June 18,2008:
The war on terror is shifting from
Iraq to Afghanistan, as al Qaeda members have been doing for most of this year.
Last month, more foreign (U.S. and NATO) troops died in Afghanistan (19) than
in Iraq (17, according to the official count, unofficially, 19 troops died).
And that's with twice as many foreign troops in Iraq. It's part of a trend. Foreign
troops, especially Americans, are operating more as peacekeepers in Iraq this
year. This is because Iraqi security forces are completing the process of
building a Kurdish and Shia force that can match the abilities of Saddam's
Sunni Arab thugs that controlled the country for decades. The new force does
not use all the barbaric techniques Saddam's butchers employed. But the new guys can be
pretty nasty, and will provide foreign journalists with much breathless copy in
the next few years. Actually, the new Iraqi force is not much worse than any
other security force in the region. But that's a story that doesn't fly with most
editors. Dumping on Iraq does, and will continue to do so for a while.
But there
will also be a transition from reporting the news from Iraq, to writing the
histories of the war in Iraq. This will cause some stress, because the Internet
makes available, simultaneously, the original "news" version of Iraq (with all
its distortions and advocacy) and the "history" version (that attempts to
simply describe what actually happened.) We strive for the latter, which is
unusual for what many people consider a web site devoted to "news." But because
of the web, you can easily see how this "news/history" thing works. Many major
newspapers have put their archives online. You can now go look at contemporary
reporting of past wars, and compare that to the histories later written of
those conflicts. Of course, this assumes you have familiarized yourself the
historical record. That's a minority activity. Most people just take what the
news gives them, but it's becoming more popular to pursue other versions of
events via the web. Checking the way wars were reported at the time is one of
them. But doing this makes you realize that you cannot trust the news to get it
right for wars going on right now. That's because the news has to report
exciting "news" events in order to remain competitive (and profitable). Many
people in the news business are constantly bitching about this, especially the
entertainment techniques that often creep into the presentation of their
reporting. But everyone realizes that the audience demands news that excites
and entertains. News that simply informs, losses money and cannot survive,
except on the web.
Getting
back to the history of the Iraq war, another angle that the news misses is the
dismantling of the al Qaeda support system. Nations in the West (with large
Moslem minorities), as well as Moslem nations themselves, have been cracking
down on organizations that recruit suicide bombers for work in Iraq. These
groups raised money, and recruited young men willing to die for the cause.
Fundraising and recruiting have become more difficult, as al Qaeda became less
popular (among Moslems) because of their continuing terror attacks against
Moslems. This made it easier for police to identify and arrest the recruiters. Many of these people
have been convicted and sent to jail in the last year. That has cut off the
supply of recruits, and forced al Qaeda to use whoever they could get. That
meant more aborted or poorly executed attacks. But Moslem civilians are still
getting killed, continuing the downward spiral of al Qaedas stature in the
Islamic world.
In Iraq,
al Qaeda has been reduced to one collection of cells in the north, around the
city of Mosul. Here, some of the al Qaeda leaders are carrying out a revenge
campaign, and have killed three Sunni Arab tribal leaders who used to support
the terrorists, but now support the government. As usual, this has had an
impact quite the opposite of what al Qaeda was hoping for. The Sunni Arab
tribes are becoming more energetic, and brutal, in hunting down the terrorists,
and the tribesmen who still support them. This is turning into a war of
extermination, which encourages many of the al Qaeda operatives to head for
Pakistan, where al Qaeda has established a base for a last stand. But some of
the Iraqi terrorists cannot, or will not, go. So they will die, and try to kill
a lot of Iraqis in the process.
The
government has successfully used an ancient tactic for winning sectarian wars.
That is, Kurdish and Shia police and army units were used against Sunni areas,
while the recent Battle of Basra was spearheaded by the 1st Infantry
Division, which is largely recruited from Sunni Arab western Iraq (Anbar
province). Not only were the Sunnis happy to kill Shia, but the Shia militias
had a historical fear of armed Sunnis that did not do much for their morale. Once
the militia units were broken, Shia Arab police units came in to make peace and
settle things down. The Shia militia units belonging to the Mahdi Army are
being destroyed this way.