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THE
ROVING EYE
The Gaza
or Grozny choice
By Pepe Escobar
AMMAN - There are two options for Washington to
win this war: the Gaza option or the Grozny option.
The suicide bombing near Najaf is proof that the
"Palestinization" of Iraq is in full swing. The repeated
calls for jihad from Islamic scholars in al-Azhar in
Cairo, the Grand Mufti of Syria and a powerful imam in
Najaf show that the jihad in Mesopotamia is also in full
swing. In mass protests from Rabat in Morocco to
Peshawar in Pakistan, from Kolkata in India to Jakarta
in Indonesia, the Arab - and Muslim - street continues
to demonstrate its opposition to the events unfolding in
Iraq.
And certainly the majority of the world's
1.3 billion Muslims - and seemingly most Iraqis
themselves - don't believe that the coalition has
marched on Iraq to liberate its people. The message of
the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle - "When we leave,
the oil will be left behind to the people of Iraq" -
rings hollow in many a Middle Eastern ear.
And
with every day that the war drags on, with mounting
casualties on both sides, and especially civilian
deaths, the crucial question remains: What price
victory? By choosing the Gaza option - a war of
attrition - Washington falls into Saddam Hussein's trap:
it will serve him on a plate the explosive image he is
seeking, that of an Israeli tank in the streets of Gaza
juxtaposed with a US tank in the streets of Baghdad. By
choosing the Grozny option - a scorched-earth policy -
Washington will have to level Baghdad to win the war.
An Algerian intelligence agent recently arrived
from Baghdad points to US exasperation over the
propaganda war - the Pentagon has used bunker-buster
missiles to hit telephone exchanges and the Ministry of
Information. It's now totally impossible to call, fax or
e-mail Iraq from Jordan. The same point is made in one
of the daily reports of the GRU, the Russian
intelligence agency: "The coalition command has
effectively acknowledged its defeat in the information
war with the strikes against the television center in
Baghdad, and now further strikes should be expected
against television and ground satellite transmitters.
The coalition is attempting to leave the Iraqis without
information in order to demoralize them."
The
Algerian source confirms that the first ring of defense
outside Baghdad is ready to duplicate the guerrilla war
raging in the Shi'ite south: it's a web of camouflaged
tanks, sandbagged bunkers with heavy machine-guns and
mobile anti-aircraft trucks near military checkpoints.
Around them are a cluster of small villages and farms
enveloped by date-palm groves. Baghdad seems ready for
the siege, he says.
There's now a general
consensus in the Middle East that there will be
resistance in every Iraqi city, and the Iraqi army is
thinking purely in guerrilla-war terms. That's why the
civilian population is being forced to remain in the
cities. This prevents three major developments from
happening: the isolation of the military themselves; a
massive exodus; and more devastating bombing. Analysts
in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt agree that containing the
population is at the heart of the Iraq military
strategy. An immediate consequence is that the Iraqi
military is morphing into the civilian population. It's
fair to say that Mesopotamia is now in full camouflage.
This camouflage technique has already created
two very important facts on the ground. American and
British soldiers are finding it increasingly difficult
to do their jobs. They have to exercise extreme
surveillance of the civilian population: the next
civilian may be a soldier in disguise or, even worse, a
suicide bomber. There are no "good guys and bad guys"
anymore. The enemy is not visible. By doing this,
Saddam's regime has turned any illusions of a liberation
army into the certainty of an occupying army. It will
now be up to the Iraqi civilian population to swing from
one extreme to another - but there are no signs yet of
an overall change in hearts and minds. The winner may
yet be the one side able to prevent a humanitarian
disaster. Baghdad is actually competing with the British
on which side will be the first to alleviate the plight
of the besieged Shi'ite population of Basra.
The
stealth guerrilla bomber is the new protagonist of this
war. "Ali", the Iraqi suicide bomber in Najaf, is being
hailed by Baghdad as a martyr - echoing the exhortations
of the Grand Mufti of Syria. The emergence of "Alis" is
a graphic illustration of the Iraqi national resistance
now configured as "Palestinization". Deputy Prime
Minister Tarik Aziz qualifies "Ali" and future suicide
bombers as "freedom fighters and heroes".
Iraqi
military spokesman Brigadier-General Hazem al-Rawi,
meanwhile, says that "mujahideen are coming from all
Arab countries, more than 4,000 so far". Asia Times
Online has been able to confirm the nationality mix.
Afghan-Arabs came via Afghanistan and Iran. Lebanese,
Palestinians and Algerians are crossing from Syria to
Iraq. And "thousands of Jordanians also want to go",
says a source in Amman. They know they will be more
helpful in Iraq than in Jordan, where their activities
are curtailed. The same Jordanian source comments how
King Abdullah imparted his message to the Islamist
parties. "Whenever the king wants to send a stern
message he puts on his military uniform. So he summoned
the leaders to his palace to talk, surrounded by his
feared Circassean guards. He said that if they so much
as started making too much noise, they would be
destroyed."
At least in these initial stages of
the war, Saddam's regime has interplayed four larger
themes: the internal cohesion of a police state; Arab
nationalism; Shi'ite mistrust of Christians; and Sunni
Islam and the imperative of defensive jihad when under
attack by a foreign power.
The Iraqi resistance
to date has had a powerful psychological impact among
the Arab masses. Saddam and the ruling Ba'ath Party
obviously want the resistance to go on as long as
possible in the hope - perhaps misplaced - that they can
draw in help from Iran. It's important to consider that
Shi'ites see themselves as Iraqis first, then Shi'ites:
that's why they did not support Iran during the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war. But in the Shi'ite mind, the greater
Satan now is not Saddam, but the American and British
invaders.
In this sense, the war has helped
lionize Saddam in the Arab world as he is being seen as
the only Arab leader capable of resisting what many see
as "American imperialism". Saddam has managed to
personify to Arabs the capacity to resist. And the
regime has been quick to seize on this: Iraqi Vice
President Taha Yassin Ramadan has called for an Arab
popular revolt committed, in his words, to the
"destruction" of the regimes that support the war.
There's a growing feeling in the Arab street that the
Gulf petromonarchies - staunch US allies - one day will
meet their fate, and even relatively moderate states
such as Egypt and Jordan are already feeling the sting
of popular anger.
In Iraq, though, the battle
rages. Russian intelligence stresses that "near Basra,
the British forces in essence are laying a Middle
Ages-style siege of a city with the population of 2
million". The British, though, appear confident "that
the situation in the city can be destabilized and lack
of food, electricity and water will prompt the local
population to cause the surrender of the defending
forces ... the capture of Basra is viewed by the
coalition command as being exceptionally important and
as a model for the future 'bloodless' takeover of
Baghdad".
But a bloodless takeover is now out of
the question because of the guerilla warfare adopted by
the Fedayeen (all of whom come from Saddam's clan, the
Abu Ghaffar), the emergence of suicide commandos and the
general Iraqi army and security services' strategy of
camouflage among civilians. Obvious targets have been
vacated. Troops have moved into apartment blocks,
schools, social clubs, private houses.
Already
one year ago in Baghdad, Tarik Aziz was warning of "a
thousand Vietnams". Whatever the spin from the Pentagon
and Central Command in Qatar, whatever the option to be
chosen - Gaza or Grozny - the quick, decisive victory
initially sketched in Washington is not going to happen,
and the eruption of a Middle East volcano could yet
cover Pax Americana in ash.
(©2003 Asia Times
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