Iraqi insurgents’ claim to be “fighting for the liberation of their country” is, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair, “a palpable lie.” Let’s leave aside for a moment the question of whether it is appropriate for Blair, a man who deceived his country into an illegal war, to accuse others of lying. More important is that in one respect, he is right: it does indeed seem “palpable” (i.e. clear or obvious) to most people that the Iraqi resistance has no legitimacy. Rather, the insurgents are just a bunch of crazy-psycho-terrorists who hate democracy and freedom so much that they are willing to kill other Iraqis to fight it. It is not difficult to see how people could have got that impression.
On October 30, 2003, the chief foreign policy commentator for the liberal New York Times, Thomas Friedman, wrote:
“The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge—a murderous band of Saddam Hussein loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis.
The great irony is that the Baathists and Arab dictators are opposing the US in Iraq because—unlike many leftists—they understand exactly what this war is about. They understand that US power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war. They understand that this is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the US has ever launched—a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.”
In a speech in 2004, President Bush described the insurgency thus:
“They seek the total control of every person in mind and soul; a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free reign. They seek weapons of mass destruction to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks.”
In June 2004, ITV News described the insurgents as “determined and brutal terrorists”. Liberal commentator Michael Ignatieff branded the resistance “hateful” in the New York Times on June 27 2004, whilst in July, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme – Newsnight – reported that insurgent attacks were “blighting US attempts to bring peace and stability to Iraq”. On October 1 2004, the BBC’s Nicholas Witchell described a series of insurgent attacks as “intended to undermine the future”. In September, the same journalist reported,
“As is so often the case in this conflict it’s the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life – either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents.”
In July 2005, a Guardian article approvingly cited a spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying,
“Take a good look at these figures. They show that the real aim of the insurgents is simply to kill as many people as they can.
“All civilians are targets: young and old, male and female, Sunni, Shia or Kurd. It should also tell you more and more about those who talk of “an honest resistance”.
On September 1 2006, Edward Wong reported in the New York Times that,
“Since Sunday, more than 300 Iraqis have been killed in bombings, murders and a deadly pipeline explosion…The violence is generally believed to be the work of insurgents, militias and criminal gangs embroiled in Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife”,
thereby grouping “insurgents” with “militias and criminal gangs”, involved in “Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife” as opposed to fighting the occupation.
Of course, the insurgency has no “popular support” (Charles Krauthammer, FOX News, May 2004), or else the extent of Iraqi support for the insurgency is “unknown” (USA Today, May 2004).
Writing in The Guardian yesterday, Peter Beaumont depicts the insurgents as brutal and immoral “jihadi fighters”, who “use human shields and force children to run weapons for them.” Meanwhile, the occupying forces are painted as benevolent bystanders, trying their hardest to combat the evil jihadis whilst sparing innocent civilian lives.
The demonisation of the Iraqi insurgency is understandable. It is in the interests of the political elites, and the corporate media that serve them, to portray any opposition to Western imperial policies as illegitimate, terroristic and barbaric. That an imperialistic or occupying power will attempt to demonise any resistance to it is a historical universal, as writer and activist Tariq Ali points out:
“Every resistance movement against imperialism has been categorised as terrorist ‹ the Mau Mau in Kenya were demonised and brutally tortured by the British; the Algerian FLN by the French; the Vietnamese by the French and the Americans.
Today Israel’s Ariel Sharon refers to Palestinians as terrorists, Russia’s Vladimir Putin crushes the Chechens in the name of fighting terror and Tony Blair is assaulting traditional civil liberties in this country in the name of fighting terror. It’s hardly surprising that the Iraqi resistance is characterised in the same fashion.”
A quick examination of the reality, however, tells a very different story. Firstly, the Iraqi resistance is overwhelmingly indigenous. According to Major General Joseph Taluto, “99.9 per cent” of militants captured fighting U.S. forces in Iraq are Iraqi. When U.S. and Iraqi soldiers ‘methodically swept through Tall Afar’ in the largest counter-insurgency operation of 2005, they killed nearly 200 insurgents and detained close to 1,000. All those detained were Iraqi. Serious analysts of the occupation have long recognised that, in Scott Ritter’s words, the “anti-US resistance in Iraq today is Iraqi in nature, and more broadly based and deeply rooted than acknowledged.” In a recent article for the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, Stephen Zunes writes (.pdf) that “the al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists and the foreign fighters upon whom the Bush administration has focused represent only a small minority of the insurgency.” The U.S. and UK governments, together with the Western media, focus disproportionately on the very few foreign fighters present in Iraq to minimise Iraqi opposition to the occupation and to delegitimise the resistance. In addition, as Zunes explains, branding the entire resistance movement “terrorists” (or by focusing disproportionately on al-Qaeda’s small role in the insurgency, thereby associating the insurgency as a whole with terrorism) enables Bush and Blair to present Iraq as a front in the “war on terror”, whereas in fact it is nothing of the sort, and to “portray the US invasion and occupation of Iraq not as an act of aggression – as most of the international community sees it – but as an act of self-defence. By extension, it seeks to portray those who oppose the ongoing US occupation as appeasers or even supporters of totalitarianism and violence.” According to Zunes, the number of foreign insurgents fighting with an agenda even remotely resembling that described by President Bush above constitutes “well under 5 per cent of the armed resistance.”
Speaking yesterday, Tony Blair encapsulated perfectly this fallacy about the Iraqi resistance:
“These forces that are operating in Iraq at the moment are not the fault of a lack of planning or administration. It is a deliberate attempt [by] external extremists, like al-Qaida [and] like elements connected to Iran, who are linking up with internal extremists to thwart the will of the majority.”
Why mention al-Qaeda, which represents a tiny proportion of the insurgency, except in order to demonise the resistance by associating it with the ultimate bogeyman? This extract from Blair’s speech also contains another major misrepresentation of the resistance: that it is composed of “extremists” who are thwarting the “will of the majority”. In reality, it is the Coalition forces who are opposing the will of the majority in Iraq (not to mention their own countries), as illustrated by poll after poll after poll after poll after poll after poll. Numerous polls also demonstrate that insurgents who attack Coalition forces do so with widespread popular support. Only two conclusions can be drawn from Blair’s insistence that the Iraqi resistance is not backed by the Iraqi people: he’s either living in a fantasy world, or he’s bullshitting again.
Another frequent technique used to demonise the Iraqi resistance is to insinuate (or state outright) that it is composed entirely of terrorists who target and murder innocent civilians. Once again, this simply isn’t the case. While it is true that Iraqi insurgents occasionally target civilians, the vast majority of insurgent attacks target Coalition or Iraqi Security forces. Suicide bombings in crowded markets, and other atrocities like them, are usually either sectarian in nature (the insurgency is separate from the sectarian conflict, despite the deliberate conflation of the two by the media and government officials) or are perpetrated by the few foreign jihadis that are operating in Iraq (for example, Al-Qaeda). According to an August 2006 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, of 1,666 bombs exploded in Iraq in July, 90% were aimed at U.S.-led forces. Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate in February 2006, reported that,
“New data reveal, surprisingly, that the vast majority of the Iraqi insurgents’ attacks are still aimed not at Iraqi security forces or at civilians, but rather at U.S. and coalition troops. In other words, as much as was the case a year or two ago, the Iraqi insurgency is primarily an anti-occupation insurgency”.
