IRAQ: Anti-occupation guerrillas grow stronger
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. [more]