IRAQ: Resistance groups' morale will have been boosted, encouraging more attacks, writes Michael Jansen
Yesterday's downing of a Chinook helicopter as it was about to land at Baghdad's airport may herald a new, more aggressive phase of the Iraqi resistance campaign against US occupation forces.
The success of this purely military operation is bound to boost the morale of all resistance elements, encouraging them to press home their attacks and escalate their struggle. Their standing can be expected to rise with Iraqis alienated by the failure of the US occupation regime to deliver security, services and rapid reconstruction. Iraqis frightened and upset by last week's devastating suicide bombings against the headquarters of the Red Cross and police stations in Baghdad are likely to find more acceptable the straightforward guerrilla strikes against US military targets which do not cause civilian casualties.
On the operational front, it appears that resistance fighters have mastered the firing of shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles. The Chinook was the second helicopter to be brought down over the past nine days. On October 25th, a Blackhawk was shot down near Tikrit; the previous hit on a helicopter, an Apache, was back in mid-June. Ever since Baghdad fell to US forces in April, fighters have been trying to shoot down aircraft taking off and landing at the capital's international airport, a major staging point for military material and troops. The successful targeting of the air bridge could disrupt the flow of traffic. The airport is also an important symbol of the occupation authority as was the Rashid Hotel, targeted with a barrage from a makeshift rocket launcher a week ago.
The strike on the helicopter came on the second day of two days of rage proclaimed in a leaflet circulated by Saddam's Fedayeen - militia units set up by Saddam Hussein's son Uday in the mid-1990s. However, it is not known if this group was involved in the strike on the helicopter. Yesterday US forces also came under attack in the northern city of Mosul as well as Baghdad, demonstrating that those carrying out these operations either co-ordinate with other formations or have a long reach.
Bush administration spokesmen, including the head of the occupation regime, Mr Paul Bremer, continue to blame attacks on "Saddam loyalists", "foreign terrorists," and "al-Qaeda." Last week an unidentified Pentagon source claimed that Saddam himself was directing operations and his close confidant, the former vice- president, Mr Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was acting as a link between "loyalists" and Ansar al-Islam. This is a group of Islamist militants driven from its base in northern Iraq during the war and said to have moved to Kirkuk and the restive towns near Baghdad. It is claimed there are 1,000-3,000 foreign militants in Iraq.
No less an authority than the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, dismissed speculation on the possible involvement of Saddam and Mr Douri. He said Saddam did not dare to "show his face" because he would give away his hiding place and risk capture or death. This is true also of Mr Douri, who, reportedly, has been trying to negotiate his surrender to US troops rather than organise resistance. US commanders in Iraq have also played down the involvement of foreign and al-Qaeda fighters in the resistance. Of the 6,000 people detained by the US only 5 per cent are foreigners and, according to Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, none are members of al-Qaeda. Ansar al-Islam is a very small group of Kurdish fundamentalists which would not have the capacity to wage a national resistance campaign.
Authoritative sources say there are no more than 200-400 foreign fighters in Iraq and Baghdad-based US Brig Gen Martin Dempsey said: "We have not seen any infusion of foreign fighters."
Iraqi analysts believe the Bush administration clings to its line because it wants to discredit and minimise the resistance by portraying it as the efforts of foreign "terrorists". Recalling Iraq's 42-year struggle against British occupation, Iraqis find the claim insulting.
In an article published in Beirut's Daily Star, Mustafa Alrawi, editor of the Baghdad English weekly Iraq Today, writes: "To say that foreign fighters are able to operate in Iraq, let alone Baghdad, under cover and in isolation as effectively as they have allegedly been doing so far, is to ignore the feelings of the local population. To say that Iraqis are suspicious of other Arabs, let alone Sunni extremists, is an understatement." He says that a "'safe house' full of al-Qaeda sympathisers would not be safe for long in Baghdad". Foreigners without local knowledge would be unable to operate, he states.
Alrawi also argues that US accusations that "die-hard Baathists" - a "relic of a fallen regime" - are carrying out resistance operations has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and the discredited Baathists are "gaining in credibility with the disaffected".
His assessment seems to confirm what a retired senior Baathist told The Irish Times in August. He said the party was still "in shock" and did not know how to deal with its humiliating defeat. But, he said young Baathists still believe the party, minus Saddam, is the only organisation capable of ruling Iraq because it drew its membership from all communities.
He predicted they would eventually organise resistance and regain the political initiative.
However, Iraqi analysts argue that the resistance remains dominated by Iraqi Islamist groupings rather than secular Baathists.
Whether Baathist, Islamist or neither, resistance recruiters appeal to a vast manpower reservoir of Iraqis who lost jobs in the armed forces, the civil service and public companies and formerly influential tribes ignored by the US administration.
In Alrawi's view, unless the US addresses the causes of Iraqi anger and disaffection and deals with disaffected tribal and religious leaders who command the loyalty of 75 per cent of Iraqis, the resistance will continue to gain adherents, expand the scope of its operations, improve its performance and mount increasingly deadly strikes.