New Offensive On Syrian Border

The U.S. has launched an "new offensive" on the Syrian border. The reports vary on how many "insurgents" have been killed so far - 75 or 100. However quibbling over numbers pales in light of the question of who is being killed. The offensive is said to be the largest since Falluja. I guess that the press is simply overlooking Ramadi. Regardless, the analogy should raise a warning flag as both Falluja and Ramadi were "free fire zones" - kill anything that moves.

In Richard Oppel's NY Times piece - U.S. Forces Mount Offensive Near Syrian Border With Iraq - he writes "senior American commanders have increasingly blamed the porous border with Syria for allowing a never-ending stream of armed jihadists to enter Iraq and replenish the insurgency as quickly as United States and Iraqi troops can kill and capture them." Which is interesting as for much of the last month, the concern of who made up the "insurgency" we had statements like "Many of the militants fighting the new US-backed forces and targeting US soldiers are based in the Sunni community." (BBC 4/03/05). But things could have changed.

In fact, it seem highly likely that a "bold new" approach might be used. How about the "Salvador Option"? According to the In These Times article:

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high-more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million.

This may be exactly what we are seeing in Iraq at this point. In contrast to the title of Patrick Cock burn's Independent article US claims 75 insurgents killed after assault on rebel enclave, we have the detailing of a much different issue of the power struggle in Iraq:

Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government, formed at the weekend after three months, will have difficulty in getting its hands on the real levers of power. The CIA still has overall control and provides funds for the Mukhabarat, the main security agency, according to a report by Knight Ridder Newspapers.

The US has taken the national intelligence archives, the accumulated information gathered by the Mukhabarat over the past year, to the US headquarters in Baghdad. The US, which theoretically handed over sovereignty over Iraq to the government of Mr Allawi last June, in practice kept control over the most important security services. It is worried the information it has acquired will be passed on to Iran by the Shia religious parties, formerly based in Iran, and dominant in the new cabinet.

Hadi al-Ameri, a member of the National Assembly and commander of the Badr Brigade, the military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was quoted as saying: "I prefer to call it the American Intelligence of Iraq, not the Iraqi Intelligence Service."

He added: "It is not working for the Iraqi government - it's working for the CIA." He said that if this went on the Iraqi government would have to create a new intelligence service answerable to itself.

The US justifies not handing over the intelligence files to the new government because it fears that Iran will find out how much the US knows about its operations in Iraq. The Shia political parties believe, however, that the US does not want them to find out the extent to which they have been the targets of surveillance.

The Interior Ministry's and the Defence Ministry's intelligence agencies are headed by Kurds - the one Iraqi community fully supporting the occupation.

The Mukhabarat is headed by Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, whose three sons were executed after a failed coup against Saddam Hussein in 1996. His deputy in charge of daily operations is also a Kurd. Only 12 per cent of Mukhabarat officers are reportedly Shia.

Yes the "Salvador Option" indeed.

Is it any wonder then that Turkey is alarmed by the return of Kurdish freedom fighters, and is engaging them militarily (Wa. Post, 5/10/05). After all, Turkey is not high on the Bush administration's list of friends after denying the US a military route into Iraq.

The combined-arms assault here, sweeping a remote mountain stronghold by air and ground, was precisely the kind of offensive that Turkey has spent most of the last two years asking U.S. forces to mount in northern Iraq -- against the same rebel group. The Kurdistan Workers' Party, an armed group of Turkish Kurds that the State Department calls a terrorist group, maintains a large base in Iraq's Qandil range, about 200 miles north of Baghdad.

Although the Bush administration has vowed repeatedly to confront the PKK, as the guerrilla force is known, its fighters have not only continued to enjoy a haven in Iraq, they have begun returning in force to Turkey.

The dynamics of what is going on in Iraq -from the filtered crumbs we can follow - does not paint a picture of a free Iraq under a democratic government fighting off insurgents from outside the country (from Syria or elsewhere). It appears to be a scenario of an alliance with the Kurds (for their participation in the overthrow of Hussein) with a reinstatement of the structure of the deposed Baathist's and their "militaries" and intelligence networks, to run a government that has power in name only.

It can't be a coincidence that the "offensive" is on the Syrian border after recent news - US extends Syrian economic sanctions and US renews sanctions on Damascus. The offensive, and its timing, sends a clear message that the U.S. has forces and material in the area. I am sure that the fighting also provides good cover for covert movement across the Syrian border. Never mind that the word is that the U.S. is unable to " put large numbers of "boots on the ground" in case of a major emergency elsewhere" (Wa. Post, 3/19/05). Or the embarrassing report that Marines are using dummies to fool rebels.

There is a major threat here with the U.S. being "stretched thin," and that is the "response" that is left. We are warned of a potential nuclear missile test by Kim Jong Il, and recent reports that Iran is going to move forward with processing nuclear material. If the U.S. doesn't have troops, what "enforcer" is likely to be used? My guess is "weapons of mass destruction." Bush has set his pattern of response - do what I want or we will kill you. He has also shown that those with potential nuclear retaliatory capability get a fair amount of "slack." It seems unlikely that Bush can just threaten his way out of this situation, and his is not a plan that fosters cooperation and negotiation.

Of course, all of this has been used repeatedly in one place after another in the U.S. stretch for empire. The possibility that more than 100 were killed in western Iraq seems high, as does the possibility that many (if not all) of those killed were neither insurgents or foreign fighters. Empire is a very dirty business.

Posted by rowan at May 10, 2005 8:30 AM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |