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More power to the
Ba'athists
By B Raman
Bloody
November in Iraq, which saw 100 deaths of coalition
troops - 81 of them Americans - and of an unestimated,
but reportedly large number of Iraqi civilians who had
nothing to do with either Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda or
the International Islamic Front (IIF), at the hands of
the foreign troops, is a forewarning of more bloody
months to come.
Before the US-led invasion, Iraq
had no jihadi terrorists. Some Palestinians belonging to
outfits such as the Abu Nidal Organization and members
of the anti-Iran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, to whom Saddam had
given shelter, were terrorists, but not of the jihadi
kind.
Since the occupation of Iraq, the country
is swarming with jihadis - more indigenous (about 6,000)
than foreign (about 320) - who have been waging a
two-front jihad against the occupation troops - the
jihad of the indigenous resistance fighters, who are not
terrorists, and that of the foreign mujahideen, who are.
The Iraqi resistance fighters have been attacking
American troops and their Iraqi collaborators. The
foreign mujahideen have been targeting nationals of
countries that have been collaborating with the US and
international organizations. There is so far no evidence
of a common mastermind guiding the activities of the
indigenous and the external.
The jihad of the
indigenous fighters has been targeted and well planned,
avoiding innocent Iraqi civilian casualties. They are
well organized and seem to have better intelligence than
the American troops. If the US version that the Iraqi
attack on an American escort party at Samarra on
November 30 was because that party was escorting a
vehicle carrying large quantities of newly-printed
currency notes is correct, the fact that the Iraqi
fighters had advance knowledge of this would show the
kind of moles they have in the setup of the occupational
forces.
The large civilian casualties, as during
the fighting at Samarra, have been more due to
over-reaction by US troops than due to any
indiscriminate firing by the indigenous jihadis. Such
over-reactions, though regrettable, are unavoidable when
the jihadis operate from the midst of civilian-inhabited
areas. Fortunately, the indigenous jihadis have until
now refrained from using too many explosive devices,
which indiscriminately kill civilians.
The jihad
of the foreign mujahideen has been ruthless with
indiscriminate use of explosive devices and suicide
bombers. As many Iraqi civilians have died at the hands
of these foreign jihadis as at the hands of the American
troops.
The IIF, which was formed by Osama bin
Laden in 1998 and whose activities are now coordinated
by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan, has advised
the pro-bin Laden jihadi terrorist organizations all
over the world to give priority to the dispatch of
volunteers and funds to confront the Americans in Iraq,
even at the risk of a slowdown of the jihad being waged
by them in their own countries.
There are clear
indications of a stepping-up of fund collection,
particularly in Pakistan. During the recent observance
of Id, to mark the end of fasting for the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan, not only jihadi terrorist
organizations allied to al-Qaeda in the IIF, but also
the Islamic fundamentalist parties - which are members
of the pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban coalition called
the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) - collected funds all
over Pakistan, ostensibly to support the jihadis in
India's Jammu and Kashmir and Iraq and for the families
of the "martyrs" who sacrificed their lives during the
jihad.
The Pakistani authorities did not stop
the fund collection, which was made even in army
cantonments. The response was good, but it is difficult
to estimate how much was collected, how much of it would
go to financing the jihad and how much to the personal
bank accounts of the religious leaders. Even assuming
that a substantial percentage of the collections would
be misappropriated, the balance should still be
sufficient to keep the jihad in Iraq going for months.
The response to the call for foreign volunteers
to go to Iraq has not been that encouraging. There has
been a reshuffling, with Arab nationals of Chechen
origin being shifted from Chechnya and Pakistan to
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and some Pakistanis and Arabs,
including Yemeni-Balochis, also being similarly shifted.
While the jihad-hardened veterans of the jihads of the
1980s and 1990s are willing to go and fight the
Americans in Iraq, very few post-2001 new recruits are
prepared to go to Iraq. They prefer to fight the
American troops in Afghanistan by joining the Taliban
and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami.
As a
result, the number of foreign jihadis active against the
US troops in Iraq has remained at about 320 for some
weeks now. Media reports of hundreds of jihadis being
recruited in different countries and sent to Iraq are
not corroborated by ground intelligence.
US
troops continue to be handicapped by the scarcity of
precise intelligence about the nature of the enemy, its
motivation and capability. As a result, they have been
literally hitting out in the dark, not knowing whether
those targeted by them are friends or foes. This is
another reason for the large civilian casualties.
The Iraqi Governing Council, to which the US
proposes to transfer provisional authority by June, is a
farce, with very little visibility and credibility in
the country. Its members are viewed by the Iraqi
population as American quislings. One cannot win a war
with the help of quislings.
It is in India's
interest that the US prevail over the jihadi terrorists
and is able to exit Iraq with its honor and dignity
intact. If the US gets beaten and battered in Iraq by
these jihadis, it would be even more difficult to deal
with them in the rest of the world than it is today.
To be able to do so, the US has no other
alternative but to dump these quislings, rehabilitate
the intellectuals and the ruling elite of the former
ruling Ba'ath Party and seek their leadership and
cooperation in its efforts to defeat the jihadi
terrorists and reconstruct the Iraqi civil society that
it has destroyed.
Re-Ba'athification of Iraq is
the only solution to the dilemma confronting the US and
other occupying powers. There is no other viable option.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former
member of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also
head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research
& Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence
agency, from 1988 to August, 1994.
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