Le Devoir
Wednesday 11 April 2007
Tens of thousands of Iraqis went down into the streets to recognize the overthrow of Saddam Hussein four years ago. Actually, they used that pretext to express resentment, rather than satisfaction. Its object? The prolonged presence of American troops.
At the beginning of the year and after a sometimes very intense debate, President Bush decreed an increase in the number of soldiers in Iraq, effective at the beginning of February when General David Petraeus took over coalition command. Since then, we have observed a change of inflection in the course of that war, which the American executive still insists on not calling a civil war. A change in inflection, but not the one desired.
One will remember that, by sending a supplementary contingent to Baghdad and its environs, the White House expected a reduction in horror; a reduction - however slight - in the violence. If that prospect remains plausible in the medium term, for the moment the signs are really not encouraging. For what one observes heralds a continuation, or rather the maintenance, of the level of violence that has been bleeding Iraq for over three years.
In fact, if a reduction of atrocities in the capital is noted, one observes, on the other hand, an increase in some of the provinces. According to research effected by the Gulf Research Center, the number of suicide attacks conducted against civilians has risen in a straight line over February and March, compared to the last months of 2006. In fact, the last two months have been the most deadly since the "worst of the worst," August-September 2005.
We understand from this that the insurgents have very quickly adapted to the changes Washington has wrought in its military option. The rebels' objective is to discredit the change in strategy recently decided. Baghdad is to be pacified? They attack elsewhere. They attack "weak" targets - marriages, funerals, markets, caf�s - taking care to avoid those locales placed under high surveillance.
This cat and mouse game - if one may say so - has this new or singular aspect in that it's not exclusively American soldiers allied to Iraqis against a unified insurgent front. The recent development of the game in question is combined with a simultaneous fragmentation of, and growth in power of, the militias. Let me explain.
Lets take the Shiites, or more precisely, the Mahdi Army, over which Muqtada al-Sadr reigns. In the most recent months, the latter and some of his lieutenants have ended up training independent militias: in other words, they are clashing among themselves when they aren't fighting the Americans. On the Sunni side, one also notes a break-up between tribal leaders and the leaders of the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, a break-up that seems to benefit the latter. According to the statistics of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the number of individuals swelling the ranks of al-Qaeda has risen to ... 60 000! Sixty thousand!
Four years ago, the United States, Great Britain and Spain, the axis of liars, had proclaimed from every grandstand that with Iraq bursting at the seams with weapons of mass destruction, as well as being a haven of peace for al-Qaeda members, it was necessary at all costs to assault Baghdad. In so doing, they hoped to put an end to the actions of the terrorist network. The result? Iraq is prey to a high-intensity civil war; the Taliban and their accomplices have reduced Hamid Karzai's function to that of mayor of Kabul and Osama bin Laden is still at large. The axis of liars doubles as a "conspiracy of imbeciles."
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