The announcment of designated Spanish prime minister Zapatero to withdraw troops from Iraq is a late victory of the peace movement. It could become an expensive one for the USA and the rest of the world.
Imagine it's war and nobody participates this pacifists dream appears to become reality in Spain, but in modified form: Imagine it's war, and everybody flees. The announcement of the future Spanish prime minister Josι Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to retreat by June 30 might not be the last one of this kind.
The mission in the Middle East is disputed in almost all European countries that sent troops to Euphrat and Tigris. At the first anniversary of the storm on Bagdad Zapatero's announcement of retreat incited the question what European soldiers are to do in Iraq again. How however does it go on in Iraq?
The decision that Warsaw should take over the Spanish sector pushes the occupying force to the limits of their military capabilities. Already today the Polish troops can perform their tasks only with massive logistic support by the US armee. An expansion of their area of control will place the Polish armee in front of substantial technical problems.
The equipment of the Polish soldiers is unsatisfactory. If a convoy leaves the military area, vehicles often stay back broken in the heat of the desert. Today it gets back to the Polish armee, that it didn't have sufficient time to prepare for the war. And now for the second time this year they have to take over a job, that will probably be too much for them. The domestic consequences can not yet be foreseen at all.
The Iraq commitment is still disputed in Poland. May people had hope for a higher economic advantage, but the contracts were not given. The tendency in the last months in Poland was more "Get out here" than "Go on".
Zapatero's decision is also of great importance for Great Britain, the most important strategic partner of the USA. Prime Minister Tony Blair again and again tried to avoid the unpopular Iraq topic in the last weeks. Now it's back, in all its ugliness. The British Prime Minister will no more recover from his credibility crisis. An attack of the size of the bombing in Madrid could mean Blair's political end. The same applies to its colleague Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, whose Iraq politics polarized Italy like not a long time ago.
More US troops?
In Europe Iraq again become a domestic topic that can win elections like it did in Germany in September 2002. The Americans have to consider everything. How would the react to further shrinkage?
First the Americans would try to fill the gaps with own tropps. The US armee is capable to do this short term. Medium term the politics of gap filling is problematic. Already at the security conference in Munich Vietnam veteran and former republican candiate John McCain noted that 40% of the US soldiers in Iraq are reservists. "It would make me happy, if Europe could do more." said McCain it appears that Europe is doing the opposite.
Iraq would fall in chaos after a retreat of the occupying forces
The retreat of European soldiers would continue to destabilize Iraq. The fact that it is relatively calm particularly in the south-Iraqi region Basra and in the British sector has something to do with many years of experience of British troops in conflicts and crisis. A hypothetical retreat of her majesty's troops would would make the situation in the south more critical. The shiites don't like negotiating the the British but they hate the Americans.
The separation into different sectors did not only have a military, but also a political-cultural function. The Americans wanted to integrate European know-how in nation building for good reasons. American has far less experience with howa country is raised out of a totalitarian nation and formed into a democracy than European countries who had to solve these problems 60 years ago after world war II.
"The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation is a disaster" said Zapatero when he announced the retreat of the Spanish troops. And he might be right with that. But the problem is: With the retreat of the occupying force nothing will become better but a lot will become worse.
If the Spanish troops retrait out of Iraq, the calculation of the bombers of Madrid would have worked. That can lead to a strategy change of the Islamists: Bring terror into Europe's metropolises Iraq as theater of war is becoming a little bit more uninteresting since Zapatero's announcement.
Zapatero is right: The situation in Iraq is a disaster. But what does that mean? It is true: The US armee is hardly capable to provide security and order. But: Is the answer troop deduction?
Even opponents of the Iraq war like Zapatero can not deny that the majority of the Iraqi population is happy about the toppling of Saddam Hussein. His terror regime mentally devastated the country. Now there is a much too slow, much too complicated political build-up of the country. It can can happen, because it is militarily protected by the occupying force. That it is coming to an hold again and again is the fault of the - sometimes helpless, sometimes thoughtless _direction of the Americans. But above all Iraq suffers from terror which is directed against the civilian population.
An Iraq without an occupying force would fall apart and into chaos for years if not decades. The result would be a new Afghanistan, a space without rights, an El Dorado for islamistic terror groups who feel home in Bagdad already today. The dream of the pacifists: Imagine it's war, and all flee, it would become their ultimate nightmare. Not all would flee if the Spaniards, the Poles, the Italians, or even the British go.
The Terror will stay.
Claus Christian Malzahn (DER SPIEGEL)
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