LONDON -- Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is necessary to repeat this obvious point because the impression has been growing that occupied Iraq, like occupied Afghanistan, is a murderous and lawless stew of rival factions and impoverished tribes and factions, where democracy and stable government are impossible implants and where foreigners go in fear of their lives.
This disappointment has been reinforced by the tragic slaughter of six British military policemen just north of Iraq's second city of Basra at the hands of a furious mob and by the almost daily assassination of American soldiers.
Yet while backwardness, violence and poverty may be the grim and long-standing parameters of life in mountainous and remote Afghanistan this is in no way the true picture of the Iraqi situation.