Writing in the International Herald Tribune, outspoken former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter’s provocative thesis is that the Iraqi resistance is a well-orchestrated affair run by Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants, the culmination of a decade of meticulous planning by Saddam.
“The traditional Baathist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the Shiite majority – which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 – but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.
The most visible symbol of Saddam’s decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words “God Is Great” to the Iraqi flag.
The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, went largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the attention of the Bush administration. And the recent “transfer of sovereignty” to Allawi’s government reflects this lack of understanding.”
Saddam’s security service melted into the population when the US invaded, waiting to reemerge. And the recent attacks on US forces in Fallujah and Ramadi “were carried out by well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn from the ranks of Saddam’s Republican Guard.”
“The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam’s former security services.
Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or how long they stay there, Allawi’s government is doomed to fail. The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will become in the eyes of the Iraqi people – all of which creates yet more opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit.” [via dangerousmeta]
While some of what he says is not surprising — e.g. that lack of constituency the Allawi government has with the Iraqi people — I must say that Ritter’s thesis explains some facts of the resistance, such as the seeming inexhaustability and coordination of the attacks and the utter evaporation of the Republican Guard when the US invaded. It seems quite plausible to me that the crafty Saddam anticipated the rise of fundamentalism and attempted to co-opt it with the modifications to Baathist pan-Arabism Ritter describes in order to maintain his stranglehold. But whether he succeeded is another matter. It seems that al Sadr’s forces, for example, are hardly in league with the reemerging Baathists, and probably neither are the foreign Islamist ‘mujahideen’ coming into Iraq to fight the American devils. While elements of the uprising may be skillfully coordinated, there is certainly a nationalist aspect, a populist uprising against an occupying force already reacting to the illegitimacy of the Allawi government.
