Baghdad Journal

Haters of freedom

Since arriving here a week ago, we've heard a lot of theories about just what this so-called Iraqi resistance is. Whether it's reporters, U.S. generals or ordinary Iraqis on the street, all speak confidently about who these people are and what drives them. But there is too much overlap for my brain to handle. The resistance is simultaneously made up of soldiers, Ba'athist offiicals, criminals, muhajedeen, tribesman from the west and al qaeda remnants, all of whom would probably start throwing chairs at each other if they met in a bar
The Bush administration, in its wisdom, has not helped to clarify things by morphing what were once former regime members who are secularly evil into jihadi terrorists who are fanatically religiously evil. One thing is clear though: Since July 2 when President Bush made his "Bring 'em on" statement -- basically encouraging open season on the Americans in Iraq -- 30 troops have died (not including 9 who have died in various accidents) and 49 have been wounded in RPG, makeshift bomb and land mine attacks. That makes July by far the bloodiest month of this post-war war.

John Abizaid, shortly after taking over Central Command on July 7 was the first U.S. official to call what was happening on the ground in Iraq "guerrilla warfare" by, what he later said was, "a coordinated resistance." But Abizaid was immediately corrected by deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main producers, directors and choreographers of GWII. "It's not a resistance," he said. "They are forces of reaction," he said, whose sole aim is to restore Saddam back to power.
The comander of the forces here, General Ricardo Sanchez, said in a briefing we attended Thursday that he could indeed confirm the presence of foreign fighters and Islamic extremists in their midst. He added they were clearly terrorists because they were fighting out of uniform.

U.S. soldiers recording the press briefing by General Sanchez.

Former UC Berkeley guest lecturer Christopher Hitchens went on FOX and said the same thing more eloquently: "(They are) unemployed kids and imported holy warriors who are given $1000 in cash to take a pot shot with a throwaway gun or roll a grenade from behind. It's much more like mafia meets jihad than any kind of resistance."
Of course, to George Bush, things are not that complicated. He has at least been consistent in saying these whoevers are attacking U.S. soldiers because they are enemies of freedom.
But really, I think, the resistance could be anybody. Motives and murder weapons abound. Saddam's Iraq was a nation armed to the hilt. Even our mild-mannered translator Abu Abdullah has a Kalishnikov in his closet. Many Iraqis, like Abu Abdullah, bought weapons to protect themselves from the U.N. Sanctions-engendered crime wave that hit Baghdad in the mid-'90s. Then Saddam, vowing to fight the U.S. on every street corner of Baghdad, started arming the citizenry a few months before George Bush launched the attack. So even if Saddam is now having "no impact on security" as outgoing Cent Com commander Dick Myers claimed, he certainly helped create the gun culture in Iraq and thereby the means for resistance to whoever wanted it.
Their methods don't really point to one group or another either, but to all. On the streets they shoot soldiers in the back of the head, mafia style, and disappear back into the crowd. They fire at U.S. convoys from the side of the road or from passing by cars with RPGs, the prefered weapon of mujahedeen to destroy the Russian infidels in Afghanistan. They drop grenades from overpasses or the roofs of hospitals which smacks of terrorist attacks in other places. And now General Sanchez is saying the resistance are becoming more and more sophisticated in making and setting their makeshift bombs. They are now using timers and tripwires with their land mines or C4 or grenades or gas bombs.
Some months before the war, Saddam released all the prisoners from the prisons in a nationwide amnesty program -- 120,000 of them in one day. CPA officials believe that 50 percent of these prisoners were political, the rest were real: hardened criminals of the worse sort. But the criminals seem to content themselves with kidnappings, carjacks and thievery. When Bremer took the thone some months ago, he released some 400,000 hardened soldiers from service in one day.
On our first full day here I sat down with Abu Abdullah in the swank al fresco pool area at al Hamra waiting for Adam, who was borrowing a flash media drive from a fellow photojournalist. Over $3 coffees, he told me that the attacks started after Bremer laid off the soldiers. Bremer seemed oblivious that he was waving a match at a potential powderkeg. When 10,000 angry former army men demonstrated at the Palace gates demanding their jobs back, Bremer mused that this could not of happened under the former regime. The protest, he said, was "one of the signs of democracy."
On Thursday, the day a huge 600,000 barrel per day oil contract was announced, a pipeline in Baiji was blown up. Earlier, saboteurs blew up some railroad track in front of a northbound train outside of Baghdad. And near al-Dhari, robbers laid a shovel on the track, forcing a train to stop, and then beat up the engineer and stole his watch. It's like the wild west.
Speaking of which, when we visited al Jazeera the next day -- their offices are in several stories of a hotel called the Swan Lake -- we met the Baghdad bureau chief, Wadah Khanfar, who said he was sure the attacks started after 18 protesters were killed by U.S. troops in the wild western town of Fallujah in April. The attacks on the soldiers were revenge killings, then. Iraqis, especially ones from the Dulaimi tribe, take a blood debt very seriously and so the troops picked the wrong group of people to accidently slaughter, people tell us. The Dulaimi are hard core and are the largest, meanest, most powerful tribe in Iraq.
They are based in Fallujah and the nearby town of Ramadi, where the seven Iraqi police officers were killed earlier this month. The Dulaimi tribe, which boasts 400,000 members, is characterized in the press as being pro-Saddam but the tribe revolted a number of times (in 1995 and 1998) against the regime. "Saddam couldn't fight the Dulaimi," Abu Abdullah told me. "One day as a show of strength they just blocked the road between Fallujah and Ramadi and so Saddam sent his closest body guard, Arsheit, to mediate. Only after he promised them many things did they open the road."
Wadah told us that whoever these people are they getting a certain amount of sympathy from the general populace. The dignity of Iraqis, he said, has been trampled by the misdeeds of soldiers. He agreed that wild rumors abound about the U.S. soldiers, but some of them he thinks are true.
"You have one man calling our office saying that the soldiers have come into his home, stolen his cash, stolen his gold and looked at his women when they are uncovered, believe me, that man is a liar. But when you have 2,000 people calling telling the same story, we are going to report it," he said, adding that he heard of army personnel stepping on civilians' heads with their boots to pacify them -- and that is the worst insult to an Arab. Even inadvertantly showing the bottom of your shoe as you cross your legs is offensive.
The British, unlike the Americans, know how to deal with the Iraqis, many people have told us. They don't treat us arrogantly, they say, like they know what's good for the Iraqis.
Of course, the Brits have learned the hard way. The shia in the south and the sunnis in central Iraq -- including the Dulaimi -- put aside their differences in 1920 and revolted against the British viceroys -- killing some 3,000 British soldiers -- after the administrator there, Sir Arnold Wilson, rigged a couple of plebicite votes, figuring that he knew best what the people of Iraq. Bremer, people say, should be careful not to make the same mistake.