As the
United States and the interim Iraqi government marshal
their forces to retake the insurgent-held city of
Fallujah, hopes will surely rise that the elections planned
for January might be held under less threatening circumstances.
But it is not only the multitude of insurgent
groups in Iraq who are anxious to prove them wrong,
in fact a tightly knit group of people among the
post-Saddam Hussein political and security elites in
Baghdad share the same aspiration as the insurgents. The
key difference between them is that while the insurgents
are set on sabotaging the elections to undermine not
only the multinational forces but also the new Iraqi
political elites, the neo-Ba'athists in Iyad Allawi's
administration want the elections to fail in order to
postpone the formalization of Shi'ite power in Iraq.
Fallujah: An unlikely symbol Fallujah,
situated roughly 60 kilometers to the west of Baghdad,
has surely emerged as the pre-eminent symbol of the
Iraqi resistance. But it has also emerged as a symbol of
the inherent conflicts and tensions in Iraqi society
that were suddenly thrust into the open by the downfall
of Saddam Hussein. The most obvious schism is the
Shi'ite-Sunni divide, but this has tended to mask more
complex and possibly more deep-rooted conflicts. At the
heart of this are violently competing visions of Iraq.
On the one hand there are the old Arab Sunni elites with
their vision of a nationalist and essentially "Arab"
Iraq, and on the other there are the predominantly
Shi'ite Arab organizations and movements that are
anxious to seize the historic opportunity generated by
the downfall of Saddam to formalize and consolidate
their community's demographic strength in the country.
Both camps tend to see Fallujah and the events there
since April 2003 through their prejudices and ambitions.
In an interview with the Jamestown Foundation in
May this year, Dr Mustafa Alani, a highly respected Iraqi
academic in the United Kingdom and a self-described
Iraqi and Arab nationalist, glorified Fallujah thus:
"... Throughout history Fallujah has been well known for
its defiance. The British military governor in Iraq,
Colonel [Gerald] Leachman, was killed south of Fallujah
in August 1920. Fallujah also fought the Iraqi Communist
Party and ejected it from the western parts of Iraq. It
fought Abdul Karim Qasim, and of course it challenged
Saddam Hussein."
Conversely, in an interview
with the Jamestown Foundation in the same month, Dr
Hamid Bayati, a leading personality in the
overwhelmingly Shi'ite and pro-Iranian Supreme Council
of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and a deputy
foreign minister in the interim government, dismissed
this profile of Fallujah thus: "... This glorification
of Fallujah is a Ba'athist tale. I can't believe that
little Fallujah has accomplished all these heroic
deeds."
Leaving aside this political
and rhetorical divide, Fallujah and its sister towns in
Anbar province do represent a significant shift in the
identity, scope and tactics of the Iraqi insurgency.
While there is little doubt Anbar is the heart of the
Iraqi resistance and Fallujah is its epicenter, much
conjecture and speculation surrounds the true strength,
ideology and motivations of the insurgent groups. What
started in April 2003 as a determined fight by
relatively small numbers of Ba'ath Party diehards and
outraged Iraqi nationalists has now developed into a
significant insurgency involving perhaps up to 30,000
rebels organized into a multitude of insurgent
organizations.
The Jamestown Foundation held an
event on the Iraqi insurgency in Washington, DC, on
October 7 that touched on the issues that are vexing
analysts on both sides of the Atlantic. A central theme
of this event was the emergence of Iraqi Salafism as the
unifying banner of the insurgents. While the Sunni
heartlands of Iraq have historically lacked a Wahhabi
and Salafi tradition, the ferocious dynamics generated
by the sudden downfall of the 35-year Ba'athist
enterprise are beginning to change this. One of the
ironies of the Iraq war is that during the reign of the
Ba'ath Party and its predecessors, even relatively
benign Islamic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood
and Sheikh Taqi Nabahani's Hizbut Tahrir could not
establish a foothold in the country, today some of the
most violent Salafists (as characterized by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's shadowy group) have set up shop in Iraq.
Clearly, not all insurgent activity can
be reduced to the exploits of the radical Islamic
groups; on the contrary inasmuch as remnants of the
former regime's security and military apparatus and
Iraqi nationalists continue to constitute a
significant feature of the insurgency. Nonetheless, the
Islamist groups are dominating and the others are
increasingly adjusting their slogans and rhetoric - if not
their long-term goals - to suit the Salafists. Thus
an organization such as the "Islamic Army in Iraq" (which
kidnapped and subsequently released an Iranian diplomat
in August), which previously took its ideology and
motivation from the canons of Iraqi nationalism and
inclusive Sunnism, is increasingly modeling its
rhetoric and statements on that of the Salafist Ansar
al-Sunnah that would have no doubt slaughtered the
Iranian diplomat.
