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June 08, 2005
The Nature of the Iraqi Terrorists Today
This is a good essay by a leftist academic M. Schwartz on the nature of the Iraqi terrorists published in the Asia Times.
In his essay Mr. Schwartz says that the new use of car bombs which kills Iraqi civilians is going to dramatically increase the degree of hostility by the civilian Iraqi population towards the terrorists. Here is the material which was new to me
- Before the current campaign, most of the resistance attempted to co-opt, rather than defeat, the Iraqi police and national guard. The patterns were simple: when police and the national guard were stationed in cities, the resistance would cooperate with them in enforcing criminal law, delivering criminals to them and avoiding armed conflict, except when they participated in campaigns against the resistance itself. When the US called on local Iraqi forces to fight the resistance, the resistance would issue an appeal for the Iraqi armed forces to defect or abandon their posts and melt into the population. In virtually every important confrontation police stations were abandoned to the resistance, Iraqi units deserted and went home rather than fight other Iraqis, and some even joined the resistance and fought the Americans. The most highly visible of such cases occurred in the two battles in Fallujah last year and the confrontations in Sadr City, where the US could not mobilize any Iraqi units except those from the Kurdish areas.
This strategy was more successful than preventing the recruitment of police and national guards, since it created a "Trojan Horse" supplied and trained by the US that was frequently an ally and almost never the enemy. In Mosul, for example, US reliance on the local police allowed the resistance to take over the city (during the battle of Fallujah, when the US forces were otherwise occupied) with almost no fighting. A force of 3,000 policemen simply melted into the population (except those that joined the rebels) and left their weapons and supplies behind.
This new car-bomb strategy will therefore hurt the resistance whether it succeeds or fails. Any reduction in the size of the army will be more than offset by the antagonism to the resistance among the surviving forces, definitively undermining the "Trojan Horse" strategy.
So why have at least some elements of the rebellion abandoned the co-optation strategy? The most important answer lies in changes in US policy for deploying Iraqi military forces. Until last fall, the US recruited local residents for the local police force and assigned army units with matching ethno-religious backgrounds to local patrols. That is, they recruited Fallujans to police and patrol in Fallujah, Ramadans in Ramadi and Sadr City residents in Sadr City. When this was not possible, Sunnis were assigned to Sunni areas; Shi'ites were assigned to Shi'ite areas.
This policy, of course, was a key element in enabling the "Trojan Horse" strategy, since the soldiers' ties in the local communities gave families and tribal leaders personal, moral and clerical leverage over the local armed forces. Last fall, faced with the stark evidence of the power of these ties, the US military reacted by assigning outsiders to police the most troubled areas. That is, they began to use Sunni and Kurdish forces in Shi'ite areas; Shi'ite and Kurdish forces in Sunni areas. So, for example, while the Sunni military forces refused to fight in both battles of Fallujah, in the second battle a Kurdish force joined the Americans and fought alongside them.
This strategy could work - the US might be able to recruit police forces and national guard units that would not be co-optable by the resistance, simply exploiting the ethno-religious divisions in the country. They are trying this in Ramadi and other centers of Sunni resistance. In Fallujah, the Shi'ite occupying troops have been accused of frequent and systematic brutality. This brutality is a sign that the Shi'ite armed forces may not be co-optable by the Sunni resistance, and it has been a major source of the growing antagonism between the Shi'ite and Sunni communities. (The use of this ethnic "fix" to their enforcement problems, as well as failure of the Americans to respond to the charges of brutality in Fallujah and elsewhere provides further evidence of American complicity in - and perhaps authorship of - the growing ethno-religious conflict in Iraq.)
Certainly, the current car-bomb campaign suggests that at least some elements in the Sunni resistance think that the American strategy will work. One key sign of this can be seen in the abortive negotiations around the battle of Fallujah. It was not well publicized, but the US did negotiate with representatives of the Fallujah leadership before attacking, and one of the sticking points in the negotiations was the demand by the rebels that the police force in Fallujah be recruited from Fallujah. The US would not agree to this demand. Another, more immediate, indication lies in the fact that virtually all of the car bombs are directed against primarily Shi'ite armed forces. In fact, the bombings tend to be in Shi'ite areas of town (where Shi'ite recruits or police congregate) so that the civilian victims are also Shi'ite. While such targeting is "logical" in some abstract sense, the attacks are inevitably seen as anti-Shi'ite.
Hence it is no surprise that communities in which these attacks take place see them as atrocities - not only because they kill civilians, but also because the recruits are usually local men who are applying for one of the only available jobs in town. The comment that the restaurant bombers "show us how brave they are by killing these poor men who run all day to feed their families" probably represents the predominant attitude among Shi'ites toward both the car bombers and the police they target. The fact that these police jobs are all that the American-led pseudo-reconstruction can offer in the way of employment is a sign of the failure of the occupation. But even if this sharpens the anger of the residents against the US, it does not soften the anger at the car bombers, who are not only killing people, but removing one of the few job possibilities available in communities where unemployment is as high as 60%.
So the car-bomb campaign is designed to substitute for co-opting the police, but it has far-reaching consequences. Beyond the murder and alienation of civilians and its likelihood to strengthen police antagonism to the resistance, it adds to the growing divisions between Shi'ites and Sunnis, feeding the very ethno-religious friction that has become Washington's principal excuse for its continuing presence. The fact that the US is in some sense the driving force behind this growing division is an important part of the story, but it is only one important part. The other is the strategy of the Sunni resistance. Instead of searching for another way of defeating Iraqification, it has adopted this strategy, which has already contributed to the growing friction between Shi'ites and Sunnis in Iraq.
This certainly makes sense and fits with what I've read over the last two years. If the Sunni terrorists provoke massive violence against them by hostile Shias that would really put us in a no-win situation.
Hat tip to this article in Winds of Change.
Posted by rakhier at June 8, 2005 09:46 AM