CurrenT aFFairs

one degree or another in the multinational force of about 300,000 personnel. With the exception of the British and Australians, most had no combat role and were little more than token forces to keep Bush happy and allow him to boast of his “coalition of the willing”. To call the states which helped give Bush’s war legitimacy “willing” is very misleading. Some were coerced and pressured into voting for the US plan at the UN. Geraldo Munoz, Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations, alleges in his book, “A Solitary War”, that the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries that refused to support the invasion of Iraq, spied on its allies and demanded the recall of UN ambassadors who spoke out against the US plan. Such bare-knuckle diplomacy left a “lasting bitterness” and “deep mistrust” of Washington in Latin America, Europe and elsewhere, Munoz wrote, even though the administration later changed its tune when things started going badly in Iraq. Now it’s payback time. At least 16 of the nations that signed up for the coalition have pulled out their troops, including Japan, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. A total of 20 nations – such as Mongolia, El Salvador, Romania and Czech Republic – remain in the coalition, but few actually have troops there (none in any meaningful numbers) and those that do have them deployed are in non-combat support or reconstruction roles under US protection. Most of these states signed up to the coalition for access to US largesse. In 2003, the non-American component of the multinational force was 50,000 strong. By mid-2008, it will be below 7,000. Britain, which had some 40,000 troops in Iraq in 2003, the second largest contingent after the Americans, now has only some 4,000 men on the ground. And former UK prime minister Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, wants to reduce that

each withdrawal by countries that have supported the americans diminishes the international legitimacy of the us-led occupation and provides a measuring stick of how support is ebbing

2,500 and to limit the mission to training Iraqi forces rather than fighting insurgents. The war is widely unpopular in Britain – around 180 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the second highest fatality toll after the Americans, who have lost 4,000 military personnel. Brown’s efforts are clearly predicated on domestic politics and he hopes to have all British troops out of southern Iraq, their main area of operations, before the next parliamentary elections. The withdrawal of the British from the oil-rich south will mean that US forces, already over-extended, will have to fill the gap because the south is the primary overland supply route to the Americans from Kuwait. Around 70% of US supplies are shipped through the south. The Australian politician who ousted John Howard, one of Bush’s most faithful friends, in November 2007, Kevin Rudd of the Labour Party, has pledged that Australia will remain America’s most reliable ally. It’s the only country to have fought alongside the US in every major conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries. But Rudd has said he will withdraw Australia’s combat forces, primarily the 515-strong Overwatch Battle Group based in southern Iraq, by June. However, a 100-strong security team and a similar number of military trainers will remain in Baghdad, while a 1,000-strong combat force will remain in violence-torn southern Afghanistan. Denmark withdrew its 460-strong contingent from the southern city of Basra in August 2007, and replaced it with a small helicopter unit. The country’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is the only one of the world leaders who went along with Bush’s rush to invade Iraq in 2003 to remain in office. In a recent newspaper interview, Rasmussen admitted that he and other national leaders had got it wrong when they believed that “foreign troops would be welcomed with open arms like liberators”, as Bush and his cohorts had said. Spain, a staunch supporter of Bush’s war in 2003, withdrew its forces from Iraq after jihadists linked to Al Qaeda, mostly Moroccans and other North Africans, carried out the multiple bombing of commuter trains in Madrid on 11 March, 2004, killing 191 people, the day before parliamentary elections. The carnage brought down the government of hawkish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar even though he had been cruising towards an easy victory at the polls. His successor, Jose Luis Zapatero, pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq. The government of South Korea, a longtime US ally, is grappling with growing opposition to its deployment of 1,200 soldiers

(down from 3,600), but President Roh Moohyun appears to have acquiesced to heavy pressure from the White House to keep his forces in Iraq. The deployment was extended for a year in October 2007, but Roh is likely to have to bow to the wishes of his electorate eventually. Hardly any of these troop withdrawals are likely to make much difference militarily, as among the allies only Britain had a significant security role. But each withdrawal by countries that have supported the Americans diminishes the international legitimacy of the US-led occupation and provides a measuring stick of how support for the US presence is steadily ebbing. It also leaves the Americans in a quandary: They have come to understand that they cannot, even as a superpower, stand alone, but they have yet to find a post-Cold War, post-9/11 coalition structure that is cohesive and dependable – which means the US can muster little support in terms of boots on the ground in its confrontation with Iran and Syria. As the worsening crisis in Afghanistan shows, even the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and others, such as Australia, which have fielded some 43,000 troops there, is no longer the force it was during the Cold War when the enemy was the Soviets’ conventional military machine rather than the hit-and-run insurgents with which it now has to grapple. As the crisis in Afghanistan deteriorates amid Taliban resurgence, due in large part to the sanctuaries it has found in the wild tribal zones along the border in neighbouring Pakistan, the US-led coalition there is fraying badly. The Americans lay the blame on what the Bush administration sees as Nato’s failure to mount an effective counter-insurgency campaign. In the Nato operational zone, most of the fighting is being done by the British, Canadian and Dutch contingents. As the violence worsens, Nato forces face waning public support in most of the nations that contribute to the UN-sanctioned International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was established in summer 2003. According to UN sources only about half the 43,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan are allowed to engage in combat: US, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers do most of the fighting, while troops from France, Germany and elsewhere are sidelined by restrictions imposed by their governments. The US has 15,000 troops serving with the Nato-led ISAF and an additional 14,000 in separate counter-terrorism and training missions. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and senior US military command

8 The Middle easT June 2008