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THE ROVING
EYE
THE RAT TRAP
Part 2: Why the resistance
will increase
By Pepe Escobar
Part 1: How Saddam may still nail
Bush
BAKU -
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset Saddam
Hussein is - already was - totally beside the point.
Only in the past few months have we learned the extent
to which the Saddam system sub-contracted a great deal
of decision-making to different Iraqi elite - from
tribal sheikhs to businessmen and Sunni and Wahhabi
religious leaders. They may originally have been cajoled
by Saddam with carrots and sticks to be incorporated
into the Ba'athist regime. But now they are totally free
to command their own agendas.
To top it all,
they really have a common agenda for the first time in
their lives: a war against American occupation. The
resistance will persist because Saddam was never its
political, religious, spiritual or moral guide. The
mukawama - resistance against foreign occupation
- is now a full-blown nationalist, religious movement.
The most popular political party on the sprawling campus
of Baghdad University is not the widely-despised Ahmad
Chalabi's neo-conservative-backed Iraqi National
Congress. It is the Iraq Islamist Party.
A
recent peaceful mass demonstration in the south-central
city of Hilla brought down the local "collaborator"
governor. People were shouting: "Free elections now!"
Sources in Baghdad tell Asia Times Online that
avalanches of people are just waiting for June 2004 to
see what kind of government the Americans will allow,
and if they are not satisfied, then they will join the
resistance. But there are also many people - Sunni and
Shi'ite - who fear that some Iraqi Governing Council
(IGC) members may turn violent, afraid of losing power.
Rival Kurdish chieftains Jalal Talabani and Masoud
Barzani - both on the IGC - keep their strong
peshmerga private armies. Chalabi has his own
CIA-trained army, complete with American weapons.
According to new Iraqi policemen who defected to Amman,
Jordan, the bulk of the new Iraqi police is also
inclined to join the resistance.
The
increasingly sophisticated attacks in the Sunni triangle
are being coordinated by the Committee of the Faith.
They are Sunni, and most of all, they are Wahhabi - and
they had the freedom to proselytize and act even under
Saddam. As the relentless mukawama will expose
day by day the fallacy of the Anglo-American mantra -
according to which the attacks are perpetrated by
"remnants of Saddam's regime" - expect from Washington
another change in the screenplay: the blame will shift
to "foreign" al-Qaeda or "Syrian-backed terrorists".
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is
making things even worse. According to Iraqi-Canadian
journalist Firas al-Atraqchi, the CPA wants Kurdish
peshmergas patrolling the explosive Sunni
triangle and Mosul - which is predominantly Arab: "Sunni
religious leaders have expressed outrage over the
proposed deal and have warned, in no ambiguous terms,
that the Sunni areas will not tolerate being patrolled
or policed by Kurdish (or Shi'ite) militia. They warn
that a civil war would be inevitable."
The
non-aligned mujahideen
Meanwhile, in Europe,
anti-terrorist specialists warn that the four bombings
in Istanbul last month were also messages to the
European Union - because some countries, like Britain,
Italy and Spain, are collaborating with the Americans in
Iraq, and also because they have dismantled jihadi cells
in Europe. Experts at the European Strategic
Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC) in Brussels are
extremely worried of a fallout from Iraq and an imminent
attack on one of the European Union countries.
European investigations are centered on Sheikh
Abderrazak, an Algerian who was based in Milan and who
is now under arrest in Hamburg, and who was a member of
al-Tawhid, an organization directed by Abu Mussab
al-Zarkawi, a Jordanian and an al-Qaeda planner who was
identified before the Iraq war by US Secretary of State
Colin Powell as the "missing link" between Saddam and
Osama bin Laden. Nobody in Europe at the time - apart
from Britain's Tony Blair, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and
Jose Aznar of Spain - was convinced of the link. Now,
however, European investigators tell Asia Times Online
that things have changed and Zarkawi "is indeed part of
the Iraqi resistance. The Americans invaded Iraq as part
of their 'war on terror', and ended up bringing terror
to Iraq."
Zarkawi - loaded with German contacts
- is suspected of recruiting "more than a thousand
jihadis to Iraq": they are Arab-Afghans, jihad veterans,
with European passports. August Hanning, president of
the German security service (BND), told German
television that most of these jihadis, and some extra
volunteers, have already left to Iraq from Great
Britain, Bosnia and Germany, infiltrating via Syria and
Saudi Arabia. Hanning is convinced that Iraq is about to
become "the crystallization point for extremist
Islamists the world over".
Experts in Brussels
have even a "top ten" list of countries most likely to
be victims of a next wave of terror attacks: they are,
from top to bottom, the US, Britain, Israel, Australia,
France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland. The
experts are all assuming the working hypothesis that
al-Qaeda cells which are not directly related to bin
Laden anymore are using an "al-Qaeda trademark" to
mobilize jihadis and increase the repercussion of their
particular attacks.
The ESISC has thus detected
the last word in the "war on terror": the emergence of
the "non-aligned mujahideen". These people are skilled,
totally isolated and practically undetectable. Alain
Chouet, in a study from the French Institute of
International Relations, stresses that since December
2001, only five attacks can be attributed with full
certainty to al-Qaeda. Chouet stresses that al-Qaeda has
definitely mutated into "a multitude of small
entrepreneurs or local sub-contractors, with tortuous
and indirect strategies".
