Anne Ashford

Those at the bottom of the pile face utter destitution. A World Food Programme (WFP) report released on 23 September estimated the number of Iraqis living below the poverty line had increased since the war to 55 percent of the population, or more than 14 million people.

'Is the price, in blood and money, too high?' asked the Economist recently. With the occupation costing $1 billion a week, the UN suffering a devastating attack and 'postwar' casualty figures rising rapidly, some US officials may privately agree. In public, however, Iraqi resistance is the work of 'remnants' of the Ba'ath Party.

Paul Bremer, the US-appointed administrator of Iraq, told reporters that in addition to Ba'ath loyalists, supporters of Osama Bin Laden are the main forces resisting the occupation.

Many of the reasons lie in the 'road map' itself. The document sets out a three-phase plan for achieving 'a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict'. May 2003 was the target date for the completion of the first stage, which envisaged sweeping reforms of the Palestinian authority, including the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister for the first time, the dismantlement of all Israeli settlement outposts erected since May 2001, and an 'end to violence and terrorism'.

'I'll never engage in creating kings again: it's too great a strain.' As they struggle to impose a compliant government on Iraq, Pentagon officials may well reflect on the words that Gertrude Bell wrote in 1921. Bell, an adviser to the British High Commissioner in Baghdad, played an important role in creating a new colonial order for the Middle East. Out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire, the imperialists of an earlier generation fashioned a network of client kingdoms under British and French tutelage.

'Where are the protesters?' As anti-war demonstrations shook the globe in February, CNN's correspondent in Amman wondered why the streets of the Middle East were still quiet. Robert Fisk made the same point in the 'Independent': 'One million people demonstrate in London, while the Arabs, faced with disaster, are like mice.'