Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s forthcoming announcement of a full amnesty for all Iraqi armed groups willing to lay down arms is the upshot of an intensive flurry of US-Iraqi diplomatic activity culminating in the US president’s unheralded visit to Baghdad Tuesday, June 13. The visit however was overshadowed by a final report put before the US president on the state of play in Iraq.The report starts out with a piece of bleak advice: abandon all speculation on an exit strategy for US troops from Iraq, because this option is non-viable given the current situation on the ground.The United States and its leaders must accept that they are in for a long war that stretches out into the future with no end in sight. The unvarnished language is unusual in this type of official report to Washington’s highest echelons.
Furthermore, the picture of the situation in Iraq as presented to the administration, partly on the strength of data provided by the Pentagon and the CIA, is frankly termed misleading. The president has been given a garbled picture described in the report as a “fish eye” view, whereby progress in building the Iraqi army and security services is greatly overstated to overlay a far gloomier reality. US military and diplomatic officials in Iraq are accused of a tendency to play down the hazards and embellish Iraqi security forces’ capabilities and self-assurance.
Furthermore, all the estimates of Iraq’s progress towards economic reconstruction are grossly exaggerated. Since the United States and its army cannot avoid a long-range presence in Iraq – even if it is reduced in numbers – three key courses are strongly recommended to Washington to make this prolonged stay feasible.
1. To prevent the country at all costs from breaking up into three entities ruled by Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis – in other words, a heavy brake must be applied to reverse a process already racing forward.
2. To build a political, military and economic support system for the central government in Baghdad.
3. To start rebuilding Iraqi’s military and security forces from scratch.
4. To get going on the reconstruction of Iraq’s economy and its oil industry.According to official assessments, some 80% of all terrorist attacks are the work of the various al Qaeda components or allies. This is refuted in the report which points to a far grimmer reality: Al Qaeda is responsible for less than half of those attacks, whereas most are executed by indigenous Sunni insurgent and pro-Baathist guerrilla groups. Another finding is that suicide attacks cause less fatalities than routine strikes, such as roadside bombs, ambushes and assaults by large numbers of gunmen. Although the total number of suicide car bombings and booby-trapped vehicular strikes has diminished, the death toll keeps on rising.
In 2005, the insurgents mounted an average 470 attacks per week; in last three months, the figure has leapt to 620. Eighty percent of all attacks target American forces. Official US military planning and briefings are confined to dealing with violence in the four troubled provinces of Diyala, Anbar, Salah-e-din and Babel. But insurgent activity is far more prevalent and widespread than the US military appreciates, say the new report’s compilers. A further 12 provinces which are peopled by half of Iraq’s population are well within the radius of terror. Therefore, 16 of Iraq’s 18 provinces – not just four – are prey to routine violence. As time goes on, the Iraqi army is expected to suffer from a rising tide of attacks.
Iraq’s secular political grounding has been more or less swept away by the various stages of the democratic process the United States has applied in the last three years. The secular political groupings have fallen by the wayside of elections, referenda and American projects for building the post-Saddam ruling regime in Baghdad. So thoroughly have these structures, which the United States should have promoted in the body politic, been overturned, that only 9% of the Iraqi legislature’s incumbent members can claim to have no religious affiliation or dependency. This unhealthy situation must be reversed.
Three chronic problems plaguing the military and security establishment have still not been treated: One, an extremely high desertion rate, which in some units is as high as 40-50%.Two, Many of the army battalions are far from combat worthy. But even those who are, exhibit fighting ability only when they are supported by US forces. Without them, those Iraqi soldiers opt out of combat.Three, Iraqi Special Forces, basically militias, are the only effective military forces in Iraq. Some of them are of very high quality, even on a par with US special forces. However, their main shortcoming is that their commanders and men lack commitment to a regular command structure and are therefore short on discipline. They are motivated entirely by partisan or self-interest.
The report directs a blistering attack on the CIA’s economic evaluations. While the Central Intelligence Agency reported to the administration that the average per capita income in Iraq had risen in 2005 to $1,350 dollars, the truth is that it plummeted to below the $1,200 level. The CIA estimated that gross national product stood now at $46.5 billion, whereas it is down to $32 billion. Iraq’s oil refineries are working at only 50% of their capacity. The revenue from Iraq’s product of 2.2 million barrels of oil a day jumped because of rising world oil prices to $3 billion a month. New equipment and technology could quickly raise output, so that within three to four years, it could be doubled to 4.5 million barrels a day and yield an income of $6 billion a month at current prices.
This rosy prospect depends on the United States and Iraqi government putting a stop to the wholesale theft of oil by the militias, which smuggle increasing quantities of pirated oil across the borders to foreign agents. No progress has been made in securing the Iraqi population regular supplies of water and electricity or repairing the national sewage system.President Bush has often referred to improvements in these fields to demonstrate the great strides the Iraqi economy has made since the US invasion, whereas, according to the report, the entire reconstruction endeavor is a flop and the colossal $22 billion investment has gone down the drain. For any hope of progress, this process too must go back to square one and start again. The key recommendation offered in this chapter of the report for resuscitating the Iraq economy is for American-Iraqi efforts to focus on taking full control of the oil industry and putting it on its feet. Without this basic step, the Iraqi economy does not stand a chance.
