THE ROVING
EYE Precision-strike
democracy By Pepe Escobar
"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's
hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's ... and it's hard
work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty
reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it
is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It
is hard work." - President George W
Bush, presidential debate, September 30
Fallujah may become the new Gaza. Or the new
Grozny. Meanwhile, here's what's happening on the
ground, as summarized to Asia Times Online by sources in
Baghdad very close to the Fallujah resistance.
More than 1,000 marines, supported
by a few hundred US-trained Iraqi
forces, are entrenched less than a kilometer away from the city. There are
constant firefights in the eastern and southern sectors.
Thousands of families have left, "90% of them" -
according to guerrilla leaders themselves - but there is
no looting. Hospitals are badly overstretched. All shops
are closed. And the city may be running out of food. The
Americans even bombed a local institution - the top
kebab restaurant in a city that prides itself on making
the best kebabs in Iraq.
Fallujah at the moment
is still basically controlled by the Iraqi police and
dozens of different mujahideen groups from different
clans. They all fiercely coordinate the defense strategy
among themselves. The unifying banner is Islam, not the
tribal clan. The police - as long as they are not
perceived as being bossed around by Americans - and the
mujahideen get along very well.
According to the
sources in Baghdad, Fallujans vehemently deny the
presence of foreign jihadis - including of course the
ubiquitous al-Qaeda-linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, blamed
by the Americans for virtually everything that happens
in Iraq. The few dozen foreign jihadis who indeed may be
in action have blended in smoothly. Fallujah tribal
leaders are notoriously suspicious of foreigners: they
fear they may be spying for the Americans. One of the
key organizers of the guerrillas is Mohammed Younis
al-Ahmed, a former senior Ba'athist official also badly
wanted by the Americans.
The majority of Fallujah's citizens
yearn for peace. But they also believe US military
precision strikes - at times imprecision strikes - and
the almost inevitable assault against the city will
happen because the mujahideen, after three weeks and
hundreds of casualties in April, inflicted a de facto
military defeat on the Americans. Most citizens
also believe the central government in Baghdad is split
between President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni sheikh, deeply
involved in negotiations, and Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, a Shi'ite surrounded by a coterie of thuggish
neo-Ba'athists, taking orders from the Americans and
ready to level Fallujah to the ground. The problem is
negotiations collapsed last week. Senior Sunni clerics
are adamant: if the Americans attack, they will issue a
fatwa
proclaiming jihad all over Iraqi
territory.
"Democracy" is not the issue in
Iraq. How can people believe that precision strikes
against civilian neighborhoods are a persuasive weapon
conducive to winning hearts and minds and establishing
democracy? Moreover, there's nothing "precise" about it: US
ground intelligence is sketchy at best.
There
are only four United Nations officials on the ground
preparing for the elections scheduled for January. Saudi
Crown Prince Abdullah and other Arab leaders had
persuaded US President George W Bush to accept an Arab and
Muslim peacekeeping force of several hundred to protect
UN operations in Iraq. But then Washington killed the
idea because the force would be under UN, not US,
control. Arab countries refused to place their soldiers
under US control. So the whole project died last month.
The Gaza model Alain Joxe,
sociologist, strategist and president of the French
think-tank Cirpes, has written one of the most
devastating indictments of the Bush neo-conservative
world view ("L'Empire du Chaos", La
Decouverte, 2002). Joxe goes to the heart of the matter when
he analyzes the reason Israel is so important to
Washington: "Israel maintains itself as a model of
delocalized border demarcation that technically
interests the American military: the creation of a
prototype of suburban war, with no hope of peace, but
placing the prototypes of the perimeters of fortified
security which will be very useful if the Empire of
Chaos of George W Bush keeps its progression."
So the key point in the whole exercise is
the "military interest for a technical prototype".
Joxe notes that nowhere else is the prototype of suburban
war so precise and high-tech as in Palestine. He then
analyzes how the Israeli model has been applied to the
control of Baghdad. A natural development will be the
application of the Gaza model - invasion, leveling of
whole neighborhoods, lots of "collateral damage" - to
Fallujah and other rebel Sunni triangle cities.
The US may level Fallujah in order to "save it"
- yet another Vietnam recurrent theme. The Pentagon has
identified up to 30 cities in Iraq that must be subdued
before the January elections. But even assuming these 30
Fallujahs will be subdued - starting with precision
strikes causing untold civilian deaths - it is
impossible to occupy such vast "conquered" territory.
The Americans cannot even control most of Baghdad - and
the guerrillas are now systematically attacking the
Green Zone itself. All major roads around Baghdad are
intersected by the guerrillas, who in many cases have
established their own checkpoints. The only way to get
into Haifa Street, the so-called "Little Fallujah",
which is only 400 meters away from the Green Zone, is
with tanks supported by helicopters.
