From: Juan Cole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Dec 9, 2007 1:26 AM
Guerrillas differ from conventional armies in that they typically
avoid direct, conventional engagements on the battlefield. They melt
away before a conventional army's advance, and then reemerge to engage
in sniping, sneak attacks, and bombings from an unexpected quarter.
The advantage of Fred Kagan's troop escalation or "surge" is that it
allowed a tamping down of violence in Baghdad through a US campaign to
disarm the Sunni Arabs there.
There were two disadvantages of it. First, it allowed the Shiite
militias to take advantage of the disarming of many Sunni Arabs, and
to ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital
during the past six months. As a result, Baghdad is virtually a Shiite
city now, like Isfahan or Shiraz.
Second, the Sunni guerrillas melted away in West Baghdad, either
laying low or relocating to other provinces, so that the violence was
displaced to the provinces. Very likely when the extra US troops are
removed, the guerrillas will reemerge in the capital, though their
loss of so many Sunni neighborhoods to the ethnic cleansing may put
them at a disadvantage now.
The Sunni Arab guerrilla movement has clearly regrouped outside
Baghdad and is deploying high explosives with devastating effect in
Diyala, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Kirkuk provinces, to the northeast and
due north of Baghdad. Cells also remain active in the northern reaches
of Babil province just south of Baghdad, where Saddam had planted
Sunni families in what had been a Shiite area, sowing the seeds of
conflict when the Shiites returned to reclaim their property from
2003.
[etc.]
--
Jim Devine / "The radios blare muzak and newzak, diseases are cured
every day / the worst disease is to be unwanted, to be used up, and
cast away." -- Peter Case ("Poor Old Tom").
