End game

With Saddam Hussein's regime set to fall, the future of Iraq looks murkier than ever

By the 20th day of combat in Iraq, anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 Iraqis had been killed, with thousands more injured. As many as 5 million people do not have access to clean water. Some 17 million are likely to be totally reliant on food aid for the foreseeable future.

The country's infrastructure has been wrecked and it will take an investment of billions to bring it back to where it was before the Anglo-US invasion, let alone to improve the country.

Some kind of military government is certain to follow, perhaps led by retired US general Ray Garner, a close friend of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The duration of martial rule already looks a major bone of contention between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, with Blair favoring a quick transition to Iraqi self-government and Bush not convinced. History will likely prove the British right - military governments usually become unpopular very quickly.

Most worrying of all are the threats of irregular warfare, suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism, both by Iraqi nationals and by enraged foreign Muslims who may now flock to Baghdad just as they did to Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

Only swift withdrawal of the troops and a transition to self-rule are likely to prevent history from repeating itself. The question is whether we in the West will have more or fewer enemies in the Muslim world than before.