Tribal/Fundamentalist Violence
Guerrillas Economically self-sustaining
That a tribal group and Sunni fundamentalists clashed in al-Anbar is believeable. That the tribe lost 9 and "al-Qaeda" lost 55 is not, unless it was a sneak attack.
The NYT says that oil smuggling, antiquities smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and fraud raise as much as $200 million a year for the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. I suspect money comes in from the Oil Gulf, as well. There has been no success in cutting the funding off.
John Tirman on regionalizing Iraq: "Few if any peace processes can succeed without the neighbors' active consent."
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/26/2006 07:48:00 PM
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7 Comments:
Exactly what or who accounts for most of the killing right now? Some months ago, when the US was "clearing" places like Fallujah, people alleged that US forces killed more than other forces alone, or perhaps more than the others combined. Are US forces, in terms of land or air strikes, now involved more, or involved less, in the day to day violence? Based on coverage in US media, it would seem that sectarian zelots do most of the current killing. Has the US element somewhat "given up" or are the day to day campaigns simply under-reported (or impossible to report)? Are the efforts of local police more or less tractless, unrecorded, and obscure?
I noticed the that you started recently to use the term "civil war", to describe the chaos situation in Iraq, no objection about this. But when you quote John Tirman , on regionalizing Iraq: "Few if any peace processes can succeed without the neighbours' active consent.", I suppose you agree with the quotation. Personally, I agree with it. But the readers of Informed Comment, need a “deconstructed” / Informed Comment of the term “civil war”. I’m sure that you know very well that Spain civil war was not a civil war/ intern war, and if “few if any peace processes can succeed [in Iraq] without the neighbours' active consent.", the Iraqi “civil war“ is not one, may be “half civil war” not a “civil war”.
Thanks for the good, huge work in the blog.
The New York Times piece is a joke.
Has Judith Miller gone back to work at the Times as editor?
The gist and drift of this article is how the Iraqi insurgency is 'really' a criminal organization. That's the 'pot calling the kettle black', if true at all.
I mean, there's no way to verify ANY of this information, (Cf. "...a classified United States government report has concluded") just like Judith Miller's 'insider' stories that turned out to be nothing more than Pentagon PR.
I suspect the Pentagon and the NYT are taking this disinformational approach because we can't get at the large pool of insurgent-available funds in the baathist community of Syria, and there has been extensive pressure on Syria from the west to 'confiscate' baathist holdings... I'm sure elsewhere as well.
I saw this article yesterday, and considered it to be simple, and I do mean simple-as-in-simple-minded, propaganda emanating from a nation losing an illegal and unjustifiable war. The intended victim is the 'bad guy', not us. Sick, but no unexpected.
'America' will believe this story.
After all, addicts (That's U.S.) never take the blame for anything, and certainly not the responsibility for how their own actions affect others.
Juan, I would take this news about the tribes with a slight grain of salt.
A number of weeks ago tribal chiefs claimed to have killed hundreds of baathists and alqaida men, and this was reported in not so credible arabic news papers.
My view here is that the Government is paying these chiefs money and they are giving the government the news it wants. Especially, given that the government has little clue about what's happening in their areas.
I guess that we will soon find that a cut of the resources Americans and Iraqis are giving to these tribes is going to the insurgency.
It must be painful to be right when you wish you were wrong.
I'm reminded of they guy who bet that the Iraqi and the US publics would be thankful for the invasion by now.
Now that the election is over and violence has moved over a cliff, how much do I wish the people who said that the Iraqis were spiking the violence just to influence the US elections had been right.
Given the results of the election, it is clear that the American public isn't buying the Bush propaganda being spread by the MSM any more so the NY Times should give it a rest because they aren't fooling most of the people any more.
The War Chest
The 7 page "intell" report given to the NYT regarding funding of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq is interesting--one could read it to say that half of the funds come from our NATO allies. ($35 million to free kidnapped persons out of the $70 million low estimate.) Gosh, no wonder we are mad at the French and Italians. Or we could just protect their nationals better from kidnapping. Or stop smuggling of crude oil out of Iraq, and cut off imports of subsidized petroleum products, another area where we seem to glory in financing both sides of the war.
It's not clear if $70-200 million is a lot or a little. If, as other articles have suggested, many attacks are arranged by paying someone $100 to place a shell and fuse for an IED, and there are 1000 such attacks a month, that's $100,000 a month or $1.2 million a year. At 50 KIA a month and 300 wounded, that's $300 or so to inflict a casualty on us.
While the intell report guesses about sources of income, note that the larger end of the range $200 million, is just about $10 per Iraqi, or less than a dollar a month. How many Iraqi's would gladly contribute that amount to harass the friends who just won't go away?
Turning things around, the US is spending a billion dollars every day or two on the war, outspending the insurgency by at least $1,000 for each dollar they spend. We don't seem to be getting much bang for the buck. Maybe if we up our spending by a factor of 10 or 100, we'll get better results?
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