|
With the terrorist
bombing of the UN’s headquarters in Baghdad reportedly carried out by Al
Queda that resulted in the deaths of additional US civilians, it has become
crystal clear that the Bush Administration’s misguided invasion of Iraq has
increased, not decreased the threat of terrorist attack to US troops and
civilians. Indeed, Al Queda—a longtime rival and enemy of Saddam--would not
even be operating in Iraq were it not for the US invasion of that country.
The Bush Administration is failing in its purported bid to counter terrorists
who have entered Iraq in record numbers since the US defeated Saddam. In
a bid to appease the terrorist-supporting Islamic Republic of Iran, the Administration
has declared the People’s Mujahadeen of Iran a terrorist group and has disarmed
their fighters and taken over their financial assets, despite the fact that
the State Department has admitted that they pose the only effective resistance
to the rule of the terrorist Ayatollahs in Iran. Along with the US decision
to disband Iraq’s entire Army and security apparatus, this has left Iraq’s
border with Iran wide open for Al Queda and other Iranian backed terrorist
groups to enter Iraq and kill more American soldiers and innocent civilians.
Furthermore, the US proconsul in Iraq recently gave in to the Iraqi Communist
Party’s request to include one of their own representatives on Iraq’s new
US-appointed Governing Council.
Perhaps the most disturbing recent development occurred at the end of last
month when the chief spokesman of the Iraqi Al-Dawa ‘Party,’ Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
was selected as the first of Iraq’s post Saddam-era interim Presidents out
of the nine-person rotating chief executive body. Al-Jaafari will serve as
President of Iraq through the end of August. Al-Dawa is a fundamentalist
group that is affiliated with the better-known, but equally radical group,
Hezbollah, which has openly declared its intentions to target American soldiers
and civilians in Iraq for assassination. Some US intelligence officials have
implicated Al-Dawa in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut,
which cost the lives of two hundred and forty-one Marines. The car bombing
of the Marine barracks constituted the most severe act of terrorism in US
history until the September 11th, 2001 suicide bombing attacks. Nevertheless,
in the months before the war the Bush Administration courted Al Dawa by including
it among the opposition groups that would control postwar Iraq, in addition
to providing it with military assistance and US training. Al-Dawa has been
described by one US intelligence officer as being “like hard-core Vietcong.”
Despite receiving US military training and assistance and US promises of
being a major player in the post-war Iraqi government, Al Dawa sided with
Saddam against the recent US and British invasion of Iraq. Inexplicably,
it has since been allowed significant representation on the Iraq Governing
Council along with the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI), which was given fully one-third of the twenty-five seats
on Iraq’s new Governing Council. Like Al Queda, SCIRI reportedly shares close
ties to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which serves as Iran’s
intelligence service. The leader of this group, Ayatollah Muhammed Baqr al-Hakim,
warned just before the US invasion of Iraq that if US troops stayed for more
than a few weeks after Saddam was deposed, Shiites would resist them by armed
force. Not surprisingly, his prediction has since come true as he and his
fellow radical Shiite groups attempt to takeover the reigns of government
at the same time as they escalate the terrorist campaign against the US occupation
authorities in an attempt to eject them from Iraq.
Back
in May and in furtherance of al-Hakim’s threat of armed resistance to the
US occupation forces, 2,000 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and
Islamic shock troops, including armed factions of SCIRI and Al Dawa, invaded
Iraq. Their objective is to take control of eleven major Iraqi Shiite-majority
cities, according to London's Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq al-Awsat.
These cities include Karbala, Najaf, Hillah, Kufah, Diwaniyah, Kut, Nasiriyah
and Amarah. The Iranians intend to set up revolutionary committees similar
to those established after the 1979 revolution in Iran. Also sent were several
hundred elements from the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Corps. These infiltrators
were sent with large sums of money intended for weapons for the Badr Corps,
controlled by SCIRI, and Quds Corps fighters from Iraq. A senior Israeli
intelligence officer in Israel termed the new large-scale Iranian involvement
in Iraq as "massive" and representative of an Iranian attempt to "Vietnamize"
the country and establish widespread resistance against the American occupation
forces. One wonders if Al-Dawa and SCIRI may have been involved in the recent
bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad that reportedly utilized explosives
which may have been purchased from weapons stores obtained from old Iraqi
military depots.
The reason
for the Administration’s decision to allow these radical Shiite terrorist
groups the largest number of seats on Iraq’s new Governing Council
is that the neocon architects of the war in the Bush Administration believe
that no Iraqi post-war government can long endure unless it is sufficiently
“representative” of Iraq’s population, which is sixty percent Shiite Muslim.
