An unusual and welcome article in today’s Washington Post about a split between homegrown Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters in Fallujah.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.“He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near,” Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said….
Among the tensions dividing the locals and the foreigners is religion. People in Fallujah, known as the city of mosques, have chafed at the stern brand of Islam that the newcomers brought with them. The non-Iraqi Arabs berated women who did not cover themselves head-to-toe in black — very rare in Iraq — and violently opposed local customs rooted in the town’s more mystical religious tradition. One Fallujah man killed a Kuwaiti who said he could not pray at the grave of an ancestor.
If the city could be pacified before the elections without a large-scale assault, that would be a very good thing.
The miracle ending to Al Sadr’s Najaf standoff was possible because of the popularity (and uncommon common sense) of Ayatollah Al Sistani. If anybody can broker a deal to remove the foreign fighters from Fallujah without a major military action, it would give them a great deal of political legitimacy in the troubled areas of Iraq.
You really think it’s foreign fighters?
Haven’t you been following Fallujah at all?
Or gone back and done the necessary research?
After you start out by firing into a crowd of protestors (over the confiscation and quarting in a school, irony of ironies), then fire into the crowd protesting the previous firing-into-demonstrating-crowd, then start disappearing people (remember that guy named Stepanowicz? and a guy named Ryan, and an outfit called CACI) and then when there are reprisals, retaliate by an all-out military assault with snipers targetting old women and children - our snipers - and continue to bomb and shell for months - we haven’t stopped, we just backed off until they could kick all the reporters out, after it started going badly -
—months ago, old Fallujan grandmothers were saying they wished they were young men so they could take rocket launchers and go fight the Americans.
What would you do, if it was your family that was shot protesting, and then shelled indiscriminately, and then sniped at, and then bombed by aerial gunships, for months?
Be “pacified”—?
Face it - this is ID4, and we’re the aliens as far as the Iraqis are concerned.
If I’m an alien do I also get a cool space ship I can zip through the grand canyon with?
But bellatrys makes a good point. His arguements go a long ways to making the “us vs. them” case. Most Americans see the actors in Faluja as extremely irrational. They don’t share the same decision making process, they don’t value provable facts over rumors, and are extremely difficult to reason with. According to
the Sadr militia, the US bombed a whole lot of mosques who were full of pregnant virgins and little kids. “We” would say Sadr was full of crap last time, he’s probably lieing this time. “They” say holy crap the Americans are doing it “again” and pick up their AK-47 and pitchfork and sally forth to drive off the crusaders. Time after time unfounded rumors have sparked protests or armed conflicts in Iraq.
This Week in Adventures in Orwelland: ‘Elections in Kabul’, ‘Sadr hands over arms’ and ‘the people of Fallujah reject foreign terrorists’.
What a great program we have for you this week!.
And you will want to tune in next week for:
‘Stem Cells are actually useless’, “Siria converts to cristianism’ and a live performance by Richard Perle and The Flowers of Baghdad.
don’t miss it!
‘The stick’ and ‘bellatrys’, chill out a bit. What the WaPo is saying, and what Belle is picking up on, is that there are some foreign fighters and some Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, there has been an alliance of convenience between them, and that alliance may now be breaking down.
What has really depressed me about the blogospheric debate the last few months is how quick people have become to suspect the worst of others. This debate has always been vicious, but if anything it’s getting worse: the prospect of failure in Iraq, the US election and those nightmare pictures from Beslan have all pushed a few people close to the edge. Belle Waring thinks one little piece of possibly good news might be coming out of Iraq, in which she is supported by a notably tough and cynical foreign correspondent : she’s a fool who has swallowed Rumsfeld’s talking points. Daniel Davies asks a few intelligent questions about terrorism so Harry , and the IRA-exculpator ‘Brownie’, both of Harry’s place, tag him as soft on terror. Abiola Lapite announces that anyone who is in the British military may, if their views are not as hawkish as his, be in favour of Islamic terrorists killing British soldiers. Sebastian Holsclaw tells John Quiggin that any problems in Najaf are his fault. Ophelia Benson wins the Hysteria Prize by announcing that reading Crooked Timber is like watching ‘the Hitler-Stalin pact, or the Moscow Trials’. I mean, come on…
Re Fallujah, fighting in cities is something that favours the defender much more than virtually any other kind of war, so long as you’ve got committed and trained infantry to defend with. From the descriptions of the Fallujah, there are plenty of veterans of Saddam’s wars there, and they fought pretty damned well against the US Marines this spring. On the other hand, the guerrillas in Ramadi folded pretty quickly in the face of US pressure recently. One desperately hopes that this news may be the prelude to a Ramadi-style collapse in Fallujah.
But on the evidence, I’m dubious: firstly, the senior echelons of the US military have shown very little capacity for learning from events in Iraq, and that goes double for the political leadership. Secondly, if even a fraction of the best gunmen from the various Ba’athist, nationalist and Islamicist factions stay and fight it out with the US troops in Fallujah, that will mean a hell of a hard fight, because, as noted, urban warfare favours the defender, and these guys have had plenty of time to prepare.
