Guerrillas Gather at Ramadi
US Riposte
Iraq has banned non-Iraqi Arabs from coming to Iraq in the build-up to the December 15 elections. I think they would have been better off banning all civilians of any nationality from coming in; this way of doing it smacks of racism.
Aljazeera is reporting, based on video released by guerrillas that the latter have taken over Ramadi and attacked US troops there. I saw on CNN International a rebuttal of this claim by Gen. Lynch, who alleged that the Zarqawi group is very good at propaganda and is obscuring what is really going on in Iraq. He said that on the day the videotape claimed there were several attacks on US positions around Ramadi, there was actually just one rocket propelled grenade attack on a US base.
My suspicion is that the truth lies in the middle. Gen. Lynch is correct that the guerrillas are not openly patrolling downtown Ramadi on a regular basis, as the videotape suggested. The Marines would just shoot them. But it is also the case that the US military is not in control of any major city in the Sunni Arab heartland, including Baghdad, and that behind the scenes and under the cover of darkness, guerrillas do plan and carry out attacks and exercise authority. Moreover, most of the guerrillas are not the foreign jihadis of the Zarqawi strike, but rather local ex-Baathists, tribal groups, Salafi fundamentalists, etc.
The US military is beginning a sweep in Ramadi. So much for Anbar's participation in the Dec. 15 elections.
The NYT gives an overview of the multi-headed, diverse groups making up the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, suggesting that their very lack of a command structure is one of the secrets of their strength.
Given the proliferation of these small guerrilla groups, you wonder, "What would victory in Iraq look like?" I haven't heard Bush or any US general spell this out. But if the US is "staying the course" to achieve "victory," then the precise definition of "victory" has to be the philosophical starting point. Otherwise it is a case of the dog chasing his tail.
The US military said that suicide bombings fell to their lowest level in seven months in November and pointed to this statistic as a sign of progress in the war.
But November saw 87 US troops killed, among the highest death tolls for a 30-day period since the war began, and one wonders about the rate of severely wounded. Moreover, in one two-week period in November, bombers (suiciders or not) killed hundreds of Iraqis, spreading insecurity, fear and anger.
It raises the question of whether the guerrillas are depending more heavily on roadside bombs and remotely detonated bombs rather than on kamikazes. Whatever the case, the mere decline in the latter seems to have little or nothing to do with the level of security in the country, which is generally poor, and, indeed, among the worst of any country in the world.
Reuters reports on the poor equipment that still plagues the Iraqi military and makes it hard for it to establish control even of little villages from which guerrillas operate.
The Ukraine has begun the pull-out of its almost 1,000 troops from Iraq, with its security duties taken over by the Iraqi 3rd Infantry Brigade. The rest of the Ukrainians will be out by the end of 2005. It seems likely that the US will be virtually alone in Iraq as a foreign military power by mid-2006.
The case of Muriel Degauque, the poor Belgian Catholic girl who became a kamikaze in Iraq, has sent a chill through Europe. As I have argued before, the jihadi mindset is a cult-like ideology that is like software and can be installed in any mind. It is a set of plausibility structures, of premises that lead inexorably to killing oneself and others for some vague Cause. It is so insidious precisely because people inside the movement find the premises so compelling. It is not really anything to do with Islam per se, and most of the kamikazes don't know much about formal Islam. It isn't really any different than the Solar Temple Cult or other such self-destructive religious phenomena, except that the jihadis have become politicized and so kill themselves and others on the battlefield.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/02/2005 12:30:00 AM
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8 Comments:
One should wonder whether Iraqi forces do not have the equipment needed because of, say, absurdly poor resource allocation - per US troops' armor - or for some actual reason.
Hello, Mr. Cole. I've been reading up on your blog for awhile now. It's some of the most incisive analyses I've seen, and it's clear you know what you're talking about.
So I linked "Informed Comment" to my own sort of informedly commenting blog, the Center for Random Rantage [http://alexcacioppo.blogspot.com].
