Taking the sting out of the Samarra
swarm By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The city of Samarra, target of
the biggest US air strike since the invasion of
Iraq three years ago, has been the nucleus of the
national resistance since the fall of Baghdad.
The Sunni-dominated city 125 kilometers
north of Baghdad, despite several attempts, has
never been subjugated, because of the strong
tribal structure and fierce nationalism of its
residents.
Operation Swarmer, which began
on Thursday with more than 650 American and 800
Iraqi soldiers, 200 tactical vehicles and more
than
50 helicopters, aims to change this. The mission
involved a combination of UH-60 Black Hawk, AH-64D
Apache Longbow, and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, the
Pentagon said in a fact sheet, all of them to
ferry troops and provide cover.
The bomb
attacks on the revered Shi'ite Golden Mosque in
Samarra last month provided the opportunity the
United States had been waiting for, as they
provided the motivation for the Shi'ite-dominated
Iraqi army to commit fully to the assault on the
city. In previous offensives, notably on Fallujah,
Iraqi troops have proved highly unreliable.
In the Samarra attack, which is expected
to last several days, Iraqi forces are at the
forefront of pitched house-to-house battles
against the resistance. Iraqi Foreign Minister
Hoshyar Zebari called the targeted area "a hotbed
for insurgents and terrorists".
According
to a report by Al-Jazeera, residents north of
Samarra said that there was a heavy US and Iraqi
troop presence in the area and that large
explosions could be heard in the distance. They
said the operation appeared to be concentrated
near four villages - Jillam, Mamlaha, Banat Hassan
and Bukaddou - near the highway leading north from
Samarra to the city of Adwar. It was not clear how
much resistance the operation had met. The US Army
said 41 suspects had been detained.
The
offensive began on the same day that Iraq's new
parliament in the heavily fortified Green Zone met
for the first time since elections in December. In
a brief ceremony, the lawmakers each took an oath
and then the House adjourned. Parliament has been
unable to agree on a Speaker, let alone on
confirming prime minister-designate Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, the Shi'ite choice for the position.
No date was set for parliament to meet again.
Samarra, a vital part of the Sunni
triangle that is the heart of the resistance, has
been a martial city for centuries. It was chosen
by the Abbasid rulers as the cantonment for their
Turkish-dominated army so that non-Arab influence
would be kept to a minimum in the caliphate's
capital Baghdad.
During Saddam Hussein's
Ba'ath Party rule, Samarra retained its identity
as a military city as it was home to many top
officers.
After the fall of Baghdad in
2003, Samarra initially remained calm, but in time
the local population booted out the US-backed
administration and US forces, and leaders of the
resistance took over the affairs of the city.
In late 2004, the US conducted a massive
operation to regain control of the city from the
resistance. However, after claiming initial
success, matters returned to the status quo, with
former Iraqi army officers and firebrand Arab
nationalists coordinating the resistance. Even the
now-deceased Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, once No 2
under Saddam, stayed in Samarra to command the
resistance.
The US realized that the only
way to have a chance of "purging" the city and its
surrounding areas would be to invoke a committed
indigenous force. The sectarian backlash to the
Samarra shrine attack, in which Sunni-Shi'ite
tensions escalated and more than 500 people were
killed, focused attention on the resistance
leaders in Samarra, who happened to be Sunnis.
Shi'ites in uniform did not need a second
invitation for the chance to join the attack.
There is no doubt that the current offensive will
deal a blow to the resistance as for the
first time its primary weapons cache has been targeted.
A US military statement said that caches containing
artillery shells, explosives, bomb-making materials,
improvised explosive devices and military uniforms had
been discovered on the first day of the raid. It
can be expected that more bunkers will be
unearthed, containing in addition to arms large
amounts of money meant to finance the resistance.
But even if the resistance does lose its
main supply base, or parts of it, there are
alternatives, including Nineveh and Babylon.
Further, the resistance can make use of the
often-porous border with Syria.
While all
of the United States' attention is on central
Iraq, trouble could be brewing in the south, too.
Contacts of Asia Times Online familiar with the
Iraqi resistance claim that the Jaishul Islam
al-Iraq (Islamic Army of Iraq), an indigenous
group commanded by former top Iraqi generals and
independent Islamists, has established itself in
Basra and Amarah. Although the group includes
former Ba'athists of both Sunni and Shi'ite
origin, the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is
its binding force.
A general observation
of the Iraqi resistance is its highly developed
military acumen. By all accounts it has been on
red alert ever since the Samarra mosque attack
last month, and it can be expected to have devised
strategies to counter offensives such as Operation
Swarmer.
Syed Saleem Shahzadis
Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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