Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Scott Ritter sulla resistenza irachena

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/19190/
Facing the Enemy on the Ground
By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2004.
The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds
of the Iraqi people. As things currently stand, it appears that victory will
go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today:
the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.Iyad Allawi's government was
recently installed by the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA) to counter a Ba'athist nationalism that ceased to exist nearly a
decade ago. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime
shifted toward an amalgam of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism and
nationalism that more accurately reflected the political reality of Iraq.
Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight, Saddam's lieutenants are
now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups.Not only has
the United States failed to put into place a viable government to replace
the CPA in the aftermath of the so-called "transfer of sovereignty," but
more importantly, it continues to misidentify the true nature of the Iraqi
insurgency. As a consequence, the resistance will inevitably continue to
flourish and grow until no force can defeat it, Iraqi or American.
Ba'athism is Dead, Long Live Saddam
In August 1995, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to
Jordan. In the lead up to the war, much of the attention paid to this event
has centered on Kamal's various debriefings with the CIA, British
Intelligence, and UN weapons inspectors concerning Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Hussein
Kamal's testimony that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed
in the summer of 1991 has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to
date no WMD have been found.But more important than the WMD information
(which has become abundantly clear through other sources) is Kamal's
self-described reason for defecting: Saddam Hussein's order that all senior
Ba'ath Party officials undergo mandatory Koranic studies. A staunch
Ba'athist like Hussein Kamal, schooled in the doctrine of secular Arab
nationalism, viewed the command as tantamount to heresy. But for Saddam
Hussein, this radical shift in strategy was necessary to his survival given
the new realities of post-Gulf War Iraq.Confronted with the postwar turmoil
created by military defeat and economic devastation (prolonged by UN-imposed
sanctions), Saddam had to re-engineer his domestic constituency to maintain
his power. The traditional Ba'athist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab
nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior.
Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the
Shi'ite majority - which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 -
but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional
allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.The most visible symbol of
Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words "God is
Great" to the Iraqi flag. He also simultaneously embraced traditional Iraqi
tribal culture, de-emphasizing the importance of the Ba'ath Party in 1996 by
noting that it was but "one of the tribes of Iraq" - a move that erased
decades of Ba'athist anti-tribal policies.
Getting It Wrong, Again
The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, has gone
largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the
attention of the Bush Administration. And the recent "transfer of
sovereignty" from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the
new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reflects this lack of
understanding.For many in the Bush Administration, the greatest and
indisputable success of the invasion of Iraq was ridding the world of a
dangerous ideology, Ba'athism. Indeed, one of the first directives issued by
Paul Bremer, the former head of the CPA, was to pass a "de-Ba'athification"
law, effectively blacklisting all former members of that party from
meaningful involvement in the day-to-day affairs of post-Saddam Iraq. The
law underscored the mindset of those in charge of Iraq: Ba'athist holdouts
loyal to Saddam were the primary threat to the U.S.-led occupation.Senior
Bush Administration officials recognized their mistake - though a little too
late. In April 2004, Bremer rescinded his "de-Ba'thification" order. The
architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, recently told members of Congress that the Pentagon had
underestimated its enemy in Iraq. The Pentagon today speaks of a "marriage
of convenience" between Islamic fundamentalists and former members of
Saddam's Ba'athist regime, even speculating that the Islamists are taking
over Ba'athist cells weakened by American anti-insurgency efforts.Once
again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still unable or
unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground.The Iraqi
resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but rather a product of
planning years in the making. Rather than being absorbed by a larger
Islamist movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots in
Iraq, having co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or without
their knowledge.One look at the list of the 55 "most wanted" members of the
Saddam regime who remain at large reveals the probable chain of command of
the Iraqi resistance today. It also underscores the success of Saddam's
strategic decision nearly a decade past to disassociate himself from
Ba'athist ideology.
