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| Europe |
| Overview of East Europeans’ Attitudes About the War in Iraq |
| 2004-04-17 |
| .... An EOS Gallup Europe poll conducted last month in 30 European countries found most citizens opposed the U.S. intervention in Iraq and their own countries’ participation in related actions without UN approval, ABC News reported on 20 March. While 82 percent of EU nationals believed a military intervention in Iraq without UN approval was unjustified, the figure among 13 EU accession and candidate countries -- including "coalition of the willing" members such as Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia -- was lower at 74 percent. The poll figures do not translate into large street demonstrations or significant political action, however. "If there’s apathy in the West, there’s even more apathy in Eastern Europe," Mary Kaldor, a veteran of the European Nuclear Disarmament movement and director of the Global Civil Society Program at the London School of Economics .... The original motion to deploy Estonian troops to the Persian Gulf in May 2003 was backed by 69 of 101 deputies, a proportion similar to parliaments elsewhere in the region. But according to balticblog.blogspot.com, the final wording of the Estonian bill is likely to include language -- at the behest of Estonia’s Social Democrats -- linking the extension to a UN mandate. The Estonian contingent is deployed in Baghdad, in a fairly peaceful zone. Latvia has about 100 soldiers and Lithuania 90 troops participating in stabilization efforts in Iraq, and those leaders seem to be unflinching supporters of the coalition effort. Lithuania’s parliament recently approved the continued presence of its troops in Iraq. Russian news sources tend to report unspecified antiwar sentiment that they believe is growing due to casualties, but Baltic media do not report such sentiment as widespread, and antiwar demonstrations have not been reported in their respective capitals. .... Bulgarians have ways of making their unhappiness known that do not always involve street demonstrations. One of them is the time-honored collective petitioning of the powers-that-be. .... Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov, who had reasserted the government’s determination to keep maintain soldiers in Iraq, met personally with the relatives and assured them that measures were being taken to keep the troops safe. .... Such high-level assurance and attention seemed to mollify the soldiers’ families for now, and one relative admitted to journalists that the soldiers had not asked to be recalled from Iraq but their families were making the request on their behalf. Yet two days later, on 14 April, 15 of the approximately 450 Bulgarian troops stationed in Karbala asked to be relieved of their duties. .... While much concern has focused on their troops, Bulgarians have also expressed anxiety about possible terrorism. A little-reported sidebar to the Madrid tragedy of 11 March was the unusually large number of Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans among the victims -- presumably due to the number of students and migrant workers from poorer neighborhoods aboard the commuter trains that were struck, UPI reported on 11 March. Four Bulgarians were killed and eight others wounded in the Madrid blasts ..... Polls last year in the Czech Republic suggested that 70 percent of citizens opposed the war and did not back the deployment of the Czech antinuclear, -biological, and -chemical (NBC) unit to Iraq. Anxiety increased as the country followed the fate of three Czech journalists taken hostage .... About 80 percent of Hungary’s population opposed military intervention in Iraq, AP reported on 25 March -- perhaps explaining why the country’s Defense Ministry appeared to flip-flop on the issue, first talking about reducing its 300-troop deployment, then saying it has no intentions of doing so. The opposition Democratic Forum called on the government to bring the troops home immediately .... The strongest opposition party, FIDESZ, took the position that Hungarian troops should be ordered home before their mandate expires only if they are unable to accomplish their mission. In an attempt to allay public fears, Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz told the daily Nepszabadsag that no fighting is going on in the area where Hungarian soldiers are based, and they are not expected to be directly involved in any armed conflict. Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski made headlines last month when he complained that his country was "taken for a ride" regarding the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, yet he vowed to keep Poland’s 2,500 troops in Iraq. Members of the Polish parliament called for a withdrawal of the country’s troops from Iraq but have not gathered a majority to back them. In polls before and since the war began in Iraq, 70 percent of the Polish public has opposed the invasion of Iraq, less than in some other new and prospective NATO and EU members, but still a high majority. Two Polish soldiers have been killed in Iraq. .... Most Russians appear to believe the occupation of Iraq is a "crime against the Iraqi people," UPI reported on 18 March, citing RosBusinessConsulting and a February poll by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM). Some 62 percent of Russians characterized the war as a "crime," while 23 percent said it was necessary and 4 percent supported it. .... Ukraine sent 1,634 troops to Iraq, in part to repair relations with the United States, which has been critical of Ukraine’s deteriorating human rights situation and made allegations of past sales of arms to Iraq. Four Ukrainian troops have died in Iraq to date -- three in accidents, including one incident of mishandled weapons. The fourth, Ruslan Androshuk, was killed in his tank in Al-Kut on 9 April while his unit was evacuating during a fight for a bridge over the Tigris River. He was the first combat death for Ukraine and received wide coverage on local television. Five other Ukrainians in Androshuk’s unit were wounded. .... Ukrainian military spokesmen repeatedly explained that their troops were unprepared for combat and had expected to serve as peacekeepers, not warriors. In discussions of the Ukrainian presence in Iraq, the word "peacekeeper" rather than "soldier" is always used, presumably to invoke associations with the United Nations even though the UN has not sanctioned a peacekeeping force from Ukraine or any other partner or ally of the U.S.-led coalition. Parliamentarians who have opposed the war have been quick to pick up on the lack of UN authorization and the sense that the United States appears to be alone in making decisions about troop deployment. .... The opposition Our Ukraine requested that Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk report on the peacekeepers’ situation and noted that -- before agreeing to the deployment in August -- the parliament had stipulated that they would not be engaged in fighting .... The Ukraine Defense Ministry said the troops would be kept in Iraq but expressed concern about their mission. "Peacekeepers are not meant to get involved in battle," said Deputy Chief of Staff Oleg Sibeshenko. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |