Is Iraq becoming a new Afghanistan? Richard Sale

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Is Iraq becoming a new Afghanistan?

Richard Sale

The Daily Star, 8/30/03

On July 27, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rebutted claims that the US was involved in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It was an incredible statement and flew in the face of all the facts being hurriedly assembled by American intelligence analysts.
But the spin machine of the administration of US President George W. Bush pursued its odd way of viewing the facts on the ground in Iraq. For example, it initially called anti-American military attacks the action of a few “criminals,” and yet administration officials conceded that the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal law enforcement officials had never been deployed to deal with them.
This led a Pentagon analyst to say: “It’s a common psychological warfare tactic to label any opposition criminal. You try and rob the hostile forces of legitimacy.”
A few weeks later Rumsfeld was describing the guerrillas as “dead-enders” diehard members of the defeated Baath Party who once supported former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But an administration official pointed out: “That has never been true.”
Even at the time Rumsfeld spoke, the escalating attacks on US forces in Iraq were broadening. Having begun with a core of former Baath intelligence officers who paid stipends for the attacks, anti-American efforts have grown to include hard-core Jihadis and Iraqi nationalists.
Indeed, in late July, I was told that Al-Qaeda had opened training camps in Albania, and that graduates of these were entering Iraq through the border with Iran. Other Islamic militants were coming in through Syria, Turkey and Jordan. The US is thus facing a new and sinister challenge. Guerrilla attacks have had two purposes: first, to provoke the United States into massive, vindictive retaliation that would alienate the Iraqi population; and second, to show that the mighty US military, for all its incredible firepower, is vulnerable and unable to protect ordinary Iraqis in the streets.
This is a real dilemma for US forces. As attacks kill friends and colleagues, soldiers move from an attitude of openness and a desire to help and befriend Iraqis, to viewing them all as possible attackers. One American intelligence figure told me that his greatest fear was that Iraqi attacks would goad some unit “into a small massacre” that would forever turn the hearts of Iraqis against the US.
“If you try and exercise restraint to withhold judgment and it gets a man killed, then the attitude of everyone out there hardens very quickly,” a Pentagon official said.
The appearance of Al-Qaeda has added a new dimension of menace. Most operatives reportedly come from Syria and Saudi Arabia, but others from Egypt, Chechnya, Jordan and Yemen have also entered Iraq. Although small in number, they bring a ruthless expertise when it comes to killing Americans. Al-Qaeda is a strong suspect in the August 19 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, and has claimed responsibility for the attack.
But how has the US reacted to all this? “Wrongly,” say experts in low-intensity warfare. True, it has tried to plot patterns of hostility by using what the US military calls “smallpox maps” maps that show the dates and places of guerrilla attacks marked in red in an attempt to make a template of the battlefield. It has also attempted to build networks of informers in guerrilla strongholds, and develop lists of suspects based on those networks and on interrogations of suspects in custody.
However, the resulting raids and house-to-house searches have further estranged the Iraqi population, which is already angry about the inability of US troops to restore basic services such as electrical power and water.
The Bush administration has also made another mistake. Roger Trinquier, a French intelligence officer in the Battle of Algiers, wrote in his classic book, Modern Warfare: “Since the control of the population is the aim of modern warfare, any element not in direct and permanent contact with the population is useless.”
However, just as they did in Vietnam, US military units have begun to withdraw into armed cantonments or isolated garrisons to avoid casualties, leaving areas that are still under the control of the Iraqi resistance.
Middle East expert Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington has labeled “a critical mistake” the creation of security zones around US headquarters in Baghdad. “This has created a no-go zone for Iraqis, and allowed the attackers to push the US into a fortress that tends to separate US personnel from the people.”
So what is to be done? Experts say that the quality of intelligence obtained will prove key. American troops can seize arms, make raids and round up neighborhood suspects, yet the real issue is whether intelligence is good enough for such activity to have serious value. The experts also suggest it is very important to keep track of the frequency of attacks, and especially their political or economic impact. The UN bombing had an immediate chilling effect on international aid organizations trying to assist Iraqis.
However, high-profile attacks may not be the most significant. As Cordesman observed: “One of the most critical failures of the war is the failure to actually map what is going on and to tie together attacks on US soldiers with an attempt to block nation-building and alienate Iraqis from the US-led effort by the Iraqi governing council.”
One hopes the UN attack will spur further American efforts to obtain the kind of intelligence needed to preempt attacks. For the attacks must diminish. The longer they continue, the more the US presence appears foreign, alien and oppressive. And Washington must move quickly. The actions taken next will do much to decide whether the outcome in Iraq is victory or defeat.

Richard Sale is intelligence correspondent at United Press International. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).