The United States Military was, for a short period, making great strides in appealing to the Sunni Arab population of Iraq. After years of deadly "search and destroy" missions, certain segments of the military had come to the conclusion that such campaigns only serve to increase support among the Sunni Arab population for the insurgency. It also appeared that there was a split between the extremist foreign jihadis and the more moderate domestic insurgents. The US began to engage the moderate insurgents in negotiations. Many of these negotiations were successful in getting the Sunnis to lay down their arms, and even join the fight against Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, now with civil war at hand, it seems likely that the US is going back down the path of heavy handed occupation with the emergence of Operation Swarmer, the largest air assault since the initial invasion of Iraq.
When the US first invaded Iraq and established the CPA, it disenfranchised the Sunnis by disbanding the Iraqi army with little financial compensation and purging a large amount of civil servants for being "Baathists". I pointed out the effects of these move in an
earlier diary of mine. Basically, this was the spark that started the Iraqi insurgency. Without hundreds of thousands of Sunnis without a source of income and only the Americans to blame, they began an armed rebellion. It was not long before a cycle of reprisals emerged among the Occupation authorities and the Sunni population. The American military engaged in actions that further alienated the Sunnis and empowered the insurgency, such as:
With each new offensive, it seemed that the insurgency grew stronger and stronger. With every new assault, an outbreak of insurgent violence occurred. The domestic insurgents attacked coalition forces with IEDs and ambushes, and the foreign insurgents slaughtered civilians with car bomb attacks. The two groups often collaborated with each other out of a common goal of expelling the Americans and reestablishing Sunni control. But the two groups were essentially very different in size, method, structure, and ideology.
The domestic Sunni uprising was motivated more than anything by frustration and tended to be much more pragmatic. They represented the disgruntled ex-Baathists and Iraqi nationalists who resented foreign control of their control and the loss of Sunni privileges under Saddam. From the very start they begged the coalition forces to engage them in negotiations and were willing to take part in the new Iraqi government if their demands were met. But they were constantly denied and brushed off as "dead-enders, criminals, and jihadists".
The foreign fighters, who make up only a small part of the insurgency, truly were monsters in every sense of the world. They slaughtered everybody who opposed their goal of establishing an international caliphate, and did not seem to mind provoking a civil war with the Shiites. They often snuck in through the Syrian border and were harbored by sympathetic Iraqi tribal groups. Their collaboration with the more secular-minded and nationalistic insurgents was no doubt considered temporary, and provoked mainly by the US occupation.
By the time 2005 approached, cracks between the two groups started showing. One of the first reports of these came from Knight Ridder. Reporting from the Western Anbar province, Hannah Allam and Mohammed al Dulaimy revealed that the Sunni tribes had created an anti-al-Qaeda militia that fought foreigners streaming through the Syrian-Iraqi border and asked the Americans for help. However, the Americans responded by leveling entire villages and refusing to differentiate between pro- and anti- al-Qaeda fighters. This marked a pattern, in which Sunnis that get fed up with the insurgency decide to take matters into their own hands turn against America again after a heavy-handed American tactics kill innocent Sunnis and make many of the survivors homeless.
It was not until late 2005 and the massive Sunni participation in the December 15 elections that the US really took note of the split between the two groups and decided to take advantage of it. While ruling out a timetable for withdrawal (and therefore denying a chance to capture al-Zarqawi), the US offered the Sunnis carrots like cease-fires, prison releases, and reconstruction aid in exchange for turning against Al-Qaeda. By 2006, the policy began to bear fruit.
Local Insurgents Tell of Clashes with Al Qaeda's Forces in Iraq
Iraqi rebels turn on al-Qaeda
Iraq: Sunni Insurgents Turning against Al-Zarqawi
Sunni Tribes in Anbar Agree to Combat Foreign Fighters
Iraqi tribal leader announces Anbar security deal
U.S. counts on Sheiks to help in Ramadi
Iraqi Tribes Strike Back at Insurgents
One article in particular from the AP describes why such a change occurred:
Iraq's Anbar Province Shows Signs of Calm
U.S. military leaders have attributed improving relations in the province to several factors, including a confluence of interests. Americans frequently say Sunni participation in government is key to preventing an Iraqi civil war and the country's breakup. And Sunnis have leaned on Americans to gain leverage in Iraq's feuding political system and protection from Shiite militias.
"Sunnis in, that's the key," Col. Chuck Taylor, deputy commander of a unit rebuilding Iraq's police force, said in an interview at his West Baghdad base.
Taylor and Lynch say American and Iraqi leaders have cultivated dialogue with Sunni imams, tribal sheiks and other leaders. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari recently dedicated $75 million for reconstruction projects selected by local leaders, who were visited recently by the minister of defense and deputy interior minister.
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Lynch said the United States wants to make the most of the warming atmosphere by quickly creating jobs and improving infrastructure so the insurgency holds less allure.
Other reasons have been given for the evolution in Anbar, which includes the Sunni rebel hotbeds Ramadi, Fallujah, Haditha, Qaim and others.
