When the United States bullies its allies, and even its own puppets, it does so in the crudest possible manner. Pakistan may have a lesson to draw from Iraq here.

As the US-led occupation forces in Iraq continue their anti-insurgency offensive, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government is shaky. Its collapse will signify the US’s greatest political failure in Iraq. This could happen if al-Maliki yields to US pressure to end his dependence on the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The occupation troops’ “security sweep” in Baghdad and Anbar province has had extremely limited success. An elite team of former anti-insurgency experts advising US commander General David Petraeus has reportedly concluded that they have six months to win the Iraq war—“or face a Vietnam-style collapse.”

Meanwhile, it’s clear that Washington has no Plan B in case the “new way forward” strategy announced by President George W. Bush in January doesn’t work. According to reports, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace was asked at a high-level meeting what his back-up strategy might be. He answered: “I am a Marine and Marines don’t talk about failure. They talk about victory.”

This is part of a larger crisis of strategy. Earlier US plans for Iraq all ran into rough weather. These included “stabilising” Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority; return of “sovereignty” in 2004 through a handpicked government; installation of an elected regime in 2005; and the launching that summer of the anti-insurgency “Plan Baghdad”.

Bush has shifted from plan to plan without thinking things enough. The latest “new way forward” is an awkward, half-hearted attempt at a final “big push”—by inducting 21,500 more US troops into Iraq.

US policy-makers are blaming one another for the Iraq fiasco. The Republicans accuse former CPA chief Paul Bremer for messing things. The Democrats blame the Republicans. And Bush blames Iranian President Mahmood Ahmedinejad!

Worse, many US commentators blame the victims, the Iraqi people themselves. Leading Neoconservative and former Defence Planning Board chairman Richard Perle, who led the clamour for war against Iraq even before 9/11, now says he had “underestimated the depravity” in Iraq.

Right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer says the Iraqis alone are responsible for the violence and strife. “Iraq is their country. We mid-wifed their freedom. They chose civil war.”

Even Fareed Zakaria, considered a liberal critic of the Bush administration, says the Sunnis “have mostly behaved like self-defeating thugs.” Not one of these critics see the disaster’s root-cause: the US’s project of Empire.

The US want to war with Iraq out of choice. It knew Iraq didn’t possess mass-destruction weapons, nor was its government in league with al-Qaeda. The US wanted to bring about “regime change” and “instill some democracy in the heart of the Middle East”—as part of Bush’s Greater Middle East Initiative.

The US’s core-objectives were to secure access to West Asia’s energy resources, begin the “modernisation of the Middle East”, promote Israel’s security, establish (and make acceptable) its world hegemony, and reduce the global spread of terrorism.

All of these stand defeated or compromised. Within 10 months of Iraq’s invasion, the US achieved what an Egyptian called “a miracle”: “It has made people regret the downfall of Saddam’s regime.”

According to pre-invasion polls, 43 percent of Iraqis considered the US presence as “liberation” and 46 percent as “occupation.” Six months later, the figures were 15 and 67 percent. In a December 2006 poll, 95 percent felt that the security situation was better before the US-led invasion; 89 percent felt that way about the political situation; and 79 percent about the economic situation.

Iraq has been systematically looted and reduced from a middle-level human development society to an low-level, impoverished one, with high unemployment, rising inflation and a burgeoning black market. Baghdad gets electricity for barely 6 to 8 hours a day. Education has collapsed.

The psychological impact of the occupation on Iraqi society has proved devastating. An Association of Iraqi Psychologists study says violence has affected millions of children. “Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions.” This is what inevitably happens “when an innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things that children should never see”.

The US has spent $350 billion on the occupation and sustained over 3,000 deaths among its troops, besides killing 650,000 Iraqis. But it has failed to contain the insurgency. The number of insurgents rose four-fold to 20,000 between November 2003 and October 2004, and has since risen to 30,000.

Even worse is the external impact of Iraq’s occupation—in particular, through the political radicalisation of large numbers of Muslims and spread of jehadi terrorism the world over. Iraq’s occupation has made the world considerably more unsafe.

It took no great historical insight or prophetic vision to see that the occupation would foment anti-Western sentiment and violence the world over. Like the continuing injustice heaped upon the Palestinian people by Israel, Iraq’s occupation is seen by many Muslims—many others too—as proof of the West’s Islamophobia and its racist and arrogant attitude towards the Middle East. This has led to a backlash—through a rising incidence of terrorism.

Some hard numbers have now emerged proving this in a study by the Centre on Law and Security at the NYU Foundation for “Mother Jones” magazine in the US. This shows that the al-Qaeda ideology has spread “from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.”

The study looked at two periods, September 2001 to March 2003, and March 2003 to September 2006, and compared the figures for violence from a RAND Corporation database.

Globally, there was a 607 percent rise in the yearly incidence of attacks and a 237 percent rise in the fatality rate. The first period witnessed 729 deaths from terrorist attacks. This rose to 5,420 in the second. Iraq alone accounts for half the total. Even excluding Iraq, terrorist attacks and fatalities rose sharply, by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

Iraq and Afghanistan together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of deaths. But even if they’re excluded, there’s still a 35 percent increase in terrorist attacks and a 12 percent rise in fatalities (to 554 per year).

The Iraq war has caused a precipitous drop in public support for the US in Muslim countries: from 25 percent to 1 percent in Jordan, a major US ally, in Lebanon from 30 to 15 percent. Favourable views plummeted in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, from 61 percent to 15.

This has grave implications for the entire world—and not least Pakistan and India, where terrorism’s fatalities have risen from 182 to 489.

It’s in humanity’s interest that jehadi forces don’t gain. That will only produce more strife, violence and insecurity—and eventually, assaults on human rights and democracy. However, the way the US is acting will ensure precisely that outcome.

This makes it imperative that all countries which respect their autonomy and independence distance themselves from Washington’s plans for the Middle East. President Pervez Musharraf is taking a huge risk through his own version of support for the Greater Middle East Initiative. He stands warned.