Watching Syria from afar: some thoughts on reading the Crisis Group's report "Tentative Jihad"

Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

I've long been interested in the extremities of politics in all directions. In the last year I've followed some discussion on Syria and taken part in others and it has been fascinating to see how different groups on far right and left, have tried to deal with the complexity of the situation and arrive at a 'position' on it. It has been both bizarre and amusing to see how many who describe themselves as being of the radical- or anti-imperialist-left have ended up, defacto, supporting the Assad regime. Jess Hill in the Global Mail calls these predominantly Western leftists: Assad's Useful Idiots; it's a bracing read if you, like me, find it deeply creepy how unwilling some are to not learn the lessons of the 1920s and 30s, and the willful ignorance of some over Stalin's crimes

Following the Syrian regime's line, the "anti-imperialist left" claim the rebels in Syria are all foreign-sponsored al-Qaeda throat-cutters, who want to turn a supposedly progressive Socialist secular state into a Taliban-style Islamic one. There are many things deeply problematic about this claim; it is at its heart deeply patronising, even orientalist. The Arabs of the Middle East are given no agency, they are forever pawns in machinations of the West (i.e. the US). Not only does this deny them agency, it also takes away the moral responsibility for their acts: if a Syrian rebel group decides to use a suicide bomb, well it's just because "they're al-Qaeda" and "they're being controlled by the Saudis/CIA/Mossad/Biderberg group/etc.". In actual fact those rebels should be answering for their actions just as the Syrian government should be. To me the moral case for the rebellion seems pretty clear; the Syrian regime has become a neo-monarchy, power passed from father to son; power that was, of course, gained originally in a military coup and maintained over the decades via violence, fear, corruption and co-option. The revolution began peacefully like elsewhere in the Arab Spring - protesters on the streets. But people power was met with regime bullets, mass arrests and torture. The anti-imperialists have to cling to the idea that those tens of thousands of unarmed Syrians on the streets in early 2011 were all "al Qaeda" or American stooges because, if not, then Bashar al-Assad's resort to brutal repression would be the crime that most know it is.

Nevertheless violence begets violence and the regime's reaction led to civil war. From Our Own Correspondent this week has a haunting illustration of this. Ian Pannell interviews an Aleppo businessman turned rebel commander. He was turned by the horrific torture he experienced and saw happening to others after being arrested for peacefully protesting:

"Dr Raouf said that before they were arrested, the group had long discussions about whether they should get some sticks to defend themselves during protests. 'But when we were released, we decided to buy every weapon we could afford,' he said."

Homs. Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

The situation in Syria has changed - it is evolving or, perhaps better, it is mutating. The recently released Crisis Group report "Tentative Jihad: Syria’s Fundamentalist Opposition" I think is a very important document of this. It is (as so often with Crisis Group reports) a fine example of actually 'going and looking', and reporting back on what you actually see - not what fits your ideological persuasion. I won't try to sum up the report, beyond saying it is centrally about the role of Salafism amongst the armed opposition, a role that is becoming progressively more prominent as Salafi groups both fight more successfully than the more secular groups (generally grouped under the FSA banner) and as those secular fighters become attracted to Salafism (be that for purely instrumental reasons - attracting funding from the Gulf monarchies and Syrian exiles - or because it's austere simplicity becomes attractive to men facing death daily). The Crisis Group report is good at pointing out that the Salafi ideology on the rise differs in some ways from the more nihilistic Jihadism that we have come to expect from the various al Qaeda franchises around the world, and most clearly seen in the horrors of Iraqi civil war. For example, Crisis Group argue that the most prominent Salafi group, Jabhat al-Nusr, while being the most radical and sectarian and unapologetic for suicide bombing a regime intelligence installation in a Christian neighbourhood of Damascus that killed many civilians, still made it clear that they were not targeting Christians per se, they were 'collateral damage'. This differs from the intentional massacres so often seen in Iraq.

