Dispatch from the Front V

In this dispatch, my correspondent looks at the various interests all competing in Iraq, and their motivations.

I shall make you aware of how you recieve your news. All news you get is limited. There is not and has not been the safety to roam about if you are a Westerner for some time now, over a year. All major western news organizations employ locals or arab types and their identities are secret or pseudonyms. That ought to tell you all you to need to know about the situation here without me blabbing on but I digress.

Therefore, you should realize there is a whole lot of other stuff going on in this area that you will probably otherwise never hear about anyway because there isn't a news source that would get to the story anyway. Now there are arab type news like alarabiya or aljazeera but you don't watch that most likely.

For example, there is a LOT of violence in local areas that you will never hear about, criminal gangs, kidnappings for ransom is big business and revenge killings etc. You must remeber right before the invasion saddam let ALL prisoners out of the prisons. That was several hundred thousand people.

Can you imagine that happening in the US? We have like 2 million criminals, I know most are there on minor drug offences but there are thousands of violent monsters who if let loose will cause a lot of mischief, ergo the situaton here.

I am constantly amazed at how little US news seems to be able to grasp the situation here and explain it in a simple coherent manner. In a nutshell(although it is much more complex), there are 3 main factions who are causing violence/fighting.

1. Former Baath party/Saddam regime elements. Most are sunni arabs from the tribes linked to these groups. They percieve the invasion as unjust and illegal and they think they are fighting a righteous war of liberation against the hated American occupiers. They could be called nationalists - although they dont speak for all iraqis, namely shia tribes and kurds. Some may or may not have islamic motivations. Many of their clerics preach jihad against the US as justified. This constitutes 95% of who the US troops fight from day to day. The vast majority of their attacks are against military targets (not civlilians) like US troops and Iraqi police, government and army units(which are now mostly made up of shia arabs and kurds) and any one else percieved to be "collaborators" with the Americans.

They regularly catch and assasinate local interpreters and others working with or for the US. (This has prompted many workers to be imported from outside iraq to be employed by the US like filipines, africans, india, eastern europe - thus taking away jobs and money from iraqis who would otherwise be eimployed)

2. Criminal gangs-see above. Some work with the other groups. It is complicated. They do big business especially since they figured out they can capture journalists from france, italy and filipines and some other countries and get paid MILLIONS in cash for their release. The US and some other countries usually doesn't allow this so many of our citizens captured were sold to alquada groups for $ and then used for alquada political purposes since there wasn't any money to be made for ransom.

3. Jihadists. Most are not Iraqi, some are, many are linked to alquada (which is very hard thing to define and explain to a nonexpert) groups, all all have some type of violent islamic interpretations motivating them. The do 99.9% of the suicide bombings and they do not care who they kill since their clerics give them absolution and justification fatwas to do it. They are about 5% of who we and the iraqi army fights. But they get about 85% of the headlines in the news.

Now, I had explained the main groups in this country and what they want.

Neighboring countries all want something too...

Israel - Their intel is some of the best here. It benefited them to have an old enemy taken out by their friends in the US. Remember, Israel has been attacked by Iraq about 3 or 4 times in the past 50 years, the last in 1991 (iraq tried during the invasion of 2003 but didnt get far at all)

Turkey - They do not want the Kurds to have their own national state or country. They have been the most forceful of all the countries with Kurd populations. In and after the invasion they invaded northern Iraq several times and fought kurdish forces, eventually the US forced them out but their agents still work here to promote turkish interests. US-Turkish diplomatic relations have been severely strained over the Kurd issue. Of the iraqis, they helped the US fight saddam in this war and the kurds feel they should be rewarded for sticking their necks out for US interests. The issue is complicated because Turkey is a NATO ally and it also wants to join the EU. They actively try to thwart and Kurd attempts at gaining power or autonomy.

The sunni ottoman turks were the most recent of the ancient rulers of this region and as such they are the ancient enemies of the arabs and persians. By their system of government, they ruled the provinces of iraq by putting arab sunnis in power, as such sunni arabs have ruled this region for the past centuries. Now can you start to see why the sunnis are fighting like mad against the US plan for this region?

Syria - It is ruled by the communist type arab Baath party just like Iraq once was. They promote and aid iraqis in their fight against the US. They aid foreign terrorist jihadi groups.

Saudi and Iran - the kingpins.

