What went wrong? This is the simple question that guided the great authority among Anglo-American experts on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, in his book on Islamic and Arab history after Sept. 11, 2001. The question turned out not only to be good -- it was also necessary. Today, three years after the beginning of the war in Iraq, that question needs to be directed not just at the Arab world, but also at Western policy, and above all at United States policy. After all, since the administration of George W. Bush decided to remove Saddam Hussein from power by war, just about everything went wrong that possibly could have. What is more, the reality in Iraq and the surrounding region far surpassed all negative expectations and fears, and it continues to do so today.

The war in Iraq was supposed to create the conditions for a regional realignment. It was supposed to create a new, an American Middle East, proving America's power and global leadership and thereby guaranteeing America and the West lasting security in the face of the new terrorist threat. Today, we're farther removed from that than ever. If things continue to develop in the way they have since the US entered Baghdad, then there is reason to fear that there will indeed be a realignment of this dangerous region, but one entirely different and even diametrically opposed to the one intended by Washington and the neo-conservative strategists. At the core of the Middle Eastern crisis is the stalled modernization of this region. Given the pressures of globalization, and hence the accentuation of economic, social and cultural contradictions, such modernization will have to take place if the most basic needs of a very young and rapidly growing population are to be met even approximately. The decisive question will be how peacefully or violently this modernization process in the Middle East will take place. The Bush administration's disastrous miscalculation in Iraq seems to have created all the conditions for the latter.

It was perfectly clear from the very beginning that by invading Iraq, bringing about "regime change" and becoming an occupation power, the US would assume responsibility for the reshaping not just of Iraq, but of the entire Middle East. That was the very premise of the neoconservative approach of going to war for purposes of regional realignment. Along with Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, Iraq formed the center of the Near East that replaced the fallen order of the Ottoman Empire -- a Near East created after 1918 by France and, especially, by Britain.

After 1918, the British combined the three Turkish provinces Baghdad, Basra and Mosul to form the new state of Iraq. This, however, meant creating a state that bore within itself, from the very beginning, the most important religious, ethnic and power political contradictions of the Anglo-French Middle East - Sunnis, Shiites and oil. Yet all these contradictions in Iraq were never resolved and thereby overcome; rather, the state was held together by brutal violence from the Sunni- and Arab-dominated government in Baghdad, or by occupation powers.

Given their overwhelming military superiority, it was easy for the US to remove Saddam Hussein from power. If, however, it was not just a matter of toppling Saddam and installing a pro-Western dictator, but rather of setting in motion a process of regional realignment by means of the democratization of Iraq, then the decisive question was and continues to be a different one than that of military superiority. The question is whether the majority of US citizens were ever really prepared to pay the very high military, political, economic, and moral cost for such an imperial enterprise, and to pay for it over a long period of time. We know today that the answer is "No." But such a negative answer was already to be expected in 2002 and 2003, and would have been the starting point if the actual reason for the war had been placed at the center of the domestic debate in the US. That's why other reasons for going to war were invoked - weapons of mass destruction and international terror - reasons that have quite obviously not held up to reality.

From this there resulted a second question: If the US entered Iraq with superior military might but with a lack of political support, then how were they going to leave again within a manageable timeframe without leaving behind a highly explosive vacuum? This question is still unanswered today. Because these questions were foreseeable, warnings against going to war were issued from various sides. The occupation of Iraq and the toppling of the dictator Saddam Hussein had to lead either to a great realignment of the entire Middle East or create a vacuum that would threaten to endanger the cohesion of Iraq, trigger a civil war and draw the most important regional powers into this war.

There is a third question that should not be forgotten. The toppling of Saddam Hussein by the US would shift the power balance among the regional powers in a decisive way, unless that power balance was adjusted and hence neutralized by the lasting presence of the US as the new Middle Eastern hegemonic power. The US approach of attempting to make the war in Iraq the trigger for regional realignment on the basis of democratization and free elections could not but turn the old power relations between Arabs and Kurds, between the Sunni minority -- which is also the traditional power elite -- and the Shiite majority on their heads. For democracy means the rule of the majority determined by free elections, and the Shiites make up the majority in Iraq.

That also made it clear from the start that Tehran's influence on the fate of Iraq would rise disproportionately, and that Iran threatened to become the genuine regional winner of the war in Iraq if the US lost control over events on the ground or if the feared power vacuum were to be created by a US retreat. The current development in Iraq is leading very quickly into this disastrous direction. The urgent question of how to prevent a situation in which the US, with its policy in Iraq, unintentionally makes itself an agent of the implementation of Iranian interests, thereby decisively strengthening Iran, was in fact never answered by Washington.