I've seen many on the aforementioned "anti-imperialist left" say that the US/NATO is just itching to intervene in Syria, like it did in Libya. This is another bizarre claim in the face of now over a year of 'the West' failing to really do anything helpful for the people of Syria. Many in Syria were imploring the West to save them a year ago but the US electoral calendar, military exhaustion and budget deficit was always going to make this unlikely. If the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are the only people handing out money for guns, you can see why some Syrians will grow beards, shorten their trousers and take the cash, even if it is obvious to outsiders that only further darkness will come of this. Crisis Group leaves us with a horrible image for the future of the Syrian Civil War:

"As the number of internally displaced and refugees grows, and entire towns and neighbourhoods are damaged to the point of becoming uninhabitable, armed groups risk cutting themselves off further from their social base and coming to resemble combatants roaming in the rubble. As they eat, struggle and pray together, fighters increasingly form insular units detached from the cross-cutting popular movement from which they sprung, inhabiting their own world, so more prone to spin out of control. Their reportedly high attrition rate may empower second-generation leaders with less of a strategic vision, legitimacy or experience – lacunae for which they might seek to compensate with ever more radical beliefs and violence."

The obvious and frightening parallel is Syria's neighbour to the east; six or seven years ago as the US lost control and civil war flared. But as the armed groups amongst the Sunni Muslims sections of Syrian society differentiate themselves on religious grounds, or by allegiance to one area or one commander, and whilst Alawi communities radicalize in support of the rump regime, other communities like Christians and Kurds will end up either defending themselves with militias or fleeing. Syria's neighbour to west, Lebanon, and the horrors it saw from the 70s to the 90s in its vicious and multifaceted civil war, serve as another stark example of what Syria may still have to face.

The People's Mujahedin of Iran and their friends in the west

The BBC World Service has a remarkable documentary available currently on the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). Most non-Iranians will have not heard of the group, but in short they were anti-the Shah and supported the revolution against him - it's important to remember that it's only really subsequently become labelled the 'Islamic Revolution'. At the time there was a considerable radical left-wing and secular dimension to the uprising alongside the later to be dominant Islamists. The Islamists under Khomeini subsequently turned on their previous leftist allies, including the PMOI, and the group went into exile in Iraq where they allied with Saddam Hussein against the regime in Tehran. The documentary does a pretty good job of explaining the general weirdness of the group, leaving aside their politics. It would appear to resemble a cult more than a political party now, with at least hard to dismiss claims of mistreating its members who wish to leave.

Nevertheless the most noteworthy dimension to the documentary is the reporting on the PMOI's lobbying within the United States. The group was listed as a terrorist organisation in the 1990s by the US government and remains so to today. In Europe it has been de-listed as a terrorist group, although its fund raising within Europe appears to be dubious to say the least. The BBC interviews numerous prominent Americans who are now part of the PMOI's campaign in the States to be taken off the terrorist group list; they include Republicans and Democrats, and many former senior officials and soldiers. It gives a fascinating insight into this world: some of those interviewed openly admit to not knowing anything about the PMOI before being approached to speak at their events in return for (considerable) payment. Nevertheless, these personalities seems to have taken their duties seriously and are openly pushing for the PMOI to be brought in from the cold - believing clearly that their position against the current regime in Iran* means their past sins (including involvement in the hostage taking of the American diplomats in Iran all those years ago) can be forgiven.

Perhaps the enthusiastic cynicism of some in the American political world should be no surprise to us, but it's always interesting to see how this sort of lobbying for non-domestic interests works. What is far more alarming is listening to the non-mercenary supporter of the PMOI - a former US colonel who dealt with them in Iraq when the US took over their camp there - who seems to be seriously suggesting that this exile group, who have not been in Iran for nearly 30 years and that has its own cultish leanings, could be the core of a future Iranian regime when the current leaders in Tehran fall or are deposed. I expect I'm not the only one for whom, on hearing this, the name Ahmed Chalabi immediately springs to mind. People really don't learn from their mistakes do they?