The “new data” he was referring to was a report (.pdf) compiled by the multinational military command in Iraq, which contained the following graph:
It clearly shows that the vast majority of insurgent attacks have targeted Coalition forces, not civilians.
To summarise, then: the resistance to the occupation of Iraq is legitimate. It has the support of the majority of the Iraqi people, and by and large it does not target civilians.
It is in this light that we should examine the Bush administration’s attempts to vilify alleged Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, possibly with a view to providing a pretext for a war with Iran. In Bush’s words,
“My job is to protect our troops, and when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we’re going to do something about it, pure and simple.”
Many analysts – Milan Rai and Media Lens, to name two – have done an excellent job in demolishing the “evidence” provided by the Bush administration blaming Iran for insurgent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Juan Cole has pointed out, the charge against Iran is nonsensical in and of itself, since the only Iraqi groups Iran could plausibly be supporting are Shi’ite militias, whereas the vast majority of attacks on U.S. troops are perpetrated by Sunnis. Moreover, the groups Iran is being accused of supporting are the very same ones being supported by the U.S.
However, it is certainly conceivable that at some point in the future, the Bush administration will be able to provide genuine evidence of Iranian aid to militant groups in Iraq. Will it then follow that an attack on Iran is justified? The question is an interesting one: should we despise Iran for aiding the insurgent attacks that are killing our troops, or should we respect them for it? Certainly, it is taken as a given across the board that American aid to resistance movements is noble and just. As Noam Chomsky explains,
“There’s a somber debate underway about whether Washington really has evidence about Iranian support for anti-occupation forces, or whether it’s a replay of the deceit preceding the Iraq invasion. Strikingly, there is no debate about whether support for anti-occupation forces would be justified — particularly when US-run polls show that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis want them out, either immediately (2/3 in Baghdad according to US-polls) or soon. The debate is intriguing.
There was no debate in the 1980s about whether the US had the right to provide support to anti-occupation forces in Afghanistan (there was some debate about whether it would be costly to us, but not about the right). It was taken for granted that the US had the right to support resistance to aggression. In Pravda there wouldn’t have been a debate about whether the US and its allies (Britain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,…) were in fact providing support for the resistance to the Soviet occupation, because there was no doubt about it. The US was proudly proclaiming it. True, the cases are not identical, only analogous. The Soviet invasion, though criminal, was based on real security concerns on its borders, while the US invasion had no credible pretext. And there are other differences. But the point is that the right of the US to use force and violence and the illegitimacy of any resistance to it is a Holy Doctrine, which cannot be questioned in polite society, even thought about.
Therefore debate is confined to the marginal question of whether Iran is in fact providing support to forces opposing the US occupation. Similarly, the debate over US tactics is restricted to the question of what is likely to work. That was not the debate over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan — though I presume it was in Moscow.”
Michael Perry, writing for Antiwar.com, says similar things:
“But let’s go even further and say, for the sake of argument, that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving officially authorized aid from the Iranian state. It is true that having a neighboring nation in chaos does not generally benefit any country, but the Iranians have been under the gun from the U.S. for a very long time – decades, in fact. The recent threats and provocations from the Bush administration make it clear that Iran is an imminent target. I’m quite sure the Iranians realize that the quagmire in Iraq is the primary impediment to an American invasion of Iran. Troubles for U.S. forces in Iraq may buy the Iranians more time. Could the Iranians be so blind to their own self-interests?
Beyond the practical justifications for Iranian involvement in Iraq, there are also moral rationales. If Russia were to invade Mexico, at least some in the U.S. government would support the Mexican insurgents against the Russian occupiers. And most Americans would back such assistance. Aiding one’s neighbors against an unwelcome occupation is not only reasonable, it is generally considered worthy of respect.”
Throughout mainstream commentary, there is an unspoken assumption that if it were true that Iran is helping Iraqis to attack Coalition troops, the U.S. would be justified in retaliating. There is certainly no suggestion from any “respectable” publication that the resistance in Iraq is justified, and that therefore Iran should be praised for supporting it. That such an obvious argument has been totally excluded from the mainstream debate tells us a lot about the honesty of our intellectual culture and the integrity of our “free press”.
The issue of “supporting the troops” is a sensitive one – families who have sons or daughters serving in Iraq do not want to hear that attacks on them may be justified. That is completely understandable – the soldiers serving in Iraq are just kids, often from a deprived background, who trusted and were let down by their governments who sent them into an illegal and immoral war of choice. Indeed, the wish to shield the troops from further harm is a major factor in the movement to bring them home. But we must not let the Bush administration’s hijack of our strong, emotional desire to protect the troops convince us that an attack on Iran would be justified in order to defend them.
Filed under: Iraq, Media, News and politics, US | 44 Comments
Tags: International & Foreign Policy, occupation, resistance, Terrorism, War
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Sadly the people who most need to understand this are going to dispute your facts and substitute whatever Michael Savage talking points they need to continue to believe in Bush’s Tarzan school of foreign policy: “Me good, you bad.” Sigh, well put though.
JMO —Doug
Excellent post. I wrote about this subject last year as well, when I discovered the same graph you used as well.
unitedcats: Thanks. Disputing the facts is perfectly OK, although I’d certainly prefer it if people left their Michael Savage talking points in the toilet, where they belong.
Martin Wisse: Thanks. Good post yourself, an’ all.
Jamie – This is a good and informative post, so sorry to focus on the bit I’m not so sure about.
You say: “the insurgency is separate from the sectarian conflict, despite the deliberate conflation of the two by the media and government officials”
I think this point requires a bit more investigation. Not particularly by you personally but by reporters, academics and anyone concerned with the situation. I’ve been following this closely (as closely as one can from London anyway) since the beginning and I’ve simply not seen anything that could lead me to state, with confidence, that there is a clear dividing line between forces attacking the occupation on the one hand and forces attacking civilians on the other.
There’s hints that this might be the case. E.g. the apparent periodic fighting between insurgent groups, tribesmen on the one hand and foreign fighters on the other. But that’s by no means something that conclusively backs your assessment. Its quite possible that the same groups that attack US troops also attack civilians. Some say they don’t, but there’s little way of knowing whether they’re telling the truth.
Unless I’ve missed it – there’s no hard evidence either way, just a lot of circumstantial stuff. In general, there’s very little solid information on the nature of the conflict and the nature of the forces lined up against the new order in Iraq. Given the lack of information, I think a lot of caution is required before making solid assessments on the nature of the resistance.
This is particularly true when we enter the territory – as anti-war activists – of “supporting the resistance”. I’m afraid I don’t see that we have a sufficiently clear idea of what we’d be supporting if we took that position. Its possible that it’d be a resistance that only ever attacked occupying troops, but that’s far from certain. And while it remains far from certain, declaring support seems incautious, ill advised – and potentially worse than that.
In Britain, our responsibilities are non-trivial. Our role is to raise the political cost of the Iraq war by setting out the case against it and persuading as many British people as possible of its merits. What we say is important. If we’re to say something as contentious as that we “support the Iraq resistance”, we’d better be a million per cent clear that this definitely doesn’t mean supporting groups that deliberately target innocent people. I don’t see that we’ve the hard evidence in front of us that means we can say that with confidence. In the absence of that hard evidence, its not just hard to defend the stance in factual and political terms, but in moral terms as well.
