Iraq faces legacy of anarchy

In the end, Saddam was a lousy general. Although some of his troops fought bravely at the beginning, most had no stomach for the fight.

This has left the coalition allies of America and Britain with a huge problem. They now have to rebuild a country with almost no administration, no police and no legal system to work with. The problem of "what next?" is far bigger than the worst fears of planners in Whitehall and Washington.

The Allies had hoped that enough of the army and police forces would surrender intact to be used for running Iraq in the immediate aftermath of war.

But most soldiers appear to have abandoned their tanks and artillery pieces, thrown away their uniforms and legged it home.

In the scenes of joy and looting from Basra to Baghdad there was not a policeman in sight. The British have appealed to tribal leaders in Basra to put together a makeshift local government.

In Najaf the Americans have invited Grand Ayatollah and his council of Shi'ite clergy to help run the city.

Beyond the immediate issue of a total breakdown of law and order there is the long-term issue of the virtual collapse of an entire administrative and managerial class.

Engineers and administrators are needed to maintain a clean water supply, keep the hospitals working, and maintain the electricity grid. The British and the Americans have the twin task of

wrapping up a difficult guerrilla war and establishing a lasting peace - at the same time. The Pentagon is warning that enough cities are still in the hands of Saddam loyalists, Tikrit, Mosul and Kirkuk among them, to keep allied forces busy for a week or two more.

Not all the Fedayeen and diehard loyalists of Saddam's son Uday have given up in northern and western Baghdad. The diehards have copious supplies of light mortars, Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades.

In Baghdad there is still a high risk of communal and faction fighting as members of the old regime settle old scores.

More dangerous is the prospect of a sectarian war between the Shias of Baghdad and their Sunni Arab neighbours. The Kurds in the north have scores to settle. Yesterday's scenes of Kurdish forces moving to fight round Kirkuk should have sounded a warning for the Americans. The guerrillas gave a rare display of unity between the two main Kurdish factions, the Popular Union of Kurdistan and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan. They were marching under the flag of a new independent Kurdish nation.

Already Syria has proposed an alliance with Turkey and Iran to keep the uppity Kurds down.

The Kurds believe they have been promised their own state since the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 - and they say this time they are not to be denied.

The Kurdish issue threatens the US and its allies with an internal law and order problem and an external military threat at the same time.

So do the US and Britain have enough forces on the ground to wrap up the war and win the peace now?

At present there are around 130,000 American and British forces operating in and around Iraq. The Americans have a further 100,000 on the way. The US army chief, General John Shinseki, believes the US is going to need at least 200,000 troops for the next six months. General Shinseki, who retires in July, bases his calculations on serving with the Nato peace force in Bosnia.

Tony Blair, by all accounts, was hoping to leave a force of eight to ten thousand troops to manage aid operations in Basra and south-eastern Iraq for about a year.

But the enduring problem is likely to be more abstract than food in bellies, clean water in the taps and good medicines.

It is the whole issue of establishing basic law and a viable justice and enforcement system. We are going to hear a lot more of that great mantra of peacekeeping in the 1990s - "mission creep".

The mission will creep in Iraq because Saddam has left such a vacuum of administration and authority.

The US and Britain could soon be running in deed, though not word, a protectorate. There are ominous parallels with the mandate Britain was given 80 years ago, when Iraq first became a country after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.