The operation is part of the war U.S. forces launched days after the U.S. elections to destroy the remaining loyalist units of the former army of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which dispersed but maintained much of their weaponry and fighting cohesion after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion. These former units of Hussein’s Republican Guard have exacted a high price from the imperialist occupation forces and among many Iraqis over the past 18 months.

More evidence has also emerged that wealthy Sunnis, many of them former officials in the Hussein regime, are bankrolling the Baathist-led attacks. These Sunnis are using bank accounts in Syria, Jordan, and other neighboring countries to finance bombings on civilian and military targets, kidnappings, and beheadings of hostages. The loss of Fallujah, the center of such operations, has pushed the Baathists and their collaborators to flee abroad or to other locations in Iraq, such as the area south of Baghdad many Iraqis refer to as the “Triangle of Death,” where they are being pursued by the U.S.-led forces.

An estimated 5,000 troops are involved in that offensive, dubbed Operation Plymouth Rock. The entire Black Watch regiment, made up of 850 elite British troops, is now taking part in the raids there.

The involvement in battle of the British unit has deepened London’s commitment to Washington’s course in Iraq and is part of a broader shift among governments in Europe toward acceptance of the accomplishments of U.S. imperialism in Iraq.

In the run up to the assault on Fallujah the regiment was redeployed from the relatively quiet areas around Basra in southern Iraq—where the British forces have largely been based since the 2003 invasion—to a base in Baghdad to free up U.S. troops for the assault on Fallujah. Black Watch troops then guarded two bridges over the Euphrates river into Fallujah during the U.S. attack. Now they are in the thick of the fighting.

Capt. David Nevers, spokesman for the Marine unit heading the Plymouth Rock offensive, said the addition of the British regiment would enable U.S. troops to “squeeze the insurgents into a tighter box.”

The participation of the regiment also registers a shift among the imperialist powers in Europe recognizing the consequences of Washington’s occupation of Iraq. During an official visit to London November 18, after the takeover of Fallujah, French president Jacques Chirac played down differences between the two governments due to London’s close alliance with Washington in Iraq. Despite those differences, said Chirac, Paris is ready to work with London and Washington to rebuild Iraq, according to the International Herald Tribune. Chirac called London’s special relationship with Washington a “family link” created by history, which he viewed as an “advantage to Europe.”  
 
Baathists finance, organize attacks
In the wake of the victory by the U.S. military in Fallujah, more evidence continues to emerge showing that the “insurgency” in Iraq is organized and funded primarily by the country’s former Sunni rulers and their Baathist party. Several former top military officers of Hussein’s army and of militia groups like Tawhid and Jihad led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have been captured. Many were forced to flee to other cities in the Sunni Triangle or neighboring Syria.

The defeated Baathists and their supporters also abandoned enormous arms caches, the size and quality of which could only be amassed by a government. The U.S. military announced November 24 that it had discovered the largest arms cache so far in a mosque near the home of Abdullah Janabi, who was a leader of the pro-Baathist mujahadeen council in Fallujah. Janabi reportedly escaped the city during the U.S. assault. In addition to the weapons and munitions, the U.S. military said they found 500 letters in Janabi’s house from relatives of members of anti-government militias who had been killed asking for compensation. One letter from clerics in Fallujah, dated October 20, asked Janabi to negotiate the surrender of the city. According to the New York Times, Janabi’s passport shows he had recently traveled to only one country—Syria.

An article in the November 26 New York Times stated: “American and Iraqi officials say much of the insurgency is being financed by wealthy loyalists to Saddam Hussein who fled to bordering countries before the American-led invasion in March 2003.”

Many other media sources have published similar reports. “One senior defense official said more than a dozen ‘financial people’ from Hussein’s government have been identified funneling money from Syria to insurgents in Iraq,” said an article in the October 31 Washington Post. “Izzat Ibrahim Douri, a former senior Baath Party official, is among those said to have traveled to Syria to help set up a support network. He is now believed to be back in Iraq and playing a significant role in coordinating attacks.”

According to London’s Observer, another senior Baath party organizer and former aide to Saddam Hussein is among the Sunni leaders directing and financing bombings in Iraq. The man, Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, “is one of between 20 and 50 senior Baath party figures based in Syria who… are involved in organizing the guerrilla war against the U.S.-led multi-national forces in Iraq and against the new Iraqi security forces.”

