I can't believe that people still post to you...well...here's a real article on what's happening.....
HE RAT TRAP
Part 2: Why the resistance will increase
By Pepe Escobar
Part 1: How Saddam may still nail Bush
BAKU - Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset
Saddam Hussein is - already was - totally beside the point. Only
in the past few months have we learned the extent to which the
Saddam system sub-contracted a great deal of decision-making
to different Iraqi elite - from tribal sheikhs to businessmen and
Sunni and Wahhabi religious leaders. They may originally have
been cajoled by Saddam with carrots and sticks to be
incorporated into the Ba'athist regime. But now they are totally
free to command their own agendas.
To top it all, they really have a common agenda for the first time
in their lives: a war against American occupation. The resistance
will persist because Saddam was never its political, religious,
spiritual or moral guide. The mukawama - resistance against
foreign occupation - is now a full-blown nationalist, religious
movement. The most popular political party on the sprawling
campus of Baghdad University is not the widely-despised Ahmad
Chalabi's neo-conservative-backed Iraqi National Congress. It is
the Iraq Islamist Party.
A recent peaceful mass demonstration in the south-central city of
Hilla brought down the local "collaborator" governor. People
were shouting: "Free elections now!" Sources in Baghdad tell
Asia Times Online that avalanches of people are just waiting for
June 2004 to see what kind of government the Americans will
allow, and if they are not satisfied, then they will join the
resistance. But there are also many people - Sunni and Shi'ite -
who fear that some Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) members may
turn violent, afraid of losing power. Rival Kurdish chieftains Jalal
Talabani and Masoud Barzani - both on the IGC - keep their
strong peshmerga private armies. Chalabi has his own
CIA-trained army, complete with American weapons. According
to new Iraqi policemen who defected to Amman, Jordan, the
bulk of the new Iraqi police is also inclined to join the resistance.
The increasingly sophisticated attacks in the Sunni triangle are
being coordinated by the Committee of the Faith. They are
Sunni, and most of all, they are Wahhabi - and they had the
freedom to proselytize and act even under Saddam. As the
relentless mukawama will expose day by day the fallacy of the
Anglo-American mantra - according to which the attacks are
perpetrated by "remnants of Saddam's regime" - expect from
Washington another change in the screenplay: the blame will shift
to "foreign" al-Qaeda or "Syrian-backed terrorists".
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is making things even
worse. According to Iraqi-Canadian journalist Firas al-Atraqchi,
the CPA wants Kurdish peshmergas patrolling the explosive
Sunni triangle and Mosul - which is predominantly Arab: "Sunni
religious leaders have expressed outrage over the proposed deal
and have warned, in no ambiguous terms, that the Sunni areas
will not tolerate being patrolled or policed by Kurdish (or Shi'ite)
militia. They warn that a civil war would be inevitable."
The non-aligned mujahideen
Meanwhile, in Europe, anti-terrorist specialists warn that the four
bombings in Istanbul last month were also messages to the
European Union - because some countries, like Britain, Italy and
Spain, are collaborating with the Americans in Iraq, and also
because they have dismantled jihadi cells in Europe. Experts at
the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC)
in Brussels are extremely worried of a fallout from Iraq and an
imminent attack on one of the European Union countries.
European investigations are centered on Sheikh Abderrazak, an
Algerian who was based in Milan and who is now under arrest in
Hamburg, and who was a member of al-Tawhid, an organization
directed by Abu Mussab al-Zarkawi, a Jordanian and an
al-Qaeda planner who was identified before the Iraq war by US
Secretary of State Colin Powell as the "missing link" between
Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Nobody in Europe at the time -
apart from Britain's Tony Blair, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Jose
Aznar of Spain - was convinced of the link. Now, however,
European investigators tell Asia Times Online that things have
changed and Zarkawi "is indeed part of the Iraqi resistance. The
Americans invaded Iraq as part of their 'war on terror', and
ended up bringing terror to Iraq."
Zarkawi - loaded with German contacts - is suspected of
recruiting "more than a thousand jihadis to Iraq": they are
Arab-Afghans, jihad veterans, with European passports. August
Hanning, president of the German security service (BND), told
German television that most of these jihadis, and some extra
volunteers, have already left to Iraq from Great Britain, Bosnia
and Germany, infiltrating via Syria and Saudi Arabia. Hanning is
convinced that Iraq is about to become "the crystallization point
for extremist Islamists the world over".
Experts in Brussels have even a "top ten" list of countries most
likely to be victims of a next wave of terror attacks: they are,
from top to bottom, the US, Britain, Israel, Australia, France,
Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland. The experts are all
assuming the working hypothesis that al-Qaeda cells which are
not directly related to bin Laden anymore are using an "al-Qaeda
trademark" to mobilize jihadis and increase the repercussion of
their particular attacks.
The ESISC has thus detected the last word in the "war on
terror": the emergence of the "non-aligned mujahideen". These
people are skilled, totally isolated and practically undetectable.
Alain Chouet, in a study from the French Institute of International
Relations, stresses that since December 2001, only five attacks
can be attributed with full certainty to al-Qaeda. Chouet stresses
that al-Qaeda has definitely mutated into "a multitude of small
entrepreneurs or local sub-contractors, with tortuous and indirect
strategies".