In one of the Middle East’s weirder twists, Iraq is being held up as a model by a Syrian opposition-in-exile alliance as a surefire device for regime change in Damascus. Encouraged by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the British MI6 secret service, the heads of this alliance held a secret convocation in London in the first week of June to start gearing up for action.Seated at the top table were former vice president Khalim Haddam and Muslim Brotherhood leader Sadr e-Din Bayanuni. The leaders of 24 dissident groups were gathered around them.
However, the most powerful figure of them all, the president’s uncle Rifat Assad, was conspicuous by his absence. He stayed away to signal his extreme displeasure with the exiled alliance leaders’ swing towards broadening their campaign against the Bashar Assad regime by marginalizing the minority Allawite Muslim sect to which the Assad clan belongs and relegating it to a status resembling that of Iraq’s Sunni Muslims.
Some Persian Gulf intelligence sources report that Rifat, hitherto a staunch adherent of the campaign to overthrow his nephew, was so put out that he paid a discreet visit to Damascus this month to try and bury the hatchet with Bashar.The sources do not know how the reconciliation bid turned out - the feud dividing the Assad family dates back to the era of Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad. Rifat is believed to have confided to the president his conviction that the opposition alliance would not have targeted Allawite domination of Syria without tacit support from Washington, London and Paris. He therefore urged the sect’s divided factions to close ranks and together face the common enemies threatening longstanding Allawite rule of Syria.
None of this is absolutely verified by the report, however more recently certain developments are beginning to emerge:
1. The feuding wings of the Allawite Assads are in touch after decades of animosity.
2. Neither Rifat Assad nor any representative of his attended the London conclave of Syrian opposition leaders in exile.
3. He was not misled; the London gathering did indeed pass a resolution to fight Allawite rule in Syria.
4. The method its members projected is based on Iraq’s federal concept as embodied in the new national unity government in Baghdad. Turning Syria’s entire state system inside out, the country would be partitioned into broadly autonomous Sunni, Kurdish and Druze provinces. The small Allawite sect would be left nowhere in the federal set-up and the Assad dynasty toppled from its high perch in Damascus.The opposition leaders have an incremental plan of action ready to go in the coming weeks:
First: To call on American, British and French intelligence services for help in fomenting a civil unrest in Syria – nothing too violence in the first stage, so as not to bring out the Syrian security forces, the police and the army, but rather to try and draw them into sympathizing with the protest movement.
Second: To avoid targeting the ruling Baath party and its military and intelligence wings. The object is to convince them that they are the victims of the regime, rather than its mainstay. This will pave the way to the main thrust of the revolt: a back-doors appeal to the military top brass not to rush to obey orders from the presidential palace in Damascus to crush the uprising. The Syrian dissidents have done their homework on Iraq. They learned that the American decision to boycott Saddam Hussein’s Baathists and blacklist the top army and secret service officers was the most powerful goad to Sunni and Baathist elements to stage their insurgency.Third: To reverse a former decision taken in Brussels to set up a government in exile. Instead, a national council will conduct the struggle to overturn the Assad regime and remove the Allawites from their positions of power in Damascus.
In early June, the Syrian authorities claimed to have beaten off a radical Islamic attack on government buildings, including the ministry of defense, in central Damascus near Syria’s national radio and television headquarters. The assailants were said to have used grenades and lost four men, while two Syrian guards were killed. Six fighters were reportedly arrested after a three-hour battle.
No group ever claimed responsibility for this operation. Later, it transpired that the assailants were Syrians, former Sufis who came around to the fundamentalist view, implying that the Syrians were keeping more information under their hats than they were giving out. Regarding the air of mystery surrounding the event, our counter-terror sources affirm that the Syrians faked the attack. This was discovered in a comprehensive investigation carried out by international security agencies specializing in the war on al Qaeda. There were no group of radical Muslims, no arrests and no one killed. All that happened was that Syrian soldiers were told to stage a mock battle in the hope of presenting the Assad government as being hounded by al Qaeda and drawing some sympathy in the Arab arena and the West.
But the stunt also had an underlying element of fact. Syrian intelligence was informed in mid-May that the commander of Syrian fighters in Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s ranks in Iraq - “Abu Qaqaa,” whose real name is Muhammed Agasi, a 33-year old Syrian Kurd from a village north of Aleppo - had ordered his men to return to Syria and prepare to start attacking key government targets. Since then, members of the Syrian Jund al-Sham unit, are filtering back into the country. In fact Zarqawi’s death on June 7 will accelerate the exit of Syrian al Qaeda fighters from Iraq.