All the Tyrant's Men
Keep in mind that there was never a formal surrender ceremony after the U.S.
took control of Baghdad. The security services of Saddam's Iraq were never
disbanded; they simply melted away into the population, to be called back
into service when and where they were needed.The so-called Islamic
resistance is led by none other than former Vice President Izzat Ibrahim
al-Duri, an ardent Iraqi nationalist, a Sunni Arab and a practicing member
of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic mystics. His deputy is Rafi
Tilfah, who headed the Directorate of General Security (DGS), an
organization that had thoroughly penetrated Iraqi society with collaborators
and informants during Saddam's regime.As a former UN weapons inspector, I
have personally inspected the headquarters of the DGS in Baghdad, as well as
the regional DGS Headquarters in Tikrit. The rooms were full of files
concerning those who were working with or on behalf of the DGS. There is not
a person, family, tribe or Islamic movement in Iraq that the DGS does not
know intimately - information that is an invaluable asset when coordinating
and facilitating a popular-based resistance movement.I also interacted with
the former Director of the Special Security Organization, Hani al-Tilfah, on
numerous occasions during 1997-98, when he was put in charge of riding
roughshod over my inspections. He was also responsible for transferring many
of his officers to Rafi's command, purging the DGS of old Ba'athist
nationalists and replacing them with officers loyal to Saddam's new
Islamic-Tribal vision of Iraq. Today he helps coordinate the operations of
the Iraqi resistance using the very same officers.Tahir Habbush headed the
Iraqi Intelligence Service that perfected the art of improvised explosive
devices and using them to carry out assassinations. In the months prior to
the U.S.-led invasion, he was ordered to blend his agents back into the
Iraqi population so as to avoid detection by any occupying force. The
intelligence service agents were also told to infiltrate organizations
actively opposed to Saddam Hussein, and thus most likely to play a leading
role in any post-Saddam Iraqi government. These included both the Kurdish
and Shi'ite opposition parties.The recent anti-American attacks in Fallujah
and Ramadi were carried out by well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive
units, most likely drawn from the ranks of Saddam's Republican Guard. The
level of sophistication should not have come as a surprise to anyone
familiar with former Chief of the Republican Guard Sayf al-Rawi's role in
secretly demobilizing select Guard units for this very purpose prior to the
U.S. invasion. And as the former Director of Tribal Affairs for the Special
Security Organization, Rokan Razuki's knowledge of Iraqi tribal realities is
unmatched and his connections unrivaled. His continued access to tribal
councils is a tremendous threat to any authority in charge of Iraq.
No More Lebanons
The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi is a
charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, with
tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United States
from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a constituency
inside Iraq, but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqi
citizens.The truth is that there never was a significant people-based
opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush Administration to call on to
form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead
been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their
association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition
parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security
services.Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the
ground or how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail.
The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to
prop it up. The more the U.S. props up Allawi, the more discredited he
becomes in the eyes of the Iraqi people - all of which creates yet more
opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit to their advantage.The
historical parallel that best underscores the current disaster-in-the-making
is not the Vietnam War but rather Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Originally intended to rid Lebanon of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Israel's subsequent occupation led to the creation of Hizbollah as a viable
force of political and military resistance. The Hizbollah was so effective
that Israel was forced to unilaterally withdraw its forces from Lebanon in
May, 2000. The 18-year occupation not only failed to defeat the PLO, but it
also created an Islamic fundamentalist movement that today poses a serious
threat to the security of Israel and the Middle East region.In Iraq, history
may very well produce the same result since neither the Bush Administration
nor a possible Kerry Administration shows any inclination to withdraw from
Iraq in the foreseeable future. And so the course of American involvement in
Iraq and its inevitable consequences are clear. We will suffer a decade-long
nightmare that will lead to the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens
of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation of a viable and
dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq which will one day watch as
American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominiously
as Israel did from Lebanon.The strength of this anti-American resistance
depends on how long the United States chooses to "stay the course" in Iraq.
The calculus is quite simple: The sooner we bring our forces home, the
weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: The
longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring this by-product of Bush's
elective war on Iraq will be.There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi
debacle. It is no longer a question of winning, but rather mitigating
defeat.Scott Ritter was a UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998. He is
also the author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the
Bushwhacking of America" (Context Books, 2003).

decade ago.
*ROTFL*!!!!!
-Stefano