*Incidentally, some reporting links the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel via the PMOI. This has a certain attractive logic to it - if Israel is behind the assassinations as seems likely presumably they would need some sort of proxy in Iran, plus the PMOI has been responsible for bring to light some of Iran's secret nuclear facilities. Nevertheless, the PMOI has denied any linkages to Israel, there is little hard evidence linking Israel to the attacks so far, and the PMOI are far from being the only Iranian domestic insurgents/terrorist groups - there Baluch and Arab separatist groups in Iran for example as well.

Iraq is still there

Photo courtesy of Zoriah.net

"A bit obscene that we can bury so many people in the earth and know so little about them"

Poet/soldier Brian Turner

By mistake it's been an 'Iraq day' - a series of coincidences of what I have read and listened to over the last 24 hours that has meant I've spent more time thinking about a place I've never been to than is normal, or least healthy. This used to happen more often; I would see a link to a blog, a smart-arse U.S. soldier or some Iraqi civilian who writes better English than I can - either of whom should have been a 'proper' writers in better times, and I would spend hours reading it, clicking links, reading other blogs and news reports not doing the work I should have been and that seemed so less important. Articles by Nir Rosen or George Packer would have the same effect. I could always excuse spending mornings doing this as I am a political scientist and this is the most important political event of my generation, but the truth is more probably somewhere between a sense of feeling the need to bear witness and a very uncouth morbid fascination.

Last night as I rode home I was listening to a pretty tragic story of an Iraq vet, now jailed for attacking his partner and family, on This American Life. His reoccurring dreams are a curse not to wish on anyone, and made more sense of this photo that I saw this morning:

Photo courtesy of Zoriah.net

I found Zoriah's site via a link after happening to look at the Guardian Online for the first time in weeks and reading this piece about attempts by the U.S. military to manage the images coming out of the war in Iraq. Then this evening on the bus home I was listening to an edition of Fresh Air on NPR from last week which included interviews with two clearly exceptional American soldiers, theorist John Nagl and poet Brian Turner. Terms such as warrior-philosopher and warrior-poet are rather trite and overwrought, but if anyone one deserves such accolades I suspect these two gentlemen do.

Iraq is a fading from the news to a great extent, at least as anything other than an issue between McCain and Obama, but the slaughter goes on just not at such high rates anymore. It is easy to ignore, or simply to miss, but Iraq is still there.

Thinking about the surge

I've spent the last three days in bed feeling lousy with the flu - hence no blogging. But that, plus indirect flights to Brussels and back last week, has let me do a load of reading. The books that I have got through out of my big "to read" pile, I'll try and review here at some point, but I also read this Rolling Stone article: "The Myth of Surge", by the ever excellent Nir Rosen.

For anyone interested in Iraq it is important if depressing reading, and essentially demonstrates what is happening now is what cautious analysts were warning last summer.

Looking cool for the counter-insurgency

Firepower and sartorial elegance!

I'm very excited to see the Times has also started to notice new fashion trends in the world of global mayhem. Good for them; I suspect that what is now happening with the Iraqi special forces troops on the streets of Baghdad will be seen in the autumn menswear collections on the catwalks of Milan and New York later this year. I'm working on my dodgy goatee, and am developing a collections of colour-coordinated leather fingerless gloves. Now I'm off to find my old skateboard knee pads and strap them round my ankles.

Notice googles on backwards - snowboarder style, ankle-worn knee pads, fag, cute little girl, and bizzarely - a meat cleaver!

Anyway - stay tuned for more on how to keep lookin' good for worldwide strife.

"Camp Bucca prison has become a school for takfir supporters"

MEMRI, the Israeli translation organization, has an interesting and depressing translation of an al-Arabiya television report on Jihadi violence inside U.S. prisons in Iraq, notably Camp Bucca, against other Iraqi prisoners. It shows the depths of extremism that the Iraqi Jihadis have reached. The al Qaeda and other jihadis are called "Takfiris" by other prisoners. Takfir is the act of one Muslim pronouncing another to be an apostate, or 'bad' Muslim, and extremists often use it as a way of legitimating calls to kill the supposed apostate. Non-Takfiri prisoners recount people being beaten for smoking, stepping into the toilets with the wrong foot first, or just for sitting in the wrong place. It also suggests that the U.S. forces do little to control what is happening inside the prisons, just letting the prisoners get on with "organising" themselves. The report suggest some innocent prisoners who get mistakenly picked up by US or Iraqi forces, end up joining al Qaeda to find protection within the prison.

