Desperate to leave Iraq on a high note, US strategists nonetheless need a stronghold in the Middle East, which will drive the next phase of conflicts, writes Ayman El-Amir Thirty months after the US invasion of Iraq, the situation in the ravaged country is fast coming to the moment of denouement. Everyone in the region senses it is the right time to strategise. For the US, the issue is how to get out of the melee while declaring victory. For the insurgents and jihadists, it is how to extrapolate on the regional situation and what they regard as the defeat of the world's greatest military power and the weakening of its surrogates. As for US allies in the region, it is the ramifications of flourishing terrorism and the rise of domestic advocates of democratic change. For the Iraqis themselves, it is how to pick up the pieces of a failed state. Senior officials of the Bush administration are sending out signals that it is preparing an exit strategy scheduled to start in early 2006. This is dictated by a number of domestic and strategic considerations, including mid-term congressional elections next year, disenchantment of the US public with the war that sent President George W Bush's popularity polling on an unprecedented downward spiral and the overstretched fighting capacity of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is what General George W Casey Jr, commander of the US forces in Iraq, conceded in July. So, next year, the US will mark both the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and the start of a gradual pull out, by a "mission accomplished" fanfare. Whether the mission was to dispossess Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction, to rid the country of a dictator, or to rid the world of the evil of terrorism, as President Bush had declared after 9/11, we will never know. However, the contagious chaos sure to be left behind will be strongly felt in the region. Despite vociferous statements by senior US officials to the contrary, the Vietnam analogy is now playing out in Iraq. The US is getting out of Iraq but not out of the region, where the destabilising effect of a "mission misguided" will reverberate for years to come. By its military presence and the transit facilities available to it in most countries of the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East, the US hopes to reassure its regional allies, deter its enemies, maintain the status quo in a de facto divided Iraq, hold Iran in check, overthrow the regime in Syria, recast Lebanon in its interests and win the war against global terrorism. Not only is this a tall order but it is also a perfect catch-22 situation for both the US and its challengers. Nothing will enhance the cause of the insurgency in Iraq and beyond more than the perception of a defeated America combined with the imperative of maintaining a robust military stronghold in the region. It cuts across three major fault lines: the US is not invincible; it continues to desecrate Muslim lands; and it is the mainstay of oppressive regimes that stymie the democratic development of the Arab nation. This will not only rally more jihadists but will also bolster their persistent attempts to undermine what they view as corrupt regimes that owe their existence solely to US political and military backing. In other words, it will raise the spectre of urban guerrilla warfare in several Arab countries. The new equation will also work against the much-publicised US objective of a democratic Middle East capable of holding off the tide of global terrorism. As the Bush administration will require the full support of its regional allies, it will have to make concessions on what initially seemed to be a fervent drive for democracy that was originally heralded by the Greater Middle East Initiative. Tyrannical regimes will plead for flexibility in the conduct of their security business, claiming the need for emergency security measures to deal with the rising danger of terrorism. It will be akin to the 20th century US doctrine of unconditional support for dictatorial regimes that suppressed local leftist insurgencies as part of the global campaign against communism. In the same vein, Arab regimes will tighten their grip on civil liberties, political opposition and access to fundamental human rights and freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. Thus, long- standing suspicions among Arabs over US proclaimed initiatives to democratise the region will be vindicated. Instead of serving as a US-crafted model of democracy to be replicated in the Middle East, Iraq will be a hotbed of instability and a breeding ground for the export of violence to the rest of the region. With this dismal legacy of US invasion and occupation, Iraqis who have paid a high price for their "liberation" and Arab countries that dread the region-wide shockwaves of the campaign are scrambling to contain the effects. It is in this spirit that the Arab League's secretary-general, Amr Moussa, has called for, lobbied and got the blessings of senior Iraqi leaders for an all-party national reconciliation conference in Cairo in mid-November. The unspoken purpose of such a conference will be to contain the mayhem, accept and cope with the new realities of a decimated and federated Iraq. Beyond all the rhetoric and statements that will emerge from the conference will be a de facto recognition that the Shia -- the new Iraqi majority -- are in control, the Kurds having carved up the first chunk of their independent state and the Sunnis left with the choice of exclusion and insurgency or integration and meagre participation. The 100- year-old unified state of Iraq will now break up along ethno-sectarian lines with differing -- sometimes conflicting -- interests; a domesticated group of provinces that will pose no threat to their neighbours or to US interests in the Gulf. And it would seem that almost everyone in the Middle East region is comfortable with that settlement. What will come out of the killing fields of Iraq is a different story. The spirit of insurgency is still gathering pace and allies; the global phenomenon of terrorism is far from over. While insurgency will continue and escalate in Iraq for sometime to come, it is also looking for new battlegrounds to engage the US. The US has already put Iraq, with all its agonies, behind its back, and is now brushing up against Syria. Syria, in turn, is ready to torch Lebanon in a new and bloodier civil war. This is a distasteful American recipe for the spread of democracy. * The writer is former Al-Ahram corresspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York. Desperate to leave Iraq on a high note, US strategists nonetheless need a stronghold in the Middle East, which will drive the next phase of conflicts, writes Ayman El-Amir
