December 29,2004 - There were moments in 2004 when the British foreign secretary’s famously despairing cry on the eve of World War I—"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime"—seemed to acquire a global resonance. As Palestinians battled Israeli tanks with brickbats, Afghans voted with one eye on the poppy fields and another on the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, the country’s most powerful man, and Iraqis died in their thousands, it seemed a clash of civilisations was indeed upon us. Muslim disaffection extended from Indonesia through the Indian subcontinent into Europe.

That fear remains. But when the massacres of 1914 are compared with the bloodshed of 90 years later, it becomes apparent that no shadow is so dark as to obscure all light. Just as Europe’s lamps shone brighter than ever after 1918, so too did hope blossom in the year under review. I refer to the turmoil in Iraq. Death and destruction are always to be deplored. But like Israeli shoppers blown up by suicide-bombers or young American GIs who meet their end in the desert sands, Iraqis are caught in a dilemma not of their making. The choice for Arabs is between traditional despotism and Islamic fundamentalism. The more preferable alternative of democracy ceases to be an option when it is thrust down their gullets at the point of foreign bayonets. Iraq’s continuing resistance—the West calls it insurgency—reflects this anguish. The message: another Asian nation is standing by its right to choose its own future.
It was predicted last year that Saddam’s capture had broken Iraq’s spirit: with their leader behind bars, the people would meekly surrender. Now it’s said that this hasn’t happened because the minority Sunnis are trying to claw back to power, because Baathists resent their loss of privilege and because discredited institutions like the Republican Guard are behind it all. When all else fails, Osama bin Laden’s shadowy legions are blamed for continuing hostilities in Fallujah, the car bombs and ambushes elsewhere.

There may be some truth in each explanation. But no matter how many foreign jehadis there might be, the invaders would not have been trapped in such a quagmire if the local population did not support the resistance to the hilt. Probably the only exceptions are those Iraqis who benefit directly from the nominal administration of former exiles propped up by the Americans.

Always the focus of Arab nationalism, Iraq has known foreign rule before. The British occupied it in 1918 and foisted another exile —Emir Faisal of the Hejaz—on Iraqis as king. Winston Churchill called the puppet monarchy "the best and cheapest solution" for a land that was rich in oil and commanded the route to India. Faisal resignedly described himself as "an instrument of British policy". Then too the Iraqis were angry and rebellious. They rose in bloody revolt in 1920, and Britain’s Royal Air Force had to put down no fewer than 130 uprisings between 1921 and 1932. Eventually, Faisal’s reluctant subjects butchered his grandson in 1958.

Clearly, the US learnt nothing from this bloody sequence. It has learnt nothing either from its own trauma in Vietnam which ended with the humiliating spectacle of an ambassador with the Stars and Stripes bundled in a plastic bag, waiting on a rooftop to be rescued by helicopter. A wiser imperium would have left Iraq to god and anarchy.

There is no need to labour too much on George Bush’s re-election. True, it means the neo-conservative lobby has been invigorated for another term. But another president would probably have made as little difference as Colin Powell’s replacement by Condoleezza Rice has done. Heady on a new variant of the American Dream, Washington is determined to grasp what it sees as its ordained destiny ever since the Soviet Union collapsed.

The star of the year, therefore, is not the US but Iraq.It is there that history was made in 2004 and is still being made. However much the violence is to be condemned, what means other than guerrilla warfare is open to the victim of conquest? What other response is possible to the brutality of Abu Ghraib or the unknown horrors of Guantanamo Bay? Iraqi tactics are neither new nor especially grim. This was how Spain repulsed Napoleon who called the Peninsular campaign "a running sore"; this is how every invaded nation in history has fought back against a powerful invader. It just happens that the targets are usually local collaborators because the enemy is so well-shielded.

As more US troops are despatched for a meaningless election whose outcome will be even more short-lived than the Hashemite monarchy, Iraq at war teaches the rest of Asia the meaning of nationalism.


(The author, ex-editor of The Statesman, has written Waiting for America: India and the United States in the New Millennium)