The power vacuum the US threatens to leave behind in the region in the case of a withdrawal from Iraq will draw all regional powers involved into a struggle over hegemony in Iraq and in the region. The first regional power that needs to be mentioned in this regard is Iran; the second is Israel, and the third Turkey. Without a doubt Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Gulf states will not sit idly by. They currently find themselves in a weak position, both structurally and in terms of their specific current situations. Moreover, they are threatening to become the next hot spots of the conflict over hegemony in the Near East triggered by the war in Iraq. In order to understand the tremendous strategic danger of the Iranian nuclear program, which is doubtless aimed at making Iran a nuclear power in the military sense, one has to consider this possible hegemonic confrontation between Israel and Iran.

Israel will interpret the Iranian bomb both as a threat to its existence and as a hegemonic challenge, and this constellation contains within it the danger of a highly explosive crisis. But Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and all the other states in the region will not sit idly by either as Iran pursues Near Eastern hegemony by means of its nuclear program, so that there is the risk that there will at least be a nuclear arms race in the Near East. This alone would be nightmare enough.

Nonetheless, realism requires one to assume that this risk of a struggle over regional hegemony, a risk that assumes a nuclear dimension with Iran, will bring about a situation that triggers a military confrontation that none of the powers involved wants, but into which they will nonetheless find themselves sliding - by virtue of the chaotic automatism of the power relations and the high power political stakes. What is more, there is already a danger today that Tehran will overestimate its own strength and underestimates American power, thereby reaching the wrong conclusions -- conclusions with a dangerously escalating effect.

And it is here that we encounter a fourth question, that concerning the role of terrorism in Iraq and in the region. The battle against terrorism was one of the main arguments for the war in Iraq, but this argument has transformed into its opposite. If the al-Qaida terror network was on the defensive after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the war in Afghanistan, this situation has been reversed since the war in Iraq. For international jihad terrorism, Iraq has historically taken on the same mobilizing function that the Islamic and national resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan had in the 1980s. Then, it was Pakistan that became the main beneficiary of the Afghan power vacuum; in today's Iraq, that role falls to Iran.

Sunni jihad terrorism objectively contributes to Tehran's interests, not just because it is making the situation of US troops in Iraq increasingly hopeless, but also because it is highly likely to pursue the destabilization of the Arab peninsula and Jordan by terrorist means following a US retreat from Iraq. A Middle East that falls into chaos would almost certainly bring about Iranian hegemony, especially if Tehran were to succeed in becoming a nuclear power. Of course, all these calculations could turn out to be very short-sighted, since they underestimate both the Israel factor and the possibility of an anti-hegemonic Middle Eastern coalition against Iran, a coalition which could transform a possible Iraqi civil war into a second Arab-Iranian land war in Iraq - hardly an encouraging prospect, to be sure.

Another dangerous result of the American intervention in Iraq can already be discerned on the political horizon. Oil and nuclear weapons are being made the decisive power currency in this hegemonic confrontation in the Middle East. Iran already disposes of oil today and is striving for nuclear weapons. But Sunni jihad terrorism should not be underestimated either. Its true targets are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two countries whose stability is questionable. Taken together, they also dispose of the two decisive components of the new power currency in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, US policy in Iraq today has stalled entirely. Instead of bringing about regional realignment, the US is using its strength to create a power vacuum, and thus prevent a civil war. Such a civil war is, however, becoming more likely every day. If, in 2003, everything suggested that this US war was a mistake, then today, the arguments against a US retreat in Iraq are at least as strong. But the situation is even worse, since every day that US troops remain in Iraq will only aggravate rather than solve this crisis -- a crisis that is headed for civil war. It's depressing to see that nothing is left of the US strategy of regional realignment. Instead, an unnecessary defeat -- and one with far-reaching consequences -- will have to be responded to by a strategy of containment, deterrence and long-term transformation from within the societies concerned.

These prospects are anything but encouraging, but when one looks back on the years since the US invaded Baghdad, one finds that all gloomy predictions have been surpassed by reality. Foreign policy pessimists usually turn out to be bad-tempered realists. But when pessimists are overtaken by reality itself, as has happened in Iraq, that would seem to be cause for true concern. The only stage of pessimism left would then seem to be the escape into optimism, an escape that would entail the surrender of every form of realism. Recent official statements by the US administration suggest that this next stage has already been reached.

The gunmen used three cars to block a road then opened fire on the Russian diplomatic vehicle, the officials say.

