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Iraq
Bagdad Sunnis: 'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans'
2007-01-13
via Guardian, but interesting
Good, long article on the changing political beliefs of the Sunnis in Iraq.
As 20,000 more US troops head for Iraq, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed.

One morning a few weeks ago I sat in a car talking to Rami, a thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents.

Rami was explaining how the insurgency had changed since the first heady days after the US invasion. "I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.
Posted by:Spomort Greling4204

#13  Other things that struck me:
Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots...The inflation in arms prices reflects Iraq's plunge toward civil war...
I would have thought rather that the price jump reflects that so many captured ammunition caches and the former regime's storage depots have been discovered and disposed of. We've read so many reports of explosions therefrom going on day after day and night after night.

"There is a new jihad now," he said, echoing Abu Omar's warning. "The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans." In Ramadi there was still jihad against the Americans because there were no Shia to fight
Killing someone is clearly the first priority, and if they can't get to the one, they'll take whatever's at hand.

A good article, Spomort Greling4204. How on earth did it get past the Guardian's Keepers of the Faith?
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-01-13 21:00  

#12  "We have stopped using remote controls to detonate IEDs," he volunteered halfway through our conversation. "Only wires work now because the Americans are jamming the signals."

Yep, that jumped out at me too, Frank. It could have a lot to do with the precipitous (and almost unreported) drop in US casualties this month though there are probably other factors as well. This conversation apparently took place in December, but it would take time to introduce a new method all over the country and it would naturally be introduced in the most critical areas first.
Past efforts to jam IED detonation signals were frustrated one way or another, as a look at the casualty reports will show.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy   2007-01-13 20:25  

#11  "It's not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad"

Gee, wonder why that is, Abu?

Couldn't possibly have something to do with the previous decades when it wasn't a good time to be a Shia anywhere in Iraq, could it?

Go ahead and jihad, assholes - and get squashed like the vermin you are. Unlike Americans DemocRats, Iraqis don't give a shit what the Europeans think.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2007-01-13 19:21  

#10  I have been reading more on Lt-Gen. Petraeus. Apparently, after he left 101 Airborne to take over the Iraq Northern Command (from Mosul, a Sunni Kurd/Sunni Arab city), he relied on choke-point counter-insurgency. His use of road blocks, rather than take-give-take territorial patrols, would have been useful in the West Tigris sectors of Baghdad. As he stated in his "14 points" article, "intelligence" is paramount. When he gets it, he uses shock-and-awe surprise and overwhelming force to squelch resistance and minimize attacker casualties. He likes to set the "tone" of the campaign. What will that be? I would guess: relentless attacks, allowing no escape routes; pullback ultimatums, with a high cost should the other side chose to resist; total control of streets in combat areas, enforced by shoot on sight if necessary. Petraeus also engages local support by promising cleansing neighborhoods of belligerents, and delivering on these promises.

I am sure we have the right guy for the Baghdad job. I would forsee massive Mahdi Army and Al Qaeda in Iraq pullbacks once the new policy is implemented.
Posted by: Sneaze Shaiting3550   2007-01-13 17:07  

#9  The fact that our jammers are now so good has forced the terrorists to go back to wire command detonation; which in turn, has lead to an increase in the discovery and disarming of IEDs. Also, as we have seen the Sunnis pushed out of their former neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere, the incoming Shias are not at all hesitant in reporting IED laying teams in their new digs.
The Sunnis had a chance right after the fall of Saddam to turn their back on terrorism and barbarism, and they failed to take that chance.

So far, it has cost them a couple of million refugees, thousands of dead and maimed in battles with the US and Iraq militiaries, several smaller towns, and now whole neighborhoods in Baghdad. Also, they have nothing like the representation in the government that they would have, had they been smart enough to take the lost opportunities.
Posted by: Shieldwolf   2007-01-13 16:17  

#8  A nice emf pulse would...
Posted by: 3dc   2007-01-13 15:44  

#7  Standard job site safety requires shutting down all radio transmission in the area when handling electrically-detonated explosives. What would happen if the lead vehicle in a convoy was generating a constant RF sweep transmission? Might it induce a premature detonating current down the trigger wire?
Posted by: Glenmore   2007-01-13 15:34  

#6  "We have stopped using remote controls to detonate IEDs," he volunteered halfway through our conversation. "Only wires work now because the Americans are jamming the signals."

interesting. We've learned..
Posted by: Frank G   2007-01-13 13:54  

#5  SS, that's great stuff by Petraeus!

Here's a linky (pdf).

First one is from Lawrence:

“Do not try to do too much with your own hands.”

T.E. Lawrence offered this wise counsel in an article published in The Arab Bulletin in August 1917.
Continuing, he wrote: “Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is. It may take them longer and it may not be as good as you think, but if it is theirs, it will be better.”
Posted by: KBK   2007-01-13 13:27  

#4  dim bulb moment for the Sunni...

In fact the USA is the only strategic card the Sinfully Prideful Sunni ever had from day one.

Empirical fact of Biblical proportion [handed down to me by Moses the morning I became a Rantburger]:

Iraq's Sunni are a gift to the rest of us who's sole purpose on Earth was to show us what self immolating pyrrhic tactics will beget.

there fixed it..
Posted by: RD   2007-01-13 12:45  

#3  dim bulb moment for the Sunni...

In fact the USA is the only strategic card the Sinfully Prideful Sunni ever had from day one.

Empirical fact of Biblical proportion [handed down to me by Moses the morning I became a Rantburger]:

Iraq's Sunni are a gift to the rest of us who's sole purpose on Earth was to show the rest what self immolating pyrrhic tactics will beget.
Posted by: RD   2007-01-13 12:39  

#2  Life's a bitch. Life's even more of a bitch when you are stoopid.
Posted by: Brett   2007-01-13 12:29  

#1  It was always a Sunni-Shiite fight. The IED, RPG and sniper attacks were set up to deter US patrols. The Bush-Plan recognizes that visible patrols are an inappropriate means of victory in the type of battle that is waging in Baghdad.

If Baghdad is pacified, then the rest of Iraq will fall into place. And Baghdad will only be pacified when the al-Sadrites are tossed out of sectors West of the Tigris River.

Lt General David Petraeus wrote the following last year in "Military Review":

1. Do not try to do too much with your own hands.
2. Act quickly, because every army of liberation has a half-life.
3. Money is ammunition.
4. Increasing the number of stakeholders is a critical component to success.
5. Analyze "costs and benefits" before each operation.
6. Intelligence is the key to success.
7. Everyone must do nation-building.
8. Help build institutions, nut just units.
9. Cultural awareness is a force multiplier.
10. Success in a counter-insurgency requires more than just military operations.
11. Ultimate success depends on local leaders.
12. Remember the strategic corporals and strategic lieutenants.
13. There is no substitute for flexible, adaptable leaders.
14. A leader's most important task is to set the right tone.
Posted by: Sneaze Shaiting3550   2007-01-13 12:24  

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