Why I turned against the war

Adrian Blomfield went to Baghdad as a strong believer in regime change. Now he thinks that Bush has messed up in Iraq — and should be booted out of the White House

Nairobi . he other day, shortly after

returning from a longish stint in Iraq on behalf of the Daily Telegraph, I had dinner with a staunch Republican friend at a r—r

restaurant here. I was expecting a stern rebuke, and she did not disappoint. 'I thought you were fairly unbiased,' she said. 'Yet your stories became increasingly focused on the attacks. Why didn't you write about the good things, about how Americans troops are building schools and restoring services?'

Many of those intending to vote for President Bush next week would share my chum's frustrations. They believe there is a conspiracy, perpetrated by the undoubtedly liberal-dominated press, to bury the good news and report only on the had in an effort to make sure he is not re-elected.

Do they have a point? The difference between the despondency of media reports from Iraq and the optimism of the press releases put out by US military command in Baghdad certainly could not be starker.

My inbox is filled with emails from a Sgt Steve Valley at the Coalition Press Information Center bearing cheery headlines such as 'Iraqi Children Get a Kick out of Donation', 'Winning Hearts by Filling Stomachs' and 'Another Precision Strike in Fallujah'. Sgt Valley, who signs off his emails with the words 'Cowboy Up', recounts heart-warming tales of brave American soldiers handing out soccer balls to children, delivering food to poor mothers and rebuilding schools, clinics and playgrounds. The interim Iraqi government sees things Sgt Valley's way. Addressing a joint session of Congress in September, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was profuse in his praise of the US-led invasion and announced that, while there were a few problems in three of Iraq's provinces, things were pretty much hunkydory in the other 15.

Yet the Western press is daily filled with disheartening stories of suicide bombings, allegations of American bungling and the denouncements of furious Iraqis. Our television screens show grim images of dustcovered children being pulled out of the rubble after raids in Fallujah, or panicked civilians fleeing the latest suicide bombing in Baghdad, Mosul, Baqubah or a host of other towns and cities. As we all know, had news sells papers. Most foreign correspondents lean left and some may even twist the truth, especially if they think that by doing so they may lose Mr Bush the election. Indeed, there are a few reporters in Baghdad who do greet each atrocity with unbecoming glee for that very reason, as my colleague Toby Harnden reported in these pages in May. But the majority of journalists do not, I believe, put a liberal spin on their reporting, if only because there is no real need to. The situation in Iraq, despite what the military command and government would have you believe, is unrelentingly grim — if not everywhere, then at least in a large proportion of the country.

Before I flew into Iraq in early June, I — like the editor of this magazine — was uneasy about what was happening, but believed the war to be right. As someone born and raised in Africa, the issue for me was not so much whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (though I assumed the British and American governments knew something they weren't telling us) but whether the country was better off without him. I wasn't convinced that the Iraqi regime had much to do with al-Qa'eda, and accepted that an invasion would be a diversion from the real war on terror. But I did savour the words 'regime change'.

For far too long Western countries have sat back or even lent a hand as African dictators imprisoned, tortured and murdered their opponents. During the Cold War, Washington and London pumped in money to support venal regimes like those of Mobutu Sese-Seko in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Idi Amin in Uganda and even our own Daniel arap Moi in Kenya. So the idea of a dictator getting his comeuppance rather than retiring to a villa in the Cote d'Azur was appealing. I was not quite so naive as to assume that the American and British navies would soon be steaming into the Indian Ocean to prepare for an assault on Robert Mugabe. But I did think that it would be harder to ignore the excesses of such men without being accused of hypocrisy.

When I arrived in Baghdad, I was initially encouraged. The place seemed normal. The streets were busy, clogged with traffic and the shops and restaurants were open. People seemed to be getting on with life. Sure, there were signs of war and occupation here and there: patrols of US Hurnvees; Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Abrams tanks; concrete barricades topped with razor wire and warnings scrawled on the barriers — 'Do not stop here, or you will be shot' But there was less bomb damage than I had expected and fewer explosions. My only problem, to start with, was that I could not seem to find an Iraqi with a good word to say about the Americans.

On my second Friday in the city I visited Mutanabbi Street in the heart of Baghdad's intellectual quarter. Surely here they would be grateful for having been liberated. The weekly book market was in full swing and the reading matter that lined both sides of the winding alleyway would have made Saddam blanch: Shia religious texts, communist tomes, plays that satirised the former dictator and his sons, even the odd slightly racy novel. Most of the booksellers seemed to have been imprisoned or tortured by Saddam's ghastly secret service, the Mukhabarat.

