'On the brink of anarchy'

2004-04-06 07:56

London - Iraq is in danger of sliding into chaos, as US-led forces face increasingly bloody battles against both the Sunni community and the country's previously less hostile Shiite Muslims, British newspapers warned on Tuesday.

"On the brink of anarchy," was the identical front-page headline chosen by the left-leaning Guardian and Independent newspapers, both of which opposed Britain's support for the military intervention in Iraq.

Even papers which backed the conflict carried dire warnings about what might happen following deadly clashes between US troops and supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who is wanted by coalition forces for murder.

"The spectre of chaos looms large over Iraq," the right-wing Daily Telegraph said in a signed editorial by one of its opinion writers.

Around 50 people died in fighting on Sunday as US troops continued to battle Sadr's supporters in Baghdad.

Contractors

Also on Monday, US marines launched a major offensive in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, after four American contractors were brutally murdered last week in the predominantly Sunni town, a hotbed of opposition to the coalition.

The unrest risks derailing the coalition's planned transfer of Iraq's sovereignty back to its people on June 30.

British papers warned that the scale of the violence posed a whole new set of problems for the US-led coalition, and they prescribed a series of remedies.

"None of these actions even pretends to be concerned with winning hearts or minds," the Guardian, in an editorial column, said of the US military offensives.

"Britain should be arguing that Washington's interests, as well as those of the Iraqis, are best served by a genuine transfer of control which would attract international support from the coalition of the so far unwilling."

Neutral

Even the business-based Financial Times, which has taken a far more neutral stance towards the war, stressed that troops and helicopters were not enough alone.

"A purely military response will not get the US out of its hole," it said in its editorial.

The Independent recommended that the June 30 deadline be reconsidered.

"Even without US actions to try and clear the decks in preparation, the deadline was bound to set off a jostling for position among the various factions," it argued.

In contrast, the Times took the contrary view, calling any revision to the timetable "unwise".

"The present deadline is tight, but it has also had the merit of concentrating minds," it said, calling the threat from Sadr and his backers "not of a scale that warrants a drastic revision of current plans".

But most important of all, according to the Daily Telegraph, was that US and British forces remained in the country, saying that to abandon Iraq now would plunge it into strife.

"We would have a failed state in spades, which would in turn provide a breeding ground and operational base for terrorism," it said.

- AFP