The attack took place in Mansour district in the west of the city, close to the Russian embassy.

An embassy official confirmed the death and abductions to Russia's Interfax agency but made no further comment.

Russia's foreign ministry in Moscow would only say it was still checking the information.

Mansour houses a number of embassies and has seen attacks on other diplomats.

A United Arab Emirates diplomat was seized and held for two weeks before being freed last month.

Last year, two Algerian, one Egyptian and two Moroccan embassy workers were abducted and killed.

Severed Heads

The latest abductions came on another day of violence across the country.

Iraqi police said they had found eight severed heads on a roadside near the town of Baquba, 60km (35 miles) north-east of Baghdad.

The identities have not been confirmed but a note at the scene said at least one had been killed in retaliation for the murder of four Shia doctors.

Police told the Reuters news agency one of the men was identified as the Sunni preacher of a mosque in Tarmiya, 30km north of Baghdad.

And a police lieutenant-colonel, Adil Zihari, told Associated Press five of the men worked at a hospital in Baghdad.

Separately, seven policemen were killed and 10 other people wounded in an attack on a checkpoint in Baquba.

Insurgents raided the al-Razi checkpoint with rocket-propelled and hand grenades and small arms fire.

In other violence, at least four bodies were found across Baghdad, all with signs of torture.

The violence comes as the new government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki prepares to name the new interior and defence ministers - a move the administration hopes will help ease unrest.

The National Salvation Front includes outspoken former Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam and the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

"Regime change and the adoption of democracy are necessary for Syria to develop and advance on the path towards independence," 73-year-old Khaddam said in his opening speech, which was made in Arabic.

"Syria faces two choices," Khaddam added. "The first is to maintain the current situation -- and then the country's destiny will disappear.

"The other is to hand the country to the people and allow political choices to be made through free elections."

Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouini, the exiled head of the Muslim Brotherhood, added that the purpose of the meeting was to set up a "national programme of change".

"Peaceful and democratic change requires all the efforts of the nation," he said.

"The starting point must be the end" of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's administration, al-Bayanouini added.

About 50 opponents of al-Assad regime, including Kurdish parties, independents and communists, were present at the London talks which were not however attended by opposition figures living in Syria.

The group meanwhile revealed Sunday that around 15 prisoners, including opposition activist Michel Kilo and writer Ali Abdallah, began a hunger strike on May 30. Others taking part included jailed lawyer Anouar Bounnin and Mahmoud Merhi, the secretary general of the Arab Organization for Human Rights.

The talks come shortly before the head of a UN commission submits an investigative report on the February 2005 killing of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, which has been widely blamed on Syria.

Khaddam, who resigned as vice-president last June and now lives in exile in Paris where he is leading opposition activities, has alleged that Assad himself ordered the killing of Hariri in a massive Beirut bomb blast, charges Damascus has denied.

In turn, Syria has accused Khaddam of high treason and corruption.

He has held a number of meetings in Paris and Brussels with the London-based al-Bayanouini, on their push for "peaceful regime change".

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," McDonnell said, but police raids on what local media said were a dozen locations prevented them from assembling any bombs, he said.

"This group posed a real and serious threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts," he said.

Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said they are "Canadian residents from a variety of backgrounds. For various reasons they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by Al-Qaeda."

The group -- all younger than 25, except Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, and Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43 -- had no formal links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, he added.

But FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko in Washington, DC, said there was "preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact" with two American terror suspects, Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, who traveled to Toronto in March 2005.

Canada has been named by Al-Qaeda leaders on several occasions as one of six Western countries which could face their wrath, and Canadian intelligence officials have repeatedly warned that an attack in Canada was inevitable.

The arrests demonstrate that Canada is "not immune from this ideology," Portelance said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada was a target of extremists because of its liberal, democratic values and pledged to strengthen Canadian security laws, as well as provide further resources "to combat terrorism here and abroad."

"It's a dangerous world. We cannot walk away from it," he told 250 new military recruits at a ceremony at Canada's War Museum in Ottawa.

The 17 men arrested have been charged with participating in a terrorist group's activities; training and recruitment for the group; firearms and explosives offences; and contributing money or property for terrorist purposes.

Police exhibited items seized from a camp at an undisclosed location in Ontario purportedly used in training for upcoming attacks, including flash lights, computers and walkie-talkies.

Local reports suggested the group had videotaped the CN Tower, one of the world's tallest structures, and the Toronto subway, which carries some 800,000 commuters each day, but officials refused to specify the intended targets.

