All is not well in Iraq on all fronts.

A new resolution has just been passed by the UN Security Council, giving mandate to the US-led occupation forces to implement a reconstruction plan that would include the setting up of a timetable for drawing up a new constitution and for holding elections in Iraq.

The unanimous adoption of the new resolution may have appeared to end one of the most acrimonious incidents in the short history of the UN, but I doubt it will do much to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunate people of Iraq in any meaningful manner in the near future..

For countries like France and Germany, as well as many anti-war movements all over the globe, President Bush has now eaten his humble pie, by going back to the UN to seek moral legitimacy and material assistance in the post-war reconstruction effort. It is only natural that they should feel vindicated in their earlier insistence before the war, that the UN is the most relevant body to resolve international conflicts, and that US unilateralist invasion and occupation of Iraq would not have been legitimate anyway.

Nevertheless, like many untenable compromises that grew out of the eternal squabbling among the five permanent members of the Security Council, this new resolution would seem to be condemned to miserable failure.

Many regard the kind of political structure that is going to be imposed on Iraq as another instance of Pax America. Others wonder about the real existence of a workable reconstruction plan, especially when the Coalition Provisional Authority has decided to strip Iraq of all her assets through a move to sell sectors of the Iraqi economy to multinational companies.

With all vested and national interests in the way of a genuine international effort to aid the people of Iraq, we are unlikely to see a flood of foreign troops and reconstruction funds into that unfortunate country in the near future. The mood is, as one EU diplomat put it: "Those who broke Iraq are going to have to put it back together."

The prospects for an Iraq "donors' conference" in Madrid on 23 and 24 October do not look promising. Many donor nations are already suffering from compassion-fatigue, having gone through the ambiguous experience of reconstructing Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban regime.

Therefore, it looks as if the main burden of the Iraq reconstruction project will be borne by the US taxpayers, who are being asked to cough up US$ 20 billion. The UK government has pledged 550 million.

Survivor Blair

Domestic pressures may have something to do with the coalition forces going back to the UN Security Council for support. In England, the aftermath of the Iraq War has not been favourable to Tony Blair.

No weapon of mass destruction has been found by the occupation forces in the last six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein. Apparently, the dossier presented by the government to justify Saddam's threat to the security of the world has been "sexed-up". The Hutton enquiry set up to investigate Dr. Kelly's death by suicide has revealed information that suggests the British PM may have not been telling the whole truth.

Tony Blair may have survived a veiled leadership challenge from Gordon Brown in the recent Labour Party conference. He will likely serve his third term as prime minister, thanks to the moribund and directionless Tories. But his distinguished career has been tainted by his unimaginative participation in an unpopular war.

In the US, President Bush's popularity has been in sharp decline. Suddenly, his once assured second term does not seem so certain, even though none of the Democrat's 10 candidates has emerged as a leading presidential contender.

Bush has given heavy tax-cuts to the rich, and many poor and muddle class Americans have suffered from unemployment and sluggish economic growth. In the next 13 months before the primaries begin, they may just get upset enough to penalise Bush for making them pay for a useless and expensive war in a distant land that reminds them of Vietnam.

The war to bring about "regime change" in Iraq has certainly been expensive. The defence allocation for routine spending is a staggering US$368 billion. In addition, US$19 billion has been assigned to the department of energy for nuclear weapons. US$79 billion has already been passed by Congress to fund the war in Iraq, and Bush has just requested US$87 billion to sustain it in the year to come.

In fact, the US federal government is now spending as much on war as it is on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together. You would only expect this sort of allocation for the machinery of war from a third world military dictatorship! What will be the political and economic costs of sustaining such a massive war effort or warmongering, depending on how you look at it?

Committed Bush

Nevertheless, Bush is committed to this military quagmire from which he has no way of extricating himself. He needs a successful story in Iraq's political and economic reconstruction in order to win the next presidential election. He needs the continuous presence of a vast professional army and tens of thousands of reservists to crush the growing resistance from a people whom he is supposed to have liberated from a brutal corrupt regime.

