Editorial: Iraq facing bleak future without US

Civil war always ranked high among the possibilities after the dethroning of Saddam Hussein by American-led forces. Two important conditions had to be met if a stable, thriving democracy, rather than factional conflict, was to be the face of the new Iraq. First, the the country's antipathetic ethnic and religious groupings had to be persuaded that compromise and consensus were in their interests. Secondly, the new Iraqi Administration had to demonstrate that it could govern strongly and effectively, and do so without the crutch of the United States. Neither prerequisite has been met, and the turmoil convulsing Iraq is an inevitable consequence.

The daily slaughter takes two forms. Deadliest is the violence between Shiite and Sunni militias in what is effectively a low-level civil war. But there is also the insurgency against the foreign forces. This month is shaping up to be the costliest for American troops in almost two years. In part, that reflects the failure of a joint US-Iraqi drive to quell the violence in Baghdad.

This increase in conflict appears to have befuddled the White House. President George W. Bush has made the cardinal error of talking of a similarity between events in Iraq and those in Vietnam 40 years ago. Drawing such a parallel is hardly helpful for the Republican Party, which faces heavy losses in the congressional elections on November 7. In an attempt to lessen the damage, the White House has now taken to talking of "flexibility" in Iraq, and military chiefs are speaking of a substantial pull-out of US troops within 12 to 18 months.

All this merely confirms the irrevocability of the course of events in Iraq. Many Iraqis have provided their own commentary by escaping abroad or fleeing to areas where their own ethnic or religious groupings hold sway. About 1.5 million Iraqis are refugees in their own country. These people are saying, in effect, that they see no prospect of reconciliation between the Shiites, who are 60 per cent of the population, the Sunnis, who ruled the country for most of the past century, and the Kurds.

The prospect of an inclusive government flickered briefly during the national election last December. But Sunni disappointment at the outcome has fed the al Qaeda-backed insurgency, as has Sunni realisation that they can reclaim power only through armed resistance. The Shiites, for their part, have demonstrated an increasing willingness to confront, and initiate, sectarian aggression.

The constitution of the new Iraq envisaged high degrees of autonomy for the Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis. There, again, the Sunnis saw themselves losing out, especially in revenue from new oil developments. Now, the bitterness enveloping the country makes even a federal Iraq seem a remote possibility. More likely in the immediate future is a full-scale civil war leading to a Shiite-dominated clerical state, or, perhaps most likely, the break-up of Iraq. The only element preventing this at the moment is the presence of the American-led forces.

President Bush is under intensifying pressure, even from his own party, to accept the abject failure of his Iraqi initiative and detail plans to end it. If the congressional election ends 12 years of Republican rule, the change would lead to newly empowered calls for an accelerated troop withdrawal. If this were to happen, US policy would come increasingly to resemble the disengagement from Vietnam. There, however, the parallels would end. For Iraq, the short-term consequences are likely to be far more dire.