Extremist recruiting in prisons is a well known phenomenon worldwide; the reasons that it happens being rather obvious. But it has been well known for many years now that many held in these internments camps in Iraq are not part of the insurgency, and it therefore makes allowing the prisons to get this far out of control into a very self-defeating policy.

The picture at the top I found on photo essay on a U.S. Department of Defense website, showing a military policeman seizing an improvised knife during a search at Camp Bucca. The pictures are from a couple of years back, but show some of the weapons that were being found even back then.

One man's terrorist...

...is another man's strategic asset? Particularly when the first man is President Ahmadinejad of Iran, the second man works for the U.S. State Department and the group in question is PJAK.



You've got to love that revolutionary vibe!

PJAK are Iranian Kurdish guerrillas/terrorists/freedom fighters/insurgents/militants/dudes (delete as ideologically suitable/aesthetically pleasing). The Iranian government is almost certainly messing around inside Iraqi Kurdistan, probably by sponsoring a nasty Takfiri/Jihadi Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, who have been repeatedly bashed down by the Kurdish Peshmergas but keeps popping back up again like mushrooms after rain. But on the other hand, neither the U.S. as the occupying power, nor the Iraqi National Government or Kurdish regional government are doing much about the PJAK bases inside Iraq from where they attack Iran. This can be contrasted with the recent bombing by the Turkish air force of the PKK bases inside Iraq, which the U.S. must have given a nod to as the USAF has dominance over Iraqi airspace. The Iranian government has responded though, by firing artillery into Iraqi Kurdistan - seemingly with little impact beyond injuring Iraqi Kurdish civilians who had nothing to do with PJAK.

The saying "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" has come in for regular bashing over the last few years, particular from American commentators after 9/11: moral relativism, etc. etc. But PJAK isn't listed by U.S. as a terrorist organisation, and it's representatives have visited Washington D.C. Only a few people claim that the U.S. is supporting the group directly and they present no real evidence of it beside the normal unnamed sources or just saying 'it's logical'. But the U.S. is danger of falling into its own rhetorical trap of demanding 'moral clarity' in the 'War on Terror', even when in the past parts of the government have already shown hypocritical tendencies in that direction.

PJAK may well have a legitimate cause, and as it appears to have a certain pro-feminist ideology making them rather sympathetic in a region where women are heavily oppressed. But its methods would be quickly described as terrorist if they were aimed at Western forces in Iraq, or at Western countries more generally.

Links of interest:

• Quality BBC reporting on the tenuous position of the Iraqi Kurds trying to balance American, Turkish and Iranian interests against their own.
• Jamestown Terrorism Monitor article on the PJAK.
• Wikipedia article on PJAK with lots of links to news coverage, particularly on their relations with the U.S.

Law and order - Iraq style

I was going to try and write a serious piece to get my head around Iraq's various sub-civil wars that are currently going on, but as ever I started surfing and reading and now it is past midnight and I want to go to bed. So here instead is something bizarre, but brief, spotted on the excellent, excellent Army of Dude blog - the Iraqi police are on drugs.

Alex, the blogger, describes the Iraqi police and army, who he has had the the dubious pleasure of working with, as:

the squabbling, sloppy, lazy, sectarian and thieving Iraqi police and army. Our last hope of getting out of this country by the end of the decade is an efficient and professional military and police force. Renewed efforts of military transition teams to prop up credible army and police units have largely failed. We have to watch with suspicious eyes to prevent civilian abuse, looting and vaguely homosexual assault on detainees. We don’t even try to obstruct their cocaine use, which was apparent in Mosul when I saw piles of white powder on the desks at the police department. I declined an offer to sniff a line.

So, the police are on drugs. It doesn't make any less sense than the rest of it.

