The Return of the Resistance

by Dahr Jamail

At least 20 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in May, the most since last September, along with more than 50 wounded. Iraqi casualties are, as usual - and in both categories - at least ten times that number.

Attacks against US forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils), and began taking payments from the US military in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. In early April I wrote a column for this website that illustrated how ongoing Iraqi government and US military attacks against the Sahwa, coupled with broken promises of the Sahwa being incorporated into the government security apparatus or given civilian jobs, would likely lead to an exodus from the Sahwa and a return to the resistance.

Slowly, but surely, we are seeing that occur. While US liaison Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer has called this idea, along with the ongoing controversy from the Iraqi government - led by US-pawn Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki - not paying most of the Sahwa members, while continuing government arrests of and attacks on Sahwa members "overblown," this does not change reality. Let us recall the telling words of the reporter Caud Cockburn, father of journalist Patrick Cockburn, "Never believe anything until it's officially denied."

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punditman says... Where there is foreign occupation, there will always be resistance—a rather obvious point lost within the propaganda matrix of the Iraq War. To put this in an Iraqi context, the "Sawa" are turning back into insurgents for a variety of reasons. What happens if all 100,000 of these fighters turn back against Iraqi and US forces? Still, most of the media continue to parrot the line that the "surge was a success," "General Petraeus is a hero," and "Iraq's security situation is improving." Clearly, Iraq remains a multi-faceted, multi-sided mess. Violence may be cyclical but there is no peace in sight.

Insurgents form political front to plan for US pullout

punditman says:
It had to happen: the bulk of the Iraqi Sunni resistance has unified to fight a common foe: US occupation. The article below, from The Guardian, puts the lie to the whole “We are fighting al-Queda in Iraq” hogwash. These people are Sunni-based but exclude both al-Queda and the Ba’athists from their ranks. They are committed to freeing Iraq from foreign troops, reject cooperation with parties involved in political institutions set up under US occupation, and they anticipate negotiating an early US withdrawal. They want a temporary government to run the country until free elections can be held. They deny they get support from any foreign government, claiming they have been offered and rejected funding and arms from Iran (interesting) and have been under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Turkey to unite (also interesting). “We are the only resistance movement in modern history which has received no help or support from any other country,” Abdallah Suleiman Omary, head of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, told the Guardian. “The reason is we are fighting America.”

I am guessing you would be hard pressed to find this type of solid reporting and analysis of the Iraqi resistance anywhere in the US media. The reason is that the situation on the ground in Iraq flies in the face of the simplistic sloganeering and blatant lying coming out of the White House.

Leaders of Iraqi groups say attacks will go on until Americans leave

Seumas Milne in Damascus
Thursday July 19, 2007
Guardian

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

In their first interview with the western media since the US-British invasion of 2003, leaders of three of the insurgent groups - responsible for thousands of attacks against US and Iraqi armed forces and police–said they would continue their armed resistance until all foreign troops were withdrawn from Iraq, and denounced al-Queda for sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians.

Speaking in Damascus, the spokesmen for the three groups - the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Sunna and Iraqi Hamas - said they planned to hold a congress to launch a united front and appealed to Arab governments, other governments and the UN to help them establish a permanent political presence outside Iraq.

Full article…