On Monday, Canada's spy agency warned the country faced a growing threat from "homegrown terrorists", particularly youth upset about the oppression of Muslims worldwide and Canada's combat role in Afghanistan against the Taliban.

Jack Hooper, deputy director of operations at CSIS, told a Senate defence committee it was tracking 350 "high-level targets" as well as 50 to 60 organizations with possible links to groups such as Al-Qaeda.

"Increasingly, we are learning of more and more extremists that are homegrown," he said.

"These are people who may have immigrated to Canada at an early age who become radicalized while in Canada. They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth ... blend into our society very well ... speak our language ... and appear to be, for all intents and purposes, well assimilated."

"There are residents in Canada that are graduates of terrorist training camps and campaigns, including experienced combatants from conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere," he said.

More than 400 officers worked thousands of hours on the "ongoing" investigation and more arrests were expected in the case, officials said.

According to reports, CSIS had monitored the group since 2004 and police launched an investigation last year.

The accused appeared in court late Saturday as snipers on rooftops and heavily armed police in armored vehicles kept watch. They are expected to return for a bail hearing on Tuesday, officials said.

According to their lawyers, brothers Abul Koyair, 20, and Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism after they were arrested during a dawn raid on Friday.

Kahar, who was shot during the raid, was moved on Sunday from Royal London Hospital to Paddington Green high security police station, where he was expected to face questioning for the first time. However, his lawyer Kate Roxburgh said on Sunday evening he was still too weak.

Police have declined to comment on the reports that experts were hunting for evidence of chemical or biological weapons as they continued to search the terraced house.

Neighbours in Forest Gate defended the brothers, who were arrested under the Terrorism Act, describing them as devout Muslims from a Bangladeshi family, and accused police of heavy-handed tactics.

"If the intelligence was wrong, we possibly have egg on our faces,"another anonymous Scotland Yard source said in the Daily Telegraph.

"We have wasted a lot of time, put a lot of people out, one man has been shot and two have been arrested.

"But what was the alternative: that we didn't act? The bomb might not be there but if the intelligence was right, has it been moved?" he added.

According to the best-selling tabloid Sun, the raid by 250 officers could still yield results.

"Although the bomb is still missing some evidence was found at the raided house in Forest Gate to suggest potential links to terrorism," the paper said, citing more anonymous sources.

"The informant is highly regarded and was certain what he saw with his own eyes was a chemical bomb. We are still convinced the information is 100 percent accurate," insisted a source within M15, Britain's interior intelligence agency.

The Daily Mail was much less optimistic of a result, and cited several details of the police operation and enquiry which would be particularly disquieting if the bomb threat were real.

Why were relatives of the brothers allowed to go on holiday to Mauritius so soon after the raid? Why was the Forest Gate area not evacuated? And why did the police not inform Cobra, the anti-terror committee involving ministers, emergency services and security agencies, of Friday's raid?

Questions were also being asked about the shooting and arrests.

A government source told Sunday's News of the World that the shot was fired by Abul Koyair at his elder brother while attempting to grab a policeman's gun.

That theory was denied by the suspect's lawyer Julian Young late Sunday.

"My client accepts he may have shouted but he says he did not struggle and did not cause his brother to be shot".

Scotland Yard refused to comment on the incident which is now subject to an independent investigation.

Young, representing Koyair, added: "My client denies any involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism or anything to do with explosives or firearms."

He accused the police of a "cover-up", drawing a direct comparison with the Stockwell tube station shooting last July, when police were heavily criticized for shooting dead innocent Brazilian Jean-Charles de Menezes in the wake of attempted bombings in London.

The aircraft, called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are already being used by the Belgian government to catch tankers illegally dumping oil in the North Sea. Several ships' captains have already been prosecuted.

The European Commission now wants to use similar drones, which can have a 6-metre wing-span and weigh as little as 195kg, to patrol the Mediterranean coasts and the Balkans where illegal immigrants try to enter the EU. The Russian government is also close to flying drones over its borders.

A senior commission official said: "We're convinced that this is a very good way of using military technologies for non-military purposes."

Alongside the new "spies in the sky", officials in Brussels have launched more than a dozen research projects to develop new technologies for counter-terrorism, policing and border security. They include body scanners that can see through clothing and detect explosive vests, guns or chemical weapons; portable devices that can "see" through walls and detect people moving inside buildings; and tiny radio tags that would be fitted on people inside buildings under surveillance.

