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THE ROVING EYE
The 'Palestinization' of
Iraq
By Pepe Escobar
AMMAN -
American tanks are now ripping at the heart of
Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" and the
cradle of civilization; the US 5th Corps is already
engaging the Medina division of the Republican Guards as
B52s increase their bombing raids of the "red line" in
the outer ring of defenses of Baghdad, over which hangs
a surreal, dust-induced dark orange cloud.
For
280 million Arabs, the symbolic effect of the tanks in
the country is as devastating as a lethal sandstorm. But
Saddam Hussein seems to be one step ahead. It doesn't
matter that Iraqi TV was silenced by a showering of
Tomahawks (although domestic broadcasts, as well as the
international signal, have been restored). Al-Jazeera
and Abu Dhabi TV will be on hand to record the ultimate
image that Saddam knows is capable of igniting the Arab
world into an ocean of fire: an American tank in the
streets of Baghdad juxtaposed with an American tank in
the streets of Gaza.
To date, an estimated 5,200
Iraqis have crossed the Jordanian-Iraqi border, going
back "to defend their homeland" as they invariably put
it. In already one week of a war that was marketed by
the Pentagon as "clean" and "quick" and which is
revealing itself to be bloody and protracted, not a
single Iraqi refugee has crossed the al-Karama border
point into eastern Jordan.
Beyond Iraq, the most
crucial development in the Middle East for decades is
the fact that from Amman to Cairo, from Beirut to
Riyadh, the bulk of the Arab nation is now
"Palestinized". Marwan Muasher, the suave Jordanian
foreign minister, insists that King Abdullah and his
government are doing everything to end the war and "to
try to help the Iraqi people" - basically through
frantic telephone diplomacy with Bahrain, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia. The Arab League has meekly called for an
end to the war. Washington didn't even register it. And
the Arab street is not buying excuses any more.
The widespread anger directed at Arab leaders is
overwhelming - from taxi drivers to art students, from
construction workers to businessmen. For around half a
century, the anger in a way channeled by the
Palestinians - who by practical experience have learned
not to trust Arab leaders. Now the loss of legitimacy is
total - a long decaying process that originated in the
early 1990s. The street knows that all Arab regimes -
from reactionary Saudi Arabia to relatively progressive
Jordan - have failed. They have been incapable of
achieving Arab unity and independence. They have been
incapable of providing social, economic and
technological development. They have been impotent in
their promises to try to help liberate Gaza and the West
Bank. And they have been shamefully incapable of uniting
against what their populations unanimously consider a
neocolonialist war in Iraq.
One of the most
extraordinary developments of the war so far is how the
resistance of the Iraqi population against a foreign
invasion has galvanized this sentiment of anger in the
Arab world. "We are all Palestinians now," as a Bedouin
taxi driver puts it. One of the first things anyone
mentions in Jordan - be it a Jordanian, an Egyptian, a
Lebanese or a Somali refugee - is their happiness about
the way the Iraqi people are resisting the "invaders"
(never qualified as "liberators"). Their intuition also
tells them that every extra day in this war is further
humiliation to the Pentagon - especially because the
real war, and not the US version, is being followed by
the whole Arab world, in Arabic, through Arab satellite
channels.
In a cramped office in downtown Amman
near the Roman amphitheater, answering dozens of phone
calls, surfing the Internet and zapping incessantly
between al-Jazeera and CNN, a Jordanian intelligence
source muses on how the Americans will play the war.
"They are going to encircle the big cities, Basra, Mosul
and Baghdad. But the elite Republican Guard divisions
are digging in. The Americans will be forced to attack
the best Iraqi soldiers, and thousands, dozens of
thousands are now inside Baghdad. The Americans can't
occupy Baghdad, they don't have enough soldiers, the
city has more people than the whole of Lebanon. They
could stay outside and keep bombing. But for how long?
They cannot afford a war lasting many months. They will
go crazy."
The Pentagon plan for Baghdad is to
encircle the huge, sprawling city of 6 million and then
calibrate a series of urban attacks. But Baghdad is not
Ramallah on the West Bank. The Jordanian intelligence
source swears the still non-decapitated regime can
survive a siege for months. Saddam - a huge admirer of
Josef Stalin - is placing all his bets on the Stalingrad
scenario. Of the six Republican Guard divisions, three
of them, armored and with around 12,000 soldiers each,
are firmly entrenched in Baghdad's inner defensive ring.
The key elite Medina division is in the south of the
city - ready to face the Americans and already under B52
bombing.
Behind the Republican Guards there are
still four brigades of the Special Republican Guards,
with at least 10,000 and as many as 25,000 soldiers
either placed inside Baghdad or back in Tikrit, Saddam's
birthplace 160 kilometers to the north. They are
disposed in four motorized infantry brigades and are
very well trained in urban guerrilla. This is of course
Saddam's Praetorian guard, coming overwhelmingly from
the Albu Nasr tribe in Tikrit, from Baiji and from
villages near Baghdad and west of Mosul. Asia Times
Online has already reported how Saddam can count on the
support of a complex network of tribes, clans and
sub-clans in the Sunni center of Iraq (What is the US really up against?, February 21) Saddam is rallying his troops
non-stop: "Inflict damage on them, and although it may
not be big, you'll see how they will flee because they
are away from home and because they are aggressors." He
has made another jihad call on TV to the tribal and clan
chiefs, encouraging them on the guerrilla war path:
"Fight them in pockets, and when their columns move, hit
their front and rear. Those of you who have been
reluctant to fight and are waiting for the order,
consider this to be the command of faith and jihad and
fight them." Much of the resistance encountered by the
Americans and the British in the Shi'ite south was by
tribesmen and clansmen, some equipped with very
sophisticated weapons.
A mix of Republican and
Special Republican Guards, civilian and military
security, secret police and civilian militias will offer
fierce resistance to the Americans. A well as Saddam,
the 8,000 men of the Mudiriyah al-Am al-Amma (the secret
police) all come from Tikrit: this is largely an
extended family affair. Civilian militias - composed of
five competing security forces - will be decisive in
urban guerrilla warfare. These forces include the 5,000
men of the al-Amn al-Khas (the Special Forces) and the
4,000 men of the al-Mukhabasad al-Amma (intelligence
services), which are spread out all over the country.
There are also the 6,000 men from the
al-Idakhard al Askkariyya (military intelligence) and
the 5,000 men of Amm al-Askariyya (military security) -
a secret police that answers directly to the Ministry of
Defense and controls the key central district of Baghdad
(their headquarters has already been bombed). There are
still the 8,000 men of the Mudiriyah al-Am al-Amma, the
secret police which directly depends on the Ministry of
the Interior (all of these men also come from Tikrit).
Thousands of Arab-Afghan mujahideen have also
been deployed around Baghdad and Mosul preparing suicide
commando - or "martyrdom" - operations against the
invasion, as well as 2,500 Hezbollah from Lebanon. About
700 Algerian volunteers who received weapons training in
Iraqi camps are also at hand.
Finally, around
this dizzying web, we find what the Americans would call
"combatants" - at least 150,000 men and women of the
Jaysh al-Shaabi, a civilian militia that even includes
elderly Shi'ite women in black brandishing their World
War I-era rifles. The task of the militia is basically
to corral the civilian population.
All these
special and not-so-special forces have been
strategically positioned by the regime among civilians.
They will thus be deadly in a guerrilla scenario. This
would be the ultimate nightmare for the Pentagon,
barring the unthinkable - chemical, biological and even
nuclear warfare.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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