The eternal circle of the Iraqi
insurgency By Ashraf Fahim
In
all likelihood, US troops and the nascent Iraqi military
will storm the rebel city of Fallujah in the very near
future. The so-called "City of Mosques" has been under
sustained air assault for several weeks, and US
commanders now speak openly about the looming offensive.
"It's a long time in coming," marine Lieutenant
Lyle Gilbert told CNN on October 15, alluding to the
aborted US offensive on the city last April, "and this
operation is going to set the stage for Fallujans and
for the Iraqi people to go out and elect their
government and live in freedom and security as they
deserve."
Gilbert's optimism may be somewhat
misplaced, however. It was, after all, last April's
offensive, when 800 Iraqis were killed (600 of them
civilians), that solidified Iraqi opposition to the US
occupation and boosted support for the insurgency.
Another bloody offensive now could have similar
consequences, potentially igniting a wider conflagration
- Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has hinted that his
Mehdi Army could rise in response, as it did last spring
- and threaten the legitimacy of the elections scheduled
for January.
The fact that the administration of
US President George W Bush is even contemplating a new
offensive suggests it has not re-evaluated this reliance
on military force that has characterized its failed
counterinsurgency strategy to date. Intense US military
operations and insurgent attacks killed more than 3,040
Iraqis from April to September according to the Iraqi
Health Ministry, and a study published on Friday in the
Lancet medical journal puts overall deaths as a result
of violence since the US invasion at 100,000, mostly
civilians (other estimates put the total at
15,000-30,000). Whatever the true figure, the violence
has undoubtedly engendered enmity and inflamed the
insurgency.
Rather than change course to pursue
a political compromise with the insurgents, however, the
Bush administration has pressed on and spun its travails
by laying responsibility for the insurgency on "foreign
fighters" and uber-terrorist, Jordanian-born Abu Musab
Zarqawi - even though most analysts argue that the
insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi. The most obvious
explanation for the administration's intransigence is
that, having included Iraq in the "war on terror", it
can hardly negotiate with the "terrorist" insurgents,
especially during an election at home. But the problem
is deeper than the administration's ideological
rigidity. In fact, few in the US mainstream have
questioned the morality or utility of crushing a
nationalist insurgency or advocated a distinct
alternative. Rival presidential candidate John Kerry,
for one, has attacked the Bush administration for being
too soft on the rebel cities. And public opposition in
the US to its military's actions has been slow to
coalesce, especially with the mainstream media largely
sympathetic to the government's characterization of the
Iraqi opposition.
Subduing Fallujah,
provoking the uprising America's inability to
impose its military will on the Iraqi insurgents has
been little short of maddening to the Bush
administration and the loyal opposition. With bipartisan
agreement that, whatever the merits of the invasion, the
United States cannot afford to "lose" in Iraq, and a
consensus view that defeating the insurgents is an
essential first step to "victory", subduing Fallujah has
become a national obsession. Doing so won't end the
uprising outright, the argument goes, but it will
contain the fighting long enough to hold January
elections in Iraq and catalyze the political process
there.
Such a change in the dynamic must
overcome the immense barrier of enmity built up over the
past 16 months of violence, sentiment that will hardly
be ameliorated by the further devastation of Fallujah.
Last April's attack caused a sea change in Iraqi and
Arab opinion about the US project in Iraq, a lesson
apparently lost on US policymakers. The high Iraqi death
toll and apparent ability of the lightly armed
insurgents to hold off the US marines united many Iraqis
in opposition to the United States, and coincided with
the Mehdi uprising that briefly presented the Americans
with a nationwide conflagration. Even the current Iraqi
president, Ghazi al-Yawar (then a member of the
Governing Council), labeled the attack "genocide" at the
time.
In the broader Arab context, the
similarity of the images of the assault on Fallujah to
Israel's April 2002 invasion of the Jenin refugee camp
fused the struggles in Palestine and Iraq in minds of
many, and they have remained wedded in the popular
imagination. And the international community's disquiet
was voiced by then United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi,
who accused the US of collective punishment. More
recently, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has
diplomatically warned that any future attack should be
"calibrated" so as not to alienate Iraqis.
But
while the world saw in Fallujah a telling demonstration
of the limits of military power to solve political
disputes, in the US there was bipartisan criticism of
the administration for not following though on the
offensive. So it was front-page news when former Marine
Corps General James T Conway, who was in charge of
western Iraq last April, expressed his belated dissent.
"When we were told to attack Fallujah, I think we
certainly increased the level of animosity that
existed," he told reporters in September.
This
time around, there is little doubt the US military
intends to finish the job. US forces are massing for a
major assault, with 850 British soldiers repositioning
into central Iraq to free up US combat troops. Dozens of
alleged terrorist "safe houses" have been destroyed by
US warplanes in recent weeks in order, as Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers put it,
to "set the conditions for the successful use of force
later". Whatever their military utility, these air
strikes have killed scores of civilians. In just one
such incident, a couple and their four children were
killed when two rockets destroyed their home on October
19. One of the insurgents' few demands, allowing Iraqi
forces to re-enter Fallujah, is reportedly
acknowledgment that the air strikes have killed women
and children.