From this latest post, has it been suggested that the media is treating what happened in Ramadi as if it were some scaled-down Tet offensive? Also, does the NSC strategy have any practical solutions? (As of yet I have yet to find any.)
What would victory look like? Full cooption of nationalist Sunni organizations into the Alliance of Muslim Scholars into the democratic process in Iraq.
That, I think, would cause the insurgency to lose its potency. But it wouldn't die -- insurgencies go on and on until they become irrelevant. But it wouldn't threaten Iraq's survival after that.
Look at Algeria. The fighting happened mostly 1992-1998, and most of the surviving insurgents have been amnestied and gone home. But hardcore salafists are still in the mountains and deserts fighting the government.
I just saw an interesting post on Democracy Arsenal about the possibility of turning the nationalist insurgents away from the government and against the jihadist elements operating in Iraq once U.S. forces are redeployed from Iraq.
The core information in the post is from an Iraqi exile, Yahia Said, who is Director of the Open Society Institute's Iraq Revenue Watch and a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics' Centre for the Study of Global Governance. He is the son of an Iraqi journalist and leading Iraqi feminist, and left Iraq in 1979. I think you, Dr. Cole, would be able to evaluate his qualifications and the intelligence of what he says better than I can.
> Iraq has banned non-Iraqi Arabs from coming to Iraq in the build-up to the December 15 elections. I think they would have been better off banning all civilians of any nationality from coming in; this way of doing it smacks of racism.
You mean like preventing Americans from coming it? We can dream I suppose...
Hey, you have comments now! Awesome! A lot of times I wanted to tell you I liked your post... or see if other people thought you were getting it right. I hope you get a good community of commenters going and not a lot of flame war.
Professor Cole, I would question the idea that al-Qaeda is a cult, unless the definition of "cult" is so diluted as to include nearly every terrorist group. I think al-Qaeda is simply a political movement with an ideology expressed in the language of religion.
Professor Cole, you write, "It is a set of plausibility structures, of premises that lead inexorably to killing oneself and others for some vague Cause."
This can be said of nearly any popular ideology that demands sacrifice from the individual for greater, public good. Nationalistic patriotism that leads a soldier to volunteer for the US military (or some other country's military) and "die for his country" can be described in similar terms.
You add, "It is so insidious precisely because people inside the movement find the premises so compelling."
But isn't this almost a tautology? The followers of most ideologies find them very compelling, otherwise they wouldn't be followers.
My sense of al-Qaeda is that it feeds off three sentiments:
(1) Group solidarity with (Sunni) Muslims worldwide;
(2) The perception that Muslims are under attack by the US (and Israel);
(3) The belief that armed struggle can drive out the US, just as it drove out the Russians from Afghanistan.
As for suicide bombing, it's a very pragmatic and effective approach to take for an armed group that is small and heavily outgunned. It allows you to get the "maximum bang for your buck," as it were. Setting the morality question aside, one could consider suicide bombing as a highly rational tactic.
As for attacks killing civilians, that's standard practice for hundreds of armed groups in history. That is not enough to make a group a cult. It merely qualifies al-Qaeda as terrorist NGO.
You wrote
As I have argued before, the jihadi mindset is a cult-like ideology that is like software and can be installed in any mind. It is a set of plausibility structures, of premises that lead inexorably to killing oneself and others for some vague Cause.
I would go along with the idea that any religion is like viral software (see Richard Dawkins' concept of "memes"). But the idea of killing oneself and others for a cause is not unique to jihad, Islam, Arabia, Christianity, or any other religion or culture. All it takes is patriotism. The jihad programming may be more efficient in instilling patriotism, but it's not unique.
Take a look at those throughout US military history who have received high awards posthumously. They show a tendency to deliberately take action which will almost certainly result in their own death in order to save their compatriots by killing some of the enemy. See, for instance, the actions of Rodger Young, which most would hold up as an example of bravery, valour, and heroism.
