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Coming to terms with the 'great
equalizers'
By Ferry Biedermann
AMMAN - The leader of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Shami, speaks with pride of
"our F-16s", meaning the suicide bombers that
his organization regularly sends into Israel. Now, after just
days on Iraqi soil, United States and British forces
have run into the so-called "great equalizers". Four US
soldiers were killed at the weekend near the holy
Shi'ite city of Najaf in south-central Iraq when a man
blew himself up at a checkpoint.
The situation
in Iraq is very different from that in Israel and the
Palestinian territories, though, but the Americans may
nevertheless apply some of the lessons learned in Israel
to Iraq, says Professor Gerald Steinberg from the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies near Tel Aviv.
"The Americans have studied very closely what happened
here," says Steinberg. "They already applied those
lessons to Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, now they
will also have to implement them in Iraq."
There
may, however, be a more direct link in Iraq. Islamic
Jihad announced shortly after the suicide attack against
the US soldiers that it had sent a batch of suicide
bombers against invaders in Iraq. Islamic Jihad claimed
responsibility for a suicide attack in the Israeli
coastal town Netanya on Sunday. More than 50 people were
wounded in that incident.
Israel and the US
consider Iraq a supporter of such attacks because the
Iraqi regime has been giving payments to families of
suicide bombers in Israel. Iraqi authorities also showed
the press a training camp last month where "Arab
volunteers" came to prepare for "martyrdom operations".
Apart from Palestinians, the camp had volunteers from
Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The threat that suicide attacks present to US
forces depends on how well they are prepared to face
such actions, says Steinberg. The threat means facing up
to organizations, not just individuals, he says. The
Americans have a major advantage in Iraq compared to the
Israelis, Steinberg said - they do not need to take
precautions to protect their own civilian population, as
the Israelis have to.
The situation that US
troops face in Iraq is similar to the one the Israelis
faced when they occupied the south of Lebanon between
1982 and 2000. They were targeted by suicide attacks in
the early years. The Israelis later managed to prevent
most such attacks. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement
switched then to different tactics, including highly
effective roadside bombings. "It took the Israelis a
couple of years during the present intifada to get on
top of the situation," said Steinberg. The Israeli army
and security services have managed now to take the edge
off suicide attacks, he says.
The Americans do
not have a couple of years, but Steinberg said that they
do not need that much time either. "The Americans are
already doing many of the things that the whole world
condemned Israel for," Steinberg says. "They are setting
up roadblocks, they stop and search civilians, they
carry out so-called targeted assassination of Ba'ath
party leaders, the way we do with the leaders of the
Palestinian militants."
Steinberg says that it
will be crucial for US and British troops to develop
local intelligence networks on the ground. One of the
most important measures, he says, will be to isolate the
leadership. "In our case that is [Yasser] Arafat, in
Iraq that is Saddam Hussein," says Steinberg. 'The
longer Saddam Hussein remains free, even if he is driven
out of Baghdad, the longer these suicide attacks can
potentially continue."
Iraqi political expert
Jawad Saad from the University of Baghdad predicted
before the war that suicide attacks could take place
against US and British troops. But like most other
analysts, he thought that they would come later. 'Such
attacks may happen a couple of weeks after the Americans
have overthrown the regime," he said several weeks
before the start of the war. "Then people may start to
see them as occupiers."
Like so many other
assumptions about the war in Iraq, this one, too, has
proved to be off the mark.
(Inter Press
Service)
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