demanding: completion by August of a new constitution that must resolve serious disputes about the role of Islam in politics and the degree of autonomy in the regions, notably the well-run Kurdish north; its endorsement in a referendum; and general elections this December in which it is vital and possible that more Sunni voters participate.
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It is important to keep slippage to a minimum. But there should be no pretending, either by the US or Britain, that successful elections will mean a sudden exit. The insurgents may have weapons and money enough to fight on for years. Iraq has 170,000 men under arms, as against almost none a year ago, but most cannot yet operate effectively alone. To contain the violence until such time as Iraqi intelligence and firepower are up to the job, US and British forces will be needed in Iraq; they will be operating at full stretch; and they must have public support. Mr Bush is fond of saying that the art of politics is to explain a problem, “and keep explaining it and explaining it”. The necessity of the long haul in Iraq has yet to be explained with fervour and candour.