Meanwhile if you ever wondered a what a Sunni-nationalist insurgent fighter would look like if only he was wearing a comedy sombrero, scroll down to the bottom of this page. And whilst you are there read for free the excellent Economist article from a fortnight ago that originally took me to Army of Dude post quoted to above. With fingerless gloves and goatee beards already done, perhaps sombreros will actually become the next must-have fashion accessory in the world of global mayhem? Once again - it wouldn't make any less sense than the rest of it.

"I can not hear you over the sound of my own awesomness"

This slogan was rather amusingly scribbled over a photo of Blackwater security contractor, and then stuck up on the wall of a work space at a U.S. military base in Baghdad. When it comes to Blackwater and there ilk, there are all sorts of interesting and important discussions to be had about the privatization of security in an era of globalization; the renunciation by states of holding the legitimate monopoly on violence as they outsource war to commercial operations; the position of private military companies in international law; blah blah blah. But I'm not now interested in that. Rather I'm interested in ideas of sartorial elegance in the age of modern global mayhem. Last year I asked why do all wannabe terrorists need to wear leather fingerless gloves? Now we want to know - what is it about private military contractors and dodgy goatee beards?

The guy in the middle is a journo so his dodgy mustache doesn't count.

And if you are still not convinced try clicking this link, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this or this (oh, the fun you can have with Google Images!).

Anyway, I think I have made my point.

When two sides go to war...

...arm them both then sit back and watch?

One of the few "good news stories" coming out Iraq over the last few months has been the re-orientation of some of the Sunni tribes in al-Anbar province and other areas around Baghdad who are now fighting with American forces against al-Qaeda when they had previously been part of the insurgency. The way that the White House presented interim report on the surge/escalation (take your pick of terms) two weeks ago, was to talk up the eight out 18 categories where progress has been made, and to focus on success in the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The theme of reminding us all of the al-Qaeda part of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” has been a tactic the administration has been sticking to, with Bush mentioning the name of the group 95 times (just in case you didn't quite grasp the point I guess!) in his major policy speech on Iraq last week. With the White House trying to get Americans to see their perspective: that terrorism will be the result of a pullout from Iraq; you can see why they would be wanting to spread the news that some in the Sunni community who were against the US occupation are now cooperating against al-Qaeda. Additionally, there aren't many who wouldn't argue that stopping a bunch of murderous thugs who terrorise local Iraqis more than they actually attack the US military isn't a good thing in itself, regardless of US politics. But pulling sections of the more nationalist Sunni insurgency into the Iraqi forces has its own dangers.

I heard Thomas Ricks interviewed a few weeks ago analysing this issue after his most recent trip to Iraq and discussions with US commanders in the region. He was informed by his military sources that whilst the Sunni tribes are quite happy to fight and kill the often-foreign al-Qaeda fighters, that isn’t the primary reason why they have allied with the US and Iraqi government. Rather, his sources believe that, they are primarily interested in the training and weapons that the US can provide them and are quite willing to kill a few Jihadi nutters as quid pro quo in order to get them. This is because they see the US pulling out sooner or later and then the Shia-dominated Iraqi government becoming, in effect, the other party in an expanded civil war between the two communities. As the police and large sections of the military are now de-facto Shi’a organisations, the Shi’as of Iraq have an ‘army’ of their own and the Sunnis are now worried that they need to be able to balance against that with trained soldiers and plentiful weapons of their own. It seems that the Iraqi government sees exactly the same dangers as Rick's sources.

Sunni groups are not alone in preparing for a US pullout and a consequent increase in the civil war. The US is accusing its –ahem- “ally”, Saudi Arabia, of backing Sunni insurgent groups (or at least turning a blind eye to private sources from with Saudi to do this) because the Saudis fear the current Iraqi government under Maliki is too pro-Iranian. It’s all a bit bizarre and ironic really, considering the state of US-Iranian relations currently and that the US is just about to flog the Saudis 20 billion dollars’ worth of weapons to – wait for it! – balance Iranian military expansion! The US is left supporting Sunni-Shi’a cohabitation within Iraq, whilst basically promoting division between the two sides of Islam elsewhere in the region as a tool of isolating Iran. Ho hum.

