Orphans of Iraq

No war is a clean business. But the one now raging in Iraq is the worst in terms of collateral damage to life and property of the civilian, non-combatant population. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have perished, over two million fled the country and almost the same number, if not more, are internally displaced.
The entire sections of cities have been wiped out and countless villages have disappeared. Infrastructure is total ruins. Iraq's archaeological heritage, its shrines and holy places have been targeted by militants. Priceless artifacts dating back to the ancient Mesopotamia have been taken away.
Some 15,000 items have been stolen alone from Baghdad's National Museum. Iraq, a chronicle of human civilisation, cradle of rich period of Islamic history and culture and a lively mosaic of ethnic-sectarian harmony lies shattered in innumerable pieces.
The irony is that all this is taking place right in full sight of the people all over the world - people, who are helpless; they cannot stop it, including even the Americans and the British whose boys too are getting killed - for no cause - in the deserts and marshes of Iraq.
Since the start of war in March 2003, 3545 American and 152 British soldiers have been killed and many times more wounded in the Iraq war. If Saddam Hussein will never be forgiven for chemical-bombing of Kurdish villages his successors-in-power would be never forgotten for their notorious Abu-Ghuraib prison brutalities.
But what really epitomises the senselessness of Iraq war was put on display the other day. TV footage showed an orphanage in Baghdad for children with special needs run by the government. While the supervisor sits snug and cozy in his posh office with food supplies neatly stocked on shelves, the film portrays some two dozen malnourished children, in bare frames of their bones, some chained to a bed and some dozing in their own refuses.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has resented the television presentation. And, why not? He is the darling of the West. If there seems to be no end to the war in sight he is the one who would not care. He is not ready to initiate dialogue with other ethnic groups. And, what he says perfectly fits into the mind of President George Bush. In a recent interview with the Newsweek, he claimed that "destiny wanted to bring together two people (Bush and Al-Maliki) who stick to their principles".
How popular is Al-Maliki among the Iraqis one would not know because there are no opinion pollsters in Baghdad. But Bush's popularity rating, according to a recent NBC-Wall Street opinion poll, is 29 percent. Tony Blair, Bush's sidekick in the invasion of Iraq, but had famously claimed that he was nobody's poodle, never knew how the war would end. Let the people of Britain impeach him for the folly of committing Britain to war in Iraq from which Britain gained nothing but shame and 152 body-bags.
If Tony Blair does not know how to end the Iraq war (because he did not know how it began) the Bush administration too is at its wits' end in search of an exit strategy. The United States' last hurrah, the current operation involving 10,000 troops in the so-called al Qaeda infested Baquba area, is proving to be too expensive in terms of lives.
The Surge is going nowhere. If the American managers of Iraq war in Green Zone want to leave Baghdad the way they left Saigon the choice is their's. But time is running out on US military presence in Iraq. Ideally, they should even at this late stage reopen the Baker's book and find out the relevant paragraphs that can guide them out of this quagmire. Iraq belongs to Iraqis and left to themselves they will surely work out some mechanism to bring things back to normalcy. President Bush got them rid of Saddam Hussein, and that is a good enough memento to leave behind.