Zarqawi RIP?
It just does not matter if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. US troops searched a house in Mosul where guerrillas took their own lives rather than be captured for signs that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might be among the dead.
A later US press release said that it doubted that al-Zarqawi had been killed.
Meanwhile, Some 57 members of the al-Khalaylah family (al-Zarqawi's real last name) took out a half-page ad in a Jordanian newspaper to denounce their relative, to say that they had cut him off forever, and to declare their allegiance to the Hashemite monarchy.
Thousands of Jordanians protested the hotel bombings, attributed to al-Zarqawi, last last week.
If al-Zarqawi really exists and really does head up a terrorist organization in Iraq, it just probably does not matter so much if he is killed. Talent is a precious commodity, and it could be that he has some, so the death would not be trivial. But Bayan Jabr Sulagh, the Minister of the Interior, put the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at only 900 recently. Even if that is an under-estimation, it is not a huge one. They are mainly cannon fodder. When the volunteers come in, the local ex-Baathist guerrilla leadership gives them a car bomb to drive. It isn't as if the car bombs are being imported from Jordan.
If al-Zarqawi died or were captured, there would be many increasinlgy experienced guerrilla fighters to take his place.
People kept saying that when Saddam was captured, that was the end of the "insurgency." Guerrilla movements, though, are social movements, and do not typically depend on one man.
The US government is still stuck in the "Great Man" mode of historiography, and does not seem to recognize the achievements of the social group.
Nothing much would change if al-Zarqawi were killed, in my view.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/21/2005 06:21:00 AM
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12 Comments:
Don't use RIP, use KIA. RIP gives the impression you want him to rest in peace, where as criminals should burn in hell not rest in peace.
The US government is still stuck in the "Great Man" mode of historiography, and does not seem to recognize the achievements of the social group.
Well-said. I have been mystified by the tendency to hang the work of thousands, even millions of people on single individuals; for example, crediting Ronald Reagan, or John Paul II, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
Similarly, Saddam would have been little more than a guy with a big mouth if he didn't have at least a few thousand people willing to threaten and kill others for him. Same goes for any "leader".
I would argue that understanding the development of mass movements is far more important than toppling Public Enemy #1, only to have someone else take her or his place. Indeed, focusing a significant chunk of society on individuals or stereotypes presented as threats has proven to be an influential form of social control. Makes you wonder...
And still incredibly even more or less experienced, talented journalists in Iraq like Jane Arraf,continue to peddle agit prop about foreign fighters streaming into the country.
The problem is we invaded and occupied a sovereign, Arab country for no good reason. Why are we surprised that the insurgency is home grown? Why do US journalists have so much difficulty apprehending this?
"Great Man" theories have always been a lazy way of thinking. The USSR didn't collapse when Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, or any of their leaders passed away. It collapsed when it couldn't hold together politically and economically.
Similarly, the assymetric war that the U.S. is waging won't end if we kill the high profile leaders. They'll just be replaced by others. Maybe those others will not be as talented; maybe they'll be more talented. The conflict will end when the conditions that create and fuel it are resolved and not before.
I agree. Nothing would change in terms of the situation in Iraq if Zarqawi were killed. But the republicans at home would see a surge in the opinion polls and ultimately American perception of the war in Iraq is the driving force behind finding a Zarqawi body.
If al-Zarqawi died or were captured, there would be many increasinlgy experienced guerrilla fighters to take his place.
Juan,
A good way to frame this is to draw comparisons to the war on drugs. America declared a war on drugs 30+ years ago, and over and over again, local police chiefs, the FBI, and the DEA have declared victory every time they catch some drug kingpin. And every time, the drug trafficking continues, and usually gets worse.
The war on terror is functioning in the same way. Zarqawi is not the leader he is because he's some Lex Luther-type criminal mastermind. He's the leader he is because what he's been selling for years is now in high demand. He was unknown in 2002, and wouldn't have been able to get the average Iraqi to give him a bowl of fruit. Now, some Iraqis are giving their lives for him.
The problem is the demand for the ideology that Zarqawi has, not for Zarqawi himself. And until the idiots running this war figure it out, it's our problem too.
I have been waiting to see what "major news event" would surface to try to move the media away from all the bad press the Bush administration is getting over the Iraq war. Here it is--the possible death of Al-Zarqawi. (Most of these stories turn out to be untrue.) One knows they are worried when Cheney feels he has to come out into the public to "fix" things. If it gets worse, we will see Andy Card on the Sunday talk shows. Stay tuned.
