|
Despite
the U.S. government's claims of successes for the "surge,"
that is, increased numbers of American troops in Iraq, there is hardly
any doubt that the major defeats suffered by al-Qaida and other
intransigent resistance forces have come from the occupation forces'
success in enlisting local tribal and gang leaders as auxiliaries.
U.S.
officials are calling this strategy "Iraqi solutions." In
fact, it is based on two factors. One is a reaction against the
intimidation and the ruthless and largely indiscriminate killing by
al-Qaida and similar groups. The other is the Yankee dollar. In a
country where wages are low and jobs scarce, the U.S. offers fighters
in the so-called Awakening groups $10 a day and provides them with
arms.
However,
this collection of Sunni gangs is a can of worms, or more accurately, a
basket of snakes, for the U.S. occupiers. In the first place, they are
generally hostile to the U.S. client government, and in the second
place, their alliance with the U.S. is very unstable and, moreover, they are riddled with internal
conflicts and increasingly with infiltrators.
An
example of the conflicting loyalties among clan groups probably was the
suicide bombing of a gathering of Awakening group members near Fallujah
on Jan. 20 in which four members of the group were killed. The New York
Times reported Jan. 21: "Mr. Hussein had just been released after
being detained by American forces for three days, and he had invited
friends and relatives for a celebratory meal, Mr. Jamal said. It was
not clear why he had been detained. Those arriving were searched, but
the bomber, who survivors of the blast estimated was in his mid-teens,
slipped through without being inspected because he was young and known
to everyone from the neighborhood.
“‘He
was a child and one of our people, so he did not raise doubts,” Mr.
Jamal said. “Al Qaeda expected that Awakening members would attend the
lunch.’”
Since
the Awakening groups are irregular bodies, their leaders have no way to
vet their members and entourage. In the Jan. 28 issue of the British
Independent, Patrick Cockburn noted: "The Iraqi Foreign Minister,
Hoshyar Zebari, warned last week it would be 'very dangerous' if the
Awakening movement's 80,000 fighters were not absorbed into the army
and police. 'They are not that well organised and could easily be
manipulated by al-Qa'ida,' he said."
Most
of Cockburn's article was based on an interview with a local Awakening
leader. He wrote: "A crucial Iraqi ally of the United States in
its recent successes in the country is threatening to withdraw his
support and allow al-Qa'ida to return if his fighters are not
incorporated into the Iraqi army and police.
"'If
there is no change in three months there will be war again,' said Abu
Marouf, the commander of 13,000 fighters who formerly fought the
Americans. He and his men switched sides last year to battle al-Qa'ida
and defeated it in its main stronghold in and around Fallujah.
"'If
the Americans think they can use us to crush al-Qa'ida and then push us
to one side, they are mistaken,' Abu Marouf told The Independent in an
interview in a scantily furnished villa beside an abandoned cemetery
near the village of Khandari outside Fallujah. He said that all he and
his tribal following had to do was stand aside and al-Qa'ida's fighters
would automatically come back. If they did so he might have to ally
himself to a resurgent al-Qa'ida in order to 'protect myself and my
men'."
The
U.S.-sponsored predominately Shiite government, however, has good
reason to be suspicious of the Awakening groups. The British journalist
noted: "The Iraqi government fears ceding power to the Awakening
movement, which it sees as an American-funded Sunni militia, whose
leaders are often former military or security officers from Saddam
Hussein's regime and are unlikely to show long-term loyalty to the Shia
and Kurdish-dominated administration."
The
leader Cockburn interviewed made no bones about his past loyalty to
Saddam Hussein and his membership of the dictator's repressive forces:
"Abu Marouf ... says he was 'security officer' before the US
invasion of 2003. Afterwards he became a resistance fighter and, though
he will not say which guerrilla group he belonged to, local sources say
he was a commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. He is also a member
of the powerful Zubai tribe that was at the heart of anti-American
resistance in an area which saw the fiercest fighting during the Sunni
rebellion against the occupation."
Cockburn
also quoted Marouf as saying: "The worst day of my life was when Saddam
Hussein fell in 2003." The
Sunni gangs that have turned to the U.S. for sponsorship also have good
reason to despise the occupation's client government. Not only is it
sectarian, but it has made little progress in restoring the economy.
Nor has the United States, despite draining the pockets of U.S.
taxpayers in the name of rebuilding the country wrecked by the American
military.
Scandals
continue to erupt over the misuse of money allotted to construction
projects in Iraq. The latest to date was reported by the New York Times
of Jan. 9: "Rebuilding failures by one of the most heavily
criticized companies working in Iraq, the American construction giant
Parsons, were much more widespread than previously disclosed and
touched on nearly every aspect of the company’s operation in the
country, according to a report released Monday by a federal oversight
agency.
"Previous
reports by federal inspectors and by news organizations identified
numerous examples of construction failures in Parsons Corporation projects
in Iraq, including dozens of uncompleted or shoddily built health care
clinics and border forts, as well as
disastrous
sewage and plumbing problems at the Baghdad police academy that left
parts of it unusable.
"But
the new report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction, an independent federal agency, examined nearly 200
Parsons construction projects contained in 11 major “job orders” paid
for in a huge rebuilding contract. There were also three other
nonconstruction orders. The total cost of the work to the United States
was $365 million."
The
total amount wasted in such dubious projects must run into many
billions of dollars. Eventually, an accounting will have to be made.
Perhaps the occupation authorities’ most extravagant promises to repair
the damage they created were made to the city of Fallujah, which was
almost totally destroyed by the U.S. military in retaliation for the
killing of some employees of the notorious uncontrolled U.S. security
firm, Blackwater. It appears that none of the pledges were kept.
The
Independent's Cockburn visited Fallujah recently and reported on what
he saw in the Jan. 28 issue of the British daily: "The city has
been sealed off since November 2004 when United States Marines stormed
it in an attack that left much of the city in ruins. Its
streets,
with walls pock-marked with bullets and buildings reduced to a heap of
concrete slabs, still look as if the fighting had finished only a few
weeks ago.
"I
went to look at the old bridge over the Euphrates from whose steel
girders Fallujans had hanged the burnt bodies of two American private
security men killed by guerrillas – the incident that sparked the first
battle of Fallujah. The single-lane bridge is still there, overlooked
by the remains of a bombed or shelled building whose smashed roof
overhangs the street and concrete slabs are held in place by rusty iron
mesh."
Cockburn
reported crowds of residents shouting to him that they had no water or
electricity.
It
is obvious that the U.S. war machine and corruption have wrecked the
country and it is continuing to fall apart. There is no way to predict
how much damage the continuing collapse will do to the Iraqi people or
to the United States. But it is clear that it is in the
interest
of the American people and all humanitarian and progressive-minded
people to demand that the U.S. withdraw totally and immediately from
Iraq.
|