Warsaw, Washington and Baghdad
Starting this week, Chris Wells reports on what the media around the world are saying about Poland.
During what is normally a quiet time of the year, news-wise, Poland has been getting substantial coverage in the world's English-language press. Much has been written about the deployment of Polish troops to take charge of a sizeable chunk of southern Iraq, and the coverage continues to heap cement on Poland's place in U.S. President George W. Bush's new world order.
The Washington Times carried a substantial interview with Major-General Andrzej Tyszkiewcz, the man in charge of the Polish-led multinational division, which didn't quite hold water on a couple of levels. First, he accepted that Poland was running the risk of upsetting France and Germany, and then went on to add that "certain countries" may be "jealous" because the U.S. had asked Poland to head up this force. Whatever the French and German governments may be feeling while the Iraq saga unfolds in its peculiar middle-eastern bloodstained way, I don't think jealousy can be put right up there with feelings of injustice and disbelief. Secondly, the major-general was quoted as saying that Poland's involvement wasn't about money or oil, which somewhat contradicted Foreign Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz's comments a couple of weeks ago. In any event, Tyszkiewcz's final quote was that 1,200 Polish companies are poised ready to rebuild those parts of Iraq's infrastructure with which they have had experience in recent decades, although, uh ... none have actually been awarded a contract yet.
Interestingly, the same day the interview ran, the Washington Post reported poll results indicating that 55 percent of Poles were against the deployment of Polish troops in Iraq, down five points on the previous month. More noticeably, 68 percent feared that Poland would now become a target for terrorist attacks, and this on the day that the troops left for Iraq, with President Kwaśniewski claiming again that it wasn't about easy gains or oil.
The Post article also drew attention to increasing homegrown criticism over the issue, with a leading commentator at Gazeta Wyborcza complaining that Poland's true role is to provide the U.S. and U.K. with nothing more than an alibi.
The Polish troops themselves will make up about a sixth of the force they'll control (the number depends on which paper you read; estimates range from 1,700 to 2,500 Poles among a total force of between 9,700 to 12,000). The soldiers under their command read like a list of countries that failed to qualify for the football World Cup: El Salvador, Bulgaria, the Philippines, Latvia and Honduras, to name a few.
Poles are a cynical bunch at the best of times, and those with whom this writer has spoken display the familiarly stolid attitude of not getting too excited about events over which they have no control. This is not to say that the local public does not care; but to them, as to even the most myopic of observers, this is a political issue and not a military one. With domestic support waning and - as yet - no cast-iron reconstruction contracts, not to mention the perceived increase of a terrorist threat, it remains to be seen what the reaction of ordinary Poles will be, should their troops find that they have to defend themselves against the Iraqis as U.S. forces must now.
