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| Fri, 06-25-2004 - 12:48pm |
'The liberation of Baghdad is not far away'
By Alix de la Grange
BAGHDAD - On the eve of the so-called transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi caretaker government on June 30, former Saddam Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their clandestine positions for a while to explain their version of events and talk about their plans. According to these Ba'ath officials, "the big battle" in Iraq is yet to take place.
"The Americans have prepared the war, we have prepared the post-war. And the transfer of power on June 30 will not change anything regarding our objectives. This new provisional government appointed by the Americans has no legitimacy in our eyes. They are nothing but puppets."
Why have these former officers waited so long to come out of their closets? "Because today we are sure we're going to win."
Secret rendezvous
Palestine Hotel, Tuesday, 3pm. One week after a formal request, the prospect of talking with the resistance is getting slimmer. We reach a series of dead ends - until a man we have never met before discreetly approaches our table. "You still want to meet members of the resistance?" He speaks to my associate, a female Arab journalist who has been to Iraq many times. Talk is brief. "We meet tomorrow morning at the Babel Hotel," the man says before disappearing. Against all expectations, this contact seems to be more reliable than the ones we have previously tried.
Hotel Babel, Wednesday, 9am. At the entrance of the cybercafe, mobbed by foreign mercenaries, the man we saw the day before lays it down: "Tomorrow, 10 o'clock, al-Saadoun Street, in front of the Palestine. Come without your driver."
We arrive at the meeting place on Thursday morning by taxi. The contact is there. After a brief "Salam Alekum" we get into his car. "Where are we going?" No reply.
We drive for more than two hours. In Baghdad, even when traffic is not totally blocked by military checkpoints, traffic jams are permanent. In one year, more than 300,000 vehicles have been smuggled into the country. Every other car has no license plate and most drivers don't even know what "driver's license" means.
"We'll be there soon. Do you know Baghdad?", asks our man. The answer is clearly no. To get oriented in the sprawling city, one must circulate freely, and on foot. With criminal behavior spreading like a virus, a wave of kidnappings, the 50 or 60 daily attacks against the occupation forces and the indiscriminate response of the American military, there's hardly any incentive to do any walking.
The car stops in an alley, near a minibus with tinted windows. One of its doors opens. On board, there are three men and a driver carefully scrutinizing all the streets and houses around us. If we don't know at all what we are confronted with, our interlocutors seem to know very well who they're talking to. "Before any discussions, we don't want any doubts on your part about our identities," they say, while extracting some papers from inside a dusty plastic bag: identity cards, military IDs and several photos showing them in uniform beside Saddam Hussein. They are two generals and a colonel of the disbanded Iraqi army, now on the run for many months, chased by the coalition's intelligence services.
"We would like to rectify some information now circulating in the Western media, that's why we took the initiative of meeting you." Our discussion lasts for more than three hours.
Back to the fall of Baghdad
"We knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with their technological and military power. The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In other words: the resistance. Contrary to what has been largely said, we did not desert after American troops entered the center of Baghdad on April 5, 2003. We fought a few days for the honor of Iraq - not Saddam Hussein - then we received orders to disperse." Baghdad fell on April 9: Saddam and his army where nowhere to be seen.
"As we have foreseen, strategic zones fell quickly under control of the Americans and their allies. For our part, it was time to execute our plan. Opposition movements to the occupation were already organized. Our strategy was not improvised after the regime fell." This plan B, which seems to have totally eluded the Americans, was carefully organized, according to these officers, for months if not years before March 20, 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The objective was "to liberate Iraq and expel the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and install a secular democracy, but not the one imposed by the Americans. Iraq has always been a progressive country, we don't want to go back to the past, we want to move forward. We have very competent people," say the three tacticians. There will be of course no names as well as no precise numbers concerning the clandestine network. "We have sufficient numbers, one thing we don't lack is volunteers."
Fallujah
The lethal offensive of the American troops in Fallujah in March has been the turning point as far as the resistance is concerned. The indiscriminate pillage by American soldiers during their search missions (according to many witnesses) and the sexual humiliation inflicted to prisoners, including Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, have only served to magnify the anger felt by most Iraqis. "There's no more trust, it will be hard to regain it." According to these resistance leaders, "We have reached the point of no return."
This is exactly the point of view of a Shi'ite woman we had met two days earlier - a former undercover opposition militant against Saddam: "The biggest mistake of the occupation forces was to despise our traditions and our culture. They are not satisfied with having bombed our infrastructure, they tried to destroy our social system and our dignity. And this we cannot allow. The wounds are deep and the healing will take long. We prefer to live under the terror of one of our own than under the humiliation of a foreign occupation."
