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Car bombings: Iraq's time
bomb
By Michael Schwartz
To many critics of the war,
the situation in Iraq has gotten a lot more
confusing since the election of January 30. The
election itself was confusing: though originally
forced on the occupation by Shi'ite leader
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, it was nevertheless
conducted in the enthusiastic embrace of the US
government and media. And while the winning ticket
was elected after a campaign 
centered around promises of a
timetable for US withdrawal, its leadership
abandoned this demand while the occupation
celebrated the huge turnout in Shi'ite and Kurdish
areas as an endorsement of the occupation.
But the seemingly endless wrangling over
Sunni representation in the new government
provided a clarity of sorts on the meaning of the
election - that the government is simply not a
critical factor in the dynamics of Iraqi society.
By April, the whole issue of the election and the
new government had faded into the background as an
onslaught of car bombings exchanged headlines with
two new military offensives by the American
military near the Syrian border and a much
ballyhooed Iraqi military offensive in Baghdad.
These recent developments have
demonstrated that the occupation and the
resistance continue to be the two primary forces
in the country, but they also underscore how
difficult it is to discern the underlying logic of
the confrontation between them.
The car
bombings are the centerpiece of these new events,
and they represent, I believe, a new and
qualitatively different offensive strategy by the
resistance. One symptom of this departure can be
found in sheer numbers: according to US military
officials there were 25 car bombings last year in
Baghdad; since March 1, there have been 126. But
what really distinguishes this campaign from
earlier ones - even those that utilized car bombs
- is their indiscriminate targeting. Far larger
numbers of civilians are killed or wounded in
these attacks than in other resistance attacks,
many of which are carefully targeted to avoid
civilian casualties.
Don't be fooled by
the press coverage - the car bombs are not
detonated at random, nor are they primarily
directed at Shi'ite mosques. In fact, only a
handful have been targeted primarily at civilians
- the vast majority are aimed at recruits or
active duty members of the Iraqi police and army;
the civilian injuries are - to use the ghoulish
American military jargon - "collateral damage".
But it is important to begin by
understanding the small proportion that actually
target civilians, notably mosques and other places
where Shi'ites congregate. These appear to be
exclusively the work of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and
his cohorts in "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia". (Though
they regularly claim credit for these attacks, we
can never be certain of his authorship, given the
unreliability of his claims.) Zarqawi's faction
has consistently characterized the Shi'ites as
apostates. In a recent statement, they denounced
virtually the whole Shi'ite community, saying that
occupation leaders were "being aided by their
allies from Shi'ites", and then adding, "The
Shi'ite sect has always spearheaded any war
against Islam and Muslims throughout history."
Applying classic terrorist logic, Zarqawi is
attempting to use attacks on civilians to
intimidate the Shi'ite community from supporting
the new government and the US-led occupation that
stands behind it.
"Al-Qaeda in
Mesopotamia" accounts for a tiny proportion of the
military actions undertaken by the Iraqi
resistance. My best estimate is that Zarqawi and
his allies account for perhaps five actions each
week, including perhaps one car bombing. This
represents a small proportion of even the car
bombings, which have been running at at least 10
per week since the election; and it is a tiny
proportion of the 400 or so violent actions each
week - virtually all of which are directed at
military targets, with about 70% directed at US
armed forces.
These attacks are
nevertheless a significant element in the Iraqi
cauldron. The massive mayhem they cause reflects
the fact that the targets are vulnerable
civilians, and the immense publicity given them by
the American media (encouraged by occupation
authorities) ensure their actual and figurative
importance. Beyond this, their role in creating
and sustaining friction and conflict between the
Sunni and Shi'ite communities, again augmented by
the media spotlight on this growing problem (a
spotlight that is also encouraged by occupation
authorities) ensures that these attacks have
become the most visible elements in the
car-bombing offensive.
But the visibility
of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" has also created a
growing effort for the remainder of the resistance
to dissociate itself from Zarqawi and his allies.
Since last fall, the latter have been regularly
denounced by the Association of Muslim Scholars,
the key clerical leadership of the Sunni
resistance. They have been repeatedly labeled as
criminals (rather than resistance fighters) by the
Sadrists - the key anti-occupation group among the
Shi'ites. Even the new Iraqi government has
acknowledged the growing estrangement. Laith
Kubba, an adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim
Jaafari, told New York Times reporter Sabrina
Tavernise that many elements of the resistance
were no longer "welcoming" Zarqawi and other
foreign fighters. He commented, "There was a
moment when they said, 'OK, we're going to use you
in our fight against the government and Americans.
But now they're saying, 'You're a burden.'"
It is this growing isolation of Zarqawi
that makes the car-bombing offensive all the more
significant. It is being carried out by elements
of the resistance who do not traditionally target
civilians. And while they are not targeting them
in this campaign, neither are they attempting to
avoid civilian casualties. This odd equation is
nicely expressed in this Washington Post
description of a May 23 attack: "At lunchtime, a
car bomb exploded outside a cafe frequented by
workers in a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood of
north Baghdad, killing at least five people,
hospital officials said. The bomb was detonated by
remote control, police said. While the intended
targets appeared to have been police who also
gather at the cafe, witnesses said the victims
were civilians."
