Will the Real Insurgents Please Stand Up?
U.S. military officials and internal military documents obtained by the AP indicate that the active resistance consists mainly of Sunni Muslims, Ba'athists – many with experience in Saddam's army – and tribal men who are fighting for a bigger role for their group in a new, secular Iraqi society. Although they may be influenced by Islam the way some American soldiers say they are influenced by Christianity, they are not, the report suggests, fighting for a Taliban-like, Islamic state as Zarqawi's fighters appear to be.
Some analysts have even suggested that recent car bombings blamed on Zarqawi were actually carried out by Iraqi resistance fighters, the AP reports. According to one official, the attacks, which were aimed at Iraq's new security forces, bore the "tradecraft" of Saddam's former secret police.
Such statements are at odds with the Bush administration's claim that U.S.-led troops in Iraq are fighting part of the "war on terror" against foreign-led, Islamic extremists.
"Too much U.S. analysis is fixated on terms like 'jihadist,'" Anthony Cordesman told the AP, "just as it almost mindlessly tries to tie everything to bin Laden." Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a privately funded, establishment think tank, says the resistance has a distinctly nationalist character.
U.S. military officials also told the AP that guerilla leaders in Iraq could mobilize as many as 20,000 fighters, a number many times greater than that of Zarqawi's forces. The resistance also has enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered at the ongoing U.S. military occupation that they could not be defeated solely by military means, according to the report.
Some Iraqi resistance groups have also recently spoken out publicly against Zarqawi and his fighters, saying they do not approve of his tactics, especially the beheadings and car bombings that kill civilians, as well as the presence of his foreign fighters in their country, according to the New York Times.
Sheik Abdul-Satar Al-Samarri, a leader of the influential Muslim Clerics Association, a Sunni group critical of Zarqawi, told the Times that his opposition to the Jordanian fighter's tactics did not mean he thought the Iraqis should stop fighting against the U.S.-led occupation of their country.
Instead, Al-Samarri advocated an alternative to Zarqawi's brand of warfare. "Honest and true resistance – that is away from chaos, killing innocents and policemen and sabotaging infrastructure – should go on to kick the occupation out of the country."
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more at antiwar.com
BTW, I have no idea how a military that conviniently does not count civilian deaths can be trusted to id the blown up remains of a suicide bomber as "foreign". Don't all those rag heads look the same anyway? |
