MOSCOW. July 28 (Interfax-AVN) - The developments in Iraq may follow the scenario of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Charles Pena, Director of Defense Policy Studies in the Cato Institute, a major Washington-based non-commercial research centers, said in an interview with Russia's Izvestia daily published on Monday.
It did not take long for the Afghan opposition to switch from single chaotic actions to powerful organized resistance, Pena said. Thus, Iraq may become for the U.S. what Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union.
In the end, Americans are foreign invaders in Iraq, and their presence alone causes discontent among a considerable share of the population, both Sunnites and Shiites, both those who supported Saddam Hussain and those who are happy that he is gone. Very many Iraqis are unhappy with Americans bossing around in their country, Pena said.
According to him, the presence of 150,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq makes the U.S. vulnerable.
The U.S. Department of Defense is trying to scale down the threat, the expert went on. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said guerilla war is not an issue at the moment. His deputy Paul Wolfowitz named those who attack the allies as "assassins" who are paid USD500 per every destroyed U.S. soldier. But according to Pena, resistance to the occupation forces is much broader than many officials in Washington think.
He recommended the U.S. administration to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq as soon as possible, saying that each American soldier in Iraq is a potential target. The longer they stay there, even with noble humanitarian missions, the stronger the resistance to their presence will be, he said.
Pena said the U.S. bears no moral responsibility for the restoration of Iraq. This should be left to the Iraqis, he stressed.
Commenting on the operation to destroy Saddam Hussain's sons, Pena said it would have been much better if they had been captured alive. They could have revealed whether Hussain had weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the war and whether he planned to use them against U.S. troops if he had it, the expert concluded.