This is a serious factual, political and moral question. You’re quite right to raise it, and you’ve shed a lot of light on what’s happening. But the lack of factual data warrants a strong note of caution.
thanks, thats was a good read and really informative
David: Thanks for your detailed response. I have not personally investigated deeply into the question of whether or not those Iraqis who are involved in fighting the occupation are also involved in sectarian violence and targeting civilians, and perhaps I should do. Every analysis I have read says that Iraqi resistance fighters do not on the whole target civilians – see here, for example. Human Rights Watch says that the “insurgency” can basically be divided into the puritanical Islamist jihadists (al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, etc.), former Ba’athists and Saddamists (Saddam’s Fedayin and al-Awda, for example) and Sunni nationalists. The first two groups, particularly the jihadists, are responsible for the majority of the attacks on civilians, beheadings, etc. The third group, however, “generally appear to limit their attacks to military targets, and some have condemned attacks on civilians.”
Also, analyses of the resistance tend to say that the primary motive driving most people to join resistance movements is not to take part in a wider Islamic war, and it’s not to get Saddam back in power – it’s simply the nationalist desire to expel to foreign troops, who are seen as colonisers and human rights abusers. For example, a Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder cites Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the CFR, as describing nationalism (as opposed to Ba’athism or Islamism) as, “the strongest force [in insurgencies]“. And, as HRW watch notes, these nationalist-driven resistance groups are far less likely to target civilians than the smaller Ba’athist and Islamist factions.
But, as I say, I certainly don’t know for sure that those Iraqis who fight in the resistance do not also fight in the sectarian conflict – although regardless, the resistance and the sectarian conflict are different in many important respects, and the conflation of the two is false. I wasn’t necessarily advocating that we support those Iraqis who are fighting against the occupation so much as I was raising the question, and highlighting the knee-jerk demonisation and delegitimisation of the resistance throughout mainstream commentary.
luke: cheers!
Thanks for your response, Jamie.
I think you’re probably quite right to say that “the primary motive driving most people to join resistance movements is not to take part in a wider Islamic war, and it’s not to get Saddam back in power – it’s simply the nationalist desire to expel to foreign troops, who are seen as colonisers and human rights abusers”. You’re also right to note that the occupiers present the resistance in a certain light – one that has little regard to the facts and that suits their own position. These are important factors in understanding the nature of what’s happening in Iraq and more honest, informed and thoughtful reviews of the facts, like yours here, are definitely called for. As I say, mine was just a note of caution.
For example, the fact that a minority of attacks target civilians doesn’t on its own say very much about whether there’s a clean split between those that target civilians and those that target the occupying troops. And note that whilst HRW identifies (probably quite correctly) those three categories within the insurgency, it also notes that “these categories overlap”.
And as for “supporting the resistance” – I wasn’t really singling you out, more talking about a debate that needs to be had within parts of the left when this subject is discussed in this way. I had a similarish debate on Hezbollah with folks at Lenin’s Tomb and on my own site during the war last summer. Have a look if you’re interested.
in the comments here
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/08/ooh-aah-hezbollah.html
and here
http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk/2006/08/war-on-terror-in-pictures.html
Hi David,
No, but when taken together with the the apparent motives for attack, it does. We know for a fact that attacks against the Coalition are overwhelmingly aimed at military targets. The question is: do those who fight legitimately against the occupation also kill civilians as part of the sectarian conflict? I think that on the whole it’s unlikely, because the motives that induce most resistance fighters to take up arms seem to conflict with engaging in sectarian violence. We can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that most of the fighters who make up the resistance are fighting with a nationalist agenda. They picked up arms not out of some Islamist or Ba’athist ideology, but because they saw what Coalition forces were doing to Iraq and to Iraqis and felt they had to resist. This motive for fighting does not appear in any way to induce these nationalist resistance fighters to also kill civilians as part of the sectarian conflict. On the contrary: these Iraqis were so horrified at the violence being meted out on their fellow citizens by the occupying forces that they felt it necessary to take up arms to defend them. It seems unlikely that these same people would then go on to deliberately kill Iraqis themselves as part of the sectarian conflict.
There’s also the circumstantial evidence you mention. But yes, as you say, we should certainly be cautious in supporting groups that may plausibly be engaging in criminal acts.
On a side note, I read through the two very interesting discussions you linked to. I disagree with both you and commentators at the Tomb about Hizbullah. The Lenin’s Tomb people seemed to be arguing that in a war, you have to pick sides, even if neither side is perfect. On this, I’m with you – the only ’side’ we should be supporting is that of international law.
However, I disagree with you on another point: I think it is possible that Hizbullah did not commit war crimes by firing katyushas onto Israeli cities. It all depends on whether they deliberately targeted civilians – Jonathan Cook’s article, together with the inherent inaccuracy of katyusha rockets and the fact that Hizbullah’s civilian:soldier kill ratio was much lower than Israel’s, lead me to believe that it is certainly plausible that Nasrallah was not intentionally targeting civilians.
You argue that this is irrelevent, since Hizbullah are responsible for the predictable consequences of their actions. They are not only responsible for their targeting, but also for their means of attack. The fact that Hizbullah fired katyusha rockets towards Israeli cities, knowing how inaccurate they are and so knowing that civilian casualties were likely to result, is enough to qualify as a war crime.
I disagree. Firstly, we should recognise that Hizbullah is a non-state actor, and so is not bound by all the laws that, say, Israel is. This is not just a pedantic point – if you look at things like the Geneva Conventions, you can see that they were only intended to apply to states, and often make no sense when applied to non-state gorups. However, Hizbullah is bound by the basic laws of war that apply to everyone. These can fundamentally be boiled down to: don’t kill people for the hell of it. Only use what force is absolutely necessary for self-defence. I would also argue that these basic rules of war prohibit the deliberate targeting of civilians, in any circumstances.
However, if Hizbullah aimed for military targets, even knowing that civilian casualties were likely, and those attacks were necessary, then I don’t think you can call them criminal. What applicable law did they violate? It is important to recognise that what you are effectively saying is that the use of violence is only permissable by states. Non-state groups like Hizbullah inevitably don’t have the hi-tech weaponry required to ensure that when they aim for a military target, civilians won’t accidently be hit instead. If you argue that Hizbullah, even though it was fighting in self-defence, could not fire at Israel’s military sites because the only weapons they had were pretty inaccurate and so they couldn’t be sure that civilians wouldn’t be hit instead, what you are effectively doing is denying Hizbullah (and all non-state actors) the right to self-defence. You are ensuring that states hold a monopoly on violence.
Come to think of it, even going by the more stringent international laws that apply only to states, Hizbullah’s actions were legal. The principle of proportionality states,
If it is the case that Hizbullah’s katyusha strikes were necessary in order to defend themselves, then it must also be the case that the attacks were proportional. Hizbullah was fighting for its survival, remember. If the katyusha strikes were not necessary for Hizbullah to defend themselves, then they would have been illegitimate whether aimed at civilian or military targets, since the use of force is only justifiable in self-defence.
Therefore, if Hizbullah did not deliberately target civilians, and if the katyusha attacks were necessary for Hizbullah to defend itself, then the katyusha strikes were legal.