As
a national liberation movement, the Iraqi
guerrillas, increasingly unified, are bound ultimately to
prevail. For example, the Imam al-Mujahideen Brigades,
a resistance coalition now operating under a
central command, has grown to more than 7,000 members all
over Iraq. They have access to an unlimited supply of
heavy weapons - strategically placed throughout Iraq
before the US invasion. At least 25,000 guerrillas - and
counting - may now be in operation all over Iraq.
'Free and fair' As for the January elections, if
they indeed take place, the majority of Iraqis, Sunnis
and Shi'ites alike, will not accept the concept of a
"free and fair election" with 138,000 US troops
occupying the country. So most Sunnis will boycott them.
Shi'ite rebel leader Muqtada al-Sadr is inclined to
boycott them - because they are being imposed by the
occupying power. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the
influential Shi'ite leader, wants them as free and fair
as humanly possible. But if he doesn't get what he
wants, he can issue a fatwa
and start
a widespread urban revolution that will the make
the US presence absolutely untenable. So even if
elections do happen, few people will vote, there's a
risk of enormous bloodshed and the whole process will be
regarded as illegitimate.
The guerrillas
meanwhile are succeeding in mobilizing the Iraqi urban
masses, Sunni and Shi'ite, against the occupation. The
ultimate aim of the guerrillas is urban revolution -
exactly what Sistani will inspire if he does not get
his fair elections. That's why every day the guerrillas
target the already crumbling Iraqi infrastructure and
bomb crowds of civilians: their aim is to make people
realize that the key reason their lives are so miserable
and dangerous is because the invaders refuse to leave.
Meanwhile, in the US elections The
European diplomat in Washington does not mince his
words: "The Americans know they have lost the war in
Iraq. What they are trying to find now is an exit
strategy."
On the political level, inside
the US, a dynamic is set: Bush desperately tries to
destroy Democratic candidate John Kerry on the campaign trail
as the Iraq bloodshed - more than 100 daily attacks - slowly
destroys Bush. On the military level, inside Iraq, the
Bush administration's counter-insurgency strategy consists
of precision strikes in heavily populated neighborhoods
- even during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan that is
now under way. If Bush is re-elected, as administration
strategists spin it in euphemism alley, "you'll see us
move very vigorously", meaning the leveling of whole
cities.
No amount of spin disguises the fact
that the real reasons for the war on Iraq are related to
Washington establishing an impregnable strategic
beachhead in the oil-drenched Middle East, and at the
same time eliminating any conceivable threat to the
security of Israel. As the whole adventure went badly
wrong, desperate measures applied: that's why
Iraqification is being enforced - yet another reminder
of another failed policy, Vietnamization.
The options left are all unsavory. 1) Washington may put
at least 300,000 troops on the ground, instead of
the current 138,000, and try to smash the resistance
for good. This means an indefinite occupation - and
no "democracy" at the end of the tunnel. 2) Washington
may leave the whole mess as it is, with a constant stream
of US casualties and the resistance getting stronger
by the minute. 3) The US may pull out of Iraq entirely.
Even leading US military strategists
and prominent retired generals are angrily denouncing,
on the record, Bush's war as already lost. Seasoned
intelligence analysts are resigned that the best hope is
for an Iraqi "semi-failed state hobbling along with
terrorists and a succession of weak governments". In any
case, the neo-con model for a "reformed" Middle East is
dead. There is also insistent chatter in Washington from
"influential sources" that Bush, if re-elected, will beat
a hasty retreat from Iraq. This is extremely unlikely.
As the neo-cons consider Iraq the ultimate strategic
prize, a retreat would never be considered.
So
on the campaign trail, Bush cannot possibly tell the
truth: his real choice, if re-elected, is to bury Iraq
under an avalanche of precision strikes - as Richard
Nixon imprecisely bombed Vietnam and Cambodia - or to
manufacture an exit strategy under the cover of a
barrage of spin. It's a lose-lose situation.
Kerry on the other hand has said on the record
that, if elected, he will "double the number of Special
Forces so that we can do the job we need to do with
respect to fighting the terrorists around the world". So
this would mean an equally unsavory global
counter-insurgency, a gigantic operation modeled on the
covert wars the US waged all over Latin America,
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Indonesia and Afghanistan
from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Whom is al-Qaeda
voting for? From al-Qaeda's point of view, the
US leaving Iraq would be a major victory. And the US
staying in Iraq - bleeding thousands of men and billions
of dollars in the hands of a national guerrilla struggle
- is also a major victory. So al-Qaeda does not bother
to vote Bush or Kerry because the main sticking point -
US policy in the Middle East, the thirst for oil, the
one-sided support for Israel - will still be there. But
in terms of accelerating a clash of civilizations - a
total polarization between the Muslim world and the
Christian world - of course al-Qaeda prefers a
fundamentalist like Bush.
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