Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  Other little-known facts support this notion. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party, in its earliest years, was led mainly by Shiites like Fu'ad al-Rikabi, who between 1951 and 1958 built it up into a force numbering around 12,000 supporters. The Turkomen have a vested interest in allying with the Arabs because of persistent Kurdish persecution. A Greek Orthodox Christian, Michel Aflaq, was the founder and spiritual leader of the party. He died in Baghdad shortly before the first Gulf War, insisting to the last that Saddam had upheld the “non-denominational” character of Ba'athism. And when Fallujah came under attack in November 2004, the resistance suddenly exploded in Mosul, which has the largest concentration of Christians outside Baghdad. It cannot credibly be maintained that simply because many American troops are nominally Christian, Iraqi Christians would hesitate to oppose them if otherwise inclined to do so.1 Besides, under Saddam, Christians were protected, and were an influential body within the government, the bureaucracy, and the commercial world.

  The pattern of attacks by the resistance also illustrates its broad support. A geographical study of those attacks, completed in September 2004 and discussed by the New York Times, revealed that

  [a]ttacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.2

  According to the NYT piece, former Interim Prime Minister Allawi stood with President Bush in the White House in September 2004 declaring that, of Iraq's 18 provinces, “14 to 15 are completely safe,” and that the others suffer merely from “pockets of terrorists.” The study, produced by the Las Vegas-based Special Operations Consulting Security Management Group, Inc., revealed a different reality.

  The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the centre, and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.1

  In the 30 days prior to the article's publication, the study shows that there were 283 attacks in Nineveh and 325 in Salahuddin, 332 in the western province of Anbar, 123 in Diyala, 76 in Babylon and 13 in Wasit. There was not a single province without an attack in the 30-day period. There are only two ways to explain this. Either the resistance is a kind of traveling circus, which is trying to give the impression of being omnipresent when it is not; or, more probably, it is the unfolding of the plan devised by Saddam for the spread of the resistance to all areas of Iraq as it grows in momentum and confidence. Those who maintain that, because the Shiite south is apparently all in favor of Ayatollah al-Sistani and pro-Iranian theocracy, the resistance has a purely Sunni composition are mistaken. Al-Sistani is an old and frail man who could pass from the scene at any moment. Once he does, the Shiites will split into various factions, and most will show themselves to be fundamentally Iraqi nationalists. The proof? On January 29, 2005, Reuters reported that Ayatollah Ahmed Hassani al-Baghdadi, one of the most eminent of Shiite clerics based in Najaf, opposed the puppet government and its then-upcoming elections, along with many others, such as al-Sadr, who for his part has even pointed recently to opposition to U.S. troops as a way to unite the country.2 Al-Baghdadi said that such elections were “a conspiracy to divide and conquer Iraq,” and he went on to say, “I am a son of Iraq, and I invite all Muslims and Christians to expel the Americans from Iraq.”3

  Some telling statistics

  Dahr Jamail is a rare kind of journalist in Iraq these days, interested not in being “embedded,” but taking his chances on the streets with his interpreter. Some of the most enlightening journalism on the invasion and occupation has come from him.

  One of his Baghdad posts provided an interesting indicator of the resistance's strength. “The flight from Jordan feels all too normal,” he wrote on November 5, 2004,

  until we arrive over Baghdad International Airport. The nose of the plane dips, the left wing drops, and the downward spiral begins – dropping us 4,000 feet per minute into the inferno that is occupied Iraq.

  Rather than an in-flight magazine, a lonely card is available to read in the seat pocket. It begins: “For those of you who have not traveled with us before, you need to be aware that, for your security and safety, not for your comfort, we do a spiral descent into Baghdad. This is carried out to avoid any risk from anti-aircraft missiles or small arms fire.”1

  This is the Baghdad where the American puppet government holds sway in theory; this is the Baghdad which is supposedly overseeing the creation of a free-market democracy in Iraq. This is the Baghdad where Bush says that progress is being made, citing the number of clinics open, the number of soccer balls distributed for free.

  But it is also the Baghdad where Michael Ware, writing in TIME Magazine, says:

  The fact that insurgents … are patrolling one of Baghdad's major thoroughfares – within mortar range of the U.S. embassy – is an indication of just how much of the country is beyond the control of U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government.2

  As is now well known, nothing has changed since Jamail chronicled his descent into the chaos of Baghdad, notwithstanding even the “success” of the January 2005 elections that claimed to give Iraq a sovereign government. “In many parts of the country, total insecurity remains the rule rather than the exception, to the great distress of the population,” says Patrick Seale in the London-based Al-Hayat. “Shootings and car bombs take their dreadful toll. Some 350 people have been killed in the past two weeks. The numbers are uncertain because no one has the time to count them.”1

  A numbers game

  Even though Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz remarked in January 2005 at a Baghdad press conference that “the thugs … are growing weaker,” and that “[the enemy] is getting desperate,”2 many of the major media outlets were then at least beginning to question just how true that was. Patrick McDonnell, for instance, admitted in a January 2005 piece for the Los Angeles Times that “the size of the insurgency has become a matter of debate as the war continues and casualties mount on both sides.”3

  When Agence France Presse published a story from Baghdad on January 3, 2005, with the headline “Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents,” it caused something of a minor sensation. The writer referred to an estimate given by Gen. Abdullah Shahwani, service director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service for the Allawi interim government. “I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq,” he said, “more than 200,000 people.”4He went on to clarify his position by saying that he thought the hardcore fighters numbered around 40,000, and the rest of the total was made up of part-time fighters and volunteers, providing the rebels with everything they needed, from intelligence, to logistics, to shelter.

