This Is What Turning the Corner Looks Like
In the wake of the recent attacks, another brief from Captain Obvious to everyone but those few in power responsible for the current mess:
"(The war in Iraq) has demonstrably strengthened al-Qaeda by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war that started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135 000-strong army does not control much of Iraq. The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves trying to destroy those they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq during the past year. It is this campaign that has now spread to Britain and Egypt... "
"(The war in Iraq) has demonstrably strengthened al-Qaeda by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war that started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135 000-strong army does not control much of Iraq. The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves trying to destroy those they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq during the past year. It is this campaign that has now spread to Britain and Egypt... "
posted by Management at 2:43 AM
1 Comments:
Iraq has descended into chaos way beyond West's worst-case scenario
By Patrick Cockburn
The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain did to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.
The war in Iraq is now joining the South African War (1899-1902) and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qaeda by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war that started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135 000-strong army does not control much of Iraq.
The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves trying to destroy those they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq during the past year.
It is this campaign that has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The Iraq war has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most of the bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and intelligence is home-grown.
The shrill denials by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, that hostility to the invasion of Iraq motivated the bombers are demonstrably untrue. A soon-to-be-published investigation of 300 young Saudis caught and interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to Iraq to fight or blow themselves up shows that very few had any previous contact with al-Qaeda or any other terror organisation before 2003. The invasion of Iraq made them decide to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar reasons, according to the same study commissioned by the Saudi government and carried out by US-trained Saudi researcher Nawaf Obaid, who was given permission to speak to Saudi intelligence officers. A separate Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq, carried out by the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Israel, also concluded that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq alone.
Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small hunted group; since the invasion they have become a potent force, their ideology and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around the world. Their numbers may still not be very large, but they are numerous enough to create mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they strike, be it London or Sharm el-Sheikh.
The bombers have paralysed Baghdad. I have spent half my time living in Iraq since the invasion. The country has never been as dangerous as it is today. Some targets have been hit again and again. The army recruiting centre at Al-Muthana municipal airport in the middle of Baghdad has been attacked eight times, the last occasion being on Wednesday, when eight people were killed. The detonations of the suicide bombs make my windows shake in their frames in my room in the al-Hamra Hotel. The hotel is heavily guarded. At one time the man who looked for bombs under cars entering the compound, with a mirror on the end of a stick, carried a pistol in his right hand. He reckoned if he did discover a suicide bomber he had a split second in which to shoot him in the head before the driver detonated his bomb.
The bombers, or rather the defences against them, have altered the appearance of Baghdad. US army and Iraqi government positions in Baghdad are surrounded by ramparts of enormous cement blocks that snake through the city. Manufactured in different sizes, each is named after an American state, such as Arkansas and Wisconsin. These concrete megaliths are strangling the city by closing off many streets.
For all the newspaper and television coverage of Iraq the foreign media still fail to convey the lethal and anarchic quality of day-to-day living. The last time I drove into west Baghdad from the airport early in July we were suddenly stopped by the sound of volleys of shots. This turned out to be the police commandos, a 12 000-strong paramilitary force which is meant to be the cutting edge of the government offensive against the insurgents.
On this occasion they had loaded coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, containing the bodies of two of their officers murdered that morning, onto the backs of their pick-ups and were weaving through the traffic blazing away over our heads. Drivers slammed on their brakes, since people detained by the commandos, often for no known reason, are often found later on rubbish dumps tortured and executed.
The government, whose members seldom emerge from the Green Zone, make bizarre efforts to pretend that there are signs of a return to normality. Last week a pro-government newspaper had an article on the reconstruction of Baghdad. Above the article was a picture of a crane at a building site. But there are no cranes at work in Baghdad, so the paper was compelled to use a photograph of a crane that has been rusting for more than two years and was abandoned at the site of a giant mosque Saddam Hussein was constructing.
The motto of the British and US governments is "to stay the course in Iraq". This may be useful propaganda at home, but Iraqi government officials counter that London and Washington have no "course" in Iraq, only a policy of endless zig-zags. They have found there are people in Iraq more dangerous than Hussein. - Foreign Service
Published on the web by Sunday Independent on July 24, 2005. © Sunday Independent 2005. All rights reserved.
Post a Comment
<< Home