How the UN could yet lose the war for the allies

Even astrologers are taking part on the open season which seems to have been declared on Mr Rumsfeld. The accusations range from a botched invasion plan to the failed Shiite uprising in Iraq. His refusal to listen to Colin Powell and send an "overwhelming force" of troops to Iraq has risked the success of the war, it is claimed. The 100,000 reinforcements sent by the Pentagon are proof of Rumsfeld-induced disarray.

This is an amazing amount of bile for a war which is only two weeks old - and has achieved what is, by any modern military standards, stunning success in that time. Iraq’s oil fields, the source of its national wealth, are secure. The "pause" has been defined by Iraq’s only port, Umm Qasr, being cleared of mines so that it can start importing humanitarian aid.

Of the 300,000 British and US troops in the Persian Gulf, 80 have died. Every loss is grievously felt - but a casualty rate of 0.03 per cent is below what is expected of a ground invasion.

The progress looks bloodier because we can see it on live television - but why are so many poison darts being blowpiped from Pentagon "sources" into Mr Rumsfeld’s prickly hide, through the pages of the US press?

The problem can be traced down to the shake-up which Mr Rumsfeld has visited on the Pentagon since 11 September. In his inimitable, frank manner he has been telling chiefs of staff to rethink everything they have learned. Massive unpopularity has ensued. Generals are being told to think smaller and smarter to counter a new terrorist enemy. The Powell doctrine of "overwhelming force" - a favourite among Vietnam-era generals - was dismissed as one for the old world order.

So it is with delight that the chastised generals note deployment of 100,000 extra troops to the Gulf. Rumsfeld’s beloved precision bombs, they say in the pages of the New York press, have proved no substitute for boots on the ground.

Where are the Shiites? They were never going to rebel, say the generals - a suggestible "Rummy" was just listening to what he wanted to hear from exiled Iraqis desperate for a share of post-war power.

War is a fluid situation. The importance is not to get it right first time - no-one ever does - but to be versatile enough to respond to the rapidly-changing demands of combat.

Yes, some 700 Tomahawk missiles have been fired into Iraq - one-third of the entire US arsenal. The Pentagon’s policy is to have enough to wage war on two fronts (ie, saving some for North Korea) so this stock is low.

But the US is running out of targets. Missiles have pounded every obvious target in Baghdad; ammunition dumps are now scattered throughout Baghdad in the cellars of soldiers’ homes.

Even the biggest disaster of the campaign - the bombing of the Shola market in Iraq last week which injured 60 - may even be a deception. Pictures of the explosion show a small crater commensurate with a car bomb, not a missile. The metal bars in the market concrete are bent down into the crater, an ominous suggestion that the explosion came from above the ground. Detonating a bomb in a Shiite area is exactly the tactic which Saddam’s regime would use.

Yet this Shola bomb was a massive public-relations disaster, with images broadcast over Iraq and the Islamic world. This is the biggest challenge to the war and its success: persuading the Iraqi people that the invading troops offer them a better life than Saddam Hussein.

So far, this is proving a hard case to make. Iraqis have found their water pipes severed, and replaced with all too few bottles of water from the allies. Being confined to their towns, regularly searched and occasionally caught in cross-fire with guerrillas is no liberation.

This is nothing to do with the extra 100,000 troops Mr Rumsfeld did not deploy from the offset. Were they there, we would not be in Baghdad any quicker. It is not size of troops that keeps the Black Watch outside Basra and Az-Zubayr. It is the reception that awaits them.

Here lies the real issue in the Iraq war. From the very beginning, the problem was not going to be winning the war. Mr Rumsfeld’s troop numbers are, as he has demonstrated, changeable. The mission is winning the peace - persuading Iraqis that they are, indeed, swapping tyranny for freedom.

This cannot be done with promises. It needs hard examples for Iraqis to see: areas of their country to be filled with humanitarian aid and medicine long denied under their old dictatorship.

The surrender of the Iraqi military will mean little while rooftops are lined with snipers. A state of urban warfare will exist in Iraq for as long as troops are considered invaders. Peace will not arrive in Iraq until these minds are changed.

The humanitarian aid is the most powerful weapon. The United States realises this - and has already drawn up an ambitious three-year plan. The American taxpayer will fund up to 60 billion of contracts which can start in "secure" areas of Iraq even if the rest of the country is at war.

The south could, for example, have full medical supplies - becoming a magnet for refugees elsewhere. When "allied troops" equals "food and medicine" in the Iraq mind, war will be over.

The threat posed to this plan is the United Nations. Its diplomats are already squabbling over who should win the contracts. Calls for a "fair process" of dividing them up could mean six months of delay.

Here, the rebuilding scheme has met opposition in the form of Clare Short, the International Development Secretary. She believes that building hospitals to shelter Iraq’s sick is illegal under the 1907 Hague Regulations - unless the scheme is given a "mandate" by the UN.

This is the real obstacle to the progress of the liberation. Not Mr Rumsfeld’s cost-cutting measures, not the shortage of Tomahawk missiles, but the diplomats who threaten to halt reconstruction work until their lawyers are happy and their clients have claimed a slice of the cake.

The remedy for admiring the United Nations, or wanting it to lead an interim Iraqi government, is to remember what happened to the Bosnian "safe haven" of Srebrenica eight years ago. When Serb forces began shelling the enclave, Dutch peacekeepers asked UN headquarters for air support, but were told they faxed through the wrong form. Outnumbered, the Dutch handed over the male Muslim refugees. The executions started; some 8,000 died.

This event is, alas, not isolated - but it should, by itself, have permanently ended the UN’s claim to govern potential warzones. The blood price of its proven incompetence in these matters is unacceptably high.

Allowing Iraq’s warring tribes to be policed by the UN will no doubt satisfy Ms Short, please her lawyers and delight France and Germany. But for the Iraqi people, it would mean scores of Srebrenicas.

And for the US and Britain, it would mean truly losing the war.