  The AFP piece quoted the assessment of a RAND Corporation defense analyst, Bruce Hoffman, formerly an advisor to the U.S. military in Iraq, who said that Shahwani's estimate was not “completely out of the ballpark,” given that his estimate referred “to active sympathizers and supporters and to part-time as well as full-time active insurgents.”5

  Anthony Cordesman, the CSIS expert, also said that Shahwani's figures are credible: “The Iraqi figures do … recognize the reality that the insurgency in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas while the U.S. figures downplay this to the point of denial.”6

  In early May 2004, the military was claiming that the rebels were around 5,000 in number, including both full and part-time fighters. By October 2004, the estimate was revised to 20,000 – an increase of 400 percent. And as of early 2005, the “top U.S. commander” in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, was claiming that “U.S. forces killed or captured about 15,000 suspected militants in Iraq last year.”1 Which means that the insurgency would have been virtually extinguished if the number of militants were indeed limited to 15 to 20 thousand.2 While Gen. Casey admitted in a press conference in Bagh
dad that previous estimates of insurgent forces had been inaccurate, he nevertheless maintained that Shahwani's estimate was “inflated,” saying, “It's not a number I would subscribe to.”3 Of course he declined to cite a number to which he would subscribe. McDonnell simply commented for the Los Angeles Times that “the reluctance reflects in part a lack of solid intelligence about the fighters.” Casey did make one notable comment, though: “We cannot stay in front on this over the long haul and be successful. We're viewed by the people … as an occupation force.”4

  Independent confirmation of Shahwani's estimate comes from a U.S. special operations source who spoke anonymously to Newsweek in June 2005. If anything, Shahwani underestimated the breadth and depth of the resistance. The report including the U.S. official's comment ran as follows:

  New insurgents seem to spring up faster than the allied forces can cut them down. The Coalition has announced the killing of some 15,000 insurgents over the past year. Nevertheless, official briefers have recently estimated that between 12,000 and 20,000 insurgents remain active. According to a U.S. Special Ops source, who required anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work, the insurgents include an estimated 1,000 foreign jihadists, 500 homegrown Iraqi jihadists, between 15,000 and 30,000 former regime elements and as many as 400,000 auxiliaries and support personnel.5

  As for Shahwani himself, when asked by AFP if the insurgents were winning, he replied: “I would say they aren't losing.”

  A post-election wax or wane?

  Concise figures for rebel attacks before the January election were provided by a Knight Ridder report. As of January 2005:

  - U.S. military fatalities from hostile acts have risen from an average of about 17 per month just after Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003, to an average of 82 per month.

  - The average number of U.S. soldiers wounded by hostile acts per month has spiraled from 142 to 808 during the same period ….

  - Attacks on the U.S.-led coalition since November 2003, when statistics were first available, have risen from 735 a month to 2,400 in October 2004. Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel, the multinational forces' deputy operations director, told Knight Ridder that attacks were currently running at 75 a day, about 2,300 a month ….

  - The average number of mass-casualty bombings has grown from zero in the first four months of the American occupation to an average of 13 per month.1

  Since then, Bush administration officials have continued to say that they have got the insurgency by the throat, and its defeat is just a matter of time. The mood was best captured by Vice President Dick Cheney on May 30, 2005, when he declared on CNN's Larry King Live that “[t]he level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they are in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”2 President Bush's approach is to admit an upsurge in violence since the “election” but to interpret it as “evidence that the insurgency is on its last legs.”3

  It wouldn't be a stretch to say that this is simply more wishful thinking, of the kind Iraq observer and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole has noted recently in President Bush. Bush has, Cole wrote for Salon.com, “repeatedly expressed wild optimism, utterly unfounded in reality, about the political process in Iraq and about the ability of the new Iraqi government and army to win the guerrilla war.”4“

  What's more, the facts – and the statements of the professionals – contradict the administration line. Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said almost two weeks after the vice president made his prediction,

  I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that … this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations.1

  As for the statistics, there has been no substantial reduction in the number of attacks or other metrics since the January election, where the Knight Ridder report leaves off. Depending upon which source you go to, attack rates are somewhere between 60 and 70 per day.2 In that vein, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby told a Senate Armed Forces Committee in March of 2005 that