It leads one to a position where you can only support General Petraeus’ surge/escalation strategy because if the US now fails in giving the Iraqi government enough space to resolve the tensions between the Sunni and Shi’a communities, the US will be pulling out to watch a civil war that not only have they caused, but where they have even managed to train and arm both sides. And there we were thinking that the implications of the invasion couldn’t get any worse…

Baghdad critical

These guys might be the police. Or Medhi Army. Or both.

I haven't written anything about Iraq for months. The news from the country is so depressing: militia factions begin to fight between themselves as well as with other sectarian groups; whilst the US political debate has just stopped whilst everyone waits for September in the desperate hope that Patraeus can pull a rabbit out of the magic-surge-hat. And as ever, civilians suffer due to the actions of all the warring parties. But one story actually shocked me rather than just further depressing me. Paul Wood reported on From Our Own Correspondent that:

"One measure of how bad things have become is that Western diplomats will no longer visit the Iraqi Defence ministry, even though it is inside the Green Zone. In fact, militia infiltration is believed to be such that no-one walks anywhere in the Green Zone for fear of being snatched off the street."

I suspect that American patience with the Iraqi "government" - using the term in the loosest way - will soon run out.

For the best Iraq coverage keep checking Iraq Slogger.

Battlefield Ethics

The pictures below are jpegs made from power point slides, taken from a presentation on mental health and battlefield ethics, given at the Pentagon by General James T. Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, on the 18 April 2007. The results are based on surveys of 1350 soldiers and 450 marines. You can download the full presentation here and read the related article in the Army Times here. The first slide (ROEs stands for "rules of engagement") shows what respondents have admitted to doing themselves, and the second - and in some ways more worrying slide - shows what the respondents would or wouldn't report their comrades for. Most worryingly, around half wouldn't report their fellow marines or soldiers for killing an innocent non-combatant. This gives context to the cover-up around the Haditha killings. What General Conway's presentation shows is that soldiers and marines who have been deployed to Iraq before have increased mental health difficulties and that, in turn, leads to lower standards of ethical behaivour than with first timers.

Iraq round-up

(photo AP/Guardian) An excellent first hand report of fighting in Baquba from Peter Beaumont in the Guardian (via the Strategist): he describes how the Sunni insurgents use women and children as human shields knowing that the US troops won't fire. Earlier this week, and just down the river in Tarmiya, US forces faced a complex and long lasting assault on their position in that town. As the LA Times notes this shows the difficulties that General Petraeus' "clear and hold" counter-insurgency doctrine is going to face and why, regardless of the politics of "the Surge", it can only work with plenty of troops. The more areas you "clear", the more troops then need to be left there to "hold" that area.

This makes the announced pull-out of most British (and Danish) troops this week all the more noteworthy. Listening to the comments from US administration figures earlier this week on this, and how it was echoed in the US press, I was really quite surprised how polite they were. Of course it would be very churlish to criticize your number one ally in public - and we don't know what they are saying in private - but it seems to be putting a brave face on a rather desperate situation. Paul Rogers makes the case that the UK has, in effect, been pushed and pulled out of Basra (pushed by continuing attacks, pulled by a conglomeration of UK voices that has forced Blair to move now). Handing over Basra to what passes for the Iraqi government there - the various Shi'a militias and parties - seems a really bad idea if for example we are to take the claims of Iranian provision of weapons to Iraqi groups seriously (incidentally, and very ironically, here is claimed evidence of Iranian military support - but not from the US govt. but rather a Sunni insurgent group). The removal of UK troops from the south will just mean US forces will have be stretched even further, or that the Surge is just going to be more balloon-wrestling - where by squeezing the problem in one place, it just pops out somewhere else.

On a more lighthearted note - now we know that Prince Harry is off to Basra to be the last man in - what on earth is Chris Eubanks up to?