Evolution has, paradoxically, caused most members of most gregarious species to have similar instincts. Every so often you will read newspaper reports of dogs showing "human emotions" when they risk their own lives to rescue the children of their owners from burning buildings, or similar events. We're not unique in giving up our lives to save others.
Simple genetics shows that an allele of a gene which prompts you to save the lives of three siblings at the expense of your own life will prosper: three copies of that allele survive. An individual in the same situtation with a different allele will not save the siblings and only one copy of that allele will survive. The allele for what is apparently altruistic behaviour rapidly spreads because its possessors have more surviving relatives.
There are ways of working out the relatedness of individuals in a species such as humans (different rules apply to eusocial insects because of haplodiploidy). You can, in any situation, work out whether or not losing your life to save a certain number of individuals of varying degrees of relatedness, is likely to be more successful at propagating your genes than walking away. You can, but you don't.
Evolution prods us to instinctively estimate the pros and cons in such a situtation by equating the sum of relatedness by how closely we are bonded with those individuals (it's likely to be an inaccurate estimate but it's the best that can be achieved). That instinct can be played upon to induce patriotism.
One way of doing it is to form an army, brainwash them into bonding with boot-camp training, then lie to them about an insane dictator in a foreign land having WMDs. They will happily put their lives at risk to protect their fellow countrymen from the thread of those WMDs and will instinctively take actions which will almost certainly kill them in order to protect their cohort.
Another way of doing it is to point out that an insane dictator in a foreign land has invaded your country in order to steal its oil. Point out that the only effective weapon of repelling that foreign invader is to use the weight of numbers. If, on average, one of the invaders dies for one of your countrymen, and there are many more people in your country than invaders, this is a winning strategy. A car-bomb generally gives a better return than standing up and pointing a gun at an invader.
I would argue that invading Iraq because of WMDs, which mutated into Saddam being a threat to his neighbours, which mutated into Saddam was a nasty man who tortured people, which mutated into liberating the people of Iraq (who truly wish we'd get the hell out) constitutes a vague cause. Fighting an invader determined to steal your oil at whatever the cost to the welfare of your countrmen constitutes a very specific cause.
You can argue that Muslims outside of Iraq who join the ranks of suicide bombers have been brainwashed, but I doubt you'd say that about 9-11. Immediately after 9-11 there was an outpouring of sympathy from around the world and a desire amongst the people's of all countries to do whatever it took to prevent Osama doing anything like that again. Was Muriel Degauque brainwashed or was she reacting with sympathy for the plight of those in Iraq who continue to be harmed by the actions of an evil man?
Note: I'm in the UK and I'm an atheist. But if the UK had significant resources that somebody invaded us for, killing and torturing as he wrecked my country, then I'd probably end up giving my life to repel the invader.
Brian De Ford:
Professor Cole's explanation of the jihadi set of plausibility structures specifically mentions its vagueness. Your contrast with US military history ignores this vagueness; it is very specific. I think the point you miss is that when it comes to overriding insticts of self preservation, the "jihadi programming" can be used to rationalize a despairingly wide range of acts, while that of "brainwashed bootcamp training" requires that certain conditions be met. I have trouble imagining Rodger Young being convinced to give his life driving a truck bomb into a japanese encampment or temple, regardless of how much combat risk such action might have saved his unit. Your comparison doesn't really hold well under scrutiny.
In a different direction, I had a question-- why has it not been proposed to place a referendum on the December 15 ballot asking the Iraqi people to grant or deny permission to the US to remain in their country militarily? A "no, we ask you to leave now" consensus could give real impetus to finally scheduling a pullout. A "yes, we need you to stay for now" vote could provide the Iraqi government's cooperation with the US administration some much-needed national and international legitimacy. Either way, involving the Iraqi populace in the process of US withdrawal should be happening more than it is, right?
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