BY FIKRET BILA
MILLIYET- This week the US launched an offensive into Fallujah, Iraq. It wants to take this city with great military force. After the recent US elections, everybody was wondering if it would attack starting with Fallujah or shift the Iraq issue to an international basis. Ankara wanted Bush to put more importance on diplomatic channels. However, the White House gave the order just after the elections. Can it solve its problems in Iraq with more attacks? Can it end the resistance and ensure stability in Iraq? Analysts aren’t optimistic. Military analysts say that the US offensive which started in Fallujah might move to other cities as well. According to them, guerilla-type resistance can’t be stopped this way. Such resistance puts little stock in particular cities or geographical control, so they could just move to another city. In addition, the US offensive in Fallujah will only make Arabs angrier and feed the resistance. With such a foundation, no proper census or elections can be conducted.
The Sunni Arabs, in particular, might boycott elections. More importantly, as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul emphasized, the resulting parliament would not represent all of Iraq, and this could call into operation its legitimacy. Ankara is trying to ensure that Sunni Arabs will take part in the elections as well. For this reason, it didn’t favor the Fallujah offensive. However, today we see that Bush believes that he can solve things with a military ‘victory.’ Fallujah proves this. He’s spending his victory capital on military might. I wonder what sort of a solution the European Union will propose during the upcoming Egypt meeting of Iraq’s neighbors and the G-8.