For an interesting discussion on precisely this topic, see the comments at the end of this article. There, I debated with a guy called David Byron over the legality of Hizbullah’s katyusha attacks: he argued that they were legal, I argued they weren’t. I made some errors and didn’t always put up the best argument, but we got there in the end, and he certainly convinced me that if Hizbullah did not deliberately target civilians, then a reasonable person could call the katyusha strikes legal. It’s an interesting read.
Sorry for being a bit rambling – hopefully you can understand what I’m getting at.
(I know you’ve already written a lot on this and I don’t expect you to re-start that whole conversation again – just giving my point of view).
excellent post! very interesting…
jamie:
i was disappointed that there was no discussion by you or any of the commentators so far about the so-called salvador option (i.e., death squads), which was publicly announced by the conquistadoras in baghdad about two years ago. it is apparently housed in the official government (interior ministry?) in iraq and operates as Special Police Commandos, if i recall correctly. many commentators attribute a lot of the “sectarian” divide and resultant civilian deaths to just such an entity. do i have this wrong?
Abu: Cheers!
steve: I thought that was irrelevent to the particular issue I was writing about here, namely: the legitimacy of the Iraqi Resistance and the total blackout of any reasonable debate on the issue in the mainstream. About the El Salvador option: a good article to read on the topic (one of many) is by Edward Herman, entitled ‘Iraq: The Genocide Option‘. He agrees that the Salvador option has been implemented but, as you can guess from the title, argues that the U.S. has or is about to go further.
Excellent post!
Well I had some major disagreement with this post. It sounds an awful lot like you are projecting your beliefs onto the insurgents, assuming they are waging war against the coalition for the same reasons you would be waging war against the coalition, if you could. But unless you are closely involved with them somehow you don’t really know their motives and objectives that well.
Your speculation of no connection between insurgent violence and sectarian/terrorist violence also strikes me as dubious. You may be projecting a western sense of national pluralism onto the insurgents, but a Sunni insurgent’s sense of “Iraq” may be inextricably connected to the Sunni domination that he was accustomed to. Hence attacking US troops and murdering Shia civilians could seem perfectly consistent to him, not inconsistent as you claim.
Well, I have linked to some academic analyses of the motives behind the resistance. The president emeritus Council on Foreign Relations, for instance, says that although there are elements in the resistance that are fighting for a return to Ba’athist rule, or the establishment of Islamic rule (mostly foreign fighters in this small category), the “strongest force” in the resistance movement is nationalism:
Now, it is true that many Sunnis fear a Shi’te-led government, and with good reason – government sponsored Shi’ite death squads have been cleansing Sunnis from Baghdad, for example. But these fighters are most definitely fighting the occupation, and are taking care not to kill Iraqi civilians (they are ‘less likely to target Iraqi civilians or engage in suicide bombings’). Whilst it is possible that these nationalists are also engaged in the sectarian conflict, there is no evidence to support this. According to Sheik Jawad Al Khalisi, leader of the Iraqi National Foundation Conference,
Fred Kaplan, analysing an official report, wrote in Slate that, “In other words, as much as was the case a year or two ago, the Iraqi insurgency is primarily an anti-occupation insurgency.”
According to Ahmed S. Hashim, professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, the insurgency can be split into three basic groups: the Islamists, the Ba’athists and the, “Nationalist and patriotic individuals and insurgent groups who resent the U.S. presence and are angered by U.S. failure to restore law and order, and by U.S. operational methods perceived as deliberately humiliating to Iraqis and their honor.”
Human Rights Watch say that this group – the nationalists – “generally appear to limit their attacks to military targets, and some have condemned attacks on civilians.” We can see from the data showing that the vast majority of resistance attacks are aimed at military targets that this nationalist group makes up the main component of the insurgency (because the other two do target civilians). In any event, everyone agrees that the Ba’athists and foreign jihadists make up only a small proportion of the resistance.
So, we have the Sunni nationalists who favour a unified Iraq and who are fighting to oppose the U.S.-led occupation. They overwhelmingly do not target civilians. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the sectarian attacks on civilians are not perpetrated by them. We don’t know for sure, but that’s what seems reasonable, and there is no evidence that I know of that points to the contrary. The real culprits for the civilian massacres are likely to be al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadis, Shi’ite death squads and the occupying forces.
The resistance is completely different to the sectarian conflict in the sense that it has different goals and employs different methods. It is possible that some fighters (other than the foreign jihadists) involved in the resistance are ALSO engaged in sectarian killings, although there is no evidence of this and it seems unlikely.
We don’t know for sure – however, what’s interesting is that, as I pointed out, the question is simply never raised in the mainstream debate. It is automatically taken for granted that since these Iraqis are fighting against the U.S., they must be bad. That is, I think, very telling.
(Incidentally: I am male, not female!)
Thank you so much, Jamie.
I myself have had to undertake a considerable effort to prove to people that the Iraqi resistance is indeed Iraqi. I’ve used a lot of these statistics provided by you, but you’ve presented them much better than I could ever hope to do.
I’m going to be referring lots of people to this post on your blog.
your idea is too long to read.
hoop to my blog to see the animation.
(formerly Urael) Another excellent post, Jamie. I have to admit I’m a little bit in awe of your ability to gather, sort and present information clearly on subjects that are usually horrendously complicated. My own experiment with somthing similar has ended (although I have another Blog), but your example inspires me to have another go in the near future!
On the topic, we’ve been fed a relentless diet of lies, lies and more damn lies by our political leaders concerning Iraq (and indeed most other subjects) for over a decade now (since the start of the Blair/Bush era). The Iraqi ‘insurgents’ are indigenous? I think deep down anyone who has opposed the War knew this – in their shoes, would we not rise up against an invasion force that sought to take control of our natural resources? But it’s nice to have it proven. Makes a mockery of the US concern over Iran, too, which has long been slandered with the accusation of ‘feeding’ terrorists, and terrorism, into the area.
This is important work you’re doing here – long may it continue!
kronstadter: Thanks!
GrantTLC: Cheers. The resistance has indeed been demonised, but as David Wearing suggested above, we should be cautious in pronouncing our unqualified support for them. In any event, the idea that Iran is helping the Sunni resistance doesn’t seem plausible. More likely is that it is helping the Shi’ite militias, which do target civilians. However, they don’t target U.S. troops, which is what Bush & Co. are trying to claim. They also happen to be the same folks we are supporting.
I think what’s most interesting about this is the way discussions of this topic have been ignored so completely in the mainstream. It is assumed as self-evident that the resistance is illegitimate and terroristic, because they are fighting “us”. That tells us a lot, I think.
We live in a country where anyone who takes up arms to any degree against American interests, at least what the Bush administration labels as American interests…are routinely labelled lock, stock, and barrel as “terrorists.” And the mainstream media does this without even being asked. This is an interesting contrast to the Vietnam War where peace activists got the media to stop referring to North Vietnamese combatants as the “enemy” since we weren’t legally at war with North Vietnam. So the media has gone about a thousand miles to the right since then, yet right wing pundits still decry the “liberal” bias in the media. Jesus wept. JMO —Doug
I wasn’t around for Vietnam, but there’s no doubt about the establishment bias of the mainstream media. It’s been shown time and again, and has been structurally explained – see Chomsky and Herman’s media propaganda model.
Incidentally, the graph I included in this post only goes up to 2005. To see the version that goes up to October 2006, see here.
Wow, great blog, I’m lucky to have stumbled across it ;p.
