Prophets of doom

For readers of the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson requires no introduction. He is the doyen of its foreign correspondents, chief of the subspecies which dons flak jackets before dinner jackets, reporting from war zones and trouble spots in vivid and detached prose.

I have read and enjoyed his despatches from around the world, lamenting the fact that no British newspaper or magazine can offer such space to serious reportage. For all our smugness about the levity and superficiality of the US media, American journalism simply does this much better than its British counterpart.

The Fall of Baghdad sees Anderson setting up shop in the Iraqi capital in the build-up to war. Eschewing the controlled environment of the journalists embedded with coalition forces, dodging editorial calls for him to leave for his own safety, Anderson sticks it out, one of the more interesting and enterprising members of the media circus.

He strikes up relationships with minders and drivers and befriends a network of useful contacts of whom Ala Bashir, one of Saddam's doctors who doubles up as a sculptor, is pre-eminent.

What strikes me most forcefully is the prophetic nature of much of the analysis offered by Anderson's sources. He speaks to the editor of a conservative Iranian newspaper who tells him that although Iran supports the removal of Saddam, "the presence of the US in the region is not in our interests.

So the best thing is that the US topples Saddam Hussein, but that it pays a high price for this, because I think that one who pays a high price to take one step will think carefully before taking another." So far, so correct.

As the head of a polling organisation in Baghdad told me recently, Iran has enjoyed a much better return on its "investment" in Iraq than the US. Stirring up Shiite rebellions in the south, keeping the US busy and giving it a bloody nose costs a lot less than keeping soldiers in theatre and rebuilding a country at $4 billion a month.

Farouk Salloum, a highly regarded and bibulous poet, warns Anderson that it is easier to depose a dictator than install a democracy. Perhaps Iraq is not ready for this sudden panacea.

"The Islamic fundamentalists will rise up; so will nationalism, and even tribalism," he predicts. "You will draw out the Wahhabites from among the Sunnis and the ultra-conservative elements from the Shias." He might have mentioned the foreign fighters, the bearded fanatics from Saudi Arabia and Syria and elsewhere in the

Arab world, whose version of jihad against the hated infidels sees them killing Iraqi Muslims in droves.