Iraq analysis

[Al-khiyal]

The United Iraqi Alliance has increased its share of cabinet portfolios from 15 to 17, five of them powerful posts. The Kurdistan Alliance has 5 cabinet posts, including one powerful ministry (Foreign Affairs). The (fundamentalist Sunni Arab) Iraqi Accord Front has 4 cabinet posts and no powerful ones. The Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi received 4 cabinet posts, and the (ex-Ba'athist Sunni) National Dialogue Front of Salih Mutlak received 3, though Mutlak has rejected them because they are relatively insignificant positions:

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[Al-khiyal]

Fresh wave of assassinations in Falluja

[Al-khiyal]

Kurds say Turkish shells land in Iraq, Turkey denies

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U.S. lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’

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Gunmen kidnap 15 Iraqi athletes

Nazar Abdulzahra, ex-Iraq national team footballer, shot dead in Basra

Pentagon report said to find killing of Iraqi civilians deliberate

U.S. sailor killed in Anbar province

In Sunni neighborhood, attack on mosque draws out defenders

Sunni Arab shrine bombed in Iraq

8 Iraqis killed in attack on minibus in Iraq's capital

4 U.S. soldiers killed by bomb in Iraq

Four policemen killed in Fallujah

[Al-khiyal]

Romano Prodi promised today to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq, saying that the allied invasion had been a grave mistake.

Signor Prodi was making his first speech as Italian Prime Minister to his country's Senate, where tomorrow he faces a no confidence vote, a mere 48 hours after he was sworn in.

"We consider the war and occupation in Iraq a grave error that hasn’t solved but has complicated the problem of security," he said. "Terrorism has found a new base, and new excuses for internal and external terrorist action."

As opposition leader, Signor Prodi opposed the war in Iraq and had said during the election campaign that the remaining troops would be pulled out "as soon as possible......"

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[Al-khiyal]

Iraq is simultaneously descending into both a civil war and a war of resistance against foreign occupation. The United States has been hoping to exploit the divide between Iraqi patriots and global jihadists, but the Sunni opposition is growing more structured and unified as it adapts to changing conditions, and may transcend those divisions:

Descriptions of Iraq’s armed opposition often divide it into a set of wholly independent categories which apparently do not have much in common. The categories include the patriotic former army officers, the foreign terrorists, the Sunni Arabs determined to regain power, the Muslims opposed to any kind of foreign occupation, the tribal factions pursuing their own specific vendettas, the die-hard Ba’athists - and the “pissed-off” Iraqis (in coalition soldier jargon, POIs) who are simply sick of the foreign forces occupying their country.

While a few key figures have emerged, such as the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the former Saddam acolyte Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, they do not appear as uncontested leaders. The armed opposition has not set up any kind of civilian political representation, as the Northern Irish republicans did with Sinn Fein, for example. Nor have they published a specific political programme. So the dominant image remains that of a diffuse and largely anonymous multitude. But though that perception may have been accurate in 2003, the opposition has come a long way since then.

Broadly speaking, the change can be seen as a form of stabilisation. At first the opposition was multi-confessional and represented a cross-section of Iraqi society as a whole. But it has grown more focused as the political landscape has polarised, and it is now almost exclusively Sunni Arab. A number of large, easily recognisable groups have emerged, further simplifying the situation. The most important of these are the Islamic army, Tanzim al- Qaida fi balad al-rafidein (the organisation of al-Qaida in the land of the two rivers); the Army of the Partisans of the Tradition of the Prophet; and the Army of Muhammad. There are others. Increasingly, each of these groups dominates certain specific, clearly defined geographical areas. There are still pockets of confusion as to who has the upper hand where (one example is in the Diyala governorate near Baghdad) but these are now exceptions.

One area where the opposition is particularly settled is the al-Anbar governorate in northwestern Iraq. Here Iraqi aid workers negotiate safe passages with opposition leaders via what is almost an institutional process. A formal procedure is in place for lorry drivers to pay an insurance fee that allows them to cross the governorate, as long as they are not supplying the enemy.

Each insurgent group has its own business identity, cultivated through sophisticated communications techniques that use both audiovisual and printed materials easily recognisable by their logos and standardised presentation. No group is ever short of things to say about its own aims, analysis of the conflict, military performance or tactical recommendations.

An analysis of recent communications production reveals another form of stabilisation. Where insurgent pamphlets, videos and other communications used to be full of exaggerations, ambiguities and controversies, they are now astonishingly consistent. In the course of 2005 all the opposition groups converged on a basic rhetoric of patriotism and Salafist (Sunni) religious fervour. Debates that were initially highly charged, about the legitimacy of jihad in general and of methods in particular, ended in a consensus that may be superficial, but that everyone respects for now. For example, no one openly advocates decapitations anymore, let alone films them, as they used to do only a year ago.

Naturally, differences persist and there are tensions. Many sources, from aid workers to local journalists to Arab sympathisers, have been in contact with armed and report that Zarqawi is heavily criticised in private; he is accused of orchestrating the assassination of Shias. Some combatant groups will only claim responsibility for attacks on coalition forces, tacitly disapproving any operations that target civilians or even members of the Iraqi security forces.

United States marines recently noted, from their observations of events in the al-Anbar governorate, that there was a growing gulf between Iraqi insurgents and foreign groups. The marines observed that there were clashes without any marines being involved; they found foreign jihadists assassinated; and they observed that tribal groups were trying to reassert control over the areas where they lived. The marines concluded that the jihad agenda of foreign groups ran counter to the interests of the Iraqi insurgents.

This assessment formed the basis of the counter-insurrection strategy of the US, which aimed to wipe out the jihadists, considered irredeemable, while bringing the Iraqi resistance back on side via an extension of the political process.

Yet though there certainly are signs of potentially explosive internal tensions, stronger forces are drawing opposition groups together. Local frictions cannot undermine a high level of overall cohesion across the country. The unity between the opposition groups may be little more than a front, but it is a front that no group has yet wanted to breach in any of its official statements. No group has publicly criticised any other. On the contrary, they all appear to subscribe to a single, clear and apparently universally accepted strategy. And they all agree that drawing up a political programme would be premature and liable to cause disagreements......

Continue reading Iraq’s resistance evolves