Breakdown: The
Iraqi resistance
The invasion of Iraq was widely
perceived as an attack on the Arab world. That's why the
resistance is turning pan-Arab. Once again: this is a
nationalist and religious resistance movement.
Asia Times Online has ascertained that at least
12 independent guerrilla organizations from different
tribes are involved in the mukawama, all vaguely
in touch with each other. This loose organization may be
about to extend its reach nationwide. But the Iraqi
guerrilla movement is extraordinarily complex. These in
essence are the main actors:
The former
army. The majority of the 400,000 Iraqi soldiers
demobilized by US proconsul L Paul Bremer were nothing
but victims of the Ba'athist regime. Humiliated and
frustrated, they inevitably turned to the resistance -
and they were not being financed by Saddam Hussein, as
Asia Times Online reported from the Sunni triangle. At
least 100,000 soldiers from the Republican Guard and
Special Republican Guard didn't even receive a meager
financial compensation from the Americans. Big mistake:
they were the best trained, the best equipped, the best
motivated, and now they are totally engaged in the
resistance. They are nationalists demonstrating in
practice how the whole thing is not about Saddam's
return to power, but about getting rid of a foreign
invader.
The tribes. An extremely
complex tribal game is in play in Iraq. Saddam was a
master in this business. An example: Ramadi and
Fallujah, in the Sunni triangle, home to some of the
most vicious anti-American attacks, are controlled by
the huge Doulaiymi tribe - which always had a turbulent
relationship with Saddam. The reason for the attacks
were not $100 bills showered around by Saddam's
henchmen, but repeated blunders and massacres of
civilians by the 82nd Airborne Division. The Americans
themselves fed the infernal cycle of violence with their
string of arbitrary arrests and daily humiliations.
Tha'ar (revenge) is the absolute norm for these
extremely proud Bedouins. Meanwhile, local tribes around
Kirkuk are attacking oil pipelines just as a means of
finally getting paid for protecting them. The Americans
then dissolved the so-called "oil police" and
sub-contracted regional security to a South African
private firm, which for its part sub-contracted security
to - who else - the local tribes.
Remnants
of Saddam's regime. They are reduced to nothing
more than the fedayeen of Saddam - the private
militia established by his late son Uday - the
surveillance apparatchik and the tribes in Tikrit. It's
fair to expect much accumulated rage to explode in the
form of attacks now that Saddam is in captivity. These
people are armed to the teeth - with weapons caches
dispersed all over the country. It still remains to be
discovered how they connect with and how they provide
logistical assistance to the professional jihadis that
Hanning says are coming from Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The jihadis. An elite among them
comprise the instigators and perpetrators of the suicide
bombings. There are a few dozen survivors of Ansar
al-Islam who crossed to Iranian Kurdistan, fleeing
American bombing last March: they don't make much of a
difference. Most of all there may be a few thousand
jihadis who came before, during and after the war. They
are Yemenite, Lebanese, Sudanese, Syrian, Egyptian,
Jordanian - the pan-Arab character of the resistance.
They are loosely linked with local, small groups of
salafis - an extremist interpretation of Sunni
Islam.
American blunders only inflame the
resistance. Samarra was a classic case. The Americans
said that the guerrillas were Saddam fedayeen.
Asia Times Online has been to Samarra: it's a very
religious, conservative city which never bowed to
Saddam. Sources say that the bulk of the local
resistance was from a group called the Mujahideen of
Mohammed. Residents insist that there are no
fedayeen in the city and accuse the Americans of
being the terrorists, massacring civilians.
A
new resistance tactic is to join the Iraqi police -
recruited and paid for by the Americans - earn some $50
a month, train with American-provided weapons and gather
valuable intelligence on the foreign invader. Meanwhile,
the American military are now performing an exact replay
of the Israeli military occupying Palestine: they
surround large tracts with barbed wire and
ultra-intimidating security checks, bulldoze houses and
round up all men for lengthy interrogations.
Tha'ar will come.
The American tactic of
now Iraqifying the war is nothing but a replay of
"Vietnamization". Washington's push to make over a
complex society in its own image will fail - as it
failed in Vietnam. Iraqis, politically very
sophisticated despite decades of dictatorship, detect
crystal-clear the American plan, imposed at tank point,
to privatize the whole country by selling its assets and
fabulous natural resources to American - and a few
European - corporations. This, most of all, is what is
fueling the resistance. They know they cannot let people
like Chalabi or Talabani in the IGC decide the future of
the nation.
As author and commentator Tariq Ali
has forcefully pointed out on the website Counterpunch,
this is the "21st-century colonial model: Specialist
companies are now encouraged to provide 'security'. They
employ the mercenaries, and their profits are ensured by
the state that hires them. They are backed up by the
real army and, more importantly, by air power, to help
defeat the enemy. But none of this will work if the
population remains hostile. And large-scale repression
only helps to unite the population against the
occupiers. The fear in Washington is that the Iraqi
resistance might attempt a sensational hit just before
the next presidential election. The fear in the Arab
east is that [President George W] Bush and [Vice
President Dick] Cheney might escalate the conflict to
retain the White House in 2004. Both fears may well be
justified."
While Saddam awaits his trial, this
is what the headlines will be about: a massive popular
resistance movement fighting 21st-century colonization,
while the new actors of jihad bet on a context of
endless war. Saddam may be history, but it will be
interesting to hear what he has to say. It ain't over
till this desert "rat" sings.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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