Doug Lorimer
"They just keep getting stronger. Despite months of assurances that their forces were on the wane, the guerrillas and terrorists battling the American-backed enterprise here appear to be growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever." This was the opening paragraph in a report from Baghdad in the July 23 New York Times.
The article went on to report that "American commanders say the number of attacks against American and Iraqi forces has held steady over the last year, averaging about 65 a day. But the Americans concede the growing sophistication of insurgent attacks and the insurgents' ability to replenish their ranks as fast as they are killed."
In 2003 and the first half of 2004, attacks on US and allied troops averaged about 25 a day.
"We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents. But they're being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge", the NY Times was told by "a senior US Army intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to make his assessments public".
That same day's Los Angeles Times carried a report — also based on interviews with "senior officials" in the US military in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity — that top US military commanders expect the Iraqi anti-occupation guerrillas to be able to sustain the current rate of attacks "for at least six months", and that the guerrillas expect the US to "give up on Iraq within five years".
"Increasingly violent suicide and roadside bombings are expected to continue at a rate of 65 daily — nearly 500 a week — as insurgents still hold enough popular support to carry them out, the officials said", the LA Times reported. "That picture belies some Bush administration estimates that the insurgency was, as Vice-President Dick Cheney said, 'in its last throes', and hews closer to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's statement that it could last as long as a dozen years."
The sustained Iraqi resistance has undermined the US public's acceptance of the repeated claims by the White House and the Pentagon that Washington will be able to defeat the insurgency. According to the latest Gallup Poll results, released on July 26, by 53-43%, a majority of US voters surveyed say the US won't win the war in Iraq. One-third — 32% — said it can't win, while another 21% said it could, but won't.
Zarqawi myth
The corporate mass media, taking their lead from the propaganda issued by the White House and the top Pentagon brass, portray the anti-US insurgents in Iraq as composed largely of "foreign fighters" loyal to Al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al Zarqawi. However, in a July 1 telephone interview with the New York-based Bloomberg news website, General John Custer, director of intelligence for US Central Command, said: "One of the biggest misconceptions, I guess because of the 'rock star' status of Zarqawi, is the foreign fighter piece: that there are thousands and thousands of foreign fighters pouring into Iraq."
Pointing out that only about 300 of the 15,000 suspected rebel fighters detained in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 are non-Iraqis, Custer said: "This is a largely Iraqi Sunni, Arab insurgency. When you take a look at who we have killed, who we captured, who we have in detention, it is 95%, at least, Iraqi-Sunni-Arab, and if you look at the Zarqawi network you will find that it's vastly Iraqi."
Acknowledging that there was "no military solution" to the insurgency, Custer said that the insurgency involves a "large array of Iraqis, Sunni Arabs" who share "a common purpose": "Whether you are a jihadist on the far right of the spectrum or a nationalist, everybody can agree to one thing first: The [US- led] coalition has got to go."
Support for the armed resistance to Iraq's occupation by 160,000 US and allied foreign troops, however, is not just confined to Iraqi Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20% of Iraq's 25 million population. The June 10 Boston Globe reported that "a recent internal poll conducted for the US-led coalition found that nearly 45% of the population supported the insurgent attacks, making accurate intelligence difficult to obtain. Only 15% of those polled said they strongly supported the US-led coalition."
Growing anti-US hatred
The July 24 LA Times reported that growing hatred of the US military presence in Baghdad is being fuelled by the repeated and unpunished killings of civilians by US troops. As an example, it reported how, on July 6, a passing US military convoy had opened fire on a car that had just pulled up outside the headquarters of the Iraqi national police major crimes unit: "Apparently believing the men were staging an ambush, the Americans fired, killing one passenger and wounding the other. The sedan's driver was hit in the head by two bullet fragments. The soldiers drove on without stopping.
"This kind of shooting is far from rare in Baghdad, but the driver of the car was no ordinary casualty. He was Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Majeed Farraji, chief of the major crimes unit. His passengers were unarmed hitchhikers whom he was dropping off on his way to work."
Farraji, who was named a police general with US approval, told the LA Times from his hospital bed: "The reason they shot us is just because the Americans are reckless. Nobody punishes them or blames them ... The hatred of the Americans has increased. I myself hate them."
Farraji's comments were echoed by 38-year-old Kurdish architect Abdul-Jabbar Jmor, whose elder brother was shot dead in Baghdad on June 27 by a passing US military convoy, while being driven by Abdul-Jabbar to meet his relatives after returning to Iraq from Switzerland for the first time in 35 years.
"This kind of incident makes people hate the Americans more and more", Jmor said. "They don't care about the lives of the people. Each day they make new enemies."
The US military says it investigates all shootings of Iraqis by US personnel that result in death. However, the LA Times reported that US officials in Baghdad could not cite a single case of a US soldier having been disciplined for shooting an Iraqi civilian at a checkpoint or in traffic.
In another example of the US military's callous disregard for the lives of unarmed Iraqi civilians, the paper reported the death on June 24 of Yasser Salihee, a physician and Iraqi special correspondent for the US Knight-Ridder newspapers chain.
Salihee was shot dead by US troops while he was returning home after taking his car to a petrol station. Between the time he drove from his home and returned, US troops had begun a military operation in his neighbourhood. The route home from the petrol station taken by Salihee was not blocked off and, according to witnesses, there was no sign warning motorists to halt.
"As he neared the scene of the military operation, a US Army sniper fired at his car", the LA Times reported. "One bullet hit a tire. The other hit Salihee in the forehead. That bullet also severed fingers on his right hand, indicating he was holding up at least one of his hands at the time he was killed ...
"Salihee's widow, Raghad al Wazzan, said she accepted the American soldiers' presence when they first arrived in Iraq because 'they came and liberated us'. She sometimes helped them at the hospital where she works as a doctor. But not anymore."
"Now, after they killed my husband, I hate them", she told the LA Times. "I want to blow them all up."
US withdrawal?
The growing hatred of ordinary Iraqis toward the presence of the US and allied occupation forces was indirectly acknowledged by pro-US Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari at a news conference in Baghdad on July 27. Speaking next to Rumsfeld, who had flown into Baghdad earlier that day, Jaafari said: "The great desire of the Iraqi people is to see the coalition forces on their way out." Asked by a reporter how soon this should happen, he said that no exact timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces had yet been set, "but we confirm and we desire speed in that regard".
Only a month earlier, on June 24, in a press conference at the White House, Jaafari, echoing the position taken by US President George Bush, rejected setting any timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. "This is not the time to fall back", Jaafari said.
Earlier on July 27, while travelling with Rumsfeld, General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, told reporters that a "fairly substantial" withdrawal of US troops could begin next northern spring, if there was no increase in the scale of the insurgency.
Casey did not give any indication of what was meant by "fairly substantial". However, at a June 21 Pentagon press briefing, General John Vines, who runs day-to-day US military operations in Iraq, indicated the scale of the withdrawal being contemplated.
After warning that opinion polls showing a majority of the US public now opposes US military presence in Iraq could undermine the morale of US troops fighting in Iraq, Vines said that a reduction of "four or five brigades" — perhaps 20,000 US troops — might be possible early next year.
In testimony to Congress on July 19, General Barry McCaffrey, a retired US Army commander, said that anti-insurgency battles had already taken their toll on the morale of US troops. "We've got 17 combat brigades there right now, we will be forced into a drawdown and have 10 brigades or less on the ground by next summer", McCaffrey said after a week-long fact-finding tour of Iraq one month earlier. "The army and marines are starting to come apart under this overly aggressive foreign policy."
From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.