SEEKING AN HONOURABLE WAY OUT

 Artículo de  “The Economist” del 17-5-04

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

As insurgents kill another member of the Iraqi Governing Council, George Bush and Tony Blair are under pressure both to send more troops and to present a clear plan for how they will get out of Iraq

MILITANTS fighting the American-led occupation of Iraq struck again on Monday May 17th, with a car bomb at the coalition headquarters in Baghdad that killed Izzedin Salim, the current holder of the Iraqi Governing Council’s rotating presidency. Mr Salim, a Shia Muslim leader, was in the last car of a convoy waiting to enter the Green Zone—the heavily guarded coalition compound—when the bomb exploded. It is the second time the insurgents have killed a member of Iraq’s interim administration: last September, they murdered Aqila al-Hashemi, one of three women America had appointed to the Council.

This latest blow to the coalition’s attempts to restore order to Iraq follows several days of fierce fighting between coalition troops and Shia militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric. On Friday, for the first time, American tanks entered sacred ground in the Shia holy city of Najaf, to fire on militants hiding among the ancient tombs there. And on Sunday, attacks by Mr Sadr’s men in Nasiriya forced Italian troops to retreat from the city centre to their base on its outskirts.

With less than six weeks to go before the American-led occupiers are supposed to hand sovereignty back to a provisional Iraqi government, it is clear that more coalition troops are urgently needed to stop the insurgency escalating further and dragging Iraq down into all-out civil war. Indeed, both America and Britain are reported to be preparing to bring in reinforcements—in America’s case, it was reported on Monday that thousands of its troops stationed in South Korea would be redeployed in Iraq. But, especially after the revelations about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, both President George Bush and Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, are under increasing pressure, from both their voters at home and their foreign allies, to offer a clearer strategy for how and when they will pull their soldiers out of Iraq.

On Monday, the British media quoted unnamed government officials as saying that the prime minister and the president were working to speed up the coalition forces’ exit by stepping up the recruitment and training of re-formed Iraqi security forces. Senior members of both the Bush and Blair administrations have been saying publicly in recent days that they would pull their troops out of Iraq if the new, sovereign government that takes over on July 1st asked them to. However, they have also said that they do not expect this to happen. Adnan Pachachi, a leading member of the Governing Council, said at the weekend that until Iraqi forces were able to combat al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups operating in the country, they would still need outside help. Mr Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, said that he expected the new Iraqi government to agree to put its forces under American command from July 1st.

All this comes as the scandal over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners continues to spread, undermining the legitimacy of the American-led occupation. On Sunday, the Pentagon sought to refute a report in the New Yorker magazine that the abuse resulted from a secret plan, approved by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to toughen the interrogation methods used on detainees. The magazine quoted an unidentified former intelligence officer as saying the rules of the secret interrogation plan were: “Grab whom you must. Do what you want.” The Pentagon insisted that none of its chiefs had approved any programme that might have encouraged such abuses.

Mr Bush has so far rejected calls for him to sack Mr Rumsfeld but the horrific pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqis have lost him support both at home and abroad. At the weekend, six pro-American Gulf states issued a strong condemnation of the coalition’s treatment of prisoners. Perhaps of more immediate concern to Mr Bush is the effect that the prisoner-abuse scandal and the continuing insurgency are having on his chances of re-election in November. A Newsweek poll at the weekend showed the president’s job-approval rating sinking to a record low of 42%. More than half of Americans now disapprove of Mr Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.

The crisis in Iraq is also putting Mr Blair’s job on the line. Speculation that the prime minister is contemplating resigning has been stoked up by his deputy, John Prescott, who admitted in Saturday’s London Times that senior ministers were already discussing a change of leadership. A poll by YouGov that same day showed that 46% of the British public now want Mr Blair to quit before the next election, which is expected around a year from now, whereas only 20% want him to serve another term in office. There was, though, one piece of welcome news for the embattled premier at the weekend: the owners of the Daily Mirror sacked the paper’s editor, Piers Morgan, and admitted that the photos he had published, of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi prisoners, were fake, as the government had insisted.

Nevertheless, the Daily Mirror’s capitulation will not make Mr Blair’s troubles go away. Both Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross have said that they expressed concerns to British authorities months ago about their treatment of detainees. The government says that, of 33 allegations of mistreatment by British forces that have been investigated, so far six could lead to soldiers being charged. The growing public unrest over Iraq is expected to result in heavy losses for Mr Blair’s Labour Party in the municipal and European Parliament elections on June 10th.

As public dissatisfaction with the coalition leaders’ handling of Iraq grows, and as morale is undermined by the prisoner-abuse allegations and the steady rise in casualties, Mr Bush and Mr Blair will be tempted to seek as quick and painless an exit as possible. But both pride themselves on being men of principle, and neither would relish going down in history as a quitter. The trouble is, staying the course will require more than just holding tight: it will involve sending yet more troops to run the gauntlet of the insurgents’ bombs and bullets, and perhaps even leaving them there for several long and uncomfortable years.