08Dec03-Matthew Clark-Concrete, razor wire, ID cards
Analysts say security tactics in Iraq echo West Bank, as US general forecasts more violence.
By Matthew Clark | csmonitor.com
"As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire," reads the first sentence of a front page article in Sunday's New York Times. "West Bank East: Americans in Iraq make war the Israeli way" is the headline of an opinion piece Saturday in The Daily Star, a Lebanese paper.
The tougher US approach to security in Iraq, begun in early November, draws more parallels to Israeli tactics each day.
The new strategy applied by the US military "appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers," reports the Times. "But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over." The Times quoted one of the Iraqi civilians lining up at a checkpoint in the Iraqi town of Abu Hishma as saying: "I see no difference between us and the Palestinians. We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."
"The Americans' insistence that they 'liberated' Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's grotesque regime would suffer greatly from comparison to the internationally condemned Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," writes Ed Blanche in The Daily Star. Nonetheless, as Mr. Blanche points out, US and Israeli officials confirm such contacts are underway.
Many of the tactics employed by US forces in Iraq in recent days to counter a sharp escalation in attacks by insurgents bear striking similarities to those used by the Israelis against Palestinian militants in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - a greater use of air power, surface-to-surface missiles, round-the-clock surveillance by unmanned aerial vehicles of suspected guerrilla centers, large-scale search-and-seize operations, cracking down on a sullen, increasingly hostile civilian population.
Baghdad's "Green Zone" is an example of the separate worlds concrete and razor wire can create. As The Washington Post reports, the four-square-mile area is encircled by 15-foot concrete walls and rings of barbed wire and includes Mr. Hussein's presidential palace compound, which is now the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Venturing from the protection of the Green Zone is not just a chore, it's a feat. Forms must be filled out explaining the reason for the outing, requesting transportation and a protective detail. Some trips must be rescheduled three or four times, with recent trips to visit children at an orphanage, to speak at a women's center and repair a water treatment plant postponed because of security concerns. The seclusion, many readily concede, is compounding the challenge of the reconstruction.
For the US, the tough security measures are necessary as they expect more violence in the coming months. "We expect to see an increase in violence as we move forward toward sovereignty at the end of June," the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Sunday. He also played down the importance of finding the elusive former Iraqi leader: "The killing or capturing of Saddam Hussein will have an impact on the level of violence, but it will not end it."
This is markedly different from the US stance in the early stages of the insurgency, when the Bush administration announced that it was offering a $25 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Hussein or proof of his death. At that time, a bipartisan group of US senators returned from a three-day visit to Iraq convinced of the need to kill or capture Hussein in order to make progress.
Sanchez likened the hunt for Hussein to the proverbial needle in a haystack. "Clearly we haven't found the right haystack," he said.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wants senior commanders in Iraq to consider whether the Pentagon underestimated the number of US-trained Iraqi security forces needed to stabilize the increasingly violent environment. Following President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving visit, Mr. Rumsfeld made an unexpected visit of his own to Iraq Saturday. After the daylong visit Rumsfeld said he worried that the current goal of 220,000 Iraqi security forces might not be able to be increased later if need be. The number of Iraqis now in uniform is said to be about 140,000, reports MSNBC.
csmonitor.com |
