'Made in Israel' Crackdowns in Iraq Won't Work by Helena Cobban

Thursday, December 11, 2003
Christian Science Monitor

In recent weeks, many US military units in Iraq have turned from
trying to win Iraqi "hearts and minds" to a "get tough" policy that
explicitly copies many moves from the playbook used by the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) in the West Bank and Gaza. These moves include
demolition of homes of suspects, imposition of stifling movement
controls and other collective punishments on civilians, and the
frequent use of excessive force. Tactics like these are unethical
under any moral code, and illegal under the Fourth Geneva
Convention. In addition, their adoption is shortsighted. In Israel
itself, many leading strategic thinkers now openly admit that the
IDF's three-year-long pursuit of these tactics has still not
"convinced" the Palestinians to end their defiance of Israel's
will. (It is also tragic that US commanders moved to these
antihumanitarian and antidemocratic measures at the same time
President Bush issued his call for the spread of democracy throughout
the Arab world.) In Israel, criticism of the country's get-tough
policies toward Palestinians has been voiced by four former heads of
the country's Shin Bet security agency - and also by Gen. Moshe Yaalon
who, as sitting IDF chief of staff, is the man in charge of
implementing all the IDF's policies. In late October, Mr. Yaalon
voiced a rare public criticism of the civilian leaders whose mandate
he is sworn to follow. He told reporters that the IDF's unrelenting
use of tough tactics in the occupied territories, "increases hatred
for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations." He added, "In
our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic
interest." In the US military, several planners and commanders have
been taking lessons in tactics from the IDF. In July, for example,
Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, a deputy chief of staff at the US Army
Training and Doctrine Command, wrote in a letter to Army Magazine that
he had recently traveled to Israel "to glean lessons learned from
their counterterrorist operations in urban areas."

But so far, US commanders on the ground in Iraq seem not to have
learned of Ya'alon's important insight that decisions that seem sound
at the tactical level can add up to a setback at the broader level of
national strategy. One US colonel overseeing movement controls around
a village north of Baghdad explained to The New York Times how he
thinks the new tough policy will work: "With a heavy dose of fear and
violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince
these people that we are here to help them." I don't underestimate the
challenge the US commanders face in Iraq. A recent poll organized by a
British company found that only 21 percent of Iraqis said they had
"quite a lot" of trust in the US and British forces there. The rest
all described their trust level as "not very much," or "none at all."
The get-tough policies are only likely to make things worse. The US
commanders in Iraq are trying to do their best in an almost impossible
situation. In March, the military was ordered by its civilian bosses
to undertake a rapid advance into Iraq with a small, mobile force -
and with the expectation that Saddam Hussein's regime would fall and
the Iraqi people would greet them with open arms. Hussein's regime
fell. But the attitudes of most Iraqis toward the US forces have been
much more complex than expected, and the force levels there have never
been enough to assure public security or the restoration of basic
services. At this point, the situation has become so tense that it is
unlikely that merely increasing the force levels could solve the
problem. Anyway, the US has no additional forces to spare, and few or
no other countries look ready to add their troops. The only way
forward, then, is for President Bush and his advisers to act seriously
on all their fine rhetoric about the need for a rapid transition to
Iraqi self-government.

Can the US-dominated occupation force oversee this transition smoothly
and successfully? The evidence so far all says "no." If not the US,
who? Only the United Nations has the experience and the legitimacy to
play this absolutely vital leadership role. Yes, a transitional UN
political leadership in Iraq might still have some reliance on US
forces. But those forces would no longer be trapped in self-defeating,
made-in-Israel paradigms of using "fear and violence."

They would be working alongside Iraqis and experienced UN
democracy-builders as partners, not intimidators. The Iraq Census
Bureau says it could produce a decent national voter roll by next
September. But to have genuine elections - whether in Iraq or the West
Bank - people need freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom
of association. Those are freedoms we should all support.

They are quite incompatible with get-tough military occupation.

Helena Cobban is the author of five books on international issues
including
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813919878/commondreams-20
The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss Our
Global Future