[lbo-talk] Juan Cole op-ed on guerrilla strategy and the centrality of talking to them

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Jan 17 18:44:08 PST 2007


http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/16459277.htm

Sun, Jan. 14, 2007

The Mercury News

MISREADING THE ENEMY

By Juan Cole

<snip>

Who is the enemy in Iraq, exactly? In the first instance, it is

some 50 major Sunni Arab guerrilla groups. These have names such as

the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Army of Muhammad, and the Holy

Warrior Council. Some are rooted in the Baath party, an Arab

nationalist and socialist party that had ruled Iraq since 1968.

Others have a base in city quarters or in rural clans. Some are

made up of fundamentalist Muslims. One calls itself "Al-Qaida"

but has no real links to Osama bin Laden and his organization, and

has simply adopted the name. The Baathists and neo-Baathists, led

by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (once a right-hand man of Saddam

Hussein), are probably the most important and deadliest of these

guerrilla groups.

These guerrilla cells are rooted in the Sunni Arab sector, some 20

percent of Iraq's population, which had enjoyed centuries of

dominance in Iraq. From it came the high bureaucrats, the managers

of companies, the officer corps, the people who know how to get

things done. They know where some 200,000 remaining tons of hidden

explosives are, secreted around the country by the former regime.

They are for the most part unable to accept being ruled by what

they see as a new government of Shiite ayatollahs and Kurdish

warlords, or being occupied by the U.S. Army and Marines. These

Iraqi Sunnis enjoy the support of millions of committed and

sometimes wealthy co-religionists in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

and the oil kingdoms of the Persian Gulf.

The Sunni Arab guerrilla cells have successfully pursued a spoiler

strategy in Iraq. By engaging in assassinations, firefights and

bombings, they have made it clear that if they are not happy in the

new Iraq, no one is going to be. Did U.S. engineers repair

electricity stations? The Sunni guerrillas sabotaged them. Did the

new regime attempt to export petroleum from the northern city of

Kirkuk through Turkey? The guerrillas hit the pipelines. Did the

U.S. military attempt to plant 50 bases around the country? The

cells targeted them for mortar attacks and roadside bombs,

inflicting a steady and horrible attrition, leaving more than

25,000 GIs killed or wounded.

<snip>

The guerrillas know they cannot fight the U.S. military head-on.

But they do not need to. They know something that the Americans

could not entirely understand. Iraq is a country of clans and

tribes, of Hatfields and McCoys, of grudges and feuds. The clans

are more important than religious identities such as Sunni or

Shiite. They are more important than ethnicities such as Kurdish or

Arab or Turkmen. All members of the clan are honor-bound to defend

or avenge all the other members. They are bands not of brothers but

of cousins.

The guerrillas mobilized these clans against the U.S. troops and

against one another. Is a U.S. platoon traveling through a

neighborhood of the Dulaim clan, where people are out shopping?

They hit the convoy, and the panicked troops lay down fire around

them. They kill members of the Dulaim clan. They are now defined as

the American tribe, and they now have a feud with the Dulaim.

Members of the Dulaim cannot hold their heads up high until they

avenge the deaths of their cousins by killing Americans.

Unbelievable cruelty

The guerrillas also provoke clan feuds between adherents of the two

major sects of Islam, the Sunni and the Shiite. They pursue this

goal with unbelievable cruelty. They will blow up a big marriage

party held by a Shiite clan, killing bride, groom and revelers.

They know that Muslims try to bury the dead the same day, so there

will be a funeral. They blow up the funeral, too. The Shiite clan

knows who the Sunni clans are that support the insurgency.

The Shiites who have been attacked then join the radical Mahdi Army

out of anger and fear, and send death squads at night to take

revenge on the Sunni clan. If American troops step in to stop the

Shiites from taking revenge, that produces a feud between the U.S.

and the Shiite clans. The ordinary Sunnis under attack from the

vengeful Shiite death squads turn for protection to the Sunni

guerrillas. The deliberately provoked feuds have the effect of

mobilizing the Sunni Arabs and garnering their support for the

guerrillas.

The guerrillas have opened fronts against the Americans, against

the police and army of the new government and against the Shiites.

There is a third front, in Mosul and Kirkuk, against the Kurds. The

guerrillas hit Kirkuk's oil pipelines, police, political party

headquarters and ordinary Kurds in hopes of keeping the Kurdistan

Regional Government from annexing oil-rich Kirkuk to itself.

U.S. soldiers cannot stop the Sunni Arab guerrilla cells from

setting bombs or assassinating people. That is clear after nearly

four years. And since they cannot stop them, they also are

powerless to halt the growing number of intense clan and religious

feuds. The United States cannot stop the sabotage that hurts

petroleum exports in the north and stops electricity from being

delivered for more than a few hours a day.

President Bush in his speech Wednesday imagined that guerrillas

were coming into neighborhoods in Baghdad and in the cities of

Al-Anbar province from the outside. He suggested that, as the

solution to this problem, U.S. and Iraqi troops should clear them

out and then hold the city quarters for some time, to stop them

from coming back. But the guerrillas are not outsiders. They are

the people of those city quarters, who keep guns in their closets

and come out masked at night to engage in killing and sabotage.

<snip>

Since the Sunni Arab guerrillas cannot be defeated or stopped from

provoking massive clan feuds that destabilize the country, there is

only one way out of the quagmire. The United States and the Shiite

government of Iraq must negotiate a mutually satisfactory

settlement with the Sunni Arab guerrilla leaders. Those talks would

be easier if the guerrillas would form a civil political party to

act as their spokesman. They should be encouraged to do so. Their

first and most urgent demand is that the United States set a

timetable for withdrawal of its troops. The United States should

take them up on their offer to talk once a timetable is announced.

Bush's commitment of more than 20,000 troops is intended to address

only one of the guerrillas' tactics, taking and holding

neighborhoods. At that, he is concentrating on only a small part of

the Sunni Arab territories. The guerrillas do not need to hold such

neighborhoods to continue to engage in sabotage and the provocation

of artificial feuds.

As long as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq are so deeply unhappy, they will

simply generate more guerrillas over time. Bush is depending on

military tactics to win a war that can only be won by negotiation.

<end>

Full at: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/16459277.htm



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