Wickham's musings from Chalke

A year after the invasion the resistance groups are fighting harder than ever and Falluja, where many fighters are based, is under siege by the Americans. Both Sunni (loyal to Saddam) and Shiite (anti-Saddam) groups are fed up with the American regime and want the soldiers to leave now, even though the Americans plan to hand over power to an Iraqi government in June.

A radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has holed up in the holy city of Najaf after setting up a militia and inciting violence. The Americans want him dead or alive.

Civilian hostages from about twelve countries have been taken by various groups. Some hostages have been released after persuasion by moderate religious clerics, but only civilians from countries that have played no part in the invasion or the occupation. An Italian hostage has been killed after the Italian government said it had no intention of withdrawing troops.

Several countries, notably Russia, are airlifting out all their civilian workers, so the reconstruction process will be severely interrupted. The violence is counter-productive as the Americans want to spend their money on setting up a new regime and handing over power but these resistance groups don’t want any help from western countries.

Tony Blair has flown over to talk to Kofi Annan of the UN and President Bush today. He seems to want the UN to have more influence but George Bush so far has wanted to keep the UN at arm’s length.

The UN has been remarkable for its lack of effort or instigation of any policy. It has just waited for various countries to put up resolutions for debate. This approach has pros and cons I suppose. It means that as an organisation it has not antagonised the muslim countries or the Iraqi resistance groups and so any UN action now might be acceptable to them.

The Americans only have one solution to any problem which is to go in with guns blazing. The British who are controlling the south of Iraq around Basra have been more diplomatic and have had less trouble, but have also been lucky that it was an area largely hostile to Saddam.