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Former UK defense chief pessimistic about US assault on Fallujah

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Nov 10, IRNA -- Britain`s former assistant chief of the 
Defense Staff, Sir Timothy Garden, is pessimistic about the outcome of
the major US assault on Fallujah and suggests that it could even lead 
to civil war in Iraq. 
"My own view is that it was not the most sensible way of tackling 
the problem," the air chief marshal said. "It would not have been my 
preferred approach," he told IRNA Wednesday. 
Garden said that he felt was very much in the same way as UN 
Secretary General Kofi Annan in his warning that when you use force 
with so many casualties against counterinsurgency `you get a tactical 
victory but you generate so many other opponents`. 
"I will be very surprised if this option does not generate more 
violence in other towns around the country," he said. The US 
assessment of using a powerful show of force in Fallujah in order to 
deter others was `not one I share`, he said. 
The air marshal, who is now at the Center for Defense Studies at 
King`s College in London, said that a `real concern` was that if the 
assault was so counterproductive that more violence spreads to the 
Shia regions of Iraq. 
He warned that there would be the `prospect of effective civil 
war` if the coalition troops were withdrawn before Iraqi troops were 
trained and people `try to win power by guns rather than votes`. 
"It is a really difficult problem to see a way through," Garden 
said. If people refuse to take part in the planned elections, he said 
there would be a `lack of legitimacy`. 
He said that most evidence of dealing with insurgency showed that 
the use of large scale force led to problems reoccurring elsewhere for
soldiers who were effectively the custodians of the rule of law. 
"By and large, it does not succeed in trying to lower violence by 
using more violence," the former assistant chief of defense staff 
warned. 
He suggested that it was better to try to reach accommodation 
through diplomacy and negotiations. In the case of Iraq, he said that 
the reconstruction of the country had fallen low down in the 
priorities and had not made people feel better. 
HC/2322/1432