Most of these attacks are
a little less indiscriminate, since reports in
early May indicated that 250 of the 400 people
killed to that point were recruits or active duty
police and national guard.
This technical
distinction between targeting civilians and
targeting armed forces is worth emphasizing
because it allows us to see the underlying logic
of the attacks. The targeting of police is a
direct response to the American policy of
"Iraqification" of the war - an attempt by the US
military to train an Iraqi force that can relieve
the overstressed American armed forces. The
intention is to deprive the Iraqification campaign
of the manpower it needs, and thereby weaken the
occupation.
It remains to be seen whether
this sort of intimidation campaign can work. The
US media have been quoting American military
leaders as reporting that the bombings were not
scaring Iraqis away from one of the only jobs that
promises enough pay to support a family; but we
can't rely on such reports. (We do know, however,
that Iraqification thus far is a miserable
failure. For example, the recent Operation Matador
- the search and destroy operation by American
troops over by the Syrian border - involved no
Iraqi troops at all, because none could be trusted
to withstand actual fire fights. And the police in
key Sunni cities, such as Ramadi and Mosul, have
not been able or willing to police the towns,
leaving large sections of cities and whole towns
in the hands of the resistance, who become the de
facto police there.)
While the car-bombing
campaign cannot be called "indiscriminate"
carnage, it is carnage nonetheless, and it
represents a dramatic departure from earlier
resistance strategies on two very important
dimensions. The most obvious departure is the lack
of concern for civilian casualties. Classic
guerrilla war, regularly practiced by the Iraqi
resistance, tries to ensure that guerrilla attacks
avoid civilian casualties. In Iraq this has been
regularly practiced by warning local residents of
impending attacks and having them clear the
neighborhood before they occur. This, for example,
was done in the famous incident in Fallujah where
the four security men were ambushed (and then
later butchered by a mob), the triggering incident
for the first siege of Fallujah. But it is also
the bread and butter of myriad small guerrilla
incidents, such as the one described by Washington
Post reporter Jackie Spinner:
Farhan Ali, 52, a shepherd from the
village, said insurgents told him to clear out
of an area on a busy dirt road from Abu Ghraib
to Smailat because they had planted a bomb in a
cardboard carton that was set to blow up next to
the foot patrol. "All the people in the area
knew about it," he said. "The insurgents asked
us to stay out of the road ... All of us were
just watching," Ali said. "There were a bunch of
kids standing away from the road expecting and
watching to see an explosion." While
there have been innumerable instances where such
caution is not applied and many battles in which
civilians were caught in the crossfire, the recent
car bombings represent the first instance in which
a guerrilla campaign has generated this level of
civilian casualties. Of course, Iraqi police and
national guards (both recruits and active duty
personnel) are required to congregate in crowded
city locations, so the guerrillas have a good
excuse for attacking where they do. But in other
circumstances, they would warn people
nevertheless, even at the risk of losing the
element of surprise or aborting the attack
altogether. So this represents a drift far away
from the ethics that have so far dominated the
resistance (though at least some elements of the
resistance, including Zarqawi and his crowd, have
never honored them).
This change in
strategy has enormous potential to change the way
in which the resistance is viewed inside Iraq.
Ordinary citizens, even those who detest the
occupation, will generally be alienated from such
strategies, and therefore, from the resistance.
Many people react like two eyewitnesses to the
restaurant attack described above. One,
acknowledging the purpose of the attack,
commented: "I swear to God, I will not enter any
restaurant if I see any policemen sitting there,"
and then complained, "There is no safe place in
Baghdad, not even your bedroom." The other
declared bluntly that the insurgents were cowards:
"They cannot face these men [the police]
man-to-man, so they show us how brave they are by
killing these poor men who run all day to feed
their families."
But there is another
aspect to these attacks that is even more
symptomatic of a shift in the resistance strategy:
the targeting of police and police recruits. While
these attacks have occurred in the past, they have
now become the key weapon in the resistance
struggle against Iraqi armed forces, replacing one
that was almost its direct opposite.
Before the current campaign, most of the
resistance attempted to co-opt, rather than
defeat, the Iraqi police and national guard. The
patterns were simple: when police and the national
guard were stationed in cities, the resistance
would cooperate with them in enforcing criminal
law, delivering criminals to them and avoiding
armed conflict, except when they participated in
campaigns against the resistance itself. When the
US called on local Iraqi forces to fight the
resistance, the resistance would issue an appeal
for the Iraqi armed forces to defect or abandon
their posts and melt into the population. In
virtually every important confrontation police
stations were abandoned to the resistance, Iraqi
units deserted and went home rather than fight
other Iraqis, and some even joined the resistance
and fought the Americans. The most highly visible
of such cases occurred in the two battles in
Fallujah last year and the confrontations in Sadr
City, where the US could not mobilize any Iraqi
units except those from the Kurdish areas.