Breakdown: The Iraqi resistance
The invasion of Iraq was widely perceived as an attack on the
Arab world. That's why the resistance is turning pan-Arab. Once
again: this is a nationalist and religious resistance movement.
Asia Times Online has ascertained that at least 12 independent
guerrilla organizations from different tribes are involved in the
mukawama, all vaguely in touch with each other. This loose
organization may be about to extend its reach nationwide. But the
Iraqi guerrilla movement is extraordinarily complex. These in
essence are the main actors:
The former army. The majority of the 400,000 Iraqi soldiers
demobilized by US proconsul L Paul Bremer were nothing but
victims of the Ba'athist regime. Humiliated and frustrated, they
inevitably turned to the resistance - and they were not being
financed by Saddam Hussein, as Asia Times Online reported
from the Sunni triangle. At least 100,000 soldiers from the
Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard didn't even
receive a meager financial compensation from the Americans. Big
mistake: they were the best trained, the best equipped, the best
motivated, and now they are totally engaged in the resistance.
They are nationalists demonstrating in practice how the whole
thing is not about Saddam's return to power, but about getting rid
of a foreign invader.
The tribes. An extremely complex tribal game is in play in Iraq.
Saddam was a master in this business. An example: Ramadi and
Fallujah, in the Sunni triangle, home to some of the most vicious
anti-American attacks, are controlled by the huge Doulaiymi tribe
- which always had a turbulent relationship with Saddam. The
reason for the attacks were not $100 bills showered around by
Saddam's henchmen, but repeated blunders and massacres of
civilians by the 82nd Airborne Division. The Americans
themselves fed the infernal cycle of violence with their string of
arbitrary arrests and daily humiliations. Tha'ar (revenge) is the
absolute norm for these extremely proud Bedouins. Meanwhile,
local tribes around Kirkuk are attacking oil pipelines just as a
means of finally getting paid for protecting them. The Americans
then dissolved the so-called "oil police" and sub-contracted
regional security to a South African private firm, which for its part
sub-contracted security to - who else - the local tribes.
Remnants of Saddam's regime. They are reduced to nothing
more than the fedayeen of Saddam - the private militia
established by his late son Uday - the surveillance apparatchik
and the tribes in Tikrit. It's fair to expect much accumulated rage
to explode in the form of attacks now that Saddam is in captivity.
These people are armed to the teeth - with weapons caches
dispersed all over the country. It still remains to be discovered
how they connect with and how they provide logistical assistance
to the professional jihadis that Hanning says are coming from
Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The jihadis. An elite among them comprise the instigators and
perpetrators of the suicide bombings. There are a few dozen
survivors of Ansar al-Islam who crossed to Iranian Kurdistan,
fleeing American bombing last March: they don't make much of a
difference. Most of all there may be a few thousand jihadis who
came before, during and after the war. They are Yemenite,
Lebanese, Sudanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian - the pan-Arab
character of the resistance. They are loosely linked with local,
small groups of salafis - an extremist interpretation of Sunni
Islam.
American blunders only inflame the resistance. Samarra was a
classic case. The Americans said that the guerrillas were Saddam
fedayeen. Asia Times Online has been to Samarra: it's a very
religious, conservative city which never bowed to Saddam.
Sources say that the bulk of the local resistance was from a
group called the Mujahideen of Mohammed. Residents insist that
there are no fedayeen in the city and accuse the Americans of
being the terrorists, massacring civilians.
A new resistance tactic is to join the Iraqi police - recruited and
paid for by the Americans - earn some $50 a month, train with
American-provided weapons and gather valuable intelligence on
the foreign invader. Meanwhile, the American military are now
performing an exact replay of the Israeli military occupying
Palestine: they surround large tracts with barbed wire and
ultra-intimidating security checks, bulldoze houses and round up
all men for lengthy interrogations. Tha'ar will come.
The American tactic of now Iraqifying the war is nothing but a
replay of "Vietnamization". Washington's push to make over a
complex society in its own image will fail - as it failed in Vietnam.
Iraqis, politically very sophisticated despite decades of
dictatorship, detect crystal-clear the American plan, imposed at
tank point, to privatize the whole country by selling its assets and
fabulous natural resources to American - and a few European -
corporations. This, most of all, is what is fueling the resistance.
They know they cannot let people like Chalabi or Talabani in the
IGC decide the future of the nation.
As author and commentator Tariq Ali has forcefully pointed out
on the website Counterpunch, this is the "21st-century colonial
model: Specialist companies are now encouraged to provide
'security'. They employ the mercenaries, and their profits are
ensured by the state that hires them. They are backed up by the
real army and, more importantly, by air power, to help defeat the
enemy. But none of this will work if the population remains
hostile. And large-scale repression only helps to unite the
population against the occupiers. The fear in Washington is that
the Iraqi resistance might attempt a sensational hit just before the
next presidential election. The fear in the Arab east is that
[President George W] Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney
might escalate the conflict to retain the White House in 2004.
Both fears may well be justified."
While Saddam awaits his trial, this is what the headlines will be
about: a massive popular resistance movement fighting
21st-century colonization, while the new actors of jihad bet on a
context of endless war. Saddam may be history, but it will be
interesting to hear what he has to say. It ain't over till this desert
"rat" sings.
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