According to Saddam's generals, "more than a year after the beginning of the war, insecurity and anarchy still dominate the country. Because of their incapacity to control the situation and to maintain their promises, the Americans have antagonized the population as a whole. The resistance is not limited to a few thousand activists. Seventy-five percent of the population supports us and helps us, directly and indirectly, volunteering information, hiding combatants or weapons. And all this despite the fact that many civilians are caught as collateral damage in operations against the coalition and collaborators."
Who do they regard as "collaborators"? "Every Iraqi or foreigner who works with the coalition is a target. Ministries, mercenaries, translators, businessmen, cooks or maids, it doesn't matter the degree of collaboration. To sign a contract with the occupier is to sign your death certificate. Iraqi or not, these are traitors. Don't forget that we are at war."
The resistance's means of dissuasion led to an ever-shrinking list of candidates to key government posts proposed by the coalition, and this in a country ravaged by 13 years of embargo and two wars where unemployment has been a crucial problem. The ambient chaos is not the only reason preventing people from resuming professional activity. If the Americans, quickly overwhelmed by the whole situation, had to take the decision to reinstate former Ba'athists (policemen, secret service agents, military, officials at the oil ministry), this does not apply to everybody. The majority of victims of administrator L Paul Bremer's decree of May 16, 2003 applying the de-Ba'athification of Iraq is still clandestine.
The network
Essentially composed by Ba'athists (Sunni and Shi'ite), the resistance currently regroups "all movements of national struggle against the occupation, without confessional, ethnic or political distinction. Contrary to what you imagine in the West, there is no fratricide war in Iraq. We have a united front against the enemy. From Fallujah to Ramadi, and including Najaf, Karbala and the Shi'ite suburbs of Baghdad, combatants speak with a single voice. As to the young Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, he is, like ourselves, in favor of the unity of the Iraqi people, multiconfessional and Arab. We support him from a tactical and logistical perspective."
Every Iraqi region has its own combatants and each faction is free to choose its targets and its modus operandi. But as time goes by, their actions are increasingly coordinated. Saddam's generals insist there is no rivalry among these different organizations, except on one point: which one will eliminate the largest number of Americans.
Weapons of choice
"The attacks are meticulously prepared. They must not last longer than 20 minutes and we operate preferably at night or very early in the morning to limit the risks of hitting Iraqi civilians." They anticipate our next question: "No, we don't have weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, we have more than 50 million conventional weapons." By the initiative of Saddam, a real arsenal was concealed all over Iraq way before the beginning of the war. No heavy artillery, no tanks, no helicopters, but Katyushas, mortars (which the Iraqis call haoun), anti-tank mines, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other Russian-made rocket launchers, missiles, AK 47s and substantial reserves of all sorts of ammunition. And the list is far from being extensive.
But the most efficient weapon remains the Kamikazes. A special unit, composed of 90% Iraqis and 10% foreign fighters, with more than 5,000 solidly-trained men and women, they need no more than a verbal order to drive a vehicle loaded with explosives.
What if the weapons' reserves dwindle? "No worries, for some time we have been making our own weapons." That's all they are willing to disclose.
Claiming responsibility
"Yes, we have executed the four American mercenaries in Fallujah last March. On the other hand, the Americans soldiers waited for four hours before removing the bodies, while they usually do it in less than 20 minutes. Two days earlier, a young married woman had been arbitrarily arrested. For the population of Fallujah, this was the last straw, so they expressed their full rage against the four cadavers. The Americans, they did much worse to living Iraqi prisoners."
The suicide attack which provoked the death of Akila al-Hashimi, a diplomat and member of the Iraqi Governing Council on September 22, 2003, was also perpetrated by the resistance, as well as the car bomb which killed the president of the Iraqi executive body Ezzedin Salim in May 17 this year at the entrance of the Green Zone (which Iraqis call the Red Zone, due to the number of resistance offensives).
They are also responsible for the kidnapping of foreigners. "We are aware that the kidnapping of foreign nationals blemishes our image, but try to understand the situation. We are forced to control the identity of people circulating in our territory. If we have proof that they are humanitarians or journalists we release them. If they are spies, mercenaries or collaborators we execute them. On this matter, let's be clear, we are not responsible for the death of Nick Berg, the American who was beheaded."
