Saddam or not, they just don't want us there
(Filed: 16/11/2003)

The parallels between the recent US action against Iraq and the
British invasion in 1920 are disturbingly close, but nobody seems to
have noticed, writes John Simpson

The greatest military power on earth marched into Iraq, utterly
confident that the Iraqi people would welcome it. Within weeks, a
major uprising had begun and it was forced to start negotiating a way
out. Not the Americans in 2003, but the British in 1920. The parallels
are disturbingly close, and seem mostly to have gone unnoticed.

At the end of the First World War Britain, brimming with
over-confidence, twisted the arm of the League of Nations to give it a
mandate over territory carved from the Turkish empire and called
"Iraq". The British wanted the new country's oil, and they assumed
that everybody there wanted to be governed by them.

With remarkable speed, the British Mandate officials realised that it
wasn't going to work, and that they would have to set up a government
of Iraqis which they could hand the country over to: the first example
- apart from America itself, of course - of a British possession
achieving full independence.

The uprising against them affected every part of Iraq. One hundred
thousand people died, and the British only managed to hang on to power
by rushing in the Indian army.

As the rebellion continued for several years, the British were
sometimes disgustingly brutal. Winston Churchill advised the RAF to
bomb recalcitrant Kurdish villages with poison gas, which it duly did;
thereby establishing a dubious historical precedent.

Iraq eventually achieved full independence in 1932. Its educational
system, its roads, its communications all gained remarkably as a
result of the 12-year British presence, but the British themselves
were not wanted. The one thing that the Iraqis share is a stubborn
sense of pride in themselves, and a dislike of being pushed around by
outsiders.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his
deputy at the Pentagon, allowed themselves to suggest that most Iraqis
were longing for the arrival of American troops and the creation of an
American link. Not so.

In 1920 there was, of course, no Saddam Hussein figure. This is the
second war in two years which the Americans have fought against a
personalised enemy, without managing to catch either of them.

A year ago we were assured in some over-credulous newspaper and
magazine articles that Osama bin Laden was unquestionably dead; last
month the CIA said that the latest tape from him, condemning the
goings-on in Iraq, was probably genuine.

Now that President Bush has done his U-turn and decided to hand over
to an Iraqi administration sooner rather than later, the appalling
possibility exists that the Americans will do a runner while leaving
Saddam in a position to influence things still.

But where is he? Combining information from several well-informed
sources, I think we can venture the following: he is in the desert to
the west or north-west of Baghdad, within striking reach of the
Jordanian and Syrian borders, and is being protected by the Bedouin
tribes that he cultivated so assiduously while he was in power.

This is a vast area, with only four or five roads crossing it. Any
force of armoured vehicles or helicopters setting out to get him would
be spotted long before it arrived.

In case of attack, he probably has the option of hiding in a small
underground bunker which was built during the 1990s. The architect who
designed it and the labourers who built it will all have been disposed
of afterwards, Mafia-style, and only Saddam and perhaps two or three
of his closest associates will know where it is.

It will be stocked with enough supplies to keep them going for years,
together - we can be sure - with a short-wave radio set. Saddam has
always been an assiduous listener and viewer of the BBC; as I found to
my own cost before this last war started.

So is he masterminding the campaign against the American presence?
Probably not; after all, like Osama bin Laden, his one great strategic
advantage is that he is still alive and uncaught, and if he is
constantly meeting people in the underground movement, he'll be
betrayed at some point. It is much more likely that his deputy, Izzat
Ibrahim, controls the resistance from his hiding-place in eastern
Syria.

Most of the resistance is instinctive rather than organised, and much
of it isn't even pro-Saddam. It's just that, as in 1920, large numbers
of Iraqis want to be left alone.

If Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had done a little light
historical reading beforehand, they might have thought twice about
following exactly what the British did, 83 years before.

. John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor