[Mb-civic] Facing the Enemy on the Ground By Scott Ritter

Fri Jul 9 14:04:06 PDT 2004

Facing the Enemy on the Ground

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet
 Posted on July 9, 2004, Printed on July 9, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/19190/

The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds
of the Iraqi people. As things currently stand, it appears that victory will
go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today:
the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.

Iyad Allawi's government was recently installed by the United States-led
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to counter a Ba'athist nationalism
that ceased to exist nearly a decade ago. In the aftermath of the first Gulf
War, Saddam Hussein's regime shifted toward an amalgam of Islamic
fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that more accurately reflected the
political reality of Iraq. Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight,
Saddam's lieutenants are now running the Iraqi resistance, including the
Islamist groups.

Not only has the United States failed to put into place a viable government
to replace the CPA in the aftermath of the so-called "transfer of
sovereignty," but more importantly, it continues to misidentify the true
nature of the Iraqi insurgency. As a consequence, the resistance will
inevitably continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it, Iraqi
or American.

Ba'athism is Dead, Long Live Saddam

In August 1995, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to
Jordan. In the lead up to the war, much of the attention paid to this event
has centered on Kamal's various debriefings with the CIA, British
Intelligence, and UN weapons inspectors concerning Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Hussein
Kamal's testimony that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed
in the summer of 1991 has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to
date no WMD have been found.

But more important than the WMD information (which has become abundantly
clear through other sources) is Kamal's self-described reason for defecting:
Saddam Hussein's order that all senior Ba'ath Party officials undergo
mandatory Koranic studies. A staunch Ba'athist like Hussein Kamal, schooled
in the doctrine of secular Arab nationalism, viewed the command as
tantamount to heresy. But for Saddam Hussein, this radical shift in strategy
was necessary to his survival given the new realities of post-Gulf War Iraq.

Confronted with the postwar turmoil created by military defeat and economic
devastation (prolonged by UN-imposed sanctions), Saddam had to re-engineer
his domestic constituency to maintain his power. The traditional Ba'athist
ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving
force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required
bringing into the fold not only the Shi'ite majority  which had revolted
against him in the spring of 1991  but also accommodating the growing
religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in
western Iraq.

The most visible symbol of Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his order
to add the words "God is Great" to the Iraqi flag. He also simultaneously
embraced traditional Iraqi tribal culture, de-emphasizing the importance of
the Ba'ath Party in 1996 by noting that it was but "one of the tribes of
Iraq"  a move that erased decades of Ba'athist anti-tribal policies.

Getting It Wrong, Again

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, has gone
largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the
attention of the Bush Administration. And the recent "transfer of
sovereignty" from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the
new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reflects this lack of
understanding.

For many in the Bush Administration, the greatest and indisputable success
of the invasion of Iraq was ridding the world of a dangerous ideology,
Ba'athism. Indeed, one of the first directives issued by Paul Bremer, the
former head of the CPA, was to pass a "de-Ba'athification" law, effectively
blacklisting all former members of that party from meaningful involvement in
the day-to-day affairs of post-Saddam Iraq. The law underscored the mindset
of those in charge of Iraq: Ba'athist holdouts loyal to Saddam were the
primary threat to the U.S.-led occupation.

Senior Bush Administration officials recognized their mistake  though a
little too late. In April 2004, Bremer rescinded his "de-Ba'thification"
order. The architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, recently told members of Congress that the Pentagon had
underestimated its enemy in Iraq. The Pentagon today speaks of a "marriage
of convenience" between Islamic fundamentalists and former members of
Saddam's Ba'athist regime, even speculating that the Islamists are taking
over Ba'athist cells weakened by American anti-insurgency efforts.

Once again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still unable
or unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground.

The Iraqi resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but rather a
product of planning years in the making. Rather than being absorbed by a
larger Islamist movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots
in Iraq, having co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or
without their knowledge.

One look at the list of the 55 "most wanted" members of the Saddam regime
who remain at large reveals the probable chain of command of the Iraqi
resistance today. It also underscores the success of Saddam's strategic
decision nearly a decade past to disassociate himself from Ba'athist
ideology.