To the degree that “Islamist” forces led by non-Iraqis are involved in attacks on U.S. troops and the Iraqi National Guard and police, these reports indicate that they couldn’t carry out attacks without financial and other support from Baathists. Jordanian al-Zarqawi, for example, said the Observer, could not survive “if he was not tolerated and exploited by the old Baathists.”

Meanwhile, Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister in the U.S.-installed interim regime in Baghdad, said the Iraqi government would meet in Jordan with representatives of a “number of political opposition movements.” He added that some of them are “high-ranking Baath leaders who were accused or were on lists of most wanted people.” At an international conference on Iraq held in Egypt, leaders of several Arab governments pressed Baghdad to meet with its opponents, including Baathist leaders.

The Iraqi government has also reestablished a commission charged with vetting former Baathists from government ministries, according to Agence France Presse. Sami al-Askari, head of the surveillance commission of the de-Baathification commission, said the government “had evidence that Baathist elements have infiltrated the National Guard, police, and interior ministry, and that some are leaking information to terrorists.” Askari cited as an example the arrest of the head of security for the interim government in the Green Zone, a militarized section of Baghdad which houses key ministries of the Allawi regime, and the U.S. and British embassies. He also mentioned the arrest of a high-ranking National Guard officer in relation to the ambush and killing of 43 members of the Iraqi security forces whose attackers it appears had been tipped off.

The interior ministry, said AFP, had earlier brought back 940 former employees of the Hussein regime—some to high-ranking positions in Fallujah. It has recently removed more than 500 of them, the report said.  
 
UN Oil for Food program scandal
At the same time a U.S. Senate committee is currently investigating charges that the Hussein regime siphoned billions of dollars from the United Nations-run Oil for Food program during a decade of trade sanctions against Iraq. The Associated Press reported that CIA officials will testify that some of that money is being used to finance armed attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.

After the 1991 U.S.-led war on Iraq, Washington got the UN Security Council to impose a draconian trade embargo on Iraq. Later in the 1990s, the Iraqi government was allowed to sell oil and use the funds to buy food under the UN-supervised program.

Washington is now taking advantage of a scandal surrounding this program to punish UN secretary general Kofi Annan for his criticisms of Washington around the current war in Iraq. Annan sided with Paris and Berlin and didn’t follow the U.S. government’s lead on Iraq. More recently, he has questioned the credibility of holding elections in Iraq given the fighting in the Sunni Triangle. The UN chief, who was installed on Washington’s initiative, is now being pushed by his former sponsors to resign. Many U.S. politicians and columnists are now pointing out that Annan’s son continued to receive $2,500 a month for four years after he had supposedly severed ties to Cortecna, the Swiss company contracted by the UN to manage the Oil for Food program. Annan had earlier denied this was true.

William Safire wrote in a column in the November 29 New York Times that Annan should resign, “even if personally innocent…having brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations.” The following day, the editors of Investor’s Business Daily called on Annan to “do the decent thing and resign. If not, the U.S. should remind him which nation pays the biggest share of the United Nations’ costs.”

In an Op-Ed column in the December 1 Wall Street Journal, Senator Norman Coleman also called for Annan’s resignation. Coleman heads the Senate committee investigating the UN Oil for Food program.  
 
Other fruits of U.S. offensive
The U.S. military suffered its highest casualties in a single month in November—135, with 51 killed while taking over Fallujah. The previous high in a single month was in April, during the first attempt to dislodge Baathists from Fallujah. The U.S. military estimates that more than 1,200 Baathists and their supporters were killed in Fallujah. Other estimates put the Iraqi toll as high as 2,000.

By all accounts, however, the civilian toll was minimal because most of Fallujah’s population of 250,000 had fled prior to the week-long U.S.-led assault, which started November 8. According to an Iraqi Red Crescent official, as few as 150 Iraqi families stayed behind during the attack.

The U.S. forces used relatively light and modern weaponry and elite units in the assault on Fallujah. This was part of advancing the “transformation” of the U.S. military into smaller, lighter, and more lethal brigades that can be deployed more rapidly anywhere around the globe that the U.S. rulers’ interests are threatened.

Many of Fallujah’s buildings—many more than the initial 200 estimated by the interim regime—and most of the city’s power lines were destroyed. Parts of the city’s water and sewer systems were also damaged.

Despite the devastation, there was little outcry against the assault among Iraqis because of the widespread hatred among a majority of Shiites and Kurds toward the party-police state run by the Baathist regime for decades.