  [a]ttacks numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago …. Since the January 30 election, attacks have averaged around 60 per day …. It depends, therefore, on what time period you select. Compared to a year ago, the strike rate is double.3

  The Admiral forgot to point out that most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported. In a couple of revealing paragraphs, Patrick Cockburn, writing for the British Independent on Sunday, noted that because of those omissions the attack rates cited by occupation authorities are open to serious question:

  We saw one suicide bomb explosion, clouds of smoke and dust erupting into the air, and heard another in the space of an hour. Neither was mentioned in official reports. Last year U.S. soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and “our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up.” This makes the official Pentagon claim that the number of insurgent attacks is down from 140 a day in January to 40 a day this month dubious (emphasis mine).4

  Cockburn continues by looking at the fact that in November 2004, roughly five American soldiers were dying per day, and by March 2005 it dropped to about one per day.1 “This is the result of a switch in American strategy,” he cautions, “rather than a sign of a collapse in the insurgency. U.S. military spokesmen make plain that America's military priority has changed from offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police.”2 In other words, there are fewer regular patrols, fewer sorties beyond “fortified positions,” so that it would be normal for the death rate to drop.3 What gives Americans at home the impression that their troops control Iraq is the fact that sweeps like “Operation Lightning” – carried out in June 2005 by 1,000 Marines in Anbar Province – are given extensive media coverage, inevitably extolling “the huge success” that attended its conclusion. There is no hint of Cockburn's assertion in the mainstream media: “The U.S. army and Iraqi armed forces control islands of territory while much of Iraq is a dangerous no-man's land” (emphasis mine).1

  While the general attacks have not diminished, and have in fact increased in sophistication, the incidence of “mass-casualty bombings” has soared exponentially. In mid-May 2005 a New York Times article noted that, according to a senior officer speaking in Baghdad, “the 21 car bombs [there] so far this month almost matched the total of 25 in all of last year.”2Don't be shocked; it gets worse, because two weeks later the Los Angeles Times reported on the number of bombings that same month, but the number was much higher.

  Suicide bombings have become the Iraqi insurgency's weapon of choice, with a staggering 90 attacks accounting for most of last month's 750 deaths at the militants' hands, according to tallies by the U.S. military and news agencies.3

  So in the space of just two weeks, 70 bombings took place. “Suicide attacks outpaced car bombings almost 2-to-1 in May,” the Los Angeles Times piece further reported. In April “there were 69 suicide attacks – more than in the entire year preceding the June 28, 2004, hand-over of sovereignty.”4 It also noted that “the frequency of Iraq's suicide bombings is unprecedented, exceeding the practice through years of the Palestinian uprising against Israel” as well as “the Chechen rebellion in Russia” (emphasis mine). It also quotes Navy Cmdr. Fred Gaghan, the head of the Combined Explosive Exploitation Cell in Iraq, as saying: “At this time, there is nothing to indicate that the availability of volunteers is on the decline.”5

  As for who is carrying out these attacks, the answer again depends upon who you ask. Gen. Casey, commanding general of the multinational forces in Iraq, said that it might be Iraqis:

  There is a kind of axiom out there that says that Iraqis aren't suicide bombers. I'm not sure that's the case. I believe there are Iraqi Islamic extremists … t
hat are very capable of getting into cars and blowing themselves up.1

  But Maj. Gen. John Defreitas, intelligence chief for the force commanded by Casey, said quite confidently that “[t]here is no evidence this is being done by Iraqis.” In every case, he said, “the driver has been a foreigner.”2What better illustration of the intelligence problem that the “allies” face in Iraq than the near diametric opposition between Casey's and Defreitas's assessment as to who is responsible for the spate of car bombings so much discussed in the recent news.

  Ultimately it may well be impossible to get to the truth as far as these kinds of attacks are concerned, for – as illustrated in a July 2005 AP wire – the reporting is both politicized and attributed almost exclusively to U.S. and anti-insurgency, “Iraqi” sources, who clearly have a vested interest in how the conflict is portrayed. “The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be … mostly Saudis and other Persian Gulf Arabs,” the wire said,3 quoting U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston who noted that “foreign fighters are the ones that most often are behind the wheel of suicide car bombs.” Leaving aside the notable (but never discussed) difference between a “car bomb” and a “suicide attack,” whatever those words are intended to mean,4 maintaining this position is somewhat counterproductive for the Bush administration “message.” While it highlights that “foreign fighters” play a sensational (if not substantial) role in the fighting in Iraq, it also concedes both that there are other “insurgents who are attacking U.S. troops because they are hostile to their presence”5 and that “non-Iraqis [are] behind most suicide missions.”1 If it is true, as “U.S. and Iraqi intelligence officials said,” that there is “little evidence that Iraqis carried out the near-daily stream of suicide attacks over the past six months,”2 it simply confirms that the mass of Iraqis supporting the resistance have no use for the famed “al-Zarqawi tactics.”