Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is the anniversary of 9-11—of course, the illogical trigger for the attack on Iraq. It is also the day that General Petraeus told congress that the goal of a self-sustaining Iraq would be neither quick nor easy. He said that the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met but that the violence is still at a troubling level and that Iraqi forces are sustaining tough losses. General Petraeus’s report was seen by the Democrats in the US congress to be compromised, but what is happening in the US is something that does not happen here in Australia.

Our Prime Minister admitted, just last week, that Australia went to war against Iraq for the sake of our alliance with the United States. Apparently this allows the government to avoid all scrutiny and blame for the disaster that is Iraq. It has no idea how many civilian deaths there have been over the last four years and has not asked. It did not make any attempt to verify the claims that there were no weapons of mass destruction and, just this week, we understand Israel warned America against attacking Iraq, saying that Iran was the real enemy. It is hard to believe the Australian government was not also told this and it did not bother to ask.

The United States Government Accountability Office reported this week that, of the 18 legislative, security and economic benchmarks that were established in January this year, only three were met, four were only partially met and the remaining 11 were not met at all.

As I understand it, the Iraqi parliament is no longer meeting, after 17 of the 38 members of cabinet walked out, including all the Sunnis and members from the two big Shia factions. It has yet to pass legislation the US wants, such as bills on ‘de-Baathification’—that is, allowing the Baathists back into government—oil revenue sharing, provincial elections, amnesty and militia disarmaments. The oil bill is one that gives global oil companies control over Iraq’s oil reserves and has been hugely unpopular in both the parliament and the public arena, generating yet more anti-US anger. The Iraqi government has not eliminated militia control of local security, has not eliminated political intervention in military operations, has not ensured even-handed enforcement of the law and has not increased army units. It cannot allocate and spend the $10 billion available for reconstruction.

All of this begs this question: do the Iraqi government have the capacity to do all this? They have inherited a country the invasion of which wiped out most of the infrastructure and which was then occupied. Sectarian violence is still killing people daily, ethnic cleansing occurs in neighbourhood after neighbourhood and their parliament no longer functions. Four million Iraqis have fled, including most of the teachers, doctors, civil servants and businesspeople. The number of Iraqi security forces capable of conducting independent operations has declined and the militias have not been disarmed. Australia stood by and watched the United States disband the Iraqi army, leaving 400,000 men destitute and no doubt very angry. But these were men who were trained as combatants and who were armed and dangerous. If they did not hang on to their arms, then insurgents probably did. The US lost 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80,000 pistols that were supposedly supplied to Iraqi security forces. Australia and the UK were partners in this coalition of the willing and either they turned a blind eye to the stupid mistakes made in this ill-conceived invasion or their partnership had no meaning other than the political symbolism of being there.

The four years, the deployment of 162,000 US troops and the spending of nearly $370 billion have clearly not created an environment where all these benchmarks are achievable. It is fair to say that General Petraeus has been called in to find an acceptable way out of a disastrous situation. He says that, without risking the security gains of the surge, small reductions in troops would be possible. A unit of 2,000 marines could be sent home later this month, and the brigade combat teams could be out by August 2008. Petraeus did not, however, say how much longer the remaining 130,000 US troops would have to stay in Iraq in order to stabilize the country. There are of course an additional 100,000 contractors and thousands of military vehicles and weapons in 100 bases around the country.

There are 18,000 detainees held by US forces, most of them Sunnis. Unemployment and underemployment affect half the population, and oil exports were down to less than half the $55 billion that they were worth in 1980. The chief US diplomat in Iraq, Mr Brian Crocker, who analysed Iraq’s political state, told congress committee hearings yesterday that the political goals were attainable, but he too would not give a time line for success and acknowledged that the lack of progress was deeply frustrating. He said:

It is no exaggeration to say that Iraq is, and will remain for some time to come, a traumatized society.

According to an article in the Financial Times last month, there are no political institutions and no national narrative. Ministries are sectarian booty and factional bastions. The interior ministry, headquarters for several death squads, is partitioned into factional fiefdoms on each of its 11 floors, with the seventh floor split between the armed wings of the two US allied groups.

The Shia majority was empowered by the invasion, giving the sect—a dispossessed minority within Islam—rights denied them for centuries, but they have broken into factions now. The invasion has created large numbers of Shia and Sunni jihadists that probably did not need any assistance from Iran.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Tina Susman reports on Amil and Bayaa, two middle-class neighbourhoods of Baghdad where 160 bodies have been found since May—men tortured and shot. In these suburbs of Baghdad, Shias and Sunnis once lived happily together without conflict. The Sunnis have now been killed or driven out. The Iraqi security forces are complicit, according to residents, and the US forces are powerless to stop the violence. Scores of people have died in car bombings and others have been assassinated or abducted. The Shia militia took to the streets after the May bombings, which police and residents blamed on Sunni Arab militants. A loudspeaker on a Sunni mosque called for Shiites to be attacked and bombs began appearing outside Shia homes.

The Iraqi army does nothing to stop these attacks. Residents say that they stay at checkpoints on main roads and do not go inside dangerous neighbourhoods. People who witness crimes are afraid to speak up. This fear, mixed with bitterness over bombings, is turning everyone into silent conspirators. In these neighbourhoods there is no electricity, no running water and no means to buy fuel for their generators. This is the mess that is Iraq, and Australia has to share some of the responsibility for it. Doing more of the same for another four years will not work any more than it has over the last four years. Our government has no exit strategy and if it does not create one soon it will be left waving goodbye to the US troops as the pressure on the Bush administration forces a withdrawal. It has to be time to call in help from countries in the region and the United Nations. We need to start talking. We need to reach agreement on a way forward in the damaged country that Iraq now is.