Posted on 09/01/2007 5:38:00 AM PDT by LS
Recently I received some news items from various places about the shift to a victory mode in Iraq. They are quite remarkable.
1) Dave Kilcullen has a long piece in Small Wars Journal, called "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt."
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/
It appears al-Qaeda's tactic, not only in Iraq but elsewhere, is to intermarry with the locals, creating kinship ties that surpass ideology, even religion! That apparently backfired in Iraq. Here are the key paragraphs:
Islam, of course, is a key identity marker when dealing with non-Muslim outsiders, but when all involved are Muslim, kinship trumps religion. And in fact, most tribal Iraqis I have spoken with consider AQ’s brand of “Islam” utterly foreign to their traditional and syncretic version of the faith. One key difference is marriage custom, the tribes only giving their women within the tribe or (on rare occasions to cement a bond or resolve a grievance, as part of a process known as sulha) to other tribes or clans in their confederation (qabila). Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done. AQ, with their hyper-reductionist version of “Islam” stripped of cultural content, discounted the tribes’ view as ignorant, stupid and sinful.
This led to violence, as these things do: AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha’r) on his people, who attacked AQI. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality, killing the children of a prominent sheikh in a particularly gruesome manner, witnesses told us. This was the last straw, they said, and the tribes rose up. Neighboring clans joined the fight, which escalated as AQI (who had generally worn out their welcome through high-handedness) tried to crush the revolt through more atrocities. Soon the uprising took off, spreading along kinship lines through Anbar and into neighboring provinces.
Other tribesmen told me women weren’t the only issue. The tribes run smuggling, import/export and construction businesses which AQI shut down, took over, or disrupted through violent disturbances that were “bad for business”. Another factor was the belief, widespread among the tribes (and with at least some basis in fact) that AQI has links to, and has received funding and support from, Iran. In their view, women were simply the spark – AQI already “had it coming”. (Out in the wild western desert, things often tend to play out like The Sopranos… except that AQI changed the rules of the game by adding roadside bombs, beheadings, murder of children and death by torture. Eventually, enough was enough for the locals.)
The revolt spread, not only across Anbar, but now into Baghdad, with the locals forming "Salvation Councils" and the movement is called "The Awakening." Civilian deaths are now down 75% in Ramadi, Tikrit, Fallujah, and other former centers of violence. People openly walk the streets, Americans can even walk around without body army. Markets are open, and most of the time is spent battling electric generators or clogged sewers, not al-Qaeda. Kilcullen continues:
Other provinces are experiencing similar patterns: in one farming district south of Baghdad, a treaty between an enterprising company commander and community elders has dramatically reduced bombings: by late May, one road that was attacked twice a day last year had not seen a single IED attack since the agreement was established in March. The locals have formed a neighborhood watch, are policing their own community, and are enrolling in the Iraqi police under government control and cooperating with local Iraqi Army units. And recently Shi’a tribes in the south have approached us, looking to cooperate with the government against Shi’a extremists.
In Baghdad, neighborhood watch grouups have been formed, including Shia-Sunni partnerships. The Iraqi government under Maliki, desplaying great courage, has worked closely with these groups---including some former enemies---but it has succeeded. This has freed up Iraqi army to go on offense, rather than be tied up in static guard duties. He points out the plusses and minuses, including the risk that arming Sunnis might lead to regional warlordism (doesn't seem to bother us in Afghanistan). One response has been to more closely monitor weapons going to groups that have yet to prove loyalty; and another is to biometrically register tribal fighter and weapons serieal numbers. The trickiest is to link the tribes to the governemnt, through a system of federalism. Kilcullen concludes, fact, the uprising represents very significant political progress toward reconciliation at the grass-roots level, and major security progress in marginalizing extremists and reducing civilian deaths. Perhaps most important, this revolt began in ways that were not expected and were not accounted for in the "benchmarks," so it has been overlooked to some extent in Washington, especially by the moonbats.
Then he adds this, which has been a constant point of debate here, about troop levels: Another key implication is for force ratios and coalition troop numbers. It has become a truism to argue that we have too few troops in Iraq for “proper” counterinsurgency. This claim is somewhat questionable, in fact – there is a base level of troops needed for effective counterinsurgency, but this is a threshold: once you reach the minimum level, what the troops do becomes the critical factor, more so than how many there are. And as Robert Thompson pointed out more than 40 years ago, force ratio in counterinsurgency is an indicator of progress, not a prerequisite for it. You know things are starting to go your way when local people start joining your side against the enemy, thus indicating a growth of popular support, and changing the force ratio as a result. Merely adding additional foreign troops doesn’t make up for lack of local popular support – the British lost the Cyprus campaign with a force ratio of 110 to 1 in their favor, while in the same decade the Indonesians defeated Dar'ul Islam with a force ratio that never exceeded 3 to 1.
This "revolt" has added a minimum of 30,000 fighters to our side---more important, locals who know the enemy and know the land.
Then there is this from the Australian, an interview with Gen. Petraeus, who said that religious and ethnic killings are down 75% from last year. Roadside bombings have fallen in 8 of the last 11 weeks, and the number of weapons caches captured have doubled to 4000 weapons in Aug. alone. , and Aus. Defence Minister Nelson said that the Aussie's contribution will likely move from "security" to full-time "training" of Iraqis next year based on the progress.
(The Austrailian, "Surge Working: Top U.S. General," by Dennis Shanahan, Aug. 31, 2007.
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NEVER FORGET
.
This new 21st LIBERTY Century of ours...
is really all about Freeing the women of the world...
to be all that already are in GOD’s Eyes...
and all that they can be here on the Earth.
And it may just take a Century to do.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
This explains the sudden French reversal on Iraq and their attempt to ingratiate themselves to the Iraqi govt. Now that the hard work seems to be winding down they want to cash in.
Anyway, great article. Thanks for posting it.
FYI
When we leave Iraq, we’ll be turning it over to the Iraqis, instead of leaving behind the disaster that you want.
One thing I found interesting in this article was that in order to get some security the “peasants” are being given arms and ammunition and are forming, basically, militias. Someone finally figured out that a disarmed populace are victims. Such a new concept!
Freedom for women , freedom for anyone won’t happen under al Quaida. Fight for the true liberty to take hod, nurture it, don’t leave Iraq to the killers.
Yeah, maybe they ought to try that with the helpless civilians in New Orleans, now with the highest murder rate in the world!!
Yah, same article, but referenced slightly differently.
That’s why I said “More discussion”, not “Duplicate post”. ;-)
Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done. AQ, with their hyper-reductionist version of "Islam" stripped of cultural content, discounted the tribes' view as ignorant, stupid and sinful. This led to violence, as these things do: AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha'r) on his people, who attacked AQI. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality, killing the children of a prominent sheikh in a particularly gruesome manner, witnesses told us. This was the last straw, they said, and the tribes rose up. Neighboring clans joined the fight, which escalated as AQI (who had generally worn out their welcome through high-handedness) tried to crush the revolt through more atrocities. Soon the uprising took off, spreading along kinship lines through Anbar and into neighboring provinces.
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