One is an apparent slowdown in U.S. Marine offensives that coincided with the arrival of land forces commander Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli. Chiarelli has said he favors a "hearts and minds" approach that involves less combat.
His predecessor, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, oversaw a harsh U.S. counterinsurgency campaign that included regular bombings of Anbar towns along the Syrian border.
Even Samarra, where the current offensive is being held, had Sunnis turning against Al-Qaeda:
On 23 January, tribal and nationalist insurgent leaders in Samarra announced that they would send armed groups to hunt down Al-Qaeda members in the city in a campaign similar to one launched last month following the assassination of Albu-Baz tribal leader Hikmat Mumtaz, London's "Al-Hayat" reported on 24 January. Hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated in Samarra against Al-Qaeda on 24 January, and reports indicated that many Al-Qaeda loyalists had fled to nearby Diyala Governorate.
The U.S. military now appears to be headed back down the path of "search and destroy" rather than "hearts and minds". We now risk turning the Sunnis against us once again.
Iraqi politician criticizes US-led raid
An Iraqi politician has chastised the US for a highly publicized raid in the Samarra region, Al Jazeera reports.
The assault, dubbed "Operation Swarmer" by the Pentagon, began on Thursday morning and is expected to last for several days as US and Iraqi troops search for insurgents.
Iraqi legislator Saleh Mutlak criticized the assault in comments to reporters. "This large operation that used airplanes is sending a signal to parliament and Iraqis that the solution is military and not political," he said.
U.S.-Iraqi Sweep Angers Sunni Arabs
One leading Sunni Arab, Iraqi presidential security adviser Wafiq al-Samaraei, urged that the operation ease restrictions on traffic across Samarra's vital Tigris River bridge, and cease "disarming the people of Samarra of their own authorized weapons."
He said the arms were needed to confront the "Zarqawi terrorists."
Many Sunni spokesmen differentiate between what they see as an Iraqi nationalist resistance against the U.S. occupation and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq, many foreign, led by people like Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian allied with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
"Many young people were detained, some of them innocent, and I call for their quick release," al-Samaraie told a TV interviewer. But he also called on Samarra's youths "to lay down their arms and join the political process."
A Sunni leader in Parliament, Tarek al-Hashimi, told reporters the operation has come at too delicate a moment in Iraq. "There was no need to escalate military acts as the country is passing through a dangerous political dilemma," he said Friday.
Certainly the defeat of Al-Qaeda terrorists is important, but large-scale military operations are clearly not the only option. Al-Qaeda was clearly a dying breed in Samarra and may in fact be revived by this latest offensive.
The US military is telling us that no bombs have been dropped despite it being an air operation, "It's not precision bombs and things like that," according to one Pentagon official. However:
U.S. helicopters swarm to attack
Area residents reported a heavy troop presence and said large explosions could be heard in the distance. American forces routinely blow up structures they suspect are insurgent safe-houses or weapons depots. It was not known if they met any resistance.
So despite the fact that the troops are encountering no resistance, they are blowing up suspected insurgent buildings anyway. This offensive will inevitably kill a lot of civilians and make even more homeless. I do not blame our troops for blowing up buildings they believe are a threat to them. But I do blame those who put them in this situation in the first place.
Now according to IRIN, the situation has become a humanitarian crisis:
IRAQ: Hundreds of families displaced due to major offensive
Hundreds of families have fled the city of Samarra, some 120 km northwest of the capital, Baghdad, after US coalition and Iraqi forces launched the biggest air offensive in the country since 2003.
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"When they started to hit our city I didn't take anything. I just took my family and ran like hell. We don't have anything to eat or wear," urged Barakat Muhammad, a resident and father of five in Samarra.
...
"You can hear the explosions very close to our homes even if it is far away and our children are very afraid. Any Iraqi or US military officer that passes though our street looks at us as if we are criminals and we feel that we can be targeted at any time," Odey Abdul Karem, 36, a father of three in Samarra said.
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But local doctors say that at least 35 civilians including women and children have been treated at the local hospital with injuries caused by the air-strikes. In addition, 18 bodies had been taken to the hospital since 17 March.
"We have run out of supplies and if the operation continues we need urgent surgical materials and pain killers to offer treatment to the innocent victims," Dr Ibraheem Mahmoud, of the emergency department at the local hospital in Samarra, said.
The proper way to deal with the Samarra terrorists would have been a meeting of local tribal leaders and an offer of reconstruction aid for expelling al-Qaeda forces. The money might have convinced the more pragmatic among the insurgents to lay down their arms and accept a ceasefire. But no attempts at negotiation were made.
We may never know how many Iraqis and American soldiers have died because of the US' refusal to sit down and negotiate. At the end of the day, the reluctance to engage the insurgency may be a result of the neoconservatives' imperial aims in Iraq. The last thing the neocons want is a peaceful and sovereign Iraq that democratically chooses its own economy and is free of any type of permanent American military bases. To them, a destabilized Iraq is probably preferable to a free, prosperous, independent, socialist Iraq that would refuse be beholden to corporate America.
Until America begins to consider the fact that its enemies may have some legitimate grievances, it is doubtful it will win the Iraq war, and completely laughable that it will ever win the War on Terror.