I’ve read the posts, and there’s really not much that I can contribute at this point, I wish I got into it a little earlier!
My perception of Iraq was one of a country torn by sectarian division… Which I suppose it still, is – but I had no idea that the nationalist resistance was, as the graphs indicate, the main (and most ‘popular’) faction.
I guess I can muster up a few questions…
The number of Iraqi civillians dead is probably approaching around 600-700,000 now (as estimated by John Hopkins University study… it does probably have quite a large margin of error, but regardless, the number of people killed is HUGE) . If sectarian violence is being overemphasized and inflated (or, if the national resistence is indeed fighting FOR Iraqis), why are there so many car/suicide bombings (awhile ago, it was almost daily ;/) of market-places, and other attacks for which there is little other explanation for, other than that they are deliberately meant to kill and injure civillians?
Is it that the sectarian groups are responsible for the majority of the civillian deaths, even though the frequency of their actions is considerably less than the resistance?
For that matter, is America behing most of the civillian casualties (I find it hard to believe that America is behind most of the civillian deaths, NOT that I believe their actions are motivated by anything other than ruthless, pragmatic self-interest… I am aware of their past support for ‘deathsquad’ type groups in East Timor ;/. Maybe, actually, it’s not so unbelievable?)?
Could it be that the resistance is operating with the intention of targeting Coalition forces, but without regard for civillian life (which would seem to run at least a little bit counter to their cause… but would the perceived end justify the means?)?
Does the sentiment of the resistance span the sectarian divide? I find it hard to believe that Shi’a would easily identify with the ‘Iraqi state’ after years of the Iraqi state being personified by Saddam Hussein’s persecution of non-supporters (mainly the Shi’a and Kurds). Iraqi nationalism was, I believe more pervasive during the 1980s and the war with Iran. The events of the 90s and the ensuing brutality, one would think, would dampen the ‘Iraqi comradery’, if you will. Do more Iraqi Shi’a ideologically align themselves with Iran? Do more Kurds see themselves as progressively more independant from the Iraqi state?
You’ll have to forgive me for any errors I’ve made, I’m no expert on the Iraq war. I’ve been studying Lebanon and Iran more, lately ;p.
Again, great blog!
Hi dksu,
Thanks for the kinds words. You say:
The graphs only talk about violence against the Coalition. Sectarian violence is not represented at all on them. What the graphs show is that of the attacks conducted by the resistance to the occupation, very few have targeted civilians.
The John Hopkins epidemiological study, which puts the estimated death toll at 650,000 Iraqis, does, if I recall correctly, conclude that a minimum of 110,000 deaths have been caused directly by the occupying forces. Some scholars say that this violence perpetrated directly by the Coalition, together with the violence perpetrated by the militias and death squads it sponsors, together account for around 90% of the total violence in Iraq. I’m not sure of this, however – I’ll have to do some more research.
There’s no doubt that the sectarian conflict is brutal and is killing thousands and thousands of Iraqis. The media is in general not biased in the sense that it overplays the sectarian violence, but in that it underplays or ignores completely the resistance or “insurgent” violence, which is (as you can see from the graph) significant and growing by the day.
I never said that sectarian violence was less frequent than resistance violence – I’m not sure, but I would say that the opposite is true. What I am saying is that the resistance (not the sectarian attacks, just the resistance) rarely targets civilians.
Undoubtedly, the majority of attacks aimed at civilians are either sectarian in nature or come from the very small foreign insurgent factions (e.g. al-Qaeda). It would therefore make sense to say that the majority of civilians have been killed by those who are primarily targeting them – the militias and the foreign jihadists. I’d have to check the numbers to be sure, though.
Well, what’s undoubtedly true is that the U.S. and its puppet government in the Green Zone have supported the Shi’ite death squads who are cleansing Baghdad of its Sunnis. Also, as I say, the John Hopkins study attributed, unless I’m mistaken, at least 110,000 deaths directly to the occupying forces. Put these two together and it’s not unbelievable at all.
It could We know for sure that a majority of the resistance attacks do not aim for civilians. We also know that a favourite method of attack are roadside bombs, which could be argued to be indiscriminate. Indeed, evidence would suggest that they are so, since the casualties of resistance attacks have been primarily civilian. However, there is a big difference between deliberately aiming for civilians and aiming for a military target and missing.
The vast majority of resistants are Sunni, although polls show that a majority of Shi’ites support their attacks on the occupying forces.
The Kurds certainly want autonomy, if not outright independence. I’m not sure about the Shi’a views on Iran – I would guess that they prefer Iran to, for instance, S. Arabia. However, there is no question of Iran trying to export its method of government to Iraq – neither it nor the Iraqis (including the Shi’ites) want this. But I’m sure many Iraqi Shi’as will be friendly towards Iran, yes.
Thanks for your comment.
Ah, alright, thanks for clearing some things up!
Just some thoughts!…:
“The vast majority of resistants are Sunni, although polls show that a majority of Shi’ites support their attacks on the occupying forces.”
This would, in some way, make sense. Some Shi’a militias, most notoriously, al-Sadr’s Mahdi crew, have fought against Western involvement in Iraq for a long time… However, radicals of this bent are the ones most responsible for the ‘death squad’ style killings, or reprisal killings (to my knowledge…). It seems that Sunnis are drawn to the resistence out of nationalist pride and a legitimate fear of the Shi’a dominated police forces. Iraqi Shi’a would lack the latter incentive to support the resistence – indeed, they may consider themselves to be safer under the protection of a Shi’a dominated sectarian government (rightly, or wrongly). Some Shi’a may actually support the resistence for just this reason – that they put pressure on the Americans, and the sooner the Americans leave, the faster some form of Shi’a dominated government will be able to provide them safety from what many may believe to be a Sunni threat, possibly equated with Saddam’s brand of Ba’athism. They could be supporting the resistance based on the pragmatic philosophy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – a saying that Khomeini was himself not shy of.
Just a few thoughts, I’m really just batting around ideas about how the resistence is really perceived by the various Iraqi peoples.
It must be difficult to really figure out what people MEAN when they make a statement like “I support the resistence”, considering all of the different groups that identify themselves with the idea of a legitimate resistence in Iraq at the moment ;p.
Thanks for the response!
Insane levels of ignorance are required to swallow the thesis of a legitimate Iraqi resistance to occupation as characterizing what is going on in Iraq today.
The Sunni nationalists are not “resisting” US occupation in the name of Iraq , they are resisting Shia domination, which they believe they can reverse without a US presence. Though now there are signs that they are actually seeking an extension of the US presence to protect them form a Shia backlash that they themselves have done so much to provoke.
Likewise both the Sadrists and Badrists have largely predicated their waxing and waning support for US occupation on the extent to which it serves their own ends – for all the fiery anti US rhetoric from Mookie, or the more measured rhetoric of the Badr brigades – they have been simultaneously attacking US forces whilst also co-operating with them when it meets their sectarian aims – or simply because they have not themselves been strong enough to take on the Sunni insurgency.
As for Iraqi Kurds the idea that they are opposed to the US presence is simply idiotic.