Unfortunately for Bush, the grim picture on the ground in Iraq does not bode well for his wishful tactics. Hours after the UN Security Council had passed the latest resolution on Iraq's future, three US military police officers died in a clash with the supporters of a Shia cleric in the holy city of Kabala. A fourth died in a roadside bomb attack, making him the 101st American casualty since the official end of hostilities.

Guerrilla attacks on US soldiers throughout Iraq are now running at a dozen a day, killing hundreds and wounding over 1,500. Yet, the Iraqis have suffered the greatest toll; some quarters estimated that as many as 10,000 Iraqis might have perished in the entire conflict, including many civilians.

A recent survey conducted by the Pentagon-funded Stars and Stripes newspapers found that 70% of the US soldiers in Iraq described their morale as ranging from average to low. Half did not want to re-enlist, and 31% saw the war as of no value to the US at all!

Instead of being welcome and cherished as liberators and heroes, the US led occupying forces are now finding themselves surrounded by a sea of alien-looking inscrutable hostile Arab-Muslim faces. In that atmosphere of paranoia and confusion, every Iraqi would seem to be a potential "terrorist" or a "security risk" at best, and this especially after 3 Palestinian-styled suicide bombings last week.

The abuse of human rights in Iraq to-day can only be imagined. Those reports that told the stories of US soldiers firing indiscriminately at civilians and killing children went unnoticed by the uncaring world at large.

By and by, the moral tone of the language used by the international (western?) media to narrate the continuing tragedy of the undeclared war between the coalition and the people of Iraq has shifted.

The US led authorities are now described as "the "occupying forces", while the legion of their faceless nameless Iraqi attackers are now elevated to the status of "resistance fighters", words that evoke the conditions and images of Europe under German occupation during WWII!

So who are these resistance fighters hurling their bodies at the mighty American juggernaut daily? They are no mere "Ba'athist remnants" and neither are they financed and trained by al-Qaida or other Middle Eastern militant groups, according to Zaki Chehab, the political editor of the Arabic TV station al-Hayat-LBC, and the first journalist to broadcast an interview with members of the Iraqi resistance.

Resistance fighters

In a Guardian column article entitled Inside the resistance , Zaki Chehab identified at least three groups of resistance fighters: the self-proclaimed nationalists, the Saddam Hussein loyalists in Tikrit and members of the various Islamic organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

After all, Iraq is a country that has seen 20 years of war and more than 10 years of economic sanctions. The landscape is littered with weapons and trained fighters. Ordinarily divided by partisan, geographical, religious and even gang or tribal loyalties, they are now united in their common hatred against what they perceived as foreign invaders.

Apparently, the ferocity and resolve of this home-grown resistance against the US-led coalition is fuelled by the growing discontent of a large section of the conquered Iraqi population.

Day to day living in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq must be hellish. In this security vacuum, crimes are rampant. The supply of daily necessities such as food, medicine, water and electricity is intermittent, if at all.

The problem is not only because the occupying forces have to put back and improve on an old decaying system of physical infrastructures. More importantly, the dismantling of an existing bureaucracy working under various institutions has meant that the original social fabric no matter how unsatisfactory has disintegrated.

It would be natural for many affected Iraqi to regard Paul Bremer, the head of the US occupation authority as irrelevant. The US appointed Iraqi Governing Council is now increasingly discredited. It is unlikely that any reconstruction plan in Iraq involving these two will gain any semblance of popular acceptance.

The immediate future of Iraq is bleak. Looking back to the heated debate in support of and against the US invasion of Iraq in malaysiakini 6 months ago, I cannot help but wonder why everyone is so quiet now.

With the knowledge of hindsight, can we conclude now tentatively at least that the cure for the ill of Iraq under Saddam Hussein has been worse than the disease?

Another lesson to be learned is that perhaps, despite their status as the sole superpower of our current world disorder, the US can neither afford, nor find the moral legitimacy to play the role of the international policeman.

If only such lessons do not have to be learnt at the expense of so much blood and suffering!