As to the attack against the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 20, 2003: "We have never issued an order to attack the UN and we had a lot of esteem towards the Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello , but it's not impossible that the authors of this suicide attack come from another resistance group. As we have explained, we don't control everything. And we must not forget that the UN is responsible for the 13 years of embargo we have endured."
What about the October 27, 2003 attack against the Red Cross in Baghdad? "This had nothing to do with us, we always had a lot of respect for this organization and the people who work for them. What would be our interest to attack one of the few institutions which has been helping the Iraq population for years? We know that people from Fallujah have claimed this attack, but we can assure you they are not part of the resistance. And we also add: for political and economic reasons, there are many who have an interest in discrediting us."
After June 30
"Resolution 1546 adopted on June 8 is nothing but one more web of lies to the eyes of many Iraqis. First, because it officially ends the occupation by foreign troops while authorizing the presence of a multinational force under American command, without stipulating the date of their removal. Second, because the Iraqi right to veto important military operations, demanded by France, Russia and China, was rejected. Washington has conceded only a vague notion of partnership with the Iraqi authority and did not think of anything in case of disagreement. Iraqis are not fools, the maintenance of American troops in Iraq after June 30 and the aid money they will get from the American Congress leave no doubt over the identity of who will really rule the country."
What about a possible role for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? "If NATO intervenes, it's not to help our people, but to help the Americans leave this quagmire. If they wanted our well-being, they would have made a move before," say the three officers while looking at their watches. It's late and we have largely exceeded our allotted time.
"What American troops cannot do today, NATO troops won't be able to do later on. Everyone must know: Western troops will be regarded by Iraqis as occupiers. This is something that George W Bush and his faithful ally Tony Blair will do well to think about. If they have won a battle, they have not won the war yet. The great battle is still to begin. The liberation of Baghdad is not far away."

Analysts and some U.S. commanders say it could be too late to reverse the wave of violence. Sunnis are seen as the stronger, long-term threat.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — As this week's coordinated violence demonstrates, Iraq's insurgent movement is increasingly potent, riding a wave of anti-U.S. nationalism and religious extremism. Just days before an Iraqi government takes control of the country, experts and some commanders fear it may be too late to turn back the militant tide.
The much-anticipated wave of strikes preceding Wednesday's scheduled hand-over could intensify under the new interim government as Sunni Muslim insurgents seek to undermine it, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
I think we're going to continue to see sensational attacks," said Army Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the 101st Airborne Division commander who will oversee the reshaping of Iraq's fledgling security forces.
Long gone are the days when the insurgents were dismissed as a finite force ticketed for high-tech annihilation by superior U.S. firepower.
Wreaking havoc and derailing plans for reconstruction of this battered nation, the dominant guerrilla movement — an unlikely Sunni alliance of hard-liners from the former regime, Islamic militants and anti-U.S. nationalists — has taken over towns, blocked highways, bombed police stations, assassinated lawmakers and other "collaborators," and abducted civilians.
Although Shiite Muslim fighters took U.S. forces by surprise in an April uprising, the Sunni insurgents represent a stronger, long-term threat, experts agree. The fighters, commanders say, are overwhelmingly Iraqis, with a small but important contingent of foreign fighters who specialize in carrying out suicide bombings and other spectacular attacks, possibly including this week's coordinated strikes that killed more than 100 people.
"They are effective," said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operational commander of U.S. troops here.
The insurgent force has picked up legions of part-time nationalist recruits enraged by the lengthy occupation and the mounting toll on civilians. Whether the result of U.S. or insurgent fire, the casualties are blamed on Americans.
The anti-U.S. momentum is evident in both the nation's urban centers and the palm-shrouded Sunni rural heartland, where resentment over military sweeps and the torturous pace of reconstruction is pervasive. Support for the insurgency ranges from quiet assent to participation in the fighting.
"We're talking about people who are the equivalent of the Minutemen," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who served as an advisor for the U.S.-led occupation here. "They pick up their weapons and join the fight and then go back to their homes and farms. It makes it so fluid. And the media functions as the town crier, like the calls from the minaret."
The nimble enemy has kept just far enough ahead of coalition forces to raise the question in Iraqi minds: Who will be here in the long run, the U.S. and its allies or the insurgents?
The characteristics of the insurgency in Iraq are familiar from earlier campaigns in Vietnam and elsewhere, Hoffman wrote in a recent paper: "A population will give its allegiance to the side that will best protect it."
Also like past insurgency campaigns, this one combines classic guerrilla tactics — ambushes and other attacks on occupying troops — with ruthless terror, including the massacres of religious worshipers and restaurant patrons and the beheading of hostages.