Syrian intelligence and Western al Qaeda watchers are curious to see whether Abu Qaqaa, sighted lately in Falluja, decides to leave Iraq in the wake of his men and transfer his operations center to Syria, or stay behind to seize command of some of Zarqawi’s units.Unlike most other al Qaeda chiefs in Iraq, who jealously preserve their secret identities, Agasi is one of the few whose reputation is well known to Syrian and Western intelligence agencies.After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, he was taken into custody in Damascus, but set free four days later. In early 2002, he opened a small business in Damascus as a sort of impresario for public events. He built up a reputation as a sought-after speaker at weddings and public gatherings. His small office was soon discovered to be a front for recruiting volunteers to al Qaeda. His public appearances were used to sell tapes and seditious video recordings. After a musical introduction, they featured speeches that he had made slamming America and its domination of the Middle East, and reviling “the foreigners presence in Syria.”
This was a transparent reference to the Allawites and the Assad family. “The regime in Damascus,” he would tell his audience, “doesn’t belong to the country, but to the Muslim faith” – meaning the government of any given geographic area is only legitimate if it adheres to the true faith, Islam.This popular public speaker was later discovered to have gone from platform to platform across Syria, building a nationwide network of thousands of followers - 4,000, according to one estimate – which grew into al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Syria. When Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, Agasi transferred his fighting men first to the Ansar al-Islam, the precursor of the contemporary Ansar al-Sunna; then, in 2002, to Zarqawi who had meanwhile arrived in Iraq.
This Syrian Kurd’s record hints at ambivalence in his relations with Syrian security services.On the one hand, Syrian intelligence took a fee to help him introduce foreign fighters and arms from Syria into Iraq to fight the Americans. On the other, he was detained from time to time, on suspicion of subversion against the Assad regime.
In 2003, al Qaeda Web sites and publications accused Abu Qaqaa of acting as a double agent and working for both Syria and Western intelligence. Jihadis were warned to stay away form him. Western intelligence has since concluded that this was a deliberate al Qaeda whitewash to allow its operative o carry on working in Syria without undue harassment.In early 2004, Aqasi moved to Iraq and joined Zarqawi’s high command. Should he decide now to return to Syria, as some al Qaeda circles predict, the Assad regime will have a good deal to worry about. A genuine al Qaeda campaign may be brewing – no fakes this time – at the very time that all President Bashar Assad’s enemies appear to be ganging up for a mass return to the homeland for a clandestine revolt to topple him.
The men to whom the United States is most beholden for the elimination of al Qaeda’s Iraq chief Abu Musab al Zarqawi are General Mohammed Dahabi, director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, and Col. Ali Burjaq, his counterterrorism chief. They are in charge of the kingdom’s war on al Qaeda, but also responsible for the hundreds of Jordanian agents operating not only in the Iraq border region, but also anonymously alongside US forces fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
In fact our intelligence sources disclose that Jordan ranks today as the most vital US military intelligence subcontractor since the American-Soviet Cold War, when Israeli intelligence spearheaded the US penetration of Russia and its East European satellites. On the opposite side, Jordan’s role may be likened to that of the East German HVA secret service, which successfully penetrated western intelligence on behalf of Moscow for many years. The US is funneling many tens of millions of dollars to Amman to feed Gen. Dahabi’s campaign to recruit thousands of young Jordanians for training in guerrilla warfare and, after being scrupulously screened, sent on to Jordanian academies specializing in fighting al Qaeda and other radical Muslim groups. Only a few dozen get this far and are streamed into courses training them to operate in three alternative arenas: Iraq, Afghanistan and General, a field that includes the Muslim countries of the Far East and Central Asia. Some graduates have been posted undercover to Chechnya.
These Jordanian operatives fill essential gaps for US intelligence, especially the CIA. They serve in places where it is necessary to deploy Muslims who fit naturally into prayer meetings in mosques, whose mother tongue is Arabic and whose habits and behavior are those of born Muslims.
After training, they are planted inside the tribes and clans used as transit points for al Qaeda fighters, weapons and intelligence information.Jordan’s King Abdullah and his intelligence and military chiefs are motivated less by the financial assistance rendered by the United States and more by the awareness that the expanded al Qaeda role in the war in neighboring Iraq places the terrorist threat on their doorstep. Jordan’s border cannot be properly protected from inside the realm. It needs an external buffer. Since 2004, therefore, Jordanian special troops and agents have been deployed under cover in western Iraq. They have penetrated as far as Falluja and Ramadi, north and west of Baghdad, and points as far east as Baquba. Zarqawi was cornered partly as a result of a Jordanian intelligence sting operation against the head of Zarqawi’s highway robber gang which preys on supply convoys plying the Jordan-Baghdad route, but also through agents planted inside the Jordan-based clan of Zarqawi’s Palestinian wife, the daughter of the Palestinian-Jordanian sheikh, Yasin Jarad. The al Qaeda chief was wont to correspond with his wife through couriers who brought her replies back to him.To close the noose around Zarqawi, Jordanian intelligence performed the computerized integration of tracking systems, on line in real time, a method picked up from Israeli intelligence.
The successor of Zarqawi in Iraq for now, as we stated on June 9, appears to be Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi. See also the confirmation by fellow researcher Neil on Friday, June 16, 2006 - 12:12 PM.