Yesterday’s anti-American protests in Baghdad involving thousands of people demonstrate the urgent need for a road map in Iraq that ensures the rapid removal of US and British troops.

Washington thinks that it can run affairs in Baghdad until an interim government is established; it is profoundly mistaken. With yesterday’s protests a time bomb started ticking. Anti-American sentiments are growing in Iraq; they will become the dominant issue.

The US has to understand that gratitude at liberation does not extend to an acceptance of outsiders running the country, especially when that outsider is seen as the principal supporter of Israel, Iraq’s greatest enemy. In the normal course of events, they would be grateful to George Bush and Tony Blair for ridding them of Saddam Hussein. But relief at his fall is already over and done with. For the Iraqis, a proud people, the sight of foreign troops staying on and telling them what to do is as a red rag to a bull. Six weeks to a couple of months of US-British presence is the absolute maximum the Iraqis will tolerate.

Washington and London are fond of making comparisons between the situation in Iraq and that of Europe during World War II. But after that war, occupied countries such as France, the Netherlands and Norway were not placed under allied occupation. Responsibility was assumed by the countries’ free forces. Why treat the Iraqis differently? In doing so, Washington sends a message that it does not trust them to make their own decisions — which, of course, it does not.

Even if they have the best of intentions, the longer the Americans and British try to oversee Iraq’s political rebirth, the more resentful the Iraqis will become. And the more the two set their faces against it, the greater the likelihood of violence. American and British troops who came to liberate the Iraqis will end up oppressing them. Better that Washington and London recognize that now than when it is too late.

So far, there is no twinkling of a recognition, certainly not in Washington. The US remains under the delusion that, because it has done something it regards as praiseworthy, it ought to be praised and that, in time, it will be praised; only misunderstanding or downright malevolence prevent this. If Bush continues in that view, he is in danger of becoming the prisoner of Baghdad, unable to extricate himself from a situation of his own making.

That is where Iraq’s neighbors can help. At yesterday’s summit in Riyadh, the primary concerns were that Iraq might fall apart, that the American-British forces should leave as soon as possible, that Iraqis govern themselves as soon as possible, that reconstruction starts as soon as possible and that humanitarian aid get through where it is needed. In all of these, Iraq’s neighbors can provide solutions, especially its Arab neighbors. They can provide the materials and skills to get the civil infrastructure back on line; they can impartially oversee Iraq’s constitutional transformation. More to the point, they are trusted by Iraqis, unlike the Americans and British. Before the war started, there was a proposal to have the Arab League run Iraq, in cooperation with the UN. It needs to be reconsidered. It would allow the Americans and British to leave sooner, and get themselves off a hook that threatens to impale them.