Iraq: Beyound Al-Zarqawi

By

Garba A. Isa

yekuwa@yahoo.com

                     

What is the News is not that American forces have eventually killed the Iraqi Al-Qaida leader, the Jordanian-born Abu Musa Al-Zarqawi, but that he has remained alive and combative these past 3 years. Those seeking to die as cowards peacefully on their beds do not venture into the kind of the more than challenging task which the late Al-Zarqawi set to do in Iraq against the American and British-led occupation of a Muslim heartland.

 

America’s journey into the bloody Iraqi Quagmire which began even long before the March 2003 invasion brought it face to face with the post Saddam Resistance forces called “Insurgents” by the West. They were largely made up of former Iraqi soldiers, the Republican Guards and several other Official and Volunteer Militias believed to have melted away with their weapons after Saddam Hussain’s fall. Abu Musa Al-Zarqawi the Al-Qaida resistance leader did not therefore formed the core of the resistance but simply joined in with his foreign volunteers to give it a needed boost. After evading American led assaults for more than 3 years therefore, the Martyred Al-Zarqawi  who was killed in an American bombing raid on Wednesday June 7, 2006 may have already accomplished the task of entrenching the Al-Qaida type war tactics in the Iraqi battle fields particularly in the Central and Western sectors of Iraq, the hotbed of the Anti-American violence. As already mentioned ironically by a Western commentator, Al-Zarqawi as an individual may have gone but not the “Ideology” which he has planted in Iraq and other areas. The Iraqi resistance bombing tactics have recently become an increasing resort in the Afghan quagmire as well.                   

                       

Ever since the vehement opposition of Osama Bin Laden and other radical Saudi nationals to the American troop’s present in the Kingdom following the Saddam Hussain’s invasion of Kuwit in August 1990, which may have explained the decision to link his Al-Qaeda network to the 11^th September 2001 attacks and hence the invasion of Afghanistan where he was sheltering, the fear of Al-Qaida is now the proverbial beginning of wisdom to the West particularly America and Britain. The fear of the so-called “Militant Islam” under the Taliban, was for instance the immediate reason for America’s invasion of Afghanistan under its wider strategic plans against the Islamic World.  Like Iraq, Afghanistan is vastly rich in oil and is strategically located.

        

The Islamic sentiment was  successfully evoked by the post Saddam Iraqi resistance fighters in concert with Al-Zarqawi and his group to bog down the Yankees into a bloody fiasco these past 3 years.  As a Sunni, Al-Zarqawi obviously had the best welcome in the Sunni dominated parts of Iraq, but the escalation of anti-British resistance in the Basra area in the Shias dominated south pointed to the fact that the resistance was escalating beyond sectarian confines. Part of America’s dilemma in the region is the choice between “Islamic fundamentalism” and “Arab (secular) radicalism” both which are a threat to its region’s trump cards; Oil and Israel. But as mentioned earlier, the decisive situation for America’s short and medium term plans for the Middle East may be the ultimate result of the bloody battles taking place between it and the masked Iraqi resistance fighters in the theatre of war. The fighters have succeeded in drawing the Americans into their worst nightmare since their lost war in Vietnam; hand to hand gorilla-styled combats with several undefined battle fields. The Americans’ frantic effort to build a reliable and capable Iraqi proxy to fight the occupation war on their behalf has so far proved largely unsuccessful. If the promised Al-Qaida reprisal to avenge Al-Zarqawi’s death materialises, then President Bush of America, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s and the puppet Iraqi government’s celebrations over his death may be short-lived. In spite of several elections “held at Gunpoint” as London’s the Economist described them, credible, confident and popular governments have failed to emerge under American occupation in Iraq. What we had instead are a bunch of puppets holed up in a Baghdad enclave, the so-called “Green Zone” daring not to move freely among the people.   

The apparently well orchestrated plan to balkanise the country or break it up along sectarian divides seems to be failing despite several tragic or bloody sectarian provocations aimed at pitching the Sunnis against the Shi’as. But there are even among the majority Shia’s strong voices of unity such as that of the young scholar, Muqtada Al-Sadr. A curious development is how America is playing sectarian politics in Iraq by presenting itself as the friend of the Shi’as. This is the country that is antagonistic to the same Shi’as in neighbouring Iran. The torture by the British soldiers of Shia youths in the southern city of Basra after a riot against their occupation was no pointer to a “friendly treatment”. The concern of the West is not whether one is a Shi’a or Sunni, but whether he plays their cards or not.   

The killing of Zarqawi cannot cheaply bolster America’s battered International image due to its military fiasco in Iraq, but the ability of the Americans to read the handwriting on the walls and make a face saving withdrawal from the baseless Iraqi occupation, can do the magic. The resistance city of Falluja west of Baghdad was assaulted by the Americans in November 2004 with anguish and vengeance. Falluja came to the limelight as the city which sheltered the Martyred Abu Musa Al-Zarqawi   (believed to be coordinating most of the anti-coalition operations in Central and Northern sectors of Iraq) and was where the so-called civilian contractors were killed, dragged and hanged onto a bridge. In the offensive to retake the city which was launched in the Ramadan of 2004, the Americans allegedly used banned chemical weapons, killed unarmed wounded prisoner and destroyed several mosques for  which Falluja earned the accolades of the ”City of the Mosques” . Al-Zarqawi survived the Falluja ferrocious attacks which literally reduced the city to the rubbles but remained in Iraq to fight the occupation and eventually made the supreme sacrifice with his life. The slain Al-Qaida leader did not appear to be in Iraq to fight a hit and run war with the occupation forces given his highly mobile nature, but chose to fight long drawn battles against their colonisation to the bitter end. Any time the American and British forces thought they had pacified Iraq; the resistance will fight back with another tactic; the post Zarqawi period can hardly be an exception.

                            

Before the alleged capture of Saddam Hussein in a “hole” in December 2003, the World was made to believe that he was commanding the anti-American resistance. But the intensification of the resistance and their sophistication thereafter, was a clear signal that a new force had stepped in to take over after Saddam’s ouster. The same scenario may play itself out in the case of Al-Zarqawi who by the Western account themselves was only in control of only about 15%  of the overall Iraqi insurgency before his death. In Al-Zarqawi like in the case of Saddam, at least the West knew the “Enemy combatants”- this may not be the same with their “successors” in the current messily undefined war in Iraq.  It does not look as though things will get better for the occupation forces and their puppet soldiers and government at least in the short term as a result of Al-Zarqawi’s death. The Iraqi killing fields promises to be tragically bloodier in the coming days pending the time the Yankees grab the ever visible examination answer: “End the Occupation”. If the Sudanese Darfur region is described as a Humanitarian Crisis, Iraq is the worst type.  The dirty handiworks of American troops in Iraq, Afhanistan and elsewhere were ironically what are nurturing resistance fighters like Al-Zarqawi, Bin Laden, Al-Zawahari and host of others. Meanwhile, after more than 3 years evading and fighting the Americans in Iraq, the Yankees have done an unsolicited favour to Al-Zarqawi; helped him attain martyrdom and its eternal bliss, without the anguish of life behind bars in one of their Gestapo such as the infamous Guantanamo Bay or any other notorious detention facility both at home and abroad or even the agony of dieing on an “Electric Chair”. The irony of Al-Zarqawi’s death is that it may achieve the exact opposite of its intended goals, and the Iraqis will   be the worst for it. Iraq meanwhile craves for the decisive intervention of God, which may come sooner, rather than later.  

Garba A. Isa  Yekuwa Communications, Kano