The conclusion that affirmative action and religious quotas should be applied
to Iraq’s new Governing Council might make limited sense if it were not applied
to ensure that the most militant and radical terrorist Shiite groups in Iraq
are the ones given the power in the new “democratic” Iraq. The Bush Administration
is repeating the same mistake in Iraq as it did with regards to the Palestinian
Authority, where it continues to recognize the terrorist Palestinian Liberation
Organization as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and support
a PLO-led Palestinian state. The new US appointed Governing Council notably
excludes the more moderate Shiite factions which it should be supporting
to govern Iraq, whose leaders have been targeted for assassination by the
Iranian-supported terrorist and Shiite extremist elements.
Sadoun
al-Dulaimi, a moderate Iraqi tribal leader who serves as an adviser to Americans
working in the Pentagon-led Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance,
has warned the US authorities in Iraq about the danger of radical terrorist
groups like Al-Dawa, which he said would resist any non-Islamic government
in Iraq. Back in May, Al Dulimi stated that Al-Dawa and other radical Iraqi
Shiite groups had created their own weapons storehouses in Nasiriyah and
Basra. "This will lead to civil war," al Dulimi said at the time. "I advised
(Pentagon-appointed leader) Jay Garner to watch these groups. I said, 'You're
going to have problems soon.'" In June, when thousands of American troops
raided what they believed were bases for loyalists to Saddam Hussein, provoking
a lengthy firefight that killed four Iraqis, the Shiite newspaper Al Dawa
described the deaths as "martyrdom." Given the fact that Al Dawa and the
Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq continue to
arm themselves even though Saddam and his Baathist adherents have been vanquished
seems to indicate their intention to use their weapons against US troops
and innocent civilians in Iraq.
Al-Dawa was banned along with other Islamic terrorist groups and parties
by Saddam Hussein while he was still in power. However, in post Saddam Iraq,
both anti-American Shiite terrorist groups and the Iraq Communist Party have
been welcomed with open arms into the US appointed twenty-five member Iraqi
Governing Council, while only the secularist Baathist Party which ruled Iraq
under Saddam has been banned. The ascension of a leader of a terrorist group
which is likely responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers
for which it is yet to be held accountable to serve as Iraq’s first post-Saddam-era
president, is a development whose ramifications have not, to the author’s
knowledge, been reported elsewhere. It serves as a major warning sign that
post-Saddam Iraq will likely pose a far greater terrorist threat to the US
than when Saddam Hussein was in power.
In retrospect, it now appears clear that President Reagan was right to support
Saddam Hussein and Iraq in their war against Iran, which today poses a far
more pronounced threat to the US and its allies in the Middle East than it
did during the 1980’s, although both the Reagan Administration and the British
were wrong to supply chemical and biological weapons to Iraq for the same
purpose. How very ironic that the US and Britain invaded Iraq supposedly
to disarm it of the very weapons of mass destruction that they had armed
it with only two decades ago. Iran today poses a greater threat to the US
and to the region due to the fact that it possesses Shahab 3 MRBMs capable
of reaching Israel and may well have tactical nuclear weapons which could
be mounted atop these missiles. This fact, known to many in the US intelligence
community, is the most likely reason that President Bush decided not to extend
his “war of liberation” to Iran after the US successfully defeated and occupied
Iraq, even while it failed to prevent Saddam Hussein from slipping away into
the shadows.
Last year, President Bush proclaimed to every nation and group in the world
that you are either with us in the war on terrorism or against us. If it
expects compliance with this global ultimatum by the world’s nation-states,
the Administration would do well to stop abetting radical Shiite terrorist
groups that comprise the new Iraqi Governing Council and are clearly “against
us” to avoid the appearance of a double standard in its ongoing, perpetual
“war on terrorism.” The Administration’s support of these groups will lead
to a more dangerous and violent rather than a more peaceful Iraq. Rather
than support these radical and extremist terrorist groups and leaders as
legitimate participants in the new Iraqi government, they should be banned
from further participation in the Governing Council. At the same time, their
bitter enemies from the Baath Party, who alone may have the ability to counter
their rising influence, should be brought back in as partners in a moderate
Shiite led and pro-western Iraqi government.
Published originally at EtherZone.com: republication allowed with this
notice and hyperlink intact.
David T. Pyne, Esq. is President of the Center for the National Security Interest, a national security think-tank based in Arlington, VA.
Email David Pyne
Send
this Article to a Friend
|