The insurgents' decentralized command structure, Hoffman said in an interview, echoes the atomized nature of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Thus, the arrest of deposed President Saddam Hussein in December was not nearly the intelligence windfall that U.S. authorities had predicted. Nor did his capture dry up funding for the insurgents.
Although U.S. officials have labeled Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab Zarqawi a mastermind in the wave of attacks that has shaken the country since last year, commanders say the insurgents' coordination is unclear.
"We can't find … a particular command and control structure that leads to one or two or three particular nodes," Metz said. "But I'm confident there are some leaders who have the wealth to continue … paying people to do business."
U.S. authorities have jailed dozens of cell chiefs but watched in frustration as the groups have regenerated and fought anew. "These kinds of networks, you chop off one part and the other part keeps on moving," Petraeus said.
The insurgents have other strengths: plentiful weapons (in many cases, looted from unguarded armories at the end of the invasion last year); easy mobility, in the form of a relatively modern highway system; and communications, in the form of cellphones and access to regional television channels such as Al Jazeera.
Defeating a force this entrenched and energized is difficult, commanders say.
"There are some insurgent leaders who wanted to talk to us," said Army Col. Dana Pittard of the 1st Infantry Division in Baqubah, an agricultural city northeast of Baghdad that was the site of fierce fighting Thursday. "But there are others who are hard-core and just don't get it."
Trying to defeat such a foe militarily can drag opposing forces into a withering cycle of violence, especially in a culture where families feel obliged to avenge the death of loved ones.
"The nature of this culture is you can't win a war of attrition with them," said Col. Robert B. Abrams of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad, "because it's a circle of violence — there will always be someone in the family who will pick up arms. Unless you want to kill too many people. Which of course we never want to do."
The insurgents have time on their side: U.S. forces are already under pressure to leave. And the Sunni fighters are armed with another major advantage: They have no need to win, only to sow instability. Their goal is to stand in the way of the caretaker government as it navigates a difficult path toward elections scheduled for January. Whether the nation will be sufficiently secure for free elections in six months is in doubt.
The murky guerrilla movement first emerged in the spring of 2003 with sporadic attacks on troops after the ouster of Hussein's regime. U.S. forces were just consolidating their control of Iraq and basking in their relatively easy march to Baghdad.
At the time, U.S. officials — notably L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here — dismissed the embryonic opposition as "dead-enders" who owed their allegiance to Hussein. Their initial attacks were amateurish, often involving kamikaze assaults on U.S. armored vehicles or crude roadside bombs jerry-built from stray munitions, wires and makeshift triggers.
Amid the triumphant declarations, it is now widely agreed, the U.S. leadership was disastrously slow to anticipate that this primitive enemy could grow into a formidable foe.
What Bremer and other officials failed to appreciate fully was postwar Iraq's combustible character: a nation brimming with arms, munitions and disenfranchised young men with military training, all primed to be stoked by ruthless and well-funded Baath Party operatives embittered in defeat.
"It's not clear to me that we ever developed a coherent campaign plan for conducting a counterinsurgency campaign," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. "We were unprepared for it late to recognize it."
Perceived U.S. heavy-handedness in Sunni enclaves such as Fallouja, west of the capital, provided fuel for the movement, as did the mass roundups and sweeps of thousands of young Sunni men suspected of anti-coalition activity. The U.S. decisions to disband Iraq's armed forces and bar many former Baathists from government jobs fed the growing resentment — and recruitment.
As disillusionment with the occupation grew, the armed resistance spread throughout the Sunni heartland, from greater Baghdad to the vast expanses to the west and north. Many young men flocked to the cause, whether out of principle or to earn some cash.
Hussein loyalists, including members of his secret police services, provided funds and logistics for the movement, officials say. Though themselves largely secular, they played on religious feelings and fears that Sunnis — long the dominant group in Iraq — faced marginalization in a U.S.-backed regime favoring the Shiite majority.
"They don't want this new government to come into power because they're fearful that the Sunni will be outvoted by the majority Shia," said Abrams of the 1st Cavalry Division. "They'll go from being the haves under Saddam to being the have-nots. They've got a lot to lose."
Sunni imams spurred the insurgency, and Arab jihadists specializing in suicide attacks beat a path through the nation's porous borders.
One U.S. colonel formerly charged with guarding the western borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan said a virtual "jihad Super Bowl" took place last spring and summer as foreign militants poured in.
The campaign here has again emphasized that counterinsurgency is not the United States' strong suit. Its military units today are trained for swift, high-tech wars against conventional armies — the war they fought with remarkable success on their way to Baghdad in 2003.
