Iraq's state of insecurity, Paul Rogers

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

The desperate plight of Iraq is exemplified this week by a number of brutal incidents. The slaying of dozens of Shi’a civilian hostages by their Sunni insurgent captors in the town of Madaen, southeast of Baghdad, the killing of twenty Iraqi troops in the western town of Haditha and the latest attempt to assassinate interim prime minister Iyad Allawi – all represent a lurid contrast to the impression of progress that Washington has been eager to portray.

If these were isolated events they would be easier to dismiss, but it is more realistic to view them as part of a pattern of factors – seven in all – that (as recent columns in this series have suggested) the Iraqi insurgency is maintaining vigour while changing direction.

First, insurgents are mounting many attacks on Iraqi police and security forces, including numerous car bombs. Around 250 Iraqi security personnel were killed in March. On 19 April, four national guards were killed and thirty-eight people injured in a car bomb in Baghdad, and five more people were killed in an attack in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad.

Second, US forces are concentrating on training and back-up for Iraqi forces, resulting in a decrease in US military patrols and therefore fewer targets for insurgents. In response, insurgents are mounting larger and more coordinated attacks on US bases. One assault on a US marine base near the Syrian border involved 50-100 paramilitaries in a sophisticated multi-pronged operation utilising mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and three suicide-bombers (one of whom drove a fire-engine).

Third, the Americans are trying to build up a 142,000-strong Iraqi police force (far larger than the entire British police force for a population of around one-third of Britain’s) by employing trainers from US companies – current contracts include $500 million to DynCorp, $200 million to SAIC, $200 million to US Investigation Services and $400 million to L-3 Communications Holdings (Business Week, 18 April 2005). The problem is that much of the training is in disarray: many local recruits see it as an opportunity to get a salary and have no intention of actually serving in the force. Matt Sherman, a US state department official, says: “It’s safe to say there are tens of thousands on the payroll who aren’t working”.

Fourth, the relatively low recent US death toll tends to overshadow the equally significant high level of combat injuries being suffered by US troops (the second week of April witnessed one of the highest totals since the war began in March 2003 – 224 people injured, 31 of them seriously). This reflects the fact that the sheer intensity and savagery of the conflict shows few signs of diminishing.

Steve Fainaru, a Washington Post reporter, describes an incident in Mosul where a US unit spotted insurgents transferring arms between vehicles. The sergeant in charge, Domingo Ruiz, ordered a soldier to respond:

“The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man’s head exploded, several American soldiers recalled. As he fell, more soldiers opened fire, killing at least one other insurgent. After the ambush, the Americans scooped up a piece of skull and took it back to their base as evidence of a successful mission.”

The March 12 attack – swift and brutally violent – bore the hallmark of operations that have made Ruiz, 39 and a former Brooklyn gang member, renowned among U.S. troops in Mosul and, in many ways, a symbol of the optimism that has pervaded the military since Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections” (“In Mosul, a Battle ‘Beyond Ruthless’”, 13 April 2005).

Such responses by US forces accompany a near-total failure to realise that large sectors of Iraq’s population see them as an occupying power using violent methods against legitimate resisters, which have the effect of killing many innocent civilians; the bombing raid by strike aircraft near Haditha is only one example.

Fifth, the problems of reconstruction during an insurgency remain steep. Fallujah is a prominent example. The November 2004 assault on this “city of mosques” damaged more than half of the city’s 39,000 homes. Around 10,000 were destroyed or sufficiently damaged to render them unsafe to live in.

The great majority of the city’s 250,000 residents had sought refuge outside the city before the assault began (see Ann Scott Tyson, “Increased Security In Fallujah Slows Efforts to Rebuild”, Washington Post, 19 April 2005). Five months on, only 90,000 have returned: the majority of the city still has no electricity or piped water, there is 85% unemployment and a moribund economy. Moreover, the city is ringed by four checkpoints controlling access, where returning residents have to queue for as much as four hours before observing a 7pm curfew if and when they are allowed through.

One marine major comments: “We have to be very careful how we repopulate the city. We paid too high a price to hand it back”. Once again, this seems entirely legitimate from an American perspective, but to many Iraqis it is a cogent reminder that the United States calls the shots.

Sixth, the issue of “de-Ba’athification” – a purge of officials employed by the Saddam Hussein regime – is returning to shadow the work of the new Iraqi government dominated by Shi’a and Kurds. The US occupiers have sought to defuse the insurgency and increase efficiency by re-employing experienced Ba’athists, thus quietly reversing the immediate post-war policy of Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority. The incoming Iraqi leadership sees this shift as anathema, and are not persuaded by Donald Rumsfeld’s efforts during his visit to Baghdad to prevent a new purge (see Ellen Knickmeyer, “Iraqi Alliance Seeks to Oust Top Officials of Hussein Era”, Washington Post, 18 April 2005) – even if this results in a boost to the insurgents.

Seventh, the determination of United States forces to stay in Iraq for years raises the question of whether Iraq will replace Afghanistan as a combat training-zone for paramilitaries from elsewhere in the middle east.

The reliable Washington weekly Defense News [“Troubled Iraq Attracts Terror Recruits”, 21 March 2005 (subscription only)] notes that several of the young men detained after recent violent incidents in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar had gained combat experience and training in Iraq. This trend is a reminder that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the subsequent insurgency, involve long-term issues with strong regional ramifications. The question of the intensity and direction of the current Iraqi insurgency is small by comparison.

These seven elements of the Iraqi mosaic are enough to caution against the rhetorical optimism of the George W Bush administration. Taken together, they suggest that we are still in the early years of a potentially decades-long conflict.

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Iraq's state of insecurity, Paul Rogers