Spinning the
quagmire The failed strategy in Fallujah is writ
large across Iraq. In its engagements in Samarra, Najaf,
Ramadi and elsewhere, the US has tended toward measuring
success in terms of body counts. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld bragged that the US killed up to 2,500
insurgents in August alone (many of whom would have
fallen in the siege of Najaf). But it is highly likely
that the US is creating more enemies than it is killing.
US Private Mario Rutigliano, 19, understands this if
Rumsfeld does not. After the US attack on the northern
border town of Tall Afar in mid-September that killed
104 Iraqis, Rutigliano told the Washington Post: "It
doesn't matter how many we kill, they'll always keep
coming back. They've all got cousins, brothers. They
have an endless supply."
The upshot of this
cycle of death and vengeance is that there are now
8,000-10,000 hardcore insurgents, or 20,000 if active
sympathizers are included, according to US officials who
spoke to the New York Times. Though former members of
the Ba'ath security forces may have composed the
original core of the insurgency, its ranks are now
swollen with ordinary Iraqis. Combating Iraqis who are
fighting to liberate themselves from their "liberators"
presents the Bush administration with serious moral and
legal quandaries, of course, and an acute public
relations dilemma.
To traverse this minefield
and salve any uneasiness the American people might have
about crushing a nationalist uprising, the
administration has sold the "foreign fighter" argument
to the media. Zarqawi, the alleged leader of the Tawhid
and Jihad group, has been particularly targeted, with
the media gratefully wielding him to personalize the
amorphous Iraqi quagmire to a befuddled nation. Even a
recent headline in the left-leaning Christian Science
Monitor read "Fallujans flee from US, Zarqawi fight",
suggesting a showdown between the Jordanian militant and
5,000 marines. The media have also taken the US
military's assurances that the strikes have been
"precise" at face value, with occasionally surreal
results. A recent CNN broadcast featured raw footage of
a house in Fallujah that had been flattened by a US air
strike and, as wounded children were pulled from the
rubble, anchor Carol Lin informed viewers, without
qualification, that the US had struck a Zarqawi meeting
place.
Zarqawi is now a catch-all for the
troubled Iraq project - prime mover of the insurgency
and missing link to the "war on terror". Vice President
Dick Cheney claimed in October that Zarqawi is
responsible for "most of the major car bombings that
have killed or maimed thousands of people". The recent
pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden attributed to
Zarqawi was understandably seized upon by the White
House as vindication for the war and any future assault
on Fallujah.
Because the US public imbibes much
of its news about Iraq from television, which offers
only a thin, uncritical filter of the administration's
spin, many Americans, while understandably preoccupied
with the 1,111 US military deaths, are only dimly aware
of the immense Iraqi death toll and the resentment born
of US military excess. And with the "war on terror" now
neatly folded into the Iraqi uprising, there is little
discussion of the ethical implications of suppressing
it.
Even when the media transcend their Zarqawi
fetish, it is only to focus on the role of ex-regime
loyalists and Islamic extremists, who are rendered
illegitimate by the very terminology used to represent
them. An October 22 editorial in the Washington Post,
for instance, sourced opposition to the US from
"Ba'athist insurgents, Islamic extremists and foreign
terrorists" and thereby reasoned that "success in Iraq
doesn't seem possible unless US forces are prepared to
destroy the enemy's bases and restore the government's
authority across the country". The New York Times, on
the other hand, has offered a note of caution, warning
on October 27 against the potential for civilian
casualties in any offensive in the Sunni triangle, and
sensibly advising that "the challenge posed by the
disaffected residents of the Sunni triangle is as much
political as military".
Conflict Resolution
101 The political component of the United States'
counterinsurgency strategy has been notably
underdeveloped. Because the Bush administration is
unwilling to accept the legitimacy of those who oppose
it, it has yet to engage in genuine conflict resolution.
Opponents of the "new Iraq" face a stark choice -
surrendering their weapons and joining a "democratic
process" defined by Washington and the Iraqi exiles who
dominate the interim government, or political isolation
and physical elimination.
The administration has
treated the insurgency as a law-and-order issue, with
little effort to address the ideological and political
grievances that underlie it. It has ruled out any role
for opponents of the interim Iraqi government at the
international conference on Iraq scheduled to be held in
Sharm el-Sheikh from November 22-23. In addition, US
forces detained several clerics from the anti-occupation
Muslim Clerics Association who have been negotiating a
solution to the crisis in Fallujah, sending a chill
through efforts to resolve that crisis peacefully. The
clerics' refusal to turn over Zarqawi, whose whereabouts
they claim not to know, apparently earned them US ire.
The influential group reiterated its threat to boycott
the January election as a consequence.
Difficult
as it may be for whatever US administration that emerges
after next week's election to stomach, sitting down with
the Iraqi opposition, violent or otherwise, may be the
only way to ensure Iraq's long-term stability and a US
exit. The Sharm el-Sheikh conference in particular could
be an ideal forum to encourage that opposition, whose
only common demand has been a US military withdrawal, to
propose a viable political alternative to the status
quo. If the singular focus on military force as a means
of conflict resolution continues, however, with a new
attack on Fallujah, there may be little prospect of
lasting reconciliation.
Ashraf Fahim
is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in
New York and London.
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