The US will prevail because of their greater firepower and control of the air, but using those two advantages will mean a lot of civilian casualties, unless there is a thorough evacuation of non-combatants beforehand. If I were a US general or politician, I would insist on any such evacuation as a prelude to an assault, but it’s likely to be blocked for several reasons: the guerrillas in Fallujah will likely not let civilians leave, as they will want them as cover; and the US military will be unwilling to give precise advance warning of a move into Fallujah.
I could be wrong and I really, really hope I am. But I would say that, notwithstanding this news, the chances are that we will see carnage in Fallujah before the end of the year.
Actually, Syria’s Orwellian moment happened last week:
US: Syria ready for talks with IsraelSyrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday.
“Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention,” said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.
In a three-hour meeting with the Syrian president last month in Damascus, Indyk said he detected a “clear change” in Assad’s views on a number of fronts.
On support for terrorism, Assad was responding to US demands by moving some leaders of militant Palestinian groups out of Damascus, Indyk said.
[…]
On Iraq, Assad “figured out he was on the wrong side” and has switched to cooperation with the US occupation forces in the country, Indyk said.
….
That’s Martin Indyk, former senior State Department official, Ladies and Gentlemen.
‘The stick’ and ‘bellatrys’, chill out a bit. What the WaPo is saying, and what Belle is picking up on, is that there are some foreign fighters and some Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, there has been an alliance of convenience between them, and that alliance may now be breaking down.
What has really depressed me about the blogospheric debate the last few months is how quick people have become to suspect the worst of others. This debate has always been vicious, but if anything it’s getting worse: the prospect of failure in Iraq, the US election and those nightmare pictures from Beslan have all pushed a few people close to the edge. Belle Waring thinks one little piece of possibly good news might be coming out of Iraq, in which she is supported by a notably tough and cynical foreign correspondent : she’s a fool who has swallowed Rumsfeld’s talking points. Daniel Davies asks a few intelligent questions about terrorism so Harry , and the IRA-exculpator ‘Brownie’, both of Harry’s place, tag him as soft on terror. Abiola Lapite announces that anyone who is in the British military may, if their views are not as hawkish as his, be in favour of Islamic terrorists killing British soldiers. Sebastian Holsclaw tells John Quiggin that any problems in Najaf are his fault. Ophelia Benson wins the Hysteria Prize by announcing that reading Crooked Timber is like watching ‘the Hitler-Stalin pact, or the Moscow Trials’. I mean, come on…
Re Fallujah, fighting in cities is something that favours the defender much more than virtually any other kind of war, so long as you’ve got committed and trained infantry to defend with. From the descriptions of the Fallujah, there are plenty of veterans of Saddam’s wars there, and they fought pretty damned well against the US Marines this spring. On the other hand, the guerrillas in Ramadi folded pretty quickly in the face of US pressure recently. One desperately hopes that this news may be the prelude to a Ramadi-style collapse in Fallujah.
But on the evidence, I’m dubious: firstly, the senior echelons of the US military have shown very little capacity for learning from events in Iraq, and that goes double for the political leadership. Secondly, if even a fraction of the best gunmen from the various Ba’athist, nationalist and Islamicist factions stay and fight it out with the US troops in Fallujah, that will mean a hell of a hard fight, because, as noted, urban warfare favours the defender, and these guys have had plenty of time to prepare.
The US will prevail because of their greater firepower and control of the air, but using those two advantages will mean a lot of civilian casualties, unless there is a thorough evacuation of non-combatants beforehand. If I were a US general or politician, I would insist on any such evacuation as a prelude to an assault, but it’s likely to be blocked for several reasons: the guerrillas in Fallujah will likely not let civilians leave, as they will want them as cover; and the US military will be unwilling to give precise advance warning of a move into Fallujah.
I could be wrong and I really, really hope I am. But I would say that, notwithstanding this news, the chances are that we will see carnage in Fallujah before the end of the year.
Huge double post, please delete one of them.
I can’t cite sources offhand, but it’s not news that there are strong differences of opinion within the Iraqi resistance. Many (maybe most) Iraqis oppose the American occupation, but don’t like terrorist attacks that kill Iraqi civilians. Many of these same people would be perfectly happy with attacks that kill American soldiers. Or that’s my impression. What might be happening in Falluja is that the more moderate Iraqi resistance fighters are getting sick of the nasty extremists who kill innocent Iraqis. Whether this means they’ll become friends with Americans who also kill innocent Iraqis is a separate question.
I don’t have citations for any of this—it’s just been the picture I’ve gotten from reading various stories, most recently one in the NYT yesterday.
Getting a comment posted on this site is a painful process. Takes forever to load.
