The Crisis of the ‘Resistance’ (and why it will amaze but not change the delusional Left)

Alan Johnson’s weekly column. Part two of this will appear next week.

Is the Iraqi ‘resistance’ in decline? The signs have been accumulating. The first was the report of secret discussions between the leaders of the Sunni Ba’athist insurgency and the Coalition. The senior insurgent negotiator told Time magazine that his message to the US had been "We are ready to work with you".

Time reported: “Senior Iraqi insurgent commanders said several "nationalist" rebel groups--composed predominantly of ex--military officers and what the Pentagon dubs "former regime elements"--have moved toward a strategy of "fight and negotiate." Although they have no immediate plans to halt attacks on U.S. troops, they say their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the U.S. military's offensive in the Sunni triangle”. (Time, February 2005)

As a direct result the strains between the Ba’athist and Islamist components of the Resistance have increased. You don’t negotiate a Caliphate. Time reported a Western observer close to the discussions as saying "Al-Zarqawi keeps pulling the process away from 'fight and negotiate' to 'pure mayhem.'"

The Sunni Ba’athist terrorists are seeking negotiations because they are isolated. Their’s was always a sectarian and authoritarian insurgency with the goal of reimposing Sunni/ Ba’athist power in the centre of Iraq. It still is. It was never – whatever the useful idiots said – a national liberation movement. The killers were resisting what they had always resisted: the freedom and self-determination of the Iraqi people as a whole.

The January elections showed this underlying reality in sharp relief and was always going to have a positive impact on security. But those concerned only to give Bush a bloody nose contrived not to see this. The day after the January Poll, Sidney Blumenthal, President Clinton’s Advisor, wrote a Guardian column in which he sneered, ‘The morning after the Iraqi state received the nod of legitimacy it is no more capable than before of providing security’. To which I responded, ‘My question is this: how did a man who thinks being elected makes no difference to a government’s ability to enforce security ever get to advise anyone on anything anyway? Of course it will make a difference. You just see’.
Now we may be seeing. Since the election the tide may have begun to turn. Four reasons stand out.

1. The Iraqi Army and Police are getting organised and have developed a will to fight. The so-called ‘tiny heart syndrome’ (always unfair) is being replaced by a new grit. Last Tuesday Iraqi Interior Ministry troops attacked an insurgent training camp on the edge of central Iraq's Tharthar Lake, northwest of Baghdad. Seven Interior Ministry soldiers and an undetermined number of insurgents were killed in the clash. And there are two further reports from Falluja and Baghdad:

‘In Falluja…six Iraqi Army battalions and two security battalions that arrived after November's battle are functioning so well that the Marines have been able to reduce their presence to two battalions, from four, and turn over more security duties to the Iraqis’ (New York Times, 19 March).

‘Last month, an Iraqi brigade with two battalions garrisoned along Haifa Street became the first homegrown unit to take operational responsibility for any combat zone in Iraq. The two battalions can muster more than 2,000 soldiers, twice the size of the American cavalry battalion that has led most fighting along the street. So far, American officers say, the Iraqis have done well, withstanding insurgent attacks and conducting aggressive patrols and raids, without deserting in large numbers or hunkering down in their garrisons.’ (New York Times 21 March).

The Iraqi Army has been helped by better supply. Since last summer $5 billion of American money has bought Iraqi fighting units ‘more than 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 100,000 flak jackets, 110,000 pistols, 6,000 cars and pickup trucks, and 230 million rounds of ammunition. In place of the single Iraqi battalion trained last June, there are more than 90 battalions now, totalling about 60,000 army and special police troops’. (New York Times, 21 March)

2. New tactics have been devised that have put the resistance on the back foot. Foot patrols have replaced humvee drive-throughs in Haifa Street (paid for by US soldiers with their lives. Haifa Street is now nicknamed Purple Heart Boulevard). Multiple random check-points now spring up daily across Iraq. The results: increased intelligence and increased capture of munitions and ‘resistance’ leaders.

3. Reconstruction proceeds with glacial slowness nonetheless it does proceed and more people can see a future. In one area of Baghdad it is reported that ‘Ties [between coalition troops and local people] improved with a special $2 million reconstruction program - part of the wider reconstruction in the district - that has brought 12,500 Showaka families their first indoor toilets, buried sewage pipes and modernized the electricity grid. Gone, for these people, are the centuries when sewage ran down open channels in the alleys into the Tigris’. (New York Times 21 March)

4. Ordinary Iraqis have had enough. We may be approaching the tipping point when they turn on the Ba’athist/Islamist terrorists, arms in hand. It is just possible that the marvellous stories that are emerging since the elections - of ordinary Iraqis turning on the ‘resistance’ - represent the future for the killers and the killers know it.

On March 22 the New York Times reported this inspiring story. ‘Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough. As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said. "We attacked them before they attacked us," Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. "We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them."’ (New York Times, March 22)

When a suicide bomber killed 136 people in Hilla last month hundreds of residents protested in front of the city hall every day for a week. They shouted out their slogans against terrorism at the top of their lungs and a new voice was heard in Iraq. It is rarely reported on the BBC but it will only get louder.

Another anti-terrorism rally took place in Baghdad and more are scheduled.
These four reasons may be combining to produce a decline in Resistance activity. Of course this should not be overstated. There may still 12,000 to 20,000 insurgents including foot soldiers, safe-house operators, organizers and financiers. The Iraq Body Count website continues to chart terrible death tolls. As I write news of the attacks of Thursday 24 March are being confirmed. 16 people killed, 11 Police officers and 5 female translators. Nonetheless, the attacks on US troops in the Sunni-dominated western Iraq have dropped. It is possible that US Army claims that the 25 attacks per day of November 2004 have fallen to 10 attacks per day are more than news management. The New York Times is reporting ‘American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed’ (New York Times 21 March). Whereas 11 mortars were fired from Haifa Street into the Green Zone in the first two weeks of September 2004 the figure for the last six months is only three.

Even if I am being optimistic about the decline of the Resistance one thing is clear: the pro-resistance left view is fantasy. That view was expressed most candidly by Michael Moore when he said ‘The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win’.