This has caused a degree of demoralization among Baathists and their backers. One indication of this is an audiotape, the text of which has been posted on the Internet, which reportedly condemns Islamic scholars for their failure to support the militias in Fallujah. “You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy,” the taped message says. “Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.” It also accuses Sunni and Shiite clerics of “preventing youth from heading to the battlefields.” The voice on the tape is allegedly al-Zarqawi’s but its authenticity could not be confirmed, reported the New York Times.  
 
Fighting in Mosul, elsewhere
U.S. troops have also continued to fight supporters of the Hussein regime in the northern city Mosul. Baathists there launched widespread attacks last month in an attempt to aid their brothers in Fallujah. In response, thousands of Kurdish peshmerga soldiers joined U.S. troops in retaking police stations that had been overrun by the Baathists.

The peshmerga—the name means literally “those ready to die”—are military units founded in 1946 by Iraqi Kurd leader Mustafa Barzani to help defend the independent Kurdish Mahabad Republic founded in neighboring Iran at the time. Today, they reportedly number as many as 55,000 members.

The peshmerga are now collaborating with the U.S. military to defeat Baathist forces in Mosul. Kurds there had been historically discriminated against or driven out of their homes under the Hussein regime.

“I cannot say that Mosul has been cleansed,” said Iraqi Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaih, who heads a 500-strong commando force sent to help U.S. troops crush Baathist militias in the city. At least 50 people have been killed in 10 days reported the November 28 Scotsman. Most of those have been member of the Iraqi police and National Guard.

Many of those killed, reportedly by single gunshots in the head or by beheadings, are Kurds. This has made the Kurdish soldiers there more determined to fight and perhaps carve out a part of the oil-rich city as part of a semi-autonomous Kurdish area in a federated Iraq.

“We are here to defend our people. We will fight and we will fight to win,” Sadi Ahmed Pire, commander of a Kurdish peshmerga battalion, recently told his troops gathered on the bank of the Tigris River just across from the Sunni Arab-dominated section of Mosul. “The Kurds of Mosul will not be second-class citizens,” he said, according to the Boston Globe.

On November 25 security officials of the Iraqi interim government announced the capture of Abu Saeed, reportedly a top aide to al-Zarqawi, according to the London Guardian. Saeed was captured during fighting in Mosul, where the U.S. military said it also discovered large caches of weapons including antiaircraft guns, artillery rockets, and thousands of grenades, mortars and small arms.

Meanwhile, during raids in the “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad, U.S., British, and Iraqi troops have reportedly captured more than 200 Baathists in the first week of the offensive there.

Despite the intensified fighting in the Sunni Triangle, the northern areas around Mosul and Kirkuk, and the areas near the Iraqi-Syrian border, much of Iraq remains calm. One indication of this is ongoing progress in oil production.

The November 29 Wall Street Journal reported that despite frequent sabotage attacks Iraq’s oil industry “pumps away.” The International Energy Agency in Paris, the Journal said, estimates that Iraq pumped an average of about 2 million barrels of oil a day in the second and third quarters of this year. That output is about 20 percent short of the country’s oil production before the 2003 invasion.  
 
Taking positions on Iraqi elections
Under the unfolding U.S.-led onslaught against the Baathists, most political forces in Iraq have lined up behind the call for national elections as soon as possible.

The Dawa party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Shia parties dominating the interim government, have rejected a demand by Sunni-led parties to postpone elections for six months due to fighting in the Sunni Triangle. In a joint statement with 40 other Shia-led parties, Dawa and SCIRI said the elections will proceed as scheduled on January 30. U.S. president George Bush and U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte have also said they hoped the elections will proceed as scheduled.

Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq’s foreign minister before the interim government was installed, said that more than a dozen political parties, including representatives of the two main Kurdish parties, met at his home and issued a statement supporting a postponement of the elections. “If you rush the elections, there will be some boycott,” Pachachi warned.

The main Kurdish political groups, however, soon shifted position and aligned themselves with the Shiite groups on the elections.

A senior Kurdish official who is part of the interim government said that participation in the meeting with Pachachi should not be construed as approval of a delay of the elections.

On November 28, Barham Saleh, Iraq’s deputy prime minister and a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the elections should go ahead as scheduled. “Sticking to that timetable will be difficult,” Saleh told the BBC. “But delaying elections will be much more difficult because it will have serious ramifications to the political process, to the issue of legitimacy, and surely all of us do not want to give the terrorists the slightest of technical wins in that situation.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home