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Jewish World Review Oct 24, 2005 / 21 Tishrei, 5766 Does U.S. role in Iraq benefit insurgents? By Robert Robb
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The intercepted letter from al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al
Zawahiri, to the jihadist leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, has been
widely cited as vindicating the Bush administration's Iraq policy.
President Bush himself made that claim in his radio address last Saturday.
In many respects, this claim is justified. Zawahiri describes al-Qaida as
being depleted, on the run, and out of money in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
region. He worries that Zarqawi is making fundamental strategic errors in
Iraq.
So, in the eyes of the enemy, the Bush administration's war on terror seems
to be going reasonably well.
But there are other things the terrorists are saying that the Bush
administration isn't eager to discuss, namely that the U.S. military
presence in Iraq is the central hope for a jihadist victory.
There's clearly a significant tactical disagreement between Zarqawi and the
al-Qaida leadership about the approach to the Shia in Iraq. In a letter
from Zarqawi intercepted in January, 2004, he clearly explicated a strategy
of attacking the Shia to provoke and win a civil war. He wrote that "the
only solution is for us to strike the religious, military, and other cadres
among the Shia with blow after blow until they bend to the Sunnis."
In his letter, Zawahiri suggests that attacks on the Shia are damaging
popular support for the insurgency.
But what Zawahiri and Zarqawi agree on is that, without the U.S. military
presence to rally against, the insurgency will fail.
In his recently intercepted letter, Zawahiri writes that: "The Muslim
masses — for many reasons, and this is not the place to discuss it — do not
rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is
firstly Jewish, and secondly American. This, in my limited opinion, is the
reason for the popular support that the majahedeen enjoy in Iraq, by the
grace of G-d."
In his earlier letter, Zarqawi wrote that if the American forces withdrew,
it would be impossible to rally the Sunni masses against the Shia or a
Shia-led government. As he put it: "How can we fight their cousins and
their sons and under what pretext after the Americans, who hold the reins
of power from their rear bases, pull back?"
There are a couple of questions that deserve careful exploration, but which
the Bush administration wants to ignore.
The Bush administration says that it will draw down U.S. military forces as
the Iraqi government is capable of suppressing the insurgency without them.
But what if a large U.S. military presence is sufficient cause in itself to
keep the insurgency alive?
The second question is whether the Bush administration is correct that
without the active engagement of the U.S. military, the jihadists will win
in Iraq.
There's reason to believe otherwise. There are now 200,000 Iraqi security
forces reasonably under the command of a Shia-led government. The Kurdish
militia numbers an estimated 100,000. There are perhaps tens of thousands
of additional members of various Shiite militias.
The Shia and the Kurds constitute 80 percent of the country's population
and, with the decimation of Saddam Hussein's forces, clearly now have the
upper hand in the country militarily.
The active Sunni insurgency is thought to be a force of around 20,000, with
foreign jihadists, who do the suicide bombing, perhaps numbering in the
hundreds.
The United States should maintain its military presence in Iraq through the
next parliamentary election and the formation of a new Iraqi government.
But after that, a reappraisal is in order.
Hopefully, the Sunnis will increasingly engage in the political process,
insurgency support will naturally diminish, and a military disengagement
can occur according to the Bush formula.
But if the insurgency does not abate, then a decision needs to be made as
to whether disengagement is the most prudent course of action anyway.
The jihadists may be wrong that they can build a successful insurgency
against the U.S. military presence. But they may also be right that,
without a U.S. military presence to rally against, they have no chance.
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JWR contributor Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic. Comment by clicking here.
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