Deciphering the Insurgency

In Sunday's New York Times, Middle East correspondent James Bennet speculates on the motivations of the shadowy insurgency that has caused so much death and destruction throughout Iraq.

In an article titled, "The Mystery of the Insurgency", Bennet points out that in contrast to other guerilla insurgencies such as the Vietcong, the Iraqi insurgents have no desire to win over the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis. In fact, anyone who has been following the grim statistics understands that the vast majority of casualties of the violence have been Iraqis, and not American military personnel. In addition, insurgent attacks have not been limited to Iraqi security forces, but have also targeted civilians -- Shiites praying at mosques, Kurdish funeral-goers, and shoppers in the marketplaces.

When the Coalition Provisional Authority and later the unelected transitional government of Iyad Allawi were controlling the country, the insurgency had the pretext of expelling the occupiers so that Iraq could be independent and free of American occupying influence. Even Michael Moore, in a statement you can still find on his official website stated

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.

The story is different now that Iraq has an elected government. Bennet mentions how even the archetype of a guerilla revolutionary, Che Guevara, wrote,

"Where a government has come to power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted."

In contrast to the Communist guerillas of the Cold War era who had the support of a portion of leftist intellectuals, the Iraqi insurgency has no political program and no positive universal goal (such as the establishment of a Communist classless utopia). Perhaps the reason for this difference is that the insurgency is made up of a number of different groups who each have divergent goals. There are the remnants of the Baathist security forces and the Iraqi army who (thanks to Paul Bremer) found themselves without jobs and without futures in the new Iraq. This first group is also funded by Syria which, in addition to being ruled by the Baath party, also has a stake in seeing democracy in Iraq fail, lest the Assad regime come under pressure to institute reforms and give their Kurds equality. There is also the Islamic fundamentalists/Al Qaeda supporters who see Iraq as the new battleground in their jihad against America. This second element consists of large numbers of non-Iraqi Arabs coming from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Syria. The vast majority of suicide bombings are carried out by members of this second group.

The United States and the Secretary of Defense are at least partly to blame for the strength of the insurgency. If the decision to disband the Iraqi army and expel anyone with Baath party membership (even those who were forced to join but did not believe in the ideology) had not been implemented, the insurgency would have lost much of its manpower. If the United States had devoted more manpower and troops to sealing the borders and stopping the looting (especially of weapons) in the immediate post-invasion period, it could have prevented the atmosphere of lawlessness that has contributed to the power of the insurgency. Finally, if Americans had not let every museum in Iraq be looted while guarding the oil ministry with the utmost care, it might have convinced Iraqis who would otherwise be wary of the insurgency to give the coalition and interim government a chance. Nevertheless, as even prominent opponents of the Bush administration such as Hilary Clinton and Chuck Schumer state, it is in the best interests of the world to achieve stability in Iraq and that means doing everything possible to ensure the success and survival or the newly elected Iraqi government.