Suicide attacks by the Sunni group against Shiite targets sparked the sectarian violence that swept Iraq in 2006 and the first half of last year. Al-Qaeda in Iraq carried out more than 4,500 attacks against civilians in 2007, killing 3,870 and wounding nearly 18,000, the military announced yesterday.
Do the math kids. 606 is what percentage of 4500 attacks in 2007. Let’s assume that every single foreign fighter identified in these records carried out a suicide attack. That accounts for a little more than 10% of the attacks. Who were behind the other 90%? The American people are not being told that the vast majority of the attacks in 2007 were carried out by Iraqis, not foreign fighters and not Al Qaeda.
When Zarqawi was killed in June of 2006 I had just left Iraq. I was working with the U.S. military forces who tracked him down and killed him. Before U.S. forces could land at the house where Zarqawi had been hit by a U.S. bombing strike, Iraqi Sunni police were on scene trying to rescue him and get him medical treatment. The message? Zarqawi had significant support among Iraqi government officials with Sunni ties.
One of the main reasons we have seen a drop in the number of attacks in Sunni controlled areas is not that foreign fighters have stopped coming in. No. We have changed our tactics in those areas and enlisted the very insurgents we were battling into self-defense units.
The New York Times put up a story today as well that corroborate this point (please check out this piece in the NY Times), (P.S. I was not a source for Oppel’s piece):
Some critics contend that estimates of insurgents who actually belong to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American officials say is overwhelmingly Iraqi but has foreign leadership, tend to be overstated. Many insurgents who are lumped into the group, they say, are Sunnis who simply need money or who are angered by the sectarian bias of Iraqi security forces, but who have no wider allegiance to Al Qaeda.
When the United States started paying Sunnis to join local militias is it any surprise that the level of violence dropped off? People needed money to survive and provide for their families.
Foreign fighters are a convenient boogeyman. But they are not the cause nor source of the violence in Iraq. Karen DeYoung should have asked the military what period of time was covered by the records of the 606 foreign fighters. She should have asked the U.S. military officials to identify the percentage of suicide bombings carried out overall. Nope. Why give you facts? This much is certain. Iraq continues to suffer horrific levels of violence. Violence that continues to take the lives of Iraqi civilians at levels we would not tolerate in our own society if the casualties were American men, women, and children. Do the math.
Comments (9)
Interesting article. But I'm amused by the references to Al Quaeda in Mesopotamia.
Why? Because they're almost entirely an American invention.
Al Quaeda in Mesopotamia was originally Monotheism and Holy War, back in the Saddam days and for the first few years of the insurgency.
Zaquari was not a follower of Osama Bin Laden, he was a rival. Where Osama advocated war against the far enemy, Zaquari wanted to bring the campaign against secular regimes in Islam ... apostates.
Zaquari, a Jordanian, set up shop in Iraq during the post-gulf war era. He was able to take advantage of the 'no fly zones' to establish secure bases in the north, beyond Saddam's reach.
Back in the build up to the Iraq war, Bush knew where Zaquari was and could have taken him and his organization out. But doing that would have significantly undermined the Iraq/Terror connection. A live and dangerous Zaquari helped to justify Bush's war more than a dead one could have.
After the war, Zaquari, having been rid of the hated Saddam, settled on campaigning against the US occupation.
Sadly though, Zaquari, perfectly positioned to lead an insurgency, found himself bypassed. The insurgency that emerged was entirely grass roots and indigenous, composed of ex-Baathists, die-hard nationalists, tribesmen, jihadi's, etc.
In a relatively short time, Zaquari's organization found itself a marginal and minimal part of an insurgency that not only did not have leadership, but didn't particularly need it
Zaquari fought back. He attempted to re-establish credibility by purchasing a name brand franchise. While Zaquari had been piddling around Iraq failing to go anywhere, Osama had been doing great things. Monotheism and Holy War was retired - Al Quaeda in Iraq was born.... years into the occupation.
Of course, it remained a minimal and insignificant part of the insurgency. It's estimated that Al Quaeda in Iraq's numbers consist of somewhere between 2% and 5% of the total insurgency.
They've been blamed for or have taken credit for some of the most spectacularly bloody attacks in Iraq. However, their actual authorship of these atrocities is in many cases doubtful. They may be taking credit/blame for false flag attacks, etc.
Indeed, the only place that Al Quaeda in Iraq have ever managed to make headways has been in the Bush administration.
Bush picked up on the brand name and designated them as the official enemy. Now practically every attack is by AQI. They are the enemy du jour, the enemy forever, the adversary, the nemesis...
And utterly irrelevant. Except as another demonstration as to why America is losing the war.
To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you fight with the enemy you have, not the enemy you want. Al Quaeda in Iraq is the enemy America wants and is fighting... But that's not the enemy that America actually has...
January 21, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you fight with the enemy you have, not the enemy you want
I thought that was Crosby, Stills, and Nash...oh no, that was something else...
It was peculiar that we chose to bomb Z. instead of trying to take him alive...
TINFOIL BEANIE ALERT
I believe he was a mossad plant, turned in jordanian prison, spirited into mossad penetrated kurdistan in the year before the invasion.
