Kuwait Diary

Kuwait Diary -- March 31st, 2003

Day 12 of the 2nd Gulf war
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Fierce fighting has been going on in three fronts in Iraq. In the southern front, British troops have been fighting for more than a week to gain control of Basra, Iraq’s second city of 1.3 million people. In south - central Iraq, just across the Euphrates, heavy fighting has been seen in Al Nasiriyah and Najaf. In the face of effective resistance, 5000 more US troops are finally coming in to support their battle hardened comrades. In the northern front across the Kurdish lines, the bombing of Iraqi position continues.

Heavy fighting has been reported between US marines and the Iraqi republican guards 80 kilometers outside Baghdad. The capital city has been subjected to relentless bombing for more than 12 days now. B-52 bombers have been routinely flying in from the US airbase in England and off loading their deadly payload. After such a pounding, I am surprised that buildings still stand there. Surprising also is the fact that Iraqi MIG aircraft have not been pressed into an airwar. In this war, the propaganda war has been as strong as the ground war and one of the victims of the bombing has been the buiding of the Iraqi ministry of information from which most of the war of words emanates. However the minister for information, scampering to another location, has continued to confidently hand out data on coalition casualties with a degree of professionalism to match the Pentagon news briefings or the official news briefings given by the US high command in Doha, Qatar.

Two missiles have exploded in busy market places in Baghdad leading to high civilian casualties. Iraq has blamed the US for targetting civilians which the US has promptly denied suggesting that these were Iraq’s own surface to surface missiles which have fallen back deviating from their original trajectories. However, after Saudi Arabia asked the US yesterday to cease firing Tomahawk missiles over its territory as some had fallen into the kingdom, the US has said that it is conducting further investigations into the missiles that hit the market places. The US ceased firing these guided missiles over Saudi airspace till “technical problems are fixed.”

But, as the two sides gough each others eyes out and drink each others blood, civilian casualties mount and one wonders whether the war planners have put a clinical figure on the limits of ‘collateral damage’ that are expected outside the military engagements. The coalition is desperately trying to show a humanitarian face to civilians who have been badly let down and left to fend for themselves under Saddam by the regime of Bush Senior after many tall promises and open support for uprisings against Saddam Hussein. This will make the all important difference between the coalition being considered by civilians as ‘ invaders’ or ‘liberators’. The Americans are busy fighting in the north and haven’t had much time for human interaction. The British have had more time in the south and they have been dropping leaflets which tell the civilian populations in bright green English script, “We will not abandon you this time”. The British have also been jamming the radio waves to bring propaganda messages to Iraqis spliced between songs by Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and other pop divas for young audiences and popular Arabic tunes for the elders. Personally, I would have revolted immediately against Saddam if I had to listen to any more Britney. So, I think that this is a very innovative strategy.

Elsewhere in the affairs of man.

His inspectors are becoming valuable commodities for the United States but Hans Blix isn't. The chief U.N. inspector, blamed by Washington for hurting its drive for international support in the run-up to the war, will be stepping down at the end of June. France, Germany, Russia and much of the international community had blamed the US for being trigger happy and not letting Blix complete his task of finding WMDs. Now it seems that the Bush Administration, desperate to find WMDs in Iraq to legitimize its invasion of Iraq to achieve regime change, is looking to poach and headhunt his team.

U.S. officials have said that his departure would make it easier for the Bush administration to include some of the world's top arms experts in their hunt for Iraqi weapons. At least three members of Blix's staff, two experts in biological weapons and one who specializes in Iraq’s missile programs, have been approached by special U.S. military units that will oversee Iraq's disarmament. It's a sign of recognition that the inspectors are well-trained and their expertise is essential. But the Americans have not made any overtures to their boss, Blix himself. The chief inspector was hurt by criticism that he was in the anti-war camp.

"I was in nobody's pocket," he said. "Maybe somebody wished I be in a pocket, but I was not."
Blix said the United States and Britain, trying to win support for a U.N. resolution backing a war, went "too far" in trying to claim there was "evidence that we allegedly had suppressed." "I think it was unfair, and I do resent that to some extent," he said. Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister who led the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981-1997, had said he would like to retire before his 75th birthday in June. But he had also hinted he could stay, saying he wouldn't abandon his responsibilities or turn down a request by the council that now seems unlikely.

"As things look now, certainly I will be very happy to go home in June," he said.

Inspections were suspended two weeks ago because of the war. Annan has said he expects their mission to resume once the hostilities cease, but there is no guarantee that will happen. There is disagreement in Washington about what role, if any, inspectors should play in disarming Iraq. Members of the U.N. teams are considered the only weapons experts in the world specifically trained in disarmament, and they have intimate knowledge of Iraq. But many are still skeptical of U.S. claims that Saddam has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

U.S. disarmament specialists are in Kuwait preparing to be equipped with ground-penetrating radar, sensors and sample-taking apparatus similar to that used by U.N. inspectors. Working with several former inspectors, they will probably go to many of the same locations the inspectors visited. Intelligence experts will question Iraqis involved in weapons programs while experts comb sites and analyze samples in the field using mobile labs. Meanwhile, Blix will prepare his next report to the council, which is due June 1. His staffers are pouring over documents and analysis collected from the Iraqis since November while Blix has said he's looking forward to spending more time in Sweden with his wife of 41 years and doing research and writing.