In the last year, U.S. commanders trained incoming units in counterinsurgency tactics. They shifted intelligence analysts from the search for weapons of mass destruction to the search for anti-American guerrillas. They bolted armor to Humvees and figured out ways to detect roadside bombs before they detonated. And still they're struggling to catch up to the insurgents, although commanders defend the progress made.
"We made real headway," said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who commanded the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in the region known as the Sunni Triangle for seven months until the Marines took over in April.
The key question now, Swannack and others agree, is not whether U.S. troops can defeat the insurgents in individual battles but whether the provisional Iraqi government and its fledgling security forces can stop the bombings and assassinations that make Iraqis feel unsafe.
All say the new Iraqi forces are ill-equipped to control the insurgents, and in some cases disinclined to take on their neighbors and tribal brethren. U.S. officials hope to change that by election time. Some hope that the Iraqi security officers, once properly trained and outfitted, will be able to confront the foe more effectively because of their cultural familiarity.
"There is something of a force-multiplier effect when the Iraqis take the field because each Iraqi soldier should be more capable than an American soldier in his body language and cultural knowledge," said Col. Christopher Langton of the Defense Analysis Department of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
On the political front, the new Iraqi government appears to be looking for ways to co-opt the Sunni hard-liners with talk of amnesty and reconciliation, but to date there are few takers. The Fallouja solution — in which Marines retreated from a bloody siege, essentially turning the town back over to Baathist elements and their insurgent allies — has reduced clashes, but has also created a guerrilla redoubt. The last week saw three U.S. bombing strikes in Fallouja that commanders say targeted Zarqawi's followers.
Such prospective accords with the Sunni bloc risk alienating Shiites and the ethnic Kurds, the nation's other major population group.
Much attention has focused on the insurgents' grip on Fallouja, but the recent attacks in Baqubah underscore the guerrillas' muscularity and range throughout the Sunni region.
"Since the fall of the regime, not a single penny was allocated to this town," said Awf Abdul Rida Ahmad, the mayor of Buhriz, an agricultural suburb and insurgent stronghold of 40,000 southeast of Baqubah.
U.S. and insurgent forces fought a two-day battle this month that left more than a dozen insurgents and a U.S. soldier dead, the Army says.
As in Fallouja, U.S. forces withdrew after days of gun battles. An uneasy peace prevails today. Many celebrate the mujahedin, and graffiti praises Hussein and denounces the Americans and those who collaborate.
"The people here are very peaceful, and all they want is stability and peace of mind," said the mayor, who denied the presence of insurgents in Buhriz and said calm would prevail if the Americans just stayed away. "This is not a town of criminals or thugs."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-insurgency26jun26,1,7240371.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Bremer's biggest mistake was dismissing/disbanding the Baathist army/security force.
"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer"
He could have used this organized force to his own advantge.
I read post #1 in this thread a couple of times. Didn't quite know how to respond. There is a true threat to the govening body, I've no doubt. From where this threat will come I could only guess.
What an unholy mess!
Colin Powell is the only pragmatic person in this administration, and he was totally ignored.
Carol Mosely Braun sure would have been a welcome change in the White House... one can dream!
"I hate saying "told ya so" to others, but...!"
Too many have selective memories
Colin is someone I've always admired... level headed, keeps his cool, knows the consequences of actions have to be taken into account, that you have to plan for contigencies...
and a little thing that impressed me. I was at Fenway Park for a game, and he was sitting a few seats behind me, not hiding up in the luxury or owners box... was down with all the other fans. This was many years ago, during the Clinton administration.
"Colin is someone I've always admired... level headed, keeps his cool, knows the consequences of actions have to be taken into account, that you have to plan for contigencies... "
It's a pity he didn't run for Pres. Think he would have had a good chance. On second thoughts they probably would have done to him what they did to McCaine.
Know what you mean; I read the article several times and still didn't know what to think. When I ran across the second article, I thought maybe he's right the "insurgence" do have the support of the people, but then maybe he has delusions of grandeur. What does seem real is the incorrectness of the happy face the administration wants us to see.
I am beginning to get very angry at out military's bombing of homes because they sespect an al Qaeda member is there, might be there or has been there. What about the innocents that live in those houses. I think the priorities are out of wack, and that's exactly what happened in Vietnam. We became so focused on getting the ellusive "enemy" that civilians weren't given a thought.
I never believed GWB and didn't think the war was necessary--now, as you said, it's an unholy mess. But we are stuck--making the situation worse.