Shia-Sunni divide

The Sunni-Shia divide is becoming one of the most important issues driving international affairs today, but away from Muslim countries it's not well understood. The origins are theological but now it is more and more political. Anyway, NPR is doing a good series looking at both the politics and theology. There will be more radio reports put up today and tomorrow, but there is already plenty to read and listen to on their special pages for the series.

How to make an IED - Lancastrians beware.

There is a small discussion underway attached to last night's post on the helicopter downings over the extent to which Iran is likely to be involved in these attacks. Alex, the Yorkshire Ranter, left a comment here at exactly the same time as I was reading his blog and came across his discussion from a couple of weeks back on how to build an IED with a shaped charge. I'm not sure if he has a military background or just spends more time than is healthy reading Jane's Defence Weekly, but he definitely seems to know a lot about these things - hence my warning to Lancastrians - after having lived a year in Leeds I'm pretty certain Yorkshire would fight dirty. ;-)

Basically whilst I'm quite happy to accept Iran is playing a major role in Iraq - if Russia occupied France, you don't think UK intelligence would be all over the shop from Calais to Marseilles? - but it seems that there isn't so much hard evidence of Iranian arms being used by Iraqis. KGS left this link in the comments, quoting an unnamed US officer saying that it was Iranian surface-to-air missiles (SAM) bringing down US aircraft. But read it carefully - that's not quite what the unnamed officer actually says is it? The direct quote is: "where else would they be coming from?" Well, out of the defeated Iraqi army's huge arsenal would be one logical possibility. And pushing this a bit further, KGS's link is quoting from another US mil-blogger - who simply wants an attack on Iran and he openly argues that the evidence to justify this isn't really important:

The affairs of state, of National Security, aren’t the purview of some twisted OJ Simpson celebrity trial, where “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!”

Let's leave aside all discussion on the morality of attacking Iran - perhaps a solid case could be made although it doesn't spring to mind at the moment - and consider the practical implications of this policy prescription. If the Iraqi insurgents of all stripes aren't relying on Iran for some, or any, of their weaponry - then the US isn't actually going to stop its helicopters from being shot down or APCs blown up by taking this drastic line of action. They will however make sure that Iran will do everything it can in the future to help arm anybody who wants to take shots at US's interests or those of its friends.

I think that a lot of the discussion amongst Democratic senators and congressmen (and increasing numbers of Republicans as well) in the US over bringing the troops home is more led by their political sensibilities to the domestic zeitgeist, rather than to any deeply thought out military and foreign policy strategy for Iraq. But I'm not sure if this sudden "get tough on Iraq" policy coming out of the White House isn't any different. Things are pretty terrible in Iraq and if you don't want to go with the 'Ricksian' Fiasco argument - that simply immensely bad planning and strategy within both the upper echelons of the US civilian and military leadership are to blame for where we are now - then it's really handy to have someone else to blame. And the Iranians fit the bill perfectly because the current Iranian government is so odious.

There is though a certain irony that US helicopters are only getting shot down over Iraq at all, because in 2003 we went with an evidential glove that didn't quite fit.

A quick update: KGS has just left some links in the comments of the previous helicopter post discussing Iranian weapons - I'll put them here so everyone can read them and draw their own conclusions. They are from the Guardian, the Telegraph, ABC and the Crisis Group. Thanks to KGS for digging them all out. The ABC is perhaps the most interesting one, but it still relies on unnamed officials promising that there is evidence. The Telegraph story notes that "there is no concrete evidence", and likewise the Guardian story points out they don't really know who the smugglers were. The Crisis Group write:

Even as accusations have proliferated, hard evidence has remained sparse. Typical statements, culled from Crisis Group interviews with government officials and political leaders in Iraq, include the following: "We received reports that [fill in the blank]"; "We have proof that [fill in the blank]"; "Everybody knows that [fill in the blank]"; "They spoke Persian"; "We have heard that Etelaat [Iranian intelligence] set up an office in Basra"; "Money is coming into the country"; "We have proof that Iranians are supplying Moqtada al-Sadr with money and weapons"; "We received a report a couple of weeks ago that Moqtada visited Falluja. This is clear proof of his cooperation with the insurgency there". And, in response to a direct request for evidence that the violent Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam has a presence in Diyala governorate and is supported by Iran: "You know, crossing the border is very easy". (p.3)

These links are all very similar to how the LA Times story linked above notes that the evidence of Iranian military support is discussed by coalition spokespeople but no direct evidence or photography is released. I'll say it again, I'm sure that the Iranians are busy in Iraq and may well be supplying weapons, but that doesn't mean that they hold the key to peace in Iraq or are responsible for all the US setbacks.