All the Tyrant's Men

Keep in mind that there was never a formal surrender ceremony after the U.S.
took control of Baghdad. The security services of Saddam's Iraq were never
disbanded; they simply melted away into the population, to be called back
into service when and where they were needed.

The so-called Islamic resistance is led by none other than former Vice
President Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, an ardent Iraqi nationalist, a Sunni Arab
and a practicing member of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic
mystics. His deputy is Rafi Tilfah, who headed the Directorate of General
Security (DGS), an organization that had thoroughly penetrated Iraqi society
with collaborators and informants during Saddam's regime.

As a former UN weapons inspector, I have personally inspected the
headquarters of the DGS in Baghdad, as well as the regional DGS Headquarters
in Tikrit. The rooms were full of files concerning those who were working
with or on behalf of the DGS. There is not a person, family, tribe or
Islamic movement in Iraq that the DGS does not know intimately  information
that is an invaluable asset when coordinating and facilitating a
popular-based resistance movement.

I also interacted with the former Director of the Special Security
Organization, Hani al-Tilfah, on numerous occasions during 1997-98, when he
was put in charge of riding roughshod over my inspections. He was also
responsible for transferring many of his officers to Rafi's command, purging
the DGS of old Ba'athist nationalists and replacing them with officers loyal
to Saddam's new Islamic-Tribal vision of Iraq. Today he helps coordinate the
operations of the Iraqi resistance using the very same officers.

Tahir Habbush headed the Iraqi Intelligence Service that perfected the art
of improvised explosive devices and using them to carry out assassinations.
In the months prior to the U.S.-led invasion, he was ordered to blend his
agents back into the Iraqi population so as to avoid detection by any
occupying force. The intelligence service agents were also told to
infiltrate organizations actively opposed to Saddam Hussein, and thus most
likely to play a leading role in any post-Saddam Iraqi government. These
included both the Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition parties.

The recent anti-American attacks in Fallujah and Ramadi were carried out by
well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn from the
ranks of Saddam's Republican Guard. The level of sophistication should not
have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with former Chief of the
Republican Guard Sayf al-Rawi's role in secretly demobilizing select Guard
units for this very purpose prior to the U.S. invasion. And as the former
Director of Tribal Affairs for the Special Security Organization, Rokan
Razuki's knowledge of Iraqi tribal realities is unmatched and his
connections unrivaled. His continued access to tribal councils is a
tremendous threat to any authority in charge of Iraq.

No More Lebanons

The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi is a
charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, with
tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United States
from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a constituency
inside Iraq, but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqi
citizens.

The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition
movement inside Iraq for the Bush Administration to call on to form a
government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been
forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association
with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily
infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security services.

Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or
how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail. The more it
fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The
more the U.S. props up Allawi, the more discredited he becomes in the eyes
of the Iraqi people  all of which creates yet more opportunities for the
Iraqi resistance to exploit to their advantage.

The historical parallel that best underscores the current
disaster-in-the-making is not the Vietnam War but rather Israel's invasion
of Lebanon in 1982. Originally intended to rid Lebanon of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, Israel's subsequent occupation led to the creation
of Hizbollah as a viable force of political and military resistance. The
Hizbollah was so effective that Israel was forced to unilaterally withdraw
its forces from Lebanon in May, 2000. The 18-year occupation not only failed
to defeat the PLO, but it also created an Islamic fundamentalist movement
that today poses a serious threat to the security of Israel and the Middle
East region.

In Iraq, history may very well produce the same result since neither the
Bush Administration nor a possible Kerry Administration shows any
inclination to withdraw from Iraq in the foreseeable future. And so the
course of American involvement in Iraq and its inevitable consequences are
clear. We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths
of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness
the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq which
will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every
bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon.

The strength of this anti-American resistance depends on how long the United
States chooses to "stay the course" in Iraq. The calculus is quite simple:
The sooner we bring our forces home, the weaker this movement will be. And,
of course, the obverse is true: The longer we stay, the stronger and more
enduring this by-product of Bush's elective war on Iraq will be.

There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a
question of winning, but rather mitigating defeat.