Iason Athanasiadis (Al Jazeera with agency inputs) - The killing of at least seven Iraqi civilians, all women and children, at a US checkpoint has prompted renewed speculation that the Anglo-American forces are losing the battle for "hearts and minds" in Iraq.
The victims, women and children, were shot dead by US troops at a roadblock on Monday, in what appears to be the first case of killed Iraqi civilians going uncontested by the Pentagon.
US authorities backtracked fast Tuesday after making initial statements that laid them open to charges of insensitivity in which they blamed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government for the killings.
In a revised statement, Major General Buford Blount, commander of the Third Infantry Division, said Tuesday his troops were "very concerned about it and very sorry that it happened."
US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a press briefing Tuesday at Central Command's forward planning base in Qatar, "Our efforts may result in the loss of civilian lives and they clearly will result in the loss of Iraqi military lives," when asked if the checkpoint shooting would affect the coalition's efforts to win "the hearts and minds" of the people of Iraq.
"War still not going...well"
The US media sounded warning bells Tuesday as it warned of the impact the killing by US troops of civilians will have on public opinion in Iraq and the Middle East.
"Even if accidental, such events, like the deaths of civilians in Baghdad attributed to errant US bombs, can incur large political costs both in and outside Iraq," the Washington Post said.
The New York Times concurred, stating that, "billions around the globe are seeing and hearing reports that women and children were gunned down yesterday while riding in a civilian van at an American checkpoint.
"This is just what the Iraqi commanders have in mind when they send soldiers disguised as noncombatants to fire on unsuspecting American troops. The killing of the soldiers is an incidental benefit. The real goal is to turn the Americans against Iraqi civilians and cause them to behave like a hostile occupying army rather than the friendly liberators we had envisioned."
And US promises of an investigation "will mean very little in the Arab world, particularly if such scenes become routine. If that happens, the political war for Iraq could be lost even before the military one is won, said the Times.
"On the hearts and minds front, the war is still not going particularly well for the coalition," said Alan Dupont of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University.
"While militarily they appear to be regaining the initiative, they've still got a lot of ground to make up on the public relations psychological warfare front."
Blitz-like spirit
The incident may be a sign of things to come, as an unsteady coalition struggles to control a resentful local population.
With the campaign shifting into a period of consolidation as US-led forces seek to strengthen their hold over southern Iraq, more troops are remaining stationary on the ground and open to attack.
This has left US and British soldiers on the ground grappling with the difficulty of trying to build bridges with a rattled local population even as they continue to fight elements of that same population which oppose them militarily.
Following the first incident of a human bomb operation on Saturday, stringent security measures have been instituted that have led to jittery soldiers searching Iraqi civilians at regular checkpoints.
In Baghdad, suffering under one of the fiercest aerial bombardments of modern times, reports are emerging that a blitz-like spirit of resistance is developing among people. The consensus among people there is that the current conflict is mostly about occupying Iraq rather than its much-publicized liberation.
Despite having lived through the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, most Iraqis say they have not seen anything as fearsome as this battle.
"We haven't been through this kind of bombings and such kinds of weapons," said Lua'i Habanjar, 45, an engineer and resident of Baghdad.
"Air raid sirens are continuous now, they don't stop. We don't know when the bombs will crash. We sleep on the thud of explosions and we wake up to the same thing. We go to bed with planes over our heads and we wake to planes flying over our heads," added Salma Jaafar, 45, a mother of four.
American and British forces advancing through southern Iraq have been subjected to guerrilla attacks and greeted for the most part by a solemn rather than joyful populace.
"How can one accept the occupation of his country? Do they really think we will greet their occupation with applause and music?" said Ahmed Saadallah, 36, a medical doctor.
Regional consensus
But budding resentment at what is perceived as a hostile, invading force is not just limited to Iraqi civilians but to significant majorities throughout the Arab world’s populations and elites.
The latest Arab leader to accuse the US of having fallen out of touch with the region was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He upped the ante in the current war of words between Damascus and Washington, when he charged that Washington "wants oil and to remodel the entire region."
In a sharp interview to an Austrian daily on Tuesday, President Assad pointed out that the current campaign in Iraq "will cause trouble around the entire world, not only here. And it will ruin their own interests, both economic and other," he said in reference to the US.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has also expressed concerns that the war in Iraq would spiral out of control. Following a graphic warning last September from Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa where he predicted that war in Iraq would ‘open the gates of hell in the region,’ Mubarak announced on Monday that "If there is one [Osama] bin Laden today, there will be 100 Bin Ladens after this war."
He added that the regional violence would have a catastrophic effect on global economic, political and humanitarian conditions and on stability in the Middle East.
"The Americans told us it will be brief," Mubarak said last week about the war, "but I am concerned that it will take a long time, which would cause many deaths. We hope these operations will end soon."
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