You also confuse the degree to which the insurgency is indigenous with it’s legitimacy. Domestic US terrorism might well be opposed to the Government and near 100% indigenous – being composed of Neo Nazi Nativists – none of which grants it any wider legitimacy. Likewise being indigenous does not preclude the dominance of Al Queada – certainly in the Sunni insurgency- Micheal Ware form Time Magazine has covered in detail the increasing dominance of Al Queada ideology in a Sunni insurgency initially dominated by Baathist’s. This has less to do with total numbers, but with the influence of money and ideology. There were perhaps no more than 100 Arab wahabist fighters assisting the Chechen insurgency against Yeltsin’s Russia in 1996, which was dominated by largely secular Nationalist’s, and yet within 2 years of de-facto independence Dudayev was essentially on the same page as the Islamists, and they were trying to destabilise the Caucusus via Dagestan. Besaln was a similar style of operation.
The graph of attacks from MFN Iraq does not include 2006 – when the ineffectiveness of anti-coalition attacks saw increasing reliance on attacks on the Civilian populace and the startegy of focussing on sparking a civil war. But even before the reporting systems meant that many of the attacks that do get recorded against the coalition – even including the small arms attack – don’t get recorded for the attacks on Iraqi civilians – whether the murders by death squads, the random mortaring of markets and mosques, the frequent drive bys etc etc. The discrepancy when it comes to resultant casulaties is of course even more stark – Iraqi civilians are being killed in their many tens of thousands, and overwhlemingly at the hands of your “legitimate resistance”, who you are openly calling to be supported. And this is no collateral damage – these are deliberate homicidal attacks of people chosen at random and killed in the most cruel and despicable manner – at their markets and mosques and schools , kidnapped and tortured or disapeared and executed – in scores of incidents every day. Iraqi’s do not support them, they hate them, and they unlike you, have absolutely no compunction about referring to them as terrorists and Al queada. A documetary called Baghdad Doctor is worth watching for a harrowing look at a hospital in the midst of the Insurgent violence. It was shot by an Iraqi doctor inside an Iraqi hospital. There was absolutley zero talk of “resistance to the occupation” amongst people who experience at first hand the insurgent tactics, and I think if you had walked into that hospital expounding your thesis about the Iraqi resistance you might be lucky to escape with your life for being party to such moral idiocy.
Zogby is not the only poll that has been conducted in Iraq, and is an outlier in terms of it’s results. And it should be remembered that the desire to see the end of the occupation (shared not least by the occupiers themselves) is not something from which one can infer support for the insurgents – who are in fact little more than a variety of sectarian thugs or religious nihilists.
And whilst you may personally think Zunes or Ritter or Chomsky or Tariq Ali or Juan Cole are more authortative than Krauthammer, Baeummont, Ignatieff, Talabani, Bush, Freidman on the subject of the insurgency but beyond mere assertion you have not actually made a case for why this might be so beyond mere vigorous assertion.
You proceed to indulge, in defense of this idiocy, in the most facile of moral and historical equivalences – such as between the Anti Soviet campaign in Afghanistan or Anti-Nazi resistance in Europe – which only serves to highlight the facile reductionism you have employed in coming to your thesis in the first place.
A commenter at Kos by the name of Rohan, who has actually done two tours in Iraq makes points worth repeating:
He points out that there is no evidences of a clean seperation between insurgents responsible for attacks on US forces and those attacking Iraqi civilians , and points to Jill Carrol’s reports from her captivity as to how the sunni insurgents viewed their war:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html
In addition he points out the difference in reporting which makes the graph you cite dreadfully misleading to quote him:
“There is a problem with that GAO graph too, and this part is not your fault. The way the data is collected is dreadfully misleading. I have personally complained up the chain about this, with no luck yet. Of course any report put out by the Department of Defense (where the GAO got the graph) lists attacks on US military far out of proportion to all others. This is not an attempt at deception, but its because the military faithfully reports each and every incident on itself while attacks on Iraqi forces are often unreported. This happens because Iraqis are not very diligent at reporting, and in their culture its useless to keep reporting redundant information (for example, they often refused to report that one of their checkpoints received small arms fire every day, because it had become such an everyday occurence). It also gets lost in the reporting chain, since Iraqi reports have to go through several levels and be translated into English on the American side. This lack of reporting is especially true for civilians. When a dead body is found in a neighborhood, the neighbors tell the Iraqi police, and the coaliton hears about most of them eventually, but dead bodies found are usually not reported as attacks, especially when the manner of death was unknown.
Here’s another way to look at it: On a typical day in Baghdad, between 30-60 Iraqi civilians are killed or found murdered and dumped throughout the city, while maybe 1 or 2 US soldiers are killed. Care to explain that discrepency? You can call it terrorism or freedom fighting if you want, but either way, Iraqis are attacking each other at a far, far higher rate than they are attacking US forces.”
Jamie – thanks for your response. Just a couple of points by way of reply
Firstly, you say most of the insurgents are likely to have
“picked up arms not out of some Islamist or Ba’athist ideology, but because they saw what Coalition forces were doing to Iraq and to Iraqis and felt they had to resist. This motive for fighting does not appear in any way to induce these nationalist resistance fighters to also kill civilians as part of the sectarian conflict. On the contrary: these Iraqis were so horrified at the violence being meted out on their fellow citizens by the occupying forces that they felt it necessary to take up arms to defend them. It seems unlikely that these same people would then go on to deliberately kill Iraqis themselves as part of the sectarian conflict.”
No arguments about the fact that the basic reason for the insurgency as far as most of the ordinary foot soldiers is concerned is likely to be nationalism. But two things to say about this. Firstly, we do not know to what extent the insurgency is ‘owned’ by the ordinary Iraqi people. Granted it is a pretty amorphous entity. But there are command structures and it is quite likely that many if not all of these are controlled by elements of the former regime, and al Qaeda in some cases, who’ll have the necessary skill and resources to take on that role.
Secondly, it seems pretty clear that the insurgency started out as pan-Iraqi (see Sadrist-Fallujah based insurgents co-operation in 2004) but most societies – no matter how cohesive they were initially, would break down along sectarian ethnic lines as national state structures collapse to the extent they have in Iraq. The level of sectarian violence is undoubtedly increasing, a dynamic which feeds on itself, and this only complicates the picture further. For many, Iraqi nationalism may have become less important than loyalty to clan, tribe even sect as the multifarious conflict evolves.
Again, we’re playing a guessing game. So my initial point stands. We simply do not know enough about the Iraqi insurgency to come to too definite conclusions about its nature.
I think you’re taking a thoughtful and informed approach to this. Which is welcome. Its a shame more people can’t manage the same but hopefully writing like yours will encourage that approach. It was particularly disappointing at yesterday’s march, for example, to hear some fella bellowing into a megaphone about “victory to the Iraqi resistance” as we made our way through crowds of shoppers in Picadilly. Whatever the guy meant, this is the left supporting terrorism as far as many of those people will have been concerned. God knows how many hearts and minds the anti war campaign lost as a rseult. I’m afraid situations like this aren’t in the least bit condusive to cheap slogans. We have a duty the people of Iraq to win the political and moral argument in the UK to the extent necessary to end our government’s involvement in this whole sorry business. Its a gross abrogation of that responsibility to indulgence in that sort of behaviour.
On Hezbollah, Nasrallah explicitly stated that civilians had been deliberately targeted. You can agree or disagree with his justifications, but the fact is that this is what they did. Several quotes here:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde020252006
dksu:
Perhaps – I mean certainly, the reason for supporting the resistance is a desire to see the occupation end. Why people might want this is also not too obscure – the occupying forces have killed over 100,000 Iraqis and are responsible for the devastation of Iraqi society, and they support the death squads that are tearing Iraq apart. Polls show that most Iraqis feel that the occupation is part of the problem, not the solution.