Saudi - A brutal monarchy, you can't vote. A king rules all (isn't that amazing this is still around in the 21st century?!) Furthermore, the US supports these monarchies when we were founded on the principles that are in direct contradiction to the philospy of a monarchy?! -(there are good reasons for it but they are extremely complicated) The ruling family is sunni and they do not want to see a shia dominated government next door, especially one that is seen as being puppets of the Arab's ancient enemies, the Iranian Persians.

The sunni-shia thing is kind of like Catholic-Protestant. The issue about who got to dominate in terms of political and religious power was settled in the 7th century, mostly here in Iraq south of Baghdad. Ever since, the sunnis dominate political power and sheer numbers of members in islam. Remember though, the exceptions are Iraq where shias outnumber other sunnis, and Iran where shia persians outnumber all other groups and they are also in political power.

The US invasion is allowing, by last years vote, for a shia dominated arab government to take power, basically for the first time since the 7th century(way oversimplified) Have you ever wondered why most of the 9/11 terrorist were saudi? The saudis are the source of the vast majority of $$$ for much of the terrorism in the world. Those are ugly facts the US government suppresses in the media. Now it may not be the "saudi govt" per se, who funds these bad guys, but the reality is there are huge numbers of wealthy saudis, some connected to the royal family and who are well known to others including the US govt and others, that give lots of $ to bad guys. How? The US and others buy Billions of $ every week in oil, some of this money eventually ends up to the bad guys. The 9/11 commission, under pressure, tried to suppress these hard realities.

Iran - The key question. The Persians are closest of all middle eastern muslim coutries to getting a nuclear weapon.

Ever since the 1960s when the Israelis got nuke weapons, all muslim countries have tried to acquire them. Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq etc.

(Pakistan was and is the only and first muslim majority country to acquire nuke weapons but that was mainly to counter their old enemies the Hindu Indians.)

Iran, through luck or by plan, had its old enemy Iraq and saddam taken out by the americans (Iran and Iraq fought a huge WW1 type war in the 1980s. The US and Saudis backed Iraq in order to retaliate against Iran for their Islamic Shia revolution in 1979, remember Iran was the number one US ally in the region under the Shah.) Since we all know the US is a bit busy with the insurgency, Iran feels it has little to worry about in terms of a US invasion to deal with its nuclear weapon ambitions. Iran, however, could still experience a US=led 1999 Serbian aircraft bombing campaign in order to get it to comply with US demands to disclose and disarm its weapons program.

Now, where does this leave us?

Some say we are fighting in Iraq so we don't have to fight at home in the US.

Hmm, it's a bit more complicated. We are not going to face Iraqi sunni nationalists fighting to kick out the Americans attacking Iowa. We might have to deal with Islamic wacko terrorists attacking something in Iowa, that is true. But they can come from any place that an Islamic wacko can come from, which is a whole lot of countries. (Including US allies Egypt and Saudi, see 9/11)

Oil you say? Yes, it's a fact of life that 80% of the world's energy is supplied by oil. Much of it from this region. If there were no oil here, the middle east would most likely be ignored in much the same way it was ignored for 500 years after sailing ships made the Silk Road to China and Indian obsolete.

But the main thing that I see Pres Bush doing, and others who think like him, is taking the lead in promoting change in this region. Besides oil, what has come out of this region since WW2? A whole lot of violence. The middle east does little to contribute to the greater good of humanity like modern medicine, travel, finance, technology etc. They do export a lot of terrorism.

There are many and very complex reasons for all this. I am not going to debate them here. A final thought.

We are trying to get a government in Iraq on its feet, stable peaceful and prosperous. It might be these things someday and those are good goals. I dont think we should cut and run. A friend passed along a sentiment that, "after the first US casuality, we invested too much to their sacrifice to not finish the job." A noble sentiment.

It's time for the majority of peace loving Iraqis to take responsibility, and we are helping them do that. It's slow and frustrating at times but you don't send a message to our enemies that we are leaving on day X of year X since all they have to do is wait until the day after that to keep fighting.

You beat them by resolve and commitment.

Is Iraq and the war and invasion worth it? I am here to do a job. That's for you civilians to debate. I follow orders and move out. I have an opinion and can vote but my sentiments are immaterial. If you can't square with you should not volunteer to join the US military.

In the next dispatch, we'll look more at the importance of completing the task in Iraq. It is imperative that we not cut and run at this point.

Dispatch from the Front I
Dispatch from the Front II
Dispatch from the Front III
Dispatch from the Front IV