Thus Fallujah and its
sister towns and villages in restive Anbar are not only
significant because they represent brazen and violent
defiance to the US and the interim Iraqi government, but
also because they are facilitating a convergence in the
language and tactics of the insurgents. Seen from this
perspective, a US-led assault on Fallujah and the
broader Anbar becomes inevitable.
Whither
Fallujah? The central question to ask
at this juncture is this: aside from the conclusion of
the US general elections, what else has influenced
the decision to retake Fallujah at this point in
time? The representatives of the US and the
interim Iraqi government no doubt would say that the
so-called Sunni triangle needs to be pacified ahead of
the scheduled elections in January. But no doubt many people
in the interim government - particularly those
now ensconced in the newly reconstituted security
and intelligence service - are well aware that an assault
on Anbar could, in the short term, potentially
exacerbate the situation and lead to even more serious
instability in the medium term.
Aside from the pressing security need to address
the serious problems posed by the restive centers of Anbar, there
is a covert and sinister side to the decision to
retake Fallujah at this particular time. At the heart of
this covert nexus are elements that can best be described
as "neo-Ba'athists". They are not to be confused with
the diehard Ba'athists and Saddam loyalists who control
several centers of Anbar. The neo-Ba'athists can best be
described as old-time Ba'ath members who broke with
Saddam in the 1980s and early 1990s and formed small
opposition groups in exile. The most important of these
was Allawi's Iraqi National Accord that was more akin to
a small intelligence organization than an opposition
political grouping. Allawi himself can be tentatively
described as a neo-Ba'athist, but he is now too closely
aligned with the US to be in a position truly to
articulate and pursue neo-Ba'athist agendas. But Allawi
has allowed the consolidation of a powerful neo-Ba'ath
faction in the interim government. This is led by three
controversial individuals all now heading vitally
important institutions. They are Hazim Shaalan (defense
minister), Falah al-Naqib (interior minister) and
Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, the head of the new Iraqi
intelligence service.
Hazim Shaalan
caused some controversy back in the summer when he
highlighted Iran as the No 1 enemy of Iraq. More recently, Shahwani
charged 27 employees of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad
with espionage and sabotage. According to Shahwani, the
Iranian agents, in collaboration with the SCIRI's
al-Badr Corps, had planned and carried out the
assassination of more than a dozen Iraqi intelligence
officers in less than a month. These fantastic claims
are eerily reminiscent of old Ba'athist rhetoric and
conspiracy theories aimed at Iran. More important,
Shahwani's allegations are clearly an attempt to
sabotage the electoral prospects of the SCIRI in the
coming elections.
In fact, the central priority
for the neo-Ba'athists at this point is the postponement
and eventual sabotage of the formalization and
consolidation of Shi'ite power in Iraq. The elections in
January may not give the new Iraqi regime the legitimacy
it needs but - providing they are reasonably fair and
attract voters from all regions - they will formalize
the power of the Shi'ites in the new Iraq, if only
because they will establish beyond doubt the demographic
superiority of this community. It may strike some people
as strange, but there are many Sunni Arabs in Iraq who
vociferously maintain that the Shi'ites are a minority
in the country. It should also be noted that no formal
census has been undertaken in modern Iraq to determine
the religious composition of the country.
The
neo-Ba'athists would dearly like these elections to be
not held at all, but they will be happy if their value
is significantly undermined by pervasive violence and
non-participation in the Sunni heartland. Clearly the
impending assault on Fallujah threatens to do just that
insofar as fierce resistance to the US-led operations is
likely to ensue. While nobody can accuse the US of being
in any way complicit in the conspiracies and
shortsighted politics of the neo-Ba'athists, it is
clear that the Americans have not fully understood the
dynamics of their Iraqi predicament. For one thing, the
Americans do not seem to fully appreciate that,
historically, the cycle of violence in Iraq has been
ferocious. Indeed, the current insurgency displays many
of the features of previous Iraqi rebellions and civil
wars inasmuch as violence rapidly becomes more brutal
and pervasive. The cycle of seizing and killing hostages
- which dwarf the Lebanese hostage saga of the 1980s -
is a poignant example.
None of these arguments,
of course, outline a viable alternative to current US
policies in Iraq. Therefore, the US drive to seize back
Fallujah and other Anbar towns from the rebels is
understandable. Nonetheless, there is no US security or
military solution to the problems plaguing the Sunni
heartlands of Iraq - only a legitimate and consensual
Iraqi government can successfully address those serious
problems. But the US has still plenty of scope to
isolate and undercut the growing influence of the
neo-Ba'athists in Baghdad. For if their power is left
unchecked, the neo-Ba'athists - more than any other
constituency, including the insurgents - will contribute
to the eventual defeat of the United States in Iraq.
Mahan Abedin is the editor of
Terrorism Monitor, which is published by the Jamestown
Foundation, a non-profit organization specializing in
research and analysis on conflict and instability in
Eurasia.
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