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THE
ROVING EYE
IRAQ AND AL-QAEDA
Part 1 - The usual
suspects
By Pepe
Escobar
Nearly 100 Iraqis have been killed in
less than 24 hours in two suicide bombings in
Iskandariya and Baghdad. Most of them were poor and
unemployed and were trying to find a job with the new,
American-approved Iraqi police and army. They were
Shi'ites in Iskandariya, and mostly Sunnis in Baghdad.
But for the anti-occupation guerrilla forces, they were
just one thing: collaborators.
These two deadly
attacks happened just as the Pentagon and the White
house leaked information that allegedly proved the so
far elusive link between al-Qaeda and terrorism in Iraq.
According to the Bush administration, a "key al-Qaeda
suspect" was arrested in Iraq carrying a 17-page memo on
a computer disc, on his way to Afghanistan no less,
where the disc was be handed over to Osama bin Laden, or
his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The author of the
memo was purported to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a
Jordanian national on the loose and longtime number one
suspect of being the missing link between al-Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein's regime.
In the memo, al-Zarqawi
allegedly appeals to the al-Qaeda leadership to help
detonate a civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites
as the next definitive step to get rid of the Americans.
For the Bush administration's spin machine, this is "the
strongest evidence to date of contacts between
extremists in Iraq and al-Qaeda".
This latest US
intelligence, though, makes little sense. For starters,
al-Qaeda pigeons are highly unlikely to move around with
computer discs in their briefcases: since early 2002 a
disabled al-Qaeda has used women couriers to deliver
strictly verbal messages. The memo says that the
resistance against the occupation is "struggling to
recruit Iraqis". This is not borne out by the situation
on the ground - the resistance continues, even rising,
despite the capture of Saddam. The purported memo also
says that the "new anti-American campaign" must start
before "zero hour", when power is scheduled to be
transferred to an Iraqi administration in June. Again,
this is not true. The resistance knows all too well that
only the responsibility for security will be transferred
in June, not power. The Americans will remain behind
their heavily fortified military bases, but will remain
as occupiers.
Asia Times Online has been to
Iskandariya. It's a dusty and very poor town roughly on
the imaginary border between the Sunni triangle and the
Shi'ite south. Sunnis and Shi'ites live close together
with no major hassles. But Iskandariya is also fiercely
anti-occupation. People there are proud of the local
resistance attacks. This shows how the resistance is
spreading, irrespective of sectarian, religious lines.
The memo says that "if we succeed in dragging
them [Shi'ites] into a sectarian war, this will awaken
the sleepy Sunnis, who are fearful of destruction and
death at their hands." The last thing the Shi'ites want
is to be involved in a civil war: they are fighting for
strong political representation in a new Iraqi
government. Sunnis most of all want the end of the
occupation - and the bulk of the Sunni resistance is a
nationalist movement: they may welcome technical support
from al-Qaeda, but not for a civil war.
US
Secretary of State Colin Powell was quick to defend the
apprehended memo as giving "credence" to American
claims, roughly one year ago, about an alleged
connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime. Powell
even addressed the United Nations Security Council and
made these charges. Saddam denied it; the radical group
Ansar al-Islam, in the mountains of northeast Iraq,
denied it; and no proof was ever found to substantiate
the Americans' claims. Now the same scenario is
resurrected to explain at least some of the dozens of
attacks against American soldiers and the new Iraqi
police and army. Conveniently, al-Zarqawi in his memo
claims responsibility for "25 operations, some of them
against the Shi'ites and their leaders, the Americans
and their military and the police".
The street
version of one of the attacks differs from the official
version - a suicide bombing via a pick-up truck loaded
with explosives. Dozens of eyewitnesses said that they
had heard a helicopter and the whoosh of a missile
flying through the air just before the explosion. They
later swore by Allah that the Americans brought a
bulldozer to fill in the crater caused by the explosion.
American commanders and Iraqi police chiefs continue to
repeat the same mantra: the attacks show "al-Qaeda's
fingerprints".
Who profits from exploiting these
"fingerprints"? The Bush administration, of course. With
full exposure of the weapons of mass destruction sham,
the official Washington excuse for the Iraq war has
changed: now the spin is that Saddam was a bad guy, and
terrorism in Iraq (which did not exist in the first
place) must be fought. The ever-elusive bin Laden
remains the main justification for the Bush
administration.
Yet what is qualified as
"terrorism" in Iraq is being conducted by a cluster of
the so-called "unaligned mujahideen", with only marginal
input from al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. The
American non-governmental organization Iraq Body Count,
in a still partial investigation that has not covered
the whole country, has stated that there have been more
than 10,000 civilian deaths in the Iraq war. As the
number of seriously wounded in such wars is usually four
times bigger than the number of fatal casualties, there
may be 40,000 injured civilians. Russian observers
estimate Iraqi military losses at 30,000 deaths and
120,000 seriously wounded. This means that many Iraqis
now know that in the name of their "liberation", the
Americans have killed or maimed 200,000 people. When
something like this happens, you don't need any help
from al-Qaeda to fuel your anger.
TOMORROW:
Why al-Qaeda votes Bush
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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