Helicopter losses

There hasn't seemed to have been many obvious connections between what the British Army learned in its three-decade long counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Ireland and the situation in Iraq, but I do remember some years ago reading that what the British military feared most was the IRA getting ground to air missiles. In the rural areas near the border with Ireland, known as 'bandit country', land transport was never safe even for military forces, let alone the police, so the UK relied greatly on helicopters for resupplying border observation posts, to ferry troops around and the like. As far as I remember no British helicopter was ever shot down. The Soviets started losing in Afghanistan when the mujahideen began to be able to bring down their helicopter gunships as well, and it was tactics that were developed in Afghanistan that were used by the Somalia fighters who brought down the US Blackhawks in Mogadishu in 1993. So the news that the US has lost another helicopter to ground fire is very worrying, suggesting that insurgents are getting - and being able to deploy - heavier weapons and whilst the fighting gets worse - particularly in the light of yesterdays horrendous truck-bombing - it is going to be harder for the US forces to be able to move around to try and stop that violence.

Casual references to genocide

Akinoluna's blog has a depressing post about the attitudes expressed by her fellow marines about Somali protesters outside the embassy where she works. You read the same type of attitudes expressed in the comments sections of many right-wing US blogs, where you can bet on someone suggesting the US "should nuke Mecca" within about ten readers' comments following any post on terrorism/jihad/Middle East wars/etc. It is the post-9/11 version of "Godwin's Law" and a good reason to avoid blogs like Little Green Footballs. But clearly this discourse - propagated via the internet, talk radio and the like - has an effect. Normally you just have to ignore it, thinking that there are ignorant bigots all around the world and probably always will be, and that people who make casual references to genocide can't really be all that serious. But then you remember that it is men with guns and maybe attitudes like these who end up in places like Haditha.

A book review: "Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq"

I wrote a review of "Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq" by Ahmed Hashim that will be translated and published in Finnish in the next edition of Ulkopolitiikka (Foreign Policy) magazine. As ever, when I first submitted it to the editor her response was "Great, thanks, but too long. Cut it to 3600 characters." Has any editor of any magazine or journal anywhere, ever, been known to say: "too short"? It seems to be a universal law that no matter what you write for an editor, the first time it's always a bit too long. They must teach editors this default position in editor school.

Anyway if anyone cares to read the review in its very slightly longer original English version, you are welcome to. Here's a "teaser" - click on it to go to the full review:

"Hashim provides a guide to the intricacies of the Sunni insurgent groups that operate predominantly in Baghdad itself, the Sunni towns surrounding the capital and in al-Anbar province stretching to the western borders of Iraq – looking at the disparate groups, their origins and motivations, and their support bases. There are no simple answers of the type favoured in west by those debating the war on either side of the argument: the insurgency is both a national resistance movement and an expression of an extreme religious ideology."

It's a good book. I really recommend it to anyone who wants to try and understand what is happening in Iraq. If anyone has an incredible urge to buy it you can do so by clicking this linkand hopefully Amazon will give me enough money money to a buy half a pint. Well, almost half a pint...

Iraqi humour

It isn't very tasteful (although I guess that's not very surprising) but it is rather funny.

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the highway. Suddenly a man knocks on his window. The driver rolls down his window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists down the road have kidnapped George W. Bush and Dick Cheney," the man says, "They're asking $100 million ransom. Otherwise they're going to douse them with gasoline and set them on fire. We're going from car to car taking up a collection."

The driver asks, "How much is everyone giving on average?"

The man responds: "Most people are giving about a gallon."

From IraqSlogger.com