In the US another controversy brews. It seems that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, the New Yorker Magazine reported. In an article for its April 7 edition, which will go on sale tomorrow, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.

"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."

It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.

"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying. Rumsfeld is known to have a difficult relationship with the Army's upper echelons while he commands strong loyalty from U.S. special operations forces, a key component in the war. He has insisted the invasion has made good progress since it was launched , despite unexpected guerrilla-style attacks on long supply lines from Kuwait. Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the article said.

"The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive," the former official said.
The article quoted the senior planner as saying Rumsfeld had wanted to "do the war on the cheap" and believed that precision bombing would bring victory. As this war is turning out, the wind is blowing toward the senior generals’ POV as 125000 more US troops are sent to Iraq.Unfortunately this war will not ultimately be about saving Private Ryan.

Yesterday in Britain, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from the government in protest at military action in Iraq, called for British troops to be pulled out of the war in the Gulf.

"I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war. I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed," Cook wrote in the Sunday Mirror newspaper. His article was released in advance of publication. Cook resigned as Leader of the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, on March 17, three days before Britain went to war alongside the United States. The former minister maintains that he stepped down because he could not accept responsibility for British involvement in Iraq without international backing. He is the most high profile government member to call for troops to be brought home.

Cook also criticized US President George W Bush for starting the war on the assumption that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army would quickly capitulate and victory would be swift.

"Nobody should start a war on the assumption that the enemy's army will co-operate. But that is exactly what President Bush has done," he added. He warned of the dangers of besieging the Iraqi capital Baghdad and urged the US army to consider other tactics.

"There is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege. People go hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of a city snap. Children die," he maintained. “There will be a long term legacy of hatred for the West if the Iraqi people continue to suffer from the effects of the war we started.”

Cook's resignation was one of the biggest political blows of the Iraq crisis for Blair, who suffered a massive rebellion within his own Labor party on the parliamentary vote to go to war.

It seems however, that the war will inevitably have to be fought on the streets of Baghdad and casualties in both sides would be heavy. At this stage of the war, it is doubtful that anyone in power would pull back from this campaign. According to US polls, the vast majority of Americans who support this war expect casualties between 200 and 500 US lives. An urban warfare in Baghdad and Basra will cost far more. I hope the American public is psychologically ready for the return of the body bags.

Today, in a departure from my normal ramblings, I have a treat for you. I would like to reproduce a short piece by Azar Nafizi.

Words of War--Azar Nafisi--Dateline March 27,2003

These days I am often asked what I did in Tehran as bombs fell during the Iran-Iraq war.My
interlocutors are invariably surprised, if not shocked, when I tell them that I read James, Eliot, Plath and great Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez. Yet it is precisely during such times, when our lives are transformed by violence, that we need works of imagination to confirm our faith in humanity, to find hope amid the rubble of a hopeless world. Memoirs from concentration camps and the gulag attest to this. I keep returning to the words of LeonStaff, a Polish poet who lived in the Warsaw ghetto: "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all."

I think back to the eight-year war with Iraq, a time when days and nights seemed indistinguishable, and were reduced to the sound of the siren, warning us of the next air attack. I often reminded my students at Allameh Tabatabai University that while guns roared and the Winter Palace was stormed, Nabokov sat at his desk writing poetry.

My Tehran classroom at times overflowed with students who ignored the warnings about Iraq's chemical bombs so they could reckon with Tolstoy's ability to defamiliarize (a term coined by the Russian Formalist critics)everyday reality and offer it to us through new eyes. The excitement that came from discovering a hidden truth about "Anna Karenina" told me that Iraqi missiles had not succeeded in their mission. Indeed, the more Saddam Hussein wanted us to be defined by terror, the more we craved beauty.

If I felt compelled to keep re-reading the classics, it was in order to see the light in the eyes of my students. I remember two young women, clad from head to toe in black chadors, looking as if nothing in the world mattered more than the idea that "Pride and Prejudice" was subversive
because it taught us about our right to make our own choices.

Among my scribbled notes from those days, I found a quote from Saul Bellow about writers in the Soviet work camps. To my friends in the United States who are skeptical about the importance of imagination in times of war, let me share his words: "Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place - the foreground."

And so a new war has begun, though this time it is my adopted country and not the country of my birth that is fighting Iraq. Nothing will replace the lives lost. Still, I will take some comfort now as I did then by opening a book.

Azar Nafisi, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."