Who – Iraqis or Western anti-war protestors? I would say that although al-Qaeda and so on call themselves part of the resistance, they are not really, since they are not fighting in self-defence and they are fighting with goals other than expelling the occupiers. In any case, they are not fighting legitimately, since they target civilians.
A legitimate resistance would be one that struggles with the aim of expelling the occupation and is directed at military targets. The question is whether such a resistance exists in Iraq. I think probably it does, but as David Wearing says, we can’t be certain of this.
David:
Well, from what I’ve read it is the opposite with the case of al-Qaeda: the Sunni insurgents sometimes use al-Qaeda fighters to achieve certain goals, but in general are not allied with them.
We can see from the data that most resistance attacks do not target civilians. Therefore, either the people who ‘run’ the resistance have instructed the foot-soldiers not to target civilians, or they have no real influence on the foot-soldiers. Assuming it is the former, it again seems unlikely that they would instruct the resistance fighters to take such care in only aiming at military targets and then tell them to go around slaughtering Iraqis in the sectarian conflict.
The fact that a majority of both Shi’ites and Sunnis support the resistance is another indicator that the resistance fighters are not generally involved in the sectarian conflict. If they were, it is unlikely that there would be much support for them amongst the Shi’ite population.
Certainly, but the resistance movement is supported by both Sunnis and Shi’ites.
I agree that proclaiming support for groups regarded by most people as terrorists is not a good move, tactically speaking. Morally, I agree that we should be careful in expressing support for people who may be involved in terrorism or other criminal acts.
However, I’m also conscious of the fact that in a situation like this, where there is not much honest reporting on Iraq and where in any event the resistance is very complicated and hard to analyse, it may be unreasonable to demand 100% certainty about everything before making a judgement. Rarely are we granted the luxury of knowing everything about everyone relevant before taking a position – we have to do the best we can. We do need a certain amount of knowledge, and perhaps we really don’t know enough about the actions of the resistance fighters to justify expressing support for them.
But I doubt we could ever be in the position of knowing for sure that the resistance fighters are also involved in sectarian violence. I think a reasonable standard of certainty is required, but that standard falls short of 100% certainty.
As to Nasrallah – well, regardless of what he said, his actions (at least if you believe Jonathan Cook) indicate he did not deliberately target civilians. However, if he did, then I agree that that Hizbullah committed crimes.
Hi Jamie
“We can see from the data that most resistance attacks do not target civilians. Therefore, either the people who ‘run’ the resistance have instructed the foot-soldiers not to target civilians, or they have no real influence on the foot-soldiers.”
Or they attack troops most of the time and civilians less of the time, but attack both at various points. As I said before, the fact that a minority of attacks target civilians doesn’t on its own say very much about whether there’s a clean split between those that target civilians and those that target the occupying troops.
“The fact that a majority of both Shi’ites and Sunnis support the resistance is another indicator that the resistance fighters are not generally involved in the sectarian conflict. If they were, it is unlikely that there would be much support for them amongst the Shi’ite population.”
There are different insurgent groups throughout the country. Shias doubtless support Shia tribesman mortaring UK bases for example. Its difficult to talk meaningfully about “the resistance” when its such a broad and fragmented phenomenon.
On levels of certainty – I take your point, but we’re not obliged to declare support or opposition to the resistance (which I’ve always seen as superfluous grandstanding to put it bluntly, e.g. fella with the megaphone yesterday). As part of our campaigning against our own government we’re obliged to understand what’s happening as best we can, the better to inform our campaigning. Part of that – if our evolving understanding is to be something meaningful and useful – means accepting the existence of uncertainty and complexity when the information’s inadequate or unclear.
Look, I agree about the substance of what you’re saying here. The insurgency and general violence exists in the main not because of Islamist/sectarian/Arab pathologies but because we’re illegitimately occupying someone else’s country against the will of its people. I don’t doubt that most of the Iraqi insurgents have joined the insurgency for the same reasons that you or I may join an insurgency if we suffered their experiences ourselves. But we don’t know anywhere near enough about the insurgency’s structure, the groups involved and so on to say with any certainty that there really exists amidst all this what’s sometimes called an “honourable insurgency”.
On Nasrallah – one thing you can say about the man is that he’s straightforward. If he says they targeted civilians then there’s little reason to think they didn’t.
genwolf:
On what basis do you say that? Certainly Sunnis are afraid of a Shi’ite controlled government, and for good reason. They are also strongly opposed to the occupation, so much so that many take up arms to fight against it.
Initially, Shi’ite militias were involved in attacking occupying troops. Then, as the sectarian conflict grew, they stopped because, as you say, co-operating with occupying troops to cleanse the Sunnis from Baghdad (for example) met their sectarian aims.
Who said they were?
But most resistance fighters are not fighting with the Islamist aims of al-Qaeda or the Ba’athist aims of Saddam loyalists. Their tactics – avoiding civilian targets – are not consistent with those espoused by al-Qaeda or the former Ba’athists.
In the comments above (I think it was comment #21), I provided a link to a graph including 2006. It confirms that the majority of resistance attacks continued to be directed against military targets.
Where’s your evidence? From what I’ve read, I think the majority of civilian casualties are perpetrated either by coalition forces or the sectarian death squads they support. And I am not calling for anyone to be “supported” – I am highlighting the fact that such an obvious and reasonable argument has been ignored so totally from the mainstream debate.
If you’re talking about sectarian militias, then yes, I agree. If you’re talking about the resistance, then this is once again an unevidenced assertion. The data suggests otherwise.
Again, the data suggests otherwise.
No; I’m talking about polls that explicitly asked about support for the insurgency/resistance. And you’re right – Zogby is not the only poll. Nor is it the only poll I linked to.
Not “moral equivalence” again…
Assuming you’re talking about the sectarian violence – there is circumstantial evidence. It hasn’t been investigated, and it should be. We don’t know for sure – and I totally accept that.
As to the accuracy of the graph – given the source and given that it’s conclusion is supported by all the other analyses I’ve read (HRW, for example) – I’ll need actual evidence as opposed to mere conjecture to show its inaccuracy.
But that’s assuming that the people responsible for the civilian deaths are not sectarian militias, are not the coalition and are not foreign jihadists or former Ba’athists. It’s an assumption you haven’t justified. It is true, however, that although the majority of resistance attacks are targeted at U.S.-led troops, the primary victims of the attacks are civilians. This is due to the inaccurate nature of the weaponry used.
OK, I agree with this. I do think it should be investigated further, and I do think it is important to highlight the demonisation of the resistance and the hypocrisy of those doing the demonising.
“I do think it is important to highlight the demonisation of the resistance and the hypocrisy of those doing the demonising.”
very much agree with the sentiment and your excellent attempt to do just this, and hope my criticism doesn’t detract from that.
Thanks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1989397,00.html
”The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans’
Any thoughts?
Well, if representative, then it is a shame. It shows that the “salvador option” strategy of divide and rule has worked, together with al-Qaeda’s disastrous attacks on civilians. Even that article shows the division within the movement – one guy says, “We are fighting to liberate our country from the occupations of the Americans and their Iranian-Shia stooges”, and another disagrees, saying, “Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia.”
