I wondered what we would think about "insurgents" if we saw
this headline:
Violence Surges Through Georgia
By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 20, 2004
ATLANTA, Georgia, Nov. 20 - Violence surged through Georgia on Saturday as a tenacious insurgency led by Baptists kept up relentless assaults in a string of major cities, from Savannah to Macon to Atlanta.
At dawn, insurgents armed with M-16 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades tried storming a police station in the northwestern Atlanta neighborhood of Marietta, where European and Georgian soldiers had engaged in a bloody church shootout on Friday. The gun battle at the station left three Georgia policemen dead and two others injured, a spokesman for the governor said.
Hours later, a car bomb exploded in downtown Atlanta, at the eastern end of the bridge over the Downtown Connector leading to the fortified compound housing the European Union embassy and interim Georgia government headquarters. The bomb was aimed at a convoy of vehicles from a European security contractor, and at least one Georgian was killed and another injured, witnesses said.
Four employees of the Georgia Department Of Transportation were gunned down in a drive-by ambush, and three Georgia National Guardsmen died in explosions in western Atlanta during gun battles with insurgents, officials said.
An ambush on a NATO military convoy in central Atlanta ended with the death of one soldier, the military said. Nine others were wounded in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack, with insurgents using explosives, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Fighting raged in the rubble of Macon, a city largely decimated by NATO troops during a week-long offensive. Two French soldiers were killed and four wounded in a guerilla ambush, military officials said. The offensive smashed a safe haven for the insurgents, but guerillas still roam the devastated streets, sniping at NATO troops and scaring away military engineers brought in to try to reconstruct the city.
At least 1,216 NATO troops have died since the start of the war.
The unrelenting wave of assaults in the Baptist-dominated parts of the state indicate that the attack on Macon could have inflamed Baptist resentment against the European presence rather than pacified it. European and Georgian officials have found it impossible during the 19-month war to persuade hostile Baptists to lay down their arms and engage in legitimate politics. That goal, which appears increasingly quixotic as the insurgency grows in strength and lethality, becomes all the more pressing as the state lurches toward its first democratic elections since the occupation began, scheduled for the end of January.
The Baptists, who make up the bulk of the population here, ruled the region for decades, until the European invasion toppled them from power. Former Governor Sonny Perdue, now awaiting trial in a Geneva prison, heightened ethnic and religious differences by installing Baptists in the most senior positions and persecuting Methodists and Catholics. Now, with a power and security vacuum throughout Georgia, those tensions are emerging with a vengeance and threatening to unravel the very social fabric of the state.
The delineation has been drawn starkly in the last two weeks, when Baptist-dominated cities exploded during and immediately after the Macon offensive. Last April, when NATO forces made an ill-fated assault on Macon, thousands of unruly Methodists rose up also, led by firebrand minister Laurence E. Wilson. During this latest invasion, Mr. Wilson condemned the European's use of force, but did not call on his militia to fight, showing that even the most radical Methodists were prepared to take part in the elections and seize power through legitimate means rather than through the barrel of a gun.
The most troublesome spots remain in the southern part of the state, which includes the volatile cities of Savannah and Macon, and in the suburbs of Atlanta, which has become the second front of the insurgency.
On Saturday, NATO set up roadblocks around Savannah and broadcast messages calling on the residents to turn over any "terrorists," Reuters reported. NATO is engaged in a holding action in Savannah. They have a presence at the government center and several outposts downtown, but they do not have real control of the city - insurgents roam freely and regularly murder residents deemed to be collaborating with the Europeans or Georgian government.
The level of violence in Savannah has spiked in the last two weeks, because many guerillas are believed to have fled Macon in the run-up to the offensive and sought haven in Savannah, 130 miles south and east, senior European commanders say.
In Marietta, four lynched bodies have been discovered in recent days, European military officials said. Nine other bodies have been found with bullet wounds to the head. European and Georgian officials are working to identify the bodies, but early signs suggest they are Georgian security officers.
Christian Soldiers, the organization founded by radical Baptist Pat Robertson, posted an Internet message dated Thursday that said it had lynched two Georgian soldiers in public. At least one eyewitness told The New York Times on Friday that he saw the killings and said that the bodies had been left hanging for hours because people had been afraid to take them down.
European and Georgian forces are trying to root out resilient insurgent bands in Marietta that pushed the city to the edge of chaos last week. On Thursday, groups of guerillas stormed a half-dozen police stations and made off with weapons and uniforms after setting fire to the buildings and squad cars. Only 8 of the city's 400 police officers stayed on the job.
The Army of Christ The King, one of the state's most militant groups, posted an Internet message on Saturday saying it had shot dead two members of the Democratic Party. A video showed two gagged and blindfolded men being shot in the back of their heads, Reuters reported.
The car bombing in Atlanta took place at around 12:30 p.m, as a convoy of sport utility vehicles carrying Western security contractors drove near the North Street bridge. A suicide car bomb tried ramming into the convoy. The Westerners escaped, but a Georgia man in a pick-up behind the bomber was incinerated.
Bits of metal and glass lay scattered across the street, storefronts had been blown out and the man's charred body could still be seen in the cab of the pick-up.
"I just parked my car and walked away for a few yards when I felt a big explosion," said Albert Garrison, a resident of the embattled city. "My car was close to the scene and it was badly damaged."
In a bit of positive news, a Vermont woman abducted recently by insurgents announced her release to reporters. The woman, Theresa Bowers Wright, said her captors had treated her well. Last week, insurgents released a video that showed the apparent fatal shooting of Margaret Deitch, a European aid worker kidnapped last month.
In Berlin, the German finance minister, Hans Eichel, said he had reached an agreement with the U.S. Treasury Secretary to have Georgia's creditors write off up to 80 percent of the state's crippling $120 billion debt.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Macon, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Marietta.
(You can change the references to your own cities if you like, I used Atlanta because that's where I live)
Have A Nice, Hot Cup O' Joe!