Do the Math
By Larry Johnson on January 21, 2008 at 1:45 AM in Current Affairs
The Washington Post is out Monday with an article pushing the nonsense that most of the violence in Iraq, particularly suicide bombers, was cause by foreign fighters. Karen DeYoung writes:
Based on the Sinjar records, U.S. military officials in Iraq said they now think that nine out of 10 suicide bombers have been foreigners, compared with earlier estimates of 75 percent. Similarly, they assess that 90 percent of foreign fighters entering Iraq during the one-year period ending in August came via Syria, a greater proportion than previously believed.
Although there is no way of knowing how many of the total entrants the 606 recorded individuals represent, officials said Sinjar was a primary entrance point. Its importance increased as Iraq’s Anbar province — farther south and bordering Saudi Arabia and Jordan — became more difficult for foreigners to cross.
I do not dispute that there are foreign fighters and that they have carried out suicide bombing attacks. But check out these numbers:
Suicide attacks by the Sunni group against Shiite targets sparked the sectarian violence that swept Iraq in 2006 and the first half of last year. Al-Qaeda in Iraq carried out more than 4,500 attacks against civilians in 2007, killing 3,870 and wounding nearly 18,000, the military announced yesterday.
Do the math kids. 606 is what percentage of 4500 attacks in 2007. Let’s assume that every single foreign fighter identified in these records carried out a suicide attack. That accounts for a little more than 10% of the attacks. Who were behind the other 90%? The American people are not being told that the vast majority of the attacks in 2007 were carried out by Iraqis, not foreign fighters and not Al Qaeda.
When Zarqawi was killed in June of 2006 I had just left Iraq. I was working with the U.S. military forces who tracked him down and killed him. Before U.S. forces could land at the house where Zarqawi had been hit by a U.S. bombing strike, Iraqi Sunni police were on scene trying to rescue him and get him medical treatment. The message? Zarqawi had significant support among Iraqi government officials with Sunni ties.
One of the main reasons we have seen a drop in the number of attacks in Sunni controlled areas is not that foreign fighters have stopped coming in. No. We have changed our tactics in those areas and enlisted the very insurgents we were battling into self-defense units.
Foreign fighters are a convenient boogeyman. But they are not the cause nor source of the violence in Iraq. Violence that continues to take the lives of Iraqi civilians at levels we would not tolerate in our own society if the casualties were American men, women, and children. Do the math.
Update: Also check out this piece in the NY Times, which provides a better picture of the dynamics driving the insurgency. I was not a source for Oppel’s piece but it hits the key points:
Some critics contend that estimates of insurgents who actually belong to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American officials say is overwhelmingly Iraqi but has foreign leadership, tend to be overstated. Many insurgents who are lumped into the group, they say, are Sunnis who simply need money or who are angered by the sectarian bias of Iraqi security forces, but who have no wider allegiance to Al Qaeda.
When the United States started paying Sunnis to join local militias is it any surprise that the level of violence dropped off? People needed money to survive and provide for their families.
by Ronald Scott
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