Bad start for the new US strategy

According to the Iraqi ministry of interior, 12,000 Iraqi civilians were killed last year. Other estimates put the number of Iraqis killed, since the US invasion, at 600,000. This is indeed not the Iraq many have hoped for when the statue of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain was brought down after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

US President George W. Bush is said to be extremely upset by the results of a recent survey that explored the opinion of Iraqis three-and-half-years after the invasion. According to the survey, conducted jointly by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS) and the Gulf Research Centre, only five per cent of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003. While 95 per cent felt the security situation was worse than before. The poll also revealed that nearly half of Iraqis favour an immediate withdrawal of the US-led forces; and 66 per cent felt the security situation would improve if the international coalition troops left.

According to the New York Times, Bush spent the end-of-the-year vacation trying, along with his top foreign policy advisors, to put together a new strategy to salvage the dwindling prestige of the US in Iraq and the wider Middle East. The new strategy is to be announced in the State of the Union address due to be delivered later this month.

A combination of domestic and external pressures has forced Bush to revise his Middle East policy in general and Iraq's in particular. It is expected that Bush will announce an increase in the number of US troops in Iraq by 15,000-40,000 over the next three months, as a first step in a broad security plan to stabilise Iraq before a timetable for withdrawal can be set.

Full cooperation from the Iraqi government concerning the disbanding of all militias is essential for the success of the new plan. Yet, the survey of the ICRSS does not seem promising in this regard also. The poll found that between 84 and 91 per cent of Iraqis regarded the US-backed Nouri Al Maliki government's performance as "very poor" in the implementation of promises, reconstruction efforts, dealing with sectarian strife, providing jobs and basic necessities. Only about 1.5-3 per cent of them rated the government's work as "good". This constitutes another major challenge for Bush's new Iraq strategy.

In addition, the execution of the late Iraqi president on the first day of Eid Al Adha, one of the most sacred religious holidays in Islam, does seem to have helped much. The abusive behaviour at the execution of Saddam by Shiite officials, executors and guards as he awaited his hanging caused massive angry demonstrations in Iraq and the Arab world. The investigation ordered by the Iraqi government into this incident and the video recording that showed Saddam standing on the gallows' platform, facing a barrage of mockery and derision, will not convince many that the execution was not an act of revenge by Shiites against a Sunni leader.

The official US claims that Washington had appealed to Al Maliki not to execute Saddam at dawn on Saturday because of the onset of Eid are unlikely to abate the anger or convince sceptics that the US had nothing to do with the execution.

Even if the Americans have really tried to postpone the execution of Saddam, as the occupying power in Iraq, they have definitely not tried enough. Regardless, wittingly or unwittingly, the US has fuelled the Sunni-Shiite tension, which has already torn the country apart.

Furthermore, by blaming the Shiite-dominated government of Al Maliki for rushing the execution, the Americans have sent the wrong message to Iraq's Sunni minority, which strongly believes that the removal of Saddam was part of a US-Israeli-Iranian grand design to destroy Iraq and divide it into small powerless entities.

After all, these countries were the only ones to welcome the news about Saddam's execution. This was not indeed the right start for the new American strategy to stabilise Iraq and heal the wounds of the past.

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations, Faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.