I think you are totally right about how little the death of Zarqawi would matter.
But just as an historical footnote (since you are of course a historian, first and foremost), there were a couple of times in history where the capture of the leader did deflate an insurgency, and 2 of them were the archetypcal muslim uprisings against Western armies: Abd-ed-Kader in Algeria against France, and Shamil in the Caucaus against Russia, both in the 1830s. I think those were the first insurgencies in the modern world to organize around the term jihad. And both stood out in their century has providing two of the stoutest examples of resistance to colonization.
But while both movements quickly deflated after the men were captured (the capture of Aguinaldo in the Philippines had a similar effect)
it is probably no accident that none of these leaders were killed or even treated badly. Instead they were all handsomely pensioned off. That's the way to neutralize a charismatic leader and use his charisma for your side. You get him to declare that the fight is over and show it by his actions. That demoralizes his followers. Killing him makes him a martyr.
Ah, but those were the old days when imperialism and realpolitik were done openly and sometimes rationally.
BTW, I'm sure you know this, but some of your readers may not: Abd-el-Kader was considered a hero in the United States, the "George Washington of Algeria." The town of Elkader, Iowa is named after him.
Michael
No, it matters little if al-Zarqawi is dead ; others can certainly continue his work. But it seems to matter a great deal if al-Zarquawi is seen in the public perception to be dead or alive ; if he - and the «foreign insurgents» - are no longer alive, on whom is the blame for the failure of US pacification efforts in Iraq to be placed ? And if the reason for invading Iraq was to remove Saddam Hussein and he has been removed, and the reason for staying in Iraq was to remove the «foreign insurgents» who, so it is claimed, are causing all the trouble and these too have been removed, why then do US troops remain in Iraq ? Indeed, if Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attacks on New York and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, and if he was killed in the fighting in Afghanistan the same year or died of renal insufficiency in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan a bit later, thereby bringing «closure» to the families of the victims of these attacks, what then was the justification for invading Iraq in the first place ? Mark Twain is said to have remarked that «rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated» ; it would seem that the same type of exaggeration - in the interest of the state - has been applied to the rumours regarding Messrs bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi's remarkable longevity....
Many people in the Muslim world believe that Zarqawi is a phantom figure, who may have been killed long time ago. However, it is in the interest of the War Party within the Bush Administration to give the impression that he is alive so that the onslaught against Iraq and that part of the Middle East could continue.
The daily suicide bombings in Iraq are so confusing, esp. when it was found out that the British intelligence itself was planting bombs in Basra and southern Iraq to start probably sectarian war. So, with that kind of confusion as to who is/are behind all these series of bombings, I doubt we shall have any clear understanding soon of the perpetrators.
While I believe that individuals do make a difference, and that al-Zarqawi's death, if true, would effect the insurrection, I believe you are quite right that it will not stop the insurrection but for different reasons.
Fundamentally from what I've read of him, al-Zarqawi brings one great virtue - a steely resolve. That cannot be underestimated in the ultimate success of a military campaign and the more unorthodox the campaign, the more improtant that attribute is. So his death would certainly effect the insurrection.
However, there is an underlying cause that has not been discussed much in recent days: the strategy of terrorism. Terrorism is not a political movement in the sense that the terrorists do not wish to overthrow a government and take power themselves. Instead the strategy of terrorists is to destabilize a society causing the group in power to issue such a harsh response that they become universally hated and eventually they are overthrown.
In this case, it is America an the American military that has become the object of this hatred. Without a withdrawal, or a change in policy in how the war is conducted, or preferably, both, the terror will continue. In essence we are making the terrorists successful. The more torture, artillery bombardments, white phosphorus and Faluja's there are, the more terrorists there will be. The corollary is that the longer we pursue this tact, the more the post-US government will be radicalized in order to be more un-like us.
So Representative Murtha is absolutely correct: At this point we are the problem, not the solution. The thing that I'm most worried about is whether the eventual result of this whole misguided imperialism will more likely the entire Middle East will be engulfed in war. The longer we stay there, the bigger the problem will be.
I believe that we would be facing a strong insurgency in Iraq whether or not Zarqawi had come along. If anything, Zarqawi and crew have undermined the insurgency's support among the Iraqi people. His death would certainly be welcomed by the Jordanian elite, however. One suspects that he is fighting more for the sake of fundamentalist Islam in Jordan and the Levant than for overthrow of the Baghdad puppet regime.
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