However, the research programme, which will start in earnest early next year, has caused alarm among civil liberties groups and MPs. They accuse officials in Brussels of breaking EU law by starting these projects before they had been agreed by MEPs and member states. A new report by the London-based civil rights group Statewatch and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam claims that Brussels and the European defence companies are desperate to catch up with spending in the US, where President Bush has pledged to spend $1bn a year on "homeland security".

Ben Hayes, the author of the report, said: "Everyone agrees with more money for the police and security services to combat terrorism, but the danger is that EU policy is increasingly skewed towards a particular brand of 'security', based on military, police and corporate interests."

A British-built "spy in the sky" is already in service with the US Immigration Department, patrolling the Mexican border where millions of illegal workers cross into the US every year.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said the cameras would focus on "hot-spots and common routes" used to enter the US.

US lawmakers have been debating a divisive new illegal immigration bill.

The Senate has approved a law that grants millions of illegal immigrants US citizenship and calls for the creation of a guest-worker programme, while beefing up border security.

But in order to come into effect, the plan must be reconciled with tougher anti-immigration measures backed by the House of Representatives, that insist all illegal immigration should be criminalised.

The issue has polarised politics and US society. Right-wing groups have protested against illegal immigrants, while millions of people marched in support of them last month.

Free number

The Texas governor announced his plans for streaming the border surveillance camera footage over the internet at a meeting of police officials on Thursday.

"A stronger border is what Americans want and it's what our security demands and that is what Texas is going to deliver," Mr Perry said.

The cameras will cost $5m to install and will be trained on sections of the 1,000-mile (1,600km) border known to be favoured by illegal immigrants.

Web users who spot an apparently illegal crossing will be able to alert the authorities by telephoning a number free of charge.

Mr Perry, a Republican, is running for re-election in November.

Deployment dispute

Meanwhile, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has sent National Guard soldiers to his state's border with Mexico, ending a weeks-old dispute with US President George W Bush.

President Bush announced plans on 14 May for thousands of soldiers from the Guard to be sent to bolster security along the Mexican border.

Mr Schwarzenegger had opposed the plan, describing it as a "Band-Aid solution" - or a temporary fix.

He said he did not want to place his state's National Guard soldiers - many of whom would have already served in Iraq - under additional strain.

On Thursday, the governor said he would send the soldiers to the border and the cost of the deployment would be shouldered by the federal government.

Meanwhile, a group of US civilian volunteers that has been patrolling the Mexican border began last week building a fence along a section of the frontier.

The Minutemen group started erecting the fence on privately-owned land in Arizona on Saturday, saying it is "doing the job the federal government will not do".

The Minutemen are allowed to report illegal crossings to border police but have no right to arrest suspects.

Human rights groups have accused the group of xenophobia towards illegal immigrants - but the group denies this.

"Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society."

Bush said a constitutional amendment was needed to keep "activist" judges from overturning efforts by some state legislatures to ban gay marriage.

But Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, accused Bush of using the radio address to "appease his right-wing conservative base."

"At a time when Americans are tuning in to hear about issues they care about, he chose to spend the time advocating writing discrimination into the Constitution."

APPROVAL RATINGS DOWN

Bush spoke out in favor of a ban on gay marriage during the 2004 presidential election race, when the issue's appearance on local ballots helped turn out Republican supporters in key states, but some conservatives complain that he has done little more than talk about it.

He is raising his profile on the issue as he grapples with approval ratings near 30 percent, a low for his presidency.

Bush once could count on overwhelming conservative support but the Iraq war and several political blunders have cost him some of that backing, leaving many Republicans fearful of losing control of Congress to Democrats in November.

Bush's wife, Laura, has said she did not think the gay-marriage issue should be used to score political points in an election year.

"I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously," Laura Bush told Fox news in a mid-May interview. "But I do think it's something that people in the United States want to debate."

Bush plans to promote the marriage amendment again on Monday in a White House meeting with community leaders, constitutional scholars and clergy who support the ban on same-sex unions.

Bush cited four states, Washington, California, Maryland and New York, in which he said local courts had "overturned laws protecting marriage" since 2004, and pointed to a Nebraska federal judge who removed a state ban on same-sex marriage.

Gay marriage has been an increasingly divisive issue since a Massachusetts court ruled in 2003 that the state legislature could not ban it, paving the way for America's first same-sex marriages the following year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the amendment along party lines on May 18. But it must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority and then be approved by at least 38 states to become law. A similar measure failed in 2004.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, has acknowledged he has far fewer than the 67 votes needed to win passage.

At least 13 states have passed their own amendments banning gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut have legalized civil unions. Just over half of all Americans oppose same-sex marriage, a March poll by the Pew Research center showed.