ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant
The Australian government has just issued a travel advisory flagging possible threats to the Anzac Day celebration at Gallipoli. These are the same people who have been assuring us that the Iraq invasion would not cause increased terrorism.

At the same time the Iraqi state has collapsed and the Saddam regime has essentially become one of many armed factions competing for power. The alarming nostrums out of Washington and Hillsborough say nothing about how the interim authority is to be appointed. One could hope that Bush will not succumb to the neocon claque promoting Chalabi as an Iraqi Kerensky but his record to date does not make for hope. The power on the ground is held by the Kurds, the Saddam remnants, the Shi'ites, the traditional leaders. The whole country is armed. They have little experience of cooperation or civic order.

No-one ever doubted the coalition's capacity to destroy. They need to start assuming the Geneva Convention responsibilities of an occupying power like health and public safety. What they now have to do is create something other than a desert called peace.