It makes sense that as the civil war -sparked by government-backed death squads and al-Qaeda jihadists – intensifies, more and more resistance fighters will turn from fighting the occupation to fighting the Shi’a. That, as I say, is a real shame, since the sectarian violence is extremely damaging for Iraqis (not least those who are murdered as a result) and to the fight against the occupation.
(If you mean with regards to the article above – it doesn’t effect it much. The point was to highlight the hypocrisy of those who demonise the resistance, and some of the myths they use to do it. If it is true, though, that there is no ‘honourable insurgency’, then it definitely means that we shouldn’t be supporting it. Which is fine in any case since, as David says, expressing “support” for the insurgency is effectively meaningless gesture politics).
Yep. We should definately support the Resistance(which ever faction or group you happen to like) in its’ wonderful mission of exterminating all other people who are infidels, apostates or somehow disagree.
And when exactly was the last time you where in Iraq? How often did you go to an Iraqi Police station and see the bodies bound and gagged with one shot to the head? You can spout all the crap you want and make up whatever you think is necessary but until you dee it first hand you know not a damn thing. Spend a year there and then tell me you applaud the Iran providing weapons that kill and injure your friends, your fellow soldiers. Spend time there seeing innocent men, women, and children (yes children killed for no apparent reason other than they like us soldiers) and then tell me you applaud the insurgents.
The CPGB-ML is one of only two groups I know of in UK calling for victory to iraqi’s. this is their leaflet from demo:
In Iraq, the year 2006 closed with the judicial murder of president Saddam Hussein, the death of the 3,000th US soldier, the slaughter of nearly 700,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children, and the wholesale destruction of Iraqi towns and villages.
Defeat for imperialism
For all the carnage and devastation wreaked by it on Iraq, and the murder of its president, US and British imperialism are staring in the face of a most ignominious defeat.
The resistance attacks on the occupation forces have become ever more lethal and frequent – running at 180 a day. Even the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad is no longer under the control of the occupation forces and its puppets.
Everyone, except perhaps a small clique of neo-conservative lunatics, is agreed on two things. First, that the Iraq war has been a total disaster for Anglo-American imperialism; second, that the imperialist occupiers have already lost the war, and lost it big time.
Everyone, from respectable bourgeois think tanks to the political and ideological representatives of Anglo-American imperialism, as well as the serving soldiers in Iraq, is, with increasing frequency, embracing these obvious truths.
Even that war criminal and inveterate liar, British prime minister Tony Blair, when asked, during his appearance on al-Jazeera television, whether the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq had “so far been pretty much of a disaster”, replied: “It has.”
And US president Bush’s stubborn refusal to recognise reality has begun to crack. Whereas in October 2006, he was saying “absolutely we are winning in Iraq”, a mere two months later, in the run up to Christmas, he was obliged to backtrack, with the words “we’re not winning, we’re not losing”.
Bush’s new secretary of defence, Robert Gates, during the Congressional confirmation proceedings, on being asked whether the US was winning the war, replied: “No, sir.”
Futile measures
Hot on the heels of Bush’s election debacle came the bombshell from the Iraq Study Group (ISG), whose report makes clear that the Iraq war has been a disaster; that the US must find a way to extricate itself from this war by handing over the mess of its own creation to its Iraqi puppets; and that in the end the US may have no option other than to withdraw its forces while blaming the puppet Iraqi government for its own complete failure.
Instead of accepting the face-saving recommendations of the ISG report for an exit from Iraq, President Bush has announced, as expected, a ‘surge’ in American forces by an addition of 21,500 troops.
Lies exposed
Yet the very attempt to increase US troop levels in Iraq is an admission that all past US efforts at pacifying Baghdad, let alone the whole of Iraq, have been a total failure, even though all along Bush and his cronies were feeding the world the lie that America was winning the war and the ‘terrorists’ were on the run.
Further, the latest surge in US troop levels is an admission that the Iraqi puppet government faces an imminent collapse if it is not propped up by additional imperialist soldiers, even though all along the world was being fed the lie that the Iraqi government, this tiny collection of despicable stooges, represented the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.
Now it is clear that the Iraqi ‘government’ represents only the interests of US imperialism, along with a handful of its venal stooges brought back from their émigré existence abroad on US tanks and with no social base in Iraq.
Tables turned
As a matter of fact, the US lost the war in Iraq quite some time ago. And with it, the strategy pursued by US imperialism, particularly by the Bush administration, has gone up in smoke.
A war waged for domination has turned into an instrument for undermining US domination to such an extent that it faces expulsion from the Middle East.
So it is that the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq marks a crushing defeat for Anglo-American imperialism, a source of great joy for all progressive humanity.
StW Coalition cowardice
It is still not too late for the anti-war movement to belatedly cast aside all prevarication and declare itself in solidarity with those whose courage and determination has brought our imperialist masters to such a pass.
No single political step would do more to weaken the cords that bind the British working class to social democracy than such a frank assertion of solidarity.
The leadership of the Stop the War Coalition has disgraced itself by choosing this moment to turn its back on the triumph of the Iraqi resistance, doing its damnedest to lock the whole anti-war movement behind the narrow, bourgeois-pacifist agenda of CND.
Our watchword remains, as ever,
Victory to the Iraqi resistance!
javid, thanks for the comment.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with it, nor with many of the other positions held by the CPGD. (For example, this statement:
is just ridiculous. Saddam was a murderous tyrant who perpetrated gross war crimes and crimes against humanity against Iran and against his own people. One has to accept that, regardless of one’s views on the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation.)
The leaflet you quote doesn’t show that the resistance fighters are not involved in the sectarian killing, and it doesn’t show that violent resistance is, in this case, morally justified. In my opinion, although Iraqis have a right to resist using violence if necessary, taking into account the human costs of violent resistance, and the alternatives to violence, and the chances of success, etc. etc., I don’t think violent resistance is moral here.
Well done, I hope the foolish u.s. army will leave iraq, like Obama always “promises”…
but it’s a shame, that the wants to reinforce the presence of the u.s.-army in afghanistan!! (???)
that doesn’t make sence, or not??
I mean , a good portion of the terrorists in the middle east, is fighting for the iraqi freedom.. I could get ubset for hours about these ass-holes..(Bush&co)
And I’m ashamed that Germany , where I’m comming from, is helping them in Afghanistan.. but I hope that there won’t be any attacks in germany, because the hole population is against this foolish operations of George W. Bush!
I hope our German cabinet gets reasonable.. Wish you all the best!
Hope everthing will be fine. Greets from Germany…-.-
Thanks for this. I support the Iraqi Resistance as I would support the British or the American Resistance should any foreign entity invade either of those or any other countries.
It seems that people like to get bogged down in Iraqi politics, which is indeed an interesting and multi-layered subject.
Howver, as long as Iraq is occupied by foreign invaders, any and all questions of internal politics are secondary – as would be the case with British politics if Denmark, for example, were to occupy the UK – and when the invaders are routed, while the world is free to opine, it will be up to the Iraqi people to sort out their internal political issues just as the Americans do, just as the British do. I don’t always agree necessarily with the politics of a lot of countries, however, unless one is an adherent of the Manifest Destiny doctrine, which I am not, Americans, Iraqis, Englishmen, Estonians and everybody else have the right to self-determination, whether I agree with their politics or not!