This strategy was more successful than
preventing the recruitment of police and national
guards, since it created a "Trojan Horse" supplied
and trained by the US that was frequently an ally
and almost never the enemy. In Mosul, for example,
US reliance on the local police allowed the
resistance to take over the city (during the
battle of Fallujah, when the US forces were
otherwise occupied) with almost no fighting. A
force of 3,000 policemen simply melted into the
population (except those that joined the rebels)
and left their weapons and supplies behind.
This new car-bomb strategy will therefore
hurt the resistance whether it succeeds or fails.
Any reduction in the size of the army will be more
than offset by the antagonism to the resistance
among the surviving forces, definitively
undermining the "Trojan Horse" strategy.
So why have at least some elements of the
rebellion abandoned the co-optation strategy? The
most important answer lies in changes in US policy
for deploying Iraqi military forces. Until last
fall, the US recruited local residents for the
local police force and assigned army units with
matching ethno-religious backgrounds to local
patrols. That is, they recruited Fallujans to
police and patrol in Fallujah, Ramadans in Ramadi
and Sadr City residents in Sadr City. When this
was not possible, Sunnis were assigned to Sunni
areas; Shi'ites were assigned to Shi'ite areas.
This policy, of course, was a key element
in enabling the "Trojan Horse" strategy, since the
soldiers' ties in the local communities gave
families and tribal leaders personal, moral and
clerical leverage over the local armed forces.
Last fall, faced with the stark evidence of the
power of these ties, the US military reacted by
assigning outsiders to police the most troubled
areas. That is, they began to use Sunni and
Kurdish forces in Shi'ite areas; Shi'ite and
Kurdish forces in Sunni areas. So, for example,
while the Sunni military forces refused to fight
in both battles of Fallujah, in the second battle
a Kurdish force joined the Americans and fought
alongside them.
This strategy could work -
the US might be able to recruit police forces and
national guard units that would not be co-optable
by the resistance, simply exploiting the
ethno-religious divisions in the country. They are
trying this in Ramadi and other centers of Sunni
resistance. In Fallujah, the Shi'ite occupying
troops have been accused of frequent and
systematic brutality. This brutality is a sign
that the Shi'ite armed forces may not be
co-optable by the Sunni resistance, and it has
been a major source of the growing antagonism
between the Shi'ite and Sunni communities. (The
use of this ethnic "fix" to their enforcement
problems, as well as failure of the Americans to
respond to the charges of brutality in Fallujah
and elsewhere provides further evidence of
American complicity in - and perhaps authorship of
- the growing ethno-religious conflict in Iraq.)
Certainly, the current car-bomb campaign
suggests that at least some elements in the Sunni
resistance think that the American strategy will
work. One key sign of this can be seen in the
abortive negotiations around the battle of
Fallujah. It was not well publicized, but the US
did negotiate with representatives of the Fallujah
leadership before attacking, and one of the
sticking points in the negotiations was the demand
by the rebels that the police force in Fallujah be
recruited from Fallujah. The US would not agree to
this demand. Another, more immediate, indication
lies in the fact that virtually all of the car
bombs are directed against primarily Shi'ite armed
forces. In fact, the bombings tend to be in
Shi'ite areas of town (where Shi'ite recruits or
police congregate) so that the civilian victims
are also Shi'ite. While such targeting is
"logical" in some abstract sense, the attacks are
inevitably seen as anti-Shi'ite.
Hence it
is no surprise that communities in which these
attacks take place see them as atrocities - not
only because they kill civilians, but also because
the recruits are usually local men who are
applying for one of the only available jobs in
town. The comment that the restaurant bombers
"show us how brave they are by killing these poor
men who run all day to feed their families"
probably represents the predominant attitude among
Shi'ites toward both the car bombers and the
police they target. The fact that these police
jobs are all that the American-led
pseudo-reconstruction can offer in the way of
employment is a sign of the failure of the
occupation. But even if this sharpens the anger of
the residents against the US, it does not soften
the anger at the car bombers, who are not only
killing people, but removing one of the few job
possibilities available in communities where
unemployment is as high as 60%.
So the
car-bomb campaign is designed to substitute for
co-opting the police, but it has far-reaching
consequences. Beyond the murder and alienation of
civilians and its likelihood to strengthen police
antagonism to the resistance, it adds to the
growing divisions between Shi'ites and Sunnis,
feeding the very ethno-religious friction that has
become Washington's principal excuse for its
continuing presence. The fact that the US is in
some sense the driving force behind this growing
division is an important part of the story, but it
is only one important part. The other is the
strategy of the Sunni resistance. Instead of
searching for another way of defeating
Iraqification, it has adopted this strategy, which
has already contributed to the growing friction
between Shi'ites and Sunnis in Iraq.
Michael Schwartz, professor of
sociology at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook has written extensively on popular
protest and insurgency and on American business
and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has
appeared on the Internet at numerous sites,
including Asia Times Online, TomDispatch,
MotherJones.com, and ZNet; and in print at
Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His
books include Radical Politics and Social
Structure, The Power Structure of American
Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social
Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited,
with Clarence Lo). His e-mail address is
Ms42@optonline.net
(Copyright 2005 Michael
Schwartz) |
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