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THE
ROVING EYE
From
liberation war to jihad
By Pepe
Escobar
AMMAN - It took one Shi'ite named Ali
formally to turn the Iraqi war of national liberation
into a pan-Islamic jihad.
Last week, Sergeant
Ali Jaffar Mousa Hamadi al-Nomani became the first
suicide bomber of the war, in an incident outside Najaf.
On Monday, American soldiers killed seven Iraqi women
and children, also near Najaf. They were among 13 people
traveling in a van that didn't stop at a US checkpoint.
According to the US version, the soldiers first fired
into the air, then into the engine, and then into the
passenger compartment. According to the Iraqi version,
they fired with no warning. The tragic incident is
graphic proof of how Washington's military planners
haven't read their Sun Tzu ("Know your enemy and you
know yourself"): How can you become a welcomed liberator
when you have to be suspicious of an entire civilian
population?
For Baghdad, all the martyrs in this
unprecedented mix of national liberation war and Islamic
jihad are called Ali. Like Shi'ite Sergeant Ali, the
bomber from Najaf, and like Shi'ite farmer Ali, also
from Najaf, who shot down an Apache helicopter with a
World War I-era rifle. These two Alis are being exhorted
to become the models to be emulated by all Iraqis. The
Shi'ites got the message - and that's one extra reason
they are not welcoming the British in the south as
liberators. Two of every three Iraqis are called Ali.
The name is as popular with Shi'ites as it is with
Sunnis, for obvious reasons: Ali, the cousin of the Holy
Prophet Mohammed, is simultaneously the first imam of
the Shi'ites and the fourth caliph of the Sunnis.
Since the suicide bombing, the ultra-secular
Ba'ath Party has begun remodeling the
national-liberation war into a pan-Islamic jihad against
the foreign Anglo-American invaders. The Baghdad
leadership in every news conference now salutes the
"martyrs from all the Arab world". According to
Brigadier-General Hazem al-Rawi, the Iraqi military
spokesman, the jihadis have come to Iraq to find
paradise - a reference to the eternal life in bliss
assured to a martyr in a war against an oppressor.
Hundreds of Arab-Afghans, a Hezbollah
contingent, dozens of Algerians, a group of Syrians who
went to Mosul in the north and a contingent from the
al-Quds brigade - the military wing of the Palestinian
group Islamic Jihad - are already involved in jihad
inside Iraq. Islamic Jihad leader Ramada Abdullah
Shallah has stated that now "it's one war from Jenin to
Baghdad", with the objective of defeating "the new
Mongols invading the capital of the Islamic Caliphate" -
a reference, still very vivid in the minds of Muslims
everywhere, to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols,
led by Hulagu, Genghis Khan's grandson, in the 13th
century.
Some jihadis have already been taken
prisoner. According to a Lebanese source, about 30 from
Syria and the Maghreb were captured on Sunday in Iraqi
territory, on their way to Baghdad, by a US Army patrol.
This jihad transcends most barriers. Shi'ite
imams as well as Sunni sheikhs are calling for jihad at
every Friday prayer sermon, not only all over Iraq but
also in Damascus, Cairo, Sanaa, Ramallah and Tehran. Ali
Sistani, the Marja of Najaf, a model of religious
rectitude, has issued a fatwa according to which
jihad is now an obligation for Shi'ites. In Baghdad,
Sheikh Abdel Karim Biarah, the Grand Mufti of Iraq,
issued a similar fatwa for Sunnis.
The
Ba'ath Party is actively disseminating these calls for
jihad to solidify monolithic support for the Mujaheed
al-Kebir (the "great warrior of faith"), none other than
Saddam Hussein himself. The only sector of Iraqi society
not touched by these exhortations are the Christians -
most of them based in Mosul. By aggressively playing the
religious card, the Ba'athists can be assured of the
support of Sunnis - including Wahhabis from Saudi
Arabia, very influential in Iraq in recent years,
especially in Mosul, and very close to Saddam's web of
security services.
And most of all the
Ba'athists can be assured of support from the Shi'ites,
as well as the web of Bedouin tribes - which can be
Sunni or Shi'ite. It's important to remember that during
the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Iraqi army
leadership closely monitored the southern tribes who
helped them fight the Iranians. The very powerful Shamar
confederation is an important player among these Bedouin
tribes. They are mostly nomads; they travel on horseback
bypassing artificial borders; and they respond quickly
to the concept of jihad. They wouldn't exactly
understand the concept of a nationalistic war of
liberation.
The impact of this jihad also
transcends Iraq's borders. Afghan sources note that
Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself has taken the cue in
Afghanistan and has reissued his own fatwa -
calling once again for a holy war against foreign troops
in Afghanistan.
By hyping the jihad to
unparalleled levels in modern Iraq, the Ba'ath Party is
managing to implicate practically the whole population
in the resistance. But the party hasn't forgotten more
mundane aspects of paradise. You have the option of
becoming a martyr, or enriching yourself. Every captured
American or English pilot is worth US$18,000, paid in
cash. A dead pilot is worth half. Every captured enemy
armored vehicle can be kept. If it is destroyed, its
value will be estimated, and the captor will also be
paid cash for it.
Arab nationalism is a concept
that has practically disappeared from the official book,
replaced by the rhetoric of jihad. In his most recent
20-minute speech, Saddam hailed Iraq as the "motherland
of jihad" and made numerous references to "Iraqi
mujahideen", not to the Ba'ath Party leadership or the
common Arab cause, in a reference presumably to the
mujahideen who fought against Soviet occupiers of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. Shi'ites still won't dare to
cross Saddam. Iraqi exiles in Jordan, mostly Sunni, keep
stressing that Saddam, like the great Babylonian
emperors, remains the only power capable of controlling
an ultra-volatile Iraq. By all - jihadi - means
necessary.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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