I fell in with Sarni al-Mutaily, a one-eyed Trotskyite poet (the other had been gouged out by the Mukhabarat). We went for a cup of coffee at the famous Shahbandar cafe at the top of the street. As we listened to excited debates on political theories, I turned to Sami and said: 'You and your friends must have been pretty delighted with the US invasion.' He stared at me as though I were mad. 'But look at this place,' I insisted. 'You're free to talk about what you want and nobody is going to lock you up. Surely things are better than they were.'

'Of course we are glad Saddam has gone,' Sami replied gravely. 'But things are worse in many ways now. Then, if you stuck your neck out you got clobbered. Now it's indiscriminate and everyone is affected.'

Sami was right. As the weeks progressed, the attacks escalated. The number of explosions I could hear from my hotel jumped from about two a day to about 15. Suicide bombings claimed more and more lives. Najaf and the southern Shia cities again rose up at the bidding of Muqtada al-Sadr, the spoilt, portly young cleric who drew to his cause the hopeless and the dispossessed.

But Iraqis were not just being killed by insurgents or foreign fighters. In a hospital in Sadr City, the sprawling Shia slum in northern Baghdad that is home to perhaps half the city's population, I watched as, in the space of an hour, six young children were brought in. They were smeared in blood, screaming in agony and terror, faeces dribbling from their bowels. They were victims of the 1st US Cavalry Division, sent to quell the fighting raging around us. Outside the hospital an old man, surrounded by four small coffins, wailed at the loss of all his children struck by a shell fired from an American tank.

During the course of one week, the Telegraph's chief driver and office manag

er, brother and sister, lost six relatives two in a suicide bombing in Baqubah, four mowed down by a US tank as they drove back to Baghdad.

In an opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute at the end of September, Iraqis were asked the following question: in the past year and a half, has your household been directly affected by violence in terms of death, handicap or significant monetary loss? Over one in five, 22 per cent, replied yes. A Western security company working for the Coalition estimates that there are about 80 insurgent attacks a day in Iraq. Barely a week goes by when one of Iraq's 18 provinces escapes an attack.

It is true that the Americans have refurbished 3,500 schools and built 70 healthcare centres, but such positive developments are overwhelmed by the violence and lawlessness that grip Iraq every day. We hear a lot about the abduction of foreign nationals. More than 150 have been taken and more than 30 executed. But what of the thousands of Iraqis who have also been kidnapped for ransom? Schools may have been built, but many Iraqi mothers are too afraid to send their children to them lest they too are seized.

My stint as a reporter in Iraq showed me where America went wrong. Listening to his closest advisers — Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith — President Bush went into Iraq not with a postwar reconstruction plan but with a theory. Iraq was to be an experiment in imposing unfettered capitalism on what had effectively been a socialist command economy. Taxation and tariffs were more or less abandoned. Unable to compete, Iraqi businessmen watched as Bechtel, Halliburton and their kind took over, and invested instead in the insurgency. Iraqi doctors and engineers, who could expect no more than $200 a month, watched in disbelief as foreigners were brought in as drivers on $10,000 a month. Where once most Iraqis could at least find casual work, now nearly 60 per cent are unemployed. Proconsul Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, though it was from its ranks that most of the assassination attempts on Saddam and his execrable sons were launched. Many soldiers have since joined the rebels. Most of the civil service was given the heave-ho too, including 12,000 teachers who would have been useful in those refurbished schools. Mr Bush deployed only half the number of troops his commanders asked for. As a result, he has exposed the men who are in Iraq to further danger, while robbing them of any realistic chance to stymie the insurgency.

But that does not explain everything. Whitehall often made the most idiotic decisions during the first half of the last century, but the Empire held together, largely because of the work of district officers in remote locations. I am continually astounded, when venturing out into northern Kenya or southern Sudan, by the wizened half-naked gentlemen who approach me to reminisce about the young white man who lived among them for three years, spoke their tribal tongue and dispensed Her Majesty's justice. The young men sent out from America are not cast in the same mould. Do not get me wrong: they are, by and large, incredibly brave, But because of their poor education and an American tendency towards parochialism, they have little understanding of any culture other than their own. Most are terrified of the Iraqis and bewildered by the lack of gratitude of the people they believe they liberated. While embedded with the US marines outside Fallujah, I saw these young men kick Iraqis to the ground during interrogation, stomp across prayer mats in their boots, eye up women in their homes and routinely humiliate the Iraqi guardsmen they are supposedly working with.

Their behaviour is in some ways understandable. Forbidden from entering Fallujah until after the US elections (for fear that civilian casualties could cost votes) the marines launch pointless raids outside the town that rarely uncover anything. In the meantime remotely detonated mines, suicide bombings and mortar attacks claim more of their colleagues' lives.

The 'cowboy up' school of politics has been given a chance. It has failed. Whether the unimpressive-looking John Kerry will do any better is beside the point. The cowboy has messed up in Iraq, the policy on which he has centred over half his reign. Americans should punish him accordingly.