Hence,
a)our strange forbearance in not bombing his whereabouts before the invasion (ostensibly so as not to undercut our rationale!)
b)his multiple detentions and quick releases in a system that releases no one (thus, 20,000 "security detainees" at the present time)
c)his compliant failure to disavow the patently morale busting letter supposedly found on a computer, destined for zawahiri, on the immanent demise of the resistance, and the need to provoke shiite on sunni violence (even if genuine, there were no indicia of authorship to rebut a denial)
January 21, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't this "fuzzy math" and shifting vocabulary simply a predictable and intentional result of the information crackdown put in place by the administration and it's Iraqi puppets-in-power regarding anything occurring in Iraq?
This administration has made it SOP to make everything it touches a secret so they can say what they like without the risk of all those annoying "facts" proving them wrong or liars (or both). They've done it with energy policy, environmental policy and this dubious WOT fiasco. In this particular case there are fragments of information that leak out here or there - various numbers based on god knows who's "matrix". I'm sure you've seen numbers that most of us haven't Larry, at least at some point. So even if caught, as it appears they are here, the layman (like myself) is still left scratching his head wondering just what the hell is going on. I'm certain they are lying but it all just blurs together. And to get mad and shout about it allows me to be painted as a fanatic or conspiracy nut. This is the stuff that frustrates me but I suppose that is it's purpose - not against me in particular but sometimes i wonder. ;-)
Interesting observations btw Valdron. I've also noticed the buzzword for years in the press has been al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups. It seems that every terrorist attack is either al-Qaeda directly or one of these millions of linked groups. They don't say how they're linked other than simply by saying it is so. With all those terrorists all linked together you'd think they would have been able to find Osama by now wouldn't you? I mean that sure seems like a ton of links in the chain...
January 21, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
~
Here's some more math.
Iraqi Concerned Local Citizens program ... 70,000 members ... $10 US per day per member ...
Combine all that and it currently equals a temporary freeze of conflict.
Here is a January 8 report, Military Officials Disagree on Impact of Surge by Guy Raz at NPR.
Using key sentences from that NPR report. . .
Why?
How? By cutting deals:
And:
Plus, as it currently stands now:
That gives only a short-term solution:
"We need to understand that buying off your enemy is a good short-term solution to gain a respite from violence," he says, "but it's not a long-term solution to creating a legitimate political order inside a country that, quite frankly, is recovering from the worst sort of civil war."
So -- Good ol' American common sense should tell ya' that more locals (70,000) out being targets rather than untold numbers of US soldiers = fewer US casualties.
And no doubt that's worked, that is there have been fewer US casualties -- it's in the data.
* But where's it leave the big picture? *
And last week, from the Army chief of staff :
And in an announcement from the Pentagon, the recent order to add a 3,000 member Marine addition to Afghanistan is not a 'surge'
~OGD~
January 21, 2008 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So in other words, we're paying a quarter billion dollars a year to 70,000 Iraqi's that we "liberated" so they won't blow us up?
Maybe this was a technique taught in Harvard Biz school - if you find you're losing a war, offer paid vacations to the people attacking you.
"To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?" W.H. Auden
January 22, 2008 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Haven't you heard? This is the new definition of winning - ceding territory and paying the enemy.
The Vietnam parallel would have been hiring the North Vietnamese army to occupy the northern provinces and purge the Vietcong, whilst turning a blind eye and aquiescing to the Khmer Rouge takeover of Saigon.
January 22, 2008 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I've heard, but every war is just a bit different, maybe. Like ceding territory in this case might read 'ceding occupation'.
"To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?" W.H. Auden
January 22, 2008 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the war in Iraq is currently "frozen." For how long? It is obviously not permanent.
Iraq will remain frozen until there is a Democratic President in place to take the blame for the inevitable renewal if violence and very probably the removal of American troops from Iraq. The removal of troops is going to reach a minimal level (probably some number between 100,000 and 50,000) after which they cannot defend themselves and their supply lines. After that, they will all have to leave or begin a new build up. The only affordable alternative is leaving, particularly since there is no advantage for the Iraqi's to keep American troops there and no real reason for us to fight that war occupation. Then the Republicans take up the political cry in the states of "The Democrats lost Iraq."
Republicans are nothing if not traditionalists. All they have to do is change some of the old "The Democrats lost China" signs and recycle them. It kept the viable as a minority party in the 50's and early 60's.
Like everything else in the idiotic invasion of Iraq (I-cubed) this "strategy" is primarily aimed at influencing the American public, not the Iraqi people.
January 22, 2008 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq is the American Occupation Force. (Followed by the armed mercenary thugs of the private armies of Blackwater)
Their preferred method of "suicide" bombing is to fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet, at 600 MPH, dropping bombs on anything that moves.
Anyone that is killed is immediately labeled either a terrorist or as belonging to aL-CIA-duh.
American foreign policy in a nutshell: Either you get on your knees and kiss our backsides or we'll blow you and your family to Kingdom Come.
January 22, 2008 4:41 AM | Reply | Permalink