IRAQ: As he prepares to leave Baghdad after two years covering Iraq, Jack Fairweather reflects on the failings of the US-led invasion which took place without a plan for the aftermath
Two years ago I rode into Basra with a convoy of British tanks feeling like a liberator.
Saddam was about to be overthrown, a massive reconstruction project begin, and democracy appeared just round the corner.
Two years on and Iraq has had its first elections but little else has turned out as expected.
The country is on the edge of civil war. For almost two years a mainly Sunni-led insurgency has pitted itself against US and Iraqi security forces and a floundering reconstruction process. The new Shia government looks set to wage a bloody war of repression in Sunni tribal areas, whilst pushing for an Islamic-style state.
Secular, moderating voices have been bullied into silence by the bombings and murders.
Many of these problems were an inevitable outcome of invading the country, although they have been magnified by a series of American mistakes and miscalculations. At the heart of Iraq's failings is the extraordinary fact that when US and British troops streamed across the Iraqi border, they did so without a plan. I leave the country wondering how the great American experiment in Iraq came undone in the heedless rush to war.
There was a plan for Iraq. In the months leading up to the invasion the US State Department held extensive discussions with Iraqi exiles, resulting in a 2,000-odd page document called the "Future of Iraq Project".
This project foresaw the need for a massive presence of US troops to prevent looting, and an Iraqi-directed reconstruction process which would take years - precisely the sort of findings to make anyone rethink the wisdom of invading Iraq.
They were quickly shelved by the Bush administration, which had a far more gratifying source of information.
Ahmed Chalabi, who headed a US-funded Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, had already convinced the Pentagon that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
He was also insisting that when US troops invaded they would be greeted with open arms, and that within a couple of weeks a new regime could be put in place with a pro-American leader who understood the needs of the Iraqi people.
The heavy inference was that Mr Chalabi was that man. Many months later a senior aide to Mr Chalabi described to me a meeting between the INC man and US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. "Rumsfeld was completely mesmerised by Chalabi. He was like a snake," said the official.
By the time I arrived in Baghdad, a month after the end of the war, US troops had already proved too few in number to stop the rampant looting, with the exception of a few US-guarded properties like the oil ministry - the sort of symbolism not lost on Iraqis, many of whom thought the Americans had come to steal their oil.
The first American administration of Iraq, known as the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, was in turmoil.
Its head, Lieut Gen Jay Garner, was meant to have been the benevolent face behind a massive humanitarian relief effort. But no refugees had materialised, leaving him floundering amid the competing claims of politicians, and military commanders, and of ordinary Iraqis demanding the return of basic services.
It was also obvious that Mr Chalabi, who ensconced himself at a plush Iraqi sports club, was widely loathed in the country. Instead of announcing a national conference of Iraqi leaders - similar to that done in Afghanistan - which might have begun an indigenous political process, the White House rushed to create the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The task set for the CPA was to set up a country from scratch.
With no ministries to speak of, the CPA chief administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council political party leaders - mostly from exile groups - and a team of American advisers with little Middle Eastern experience but high ideals of creating a neo-con paradise of free market enterprise.
They were to run Iraq from behind rolls of barbed wire in Saddam's former Republican Palace - another piece of symbolism Iraqis quickly grasped.
The scenes from those opening months saw a Dad's Army-style attempt to run the country. Andrew Alderson, a territorial army major, who found himself suddenly promoted to chief finance officer for southern Iraq, described flying to Baghdad to collect five Chinooks packed with $48 million in cash.
"We simply had no idea what we were doing," he said. "The people were demanding electricity and water, but we couldn't respond. Our job became about lowering expectations."
At the end of the summer, the violence began in earnest.
The insurgency was aided by two further gross miscalculations by Mr Bremer, who had developed a dictatorial style of government to compensate for his limited on-the-ground knowledge. Over the summer he disbanded the Iraqi army, and then set up a "de-Baathification" committee to banish the old regime.
The combined effect of the mass sackings was to weaken state structures which Mr Bremer and his team were trying to put back in place, and to produce a ready pool of recruits for the insurgency.
Mr Bremer also refused to set a definite timetable for elections or for the end of the occupation, apparently not wishing to undermine the CPA's rule. With the governing council ministers clearly feeling they were going to rule forever - turning their ministries into personal fiefdoms with paramilitary guards and rampant corruption - the only effective political opposition was provided by the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
Ayatollah Sistani's calls for elections - declared in the form of a fatwa - rapidly proselytised the Shia south.
"He's a good egg," one British diplomat said - a startling metaphor which showed how far Western officials bunkered down in Saddam's palace were from the Islamic-minded ayatollah.
By November the CPA was swamped in a welter of press releases proclaiming how well everything was going. Mr Bremer clearly needed an exit strategy.
He jetted off to the US for emergency talks, arriving back with news that the CPA's tenure would be reduced from 18 more months to six, and that a new Iraqi government would be chosen by a bewildering system of electoral colleges that few understood.
Ayatollah Sistani was said to be displeased. Iraqis on the street, who had taken to accusing the US forces of stealing Iraq's money and torturing detainees - which I dismissed at the time as paranoid conspiracy theories - said they simply wanted the Americans out. Then, at the end of March, five contractors were ambushed and brutally murdered in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
The US decided to avenge their deaths by trying to storm the city, whilst at the same time prosecuting Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia cleric staunchly opposed to the US occupation. It was Mr Bremer's final act of hubris. The country erupted into a nationwide revolt with insurgents taking control of most major cities, and kidnap gangs roaming the streets.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi set about trying to repair the rifts with "re-Baathification" and insurgent amnesty, but was unable to hide the ethnic fault-lines.
In the south, under Ayatollah Sistani's increasing dominance, an Islamic-style rule has already been imposed, with Sharia law advocated in courts, Iranian-backed militia patrolling cities, and women asked to stay indoors.
The Kurdish-north, secular and largely stable, continues to function like a separate country. In Sunni tribal areas Fallujah has been devastated by a second US onslaught but the insurgency continues to rage. The elections, fought on largely ethnic grounds, have formalised the divisions.
As I leave Iraq after two years it is with some sense of hope. A meaningful political process has begun, but the question is whether politics can outstrip the effects of two years of American mismanagement.