I just wanted to add that it might have sounded like I was equating American killing of Iraqi civilians with what Zarqawi does. That’s pretty close to what I meant. The NYT story yesterday made it clear that Pentagon officials saw “collateral damage” as something that might be beneficial in turning Fallujans against terrorists who kill women and children. If we kill enough of their women and children the people of Falluja will get sick of harboring terrorists who kill women and children. You’d never get an official spokesperson to admit that, but lower-level Pentagon types not used to speaking to the press are sometimes prone to letting out what they really think.
Here’s the link I followed from Atrios’ this morning: Seymour Hersh spoke at Berkeley last Friday, October 8th. Gives you some idea of what the Iraqi people have to deal with these days. If it’s the choice between this and the Islamic fundies - I suspect most of them will probably side with the fundies. At least with the fundies you know what you have to do to survive.
I was wondering what is the Fallujhan mystical tradition?
Regarding “collateral damage” I think it would be extremely difficult to, for example, lose your children to something like this, and not hate whoever did it. Maybe not forever, but for a long, long time. When there are large families in a town, it would not take very many killings to have the whole town mad at you.
If only we could convince them we’d be happy if they threw out the foreigners, said the fighting was over, and let the Iraqi interim guys through, so we could go home.
But nooo. We have to train out soldiers to shoot first and forget to ask whether they’re commiting war-crimes or not since the administration won’t do anything to the chain of command that allows it… sigh
But it does give a chance that the insurgents might just do what Sadr said and become part of the current Iraq political system. …Even if they still hate us, at least they are3n’t shooting each other.
It’s our fault either way.
Donald Johnson - Of course, the difference is Zarqawi is a nut with a very small base of support in Iraq, who wants to impose extreme Sharia law, whereas the United States “merely” wants to crush the resistance.
Bombing civilian targets was of course a strategy used against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in WW2. I’m not going to take the line that in a total war scenario where genocide is at stake, such extreme war crimes of deliberately killing masses of civilians (as a side-effect or intentionally) would never be justified. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t.
But it’s unnecessary to take that line - clearly, the insurgency in Fallujah is a very different situation to WW2. Why is it necessary for the US to use 400-metre-blast-radius bombs on Fallujah?
Ultimately I think you are absolutely right that there is a moral similarity between Zarqawi and the US military in Iraq. I think both are guilty of mass murder of civilians without just cause. In particular, let’s note that according to the Iraqi health ministry, US forces have killed more civilians than terrorists in recent weeks.
Good news! A civil war!
You know, some people will fall for any damn thing.
Re: Fallujan mystical tradition - I’d expect there are some eg. tombs of Muslim saints or other holy places where people can go and leave offerings, in return for which they can expect eg. healing, or fertility (possibly gender-specific fertility, that is, a son) or what-have-you.
This is pretty common in Syria and Lebanon, anyway, and sometimes includes cross-over visits to Christian shrines, if they are known to “work”.
Naturally, strict Wahhabis are not impressed with such popish superstition.
I was intrigued by Robin’s comment that the US was using “400 meter blast radius” bombs in Faluja. I can only guess it was meant the US is using 2,000lb bombs instead of the smaller 500lb bombs. Does anyone have any links to examples of 2,000lb bombs being used in Faluja, the circumstances, the target, and the casulties? I’m no military expert (obviously), but unless there are sky scrapers in Faluja, I’d be unpleasantly surprised to hear of 2,000lb bombs being used. Although 400 meter bombs can only mean a daisy-cutter or MOAB and to say they had been used would be a little silly. But I understand what was meant.
Robin,
I’d seriously be interested in hearing you flesh out your reasoning on “But it’s unnecessary to take that line - clearly, the insurgency in Fallujah is a very different situation to WW2. Why is it necessary for the US to use 400-metre-blast-radius bombs on Fallujah?” And don’t misunderstand me, I already somewhat agree with your statement, but would like to better understand the “whys” and “how’s” of you said.
>What might be happening in Falluja is that the more moderate Iraqi resistance fighters are getting sick of the nasty extremists who kill innocent Iraqis.
Probably not as nice as all that.
Our Pentagon is all shrugs about “collateral damage.” Well, the insurgents in Iraq are soldiers too, and they are quite capable of hardening themselves similarly. As long as the jihadists are clearly pushing the ball forward, then the “real” resistance tolerates the ugliness. Innocents are going to die when armies clash, who would know better than a battle-hardened (remember Iran-Iraq?) corps.
Lately, though, look what’s happening. We’ve see no-go after no-go after no-go. This week we see attacks in the Green Zone.
The insurgents can make a good case that they are winning this thing. And therefore they feel they have the luxury of culling some of the more unsavory aspects of this rather impressively well-thought-out insurgency.
I don’t know if that is good news, or not. I think I’ve raised the possibility already that the act of driving out the world’s military juggernaught might give the Iraqis a pride of citizenship that might just be enought to avoid a civil war. That’s admittedly a couple of orders of magnitude beyond Pollyannish, but it’s all I got - and it looks sensible compared to predicting good outcomes from leveling Falluja.
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