Mosul attack 'an inside
job' By Syed Saleem Shahzad
The deadly suicide attack on a US military base
in Mosul this week was an "inside job" carried out by
insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed forces, Asia
Times Online has been told.
Sources said a
strong nexus between Iraqi forces and the resistance is
what allowed them to carry out the most devastating
attack on US troops since the beginning of the invasion.
US forces have imposed a curfew in Mosul and have
launched a military operation in the city, but, the
sources say, this will have little effect on the
problem, for the simple reason that the US-trained Iraqi
military is heavily infected with people loyal to the
resistance groups.
Responsibility for the
suicide bombing in the US mess tent was claimed by
Islamist resistance organization Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah
(JAAS).
While various analysts ponder the
insurgents' strategy in the lead up to next month's
elections, and opine that their primary goal is to
disrupt those elections, the resistance says it has a
different agenda. In a message to Asia Times Online from
the Netherlands, Nada al-Rubaiee, a member of the
central committee of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, a
group that is part of the Iraqi national resistance
movement both inside and outside Iraq, said, "Everything
in the resistance movement is clear ... There is
agreement on one issue; that is, getting freedom from
foreign occupying forces and their handymen. It is
agreed that only Iraqi people would decide the course of
government in the post-liberation era."
The
architects of the Iraqi resistance movement have
engineered a guerrilla strategy such that today it is
very difficult to identify who the "resistance" is. For
instance, before the recent Fallujah operation, a US
military spokesperson portrayed that city as a hotbed of
Islamic groups connected with al-Qaeda. However, during
the operation, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Alawi, Iraq's
interior minister, and the US military spokesperson all
admitted that they were fighting with Saddam Hussein
remnants.
Exactly what role more than 3 million
members of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party are playing from
Kirkuk to Basra is very hard to determine, but sources
maintain that one particular aim of the resistance is
very clear, and that is "recruiting new jihadis".
Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey,
organized demoralized Turkish troops by holding a sword
in one hand and a holy book in the other and raising the
slogans of jihad against the invading Western armies,
and the secular, socialist and Arab-nationalist Ba'ath
Party members have the same strategy. JAAS and other
groups are a manifestation of this. However, the real
forces behind the Iraqi national resistance movement are
what the Iraqi interior minister recently referred to as
"Saddam loyalists and the remnants of the Ba'ath Party",
whose political wings are active abroad while its
security committees and militant wings exist in Iraq and
are fanning the flames of resistance.
With the
passage of time it has become clear that the Iraqi
insurgency is being fought under a single command and
control, though different pockets of Islamic groups
exist. Eventually, these pockets become part of the
mainstream resistance movement, although they sometimes
independently carry out operations. Thanks to the Iraqi
tribal structure, they are inevitably known to one
another, and thus forced to coordinate their strategies
to minimize contradictions.
Apart from the
broader parameters of the Iraqi resistance movement,
there are other minor but prominent social factors that
play an important role in its ability to obtain support
on the basis of nationalism, rather than secularism, an
added woe for US forces in Iraq.
The foremost is
Iraq's tribal structure. Any Iraqi national guard, army,
police or paramilitary force would obviously consist of
local Iraqis. In cities such as Samarra, Tikrit and
Mosul, which are heavily tied to tribal traditions, it
is impossible for any individual to join the Iraqi
forces and keep himself and his family protected from
popular anti-US sentiment. But if the US-backed interim
government of Iraq instead brings in forces from the
country's Kurdish areas, as it did for the Fallujah
operation, it will only fuel more hatred against the US
and its supporters. Therefore, whichever way it is
viewed, this will pose problems for the US. If the
government employs local soldiers, their loyalties will
automatically go with the resistance, but if it brings
soldiers from Kurdish areas, a fierce reaction emerges.
At the same time, it was the Iraqi tribal
structure that managed to hide the many obvious
contradictions within the resistance. For instance, when
the resistance took up arms, different Salafi groups and
tribal leaders had their reservations - particularly
Kurds and Islamists - about accepting former Saddam
regime members. But after a lot of discussion, it was
agreed that the 3 million former Ba'ath Party members
could not be secluded from the Iraqi resistance.
However, it was decided that former regime members would
be kept away to hold the control in the mainstream of
the movement and those who were only Ba'ath Party
members and not part of Saddam Hussein's regime would be
given responsibilities in the mainstream of the
resistance.
Meanwhile, Nada claims that the
number of casualties from the Mosul attack is far higher
than what was admitted by the US, 22 people. "In the
[dining tent] where the attack took place, there were at
least 500 US soldiers. The number of casualties given by
the occupation forces always excludes private
contractors [non-official soldiers/unregistered
soldiers-agents]. We expect the number [is] a lot higher
than the announced one."
According to Nada, the
attack was very organized - so much so that a video of
the bombing was even prepared and will soon be released.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is bureau chief,
Pakistan, Asia Times Online. He can be reached atsaleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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