Iraq's Asymmetrical Warfare
December 2006
Introduction
In 1964, Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian literary critic and Islamic scholar, wrote “[t]he struggle between the Believers and their enemies is in essence a struggle of belief, and not in any way of anything else. The enemies are angered only because of [the believer’s] faith, enraged only because of [the believer’s] belief.”[1] The basic tenet promulgated in most of Qutb’s writings is that of “jihad”—not simply one’s internal “struggle,” which is what the word literally means, but an offensive struggle against the “secular” West, “corrupt” Muslim rulers, “impious” Muslims and anybodyQutb deemed an infidel in order to reestablish the Islamic caliphate ruled by Sharia, Islamic law.[2] Many attribute the rise of Islamic terrorism to the writings of Sayyid Qutb.
President George W. Bush may or may not have ever heard of Sayyid Qutb, but he has seen, as have we all, the gruesome consequences of Qutb’s words. Bush has made it quite clear (whether we choose to believe him or not) that the war in Iraq is not simply part of but is in fact the central front in the “war on terror”—a war, in Bush’s words, against “a radical ideology with an unalterable objective, to enslave whole nations and intimidate the whole world.”[3] He has also said that this “war on terror,” of which Iraq is at least a part, is a new war, “[a]nd in this new kind of war, civilians find themselves suddenly on the front lines.”[4]
He is right, and this is true in more ways than one.
On the other side of the Iraqi battlefield, another new trend in warfare is flourishing. Though mercenaries are as common to war as war is common to mankind, today’s new breed of mercenary “armies”—also called “private military firms” (PMFs)—have taken on a new shape. Companies such as Blackwater Security Consulting, Dyncorp, and AEGIS, a British company, do not simply offer soldiers for hire; they offer a myriad of services, ranging from protecting business and NGO personnel to providing food and transporting equipment to both civilians and soldiers—services formerly performed by the military.
Thus, on both sides of the battlefield in Iraq—a multi-sided battlefield with no clearly demarcated “lines”—men without uniforms but with an abundance of weapons are fighting each other for multifarious “causes,” ranging from religion to power to money to security to pride. Civilians are increasingly becoming the prime targets and/or prime benefactors of these mercenary soldiers. And states are not only not doing enough to counter this ominous trend–-one which seems to threaten their “monopoly on violence”—but in many cases are increasing its momentum because they perceive it is in their interests to do so.
This paper will discuss this new trend, what some call “asymmetrical warfare”: its historical context (e.g., etymology of the term: “guerrilla warfare”); how it is regulated (or not!); the trendsetters themselves (states and individuals); what causes their effect (how trendsetters set trends); and the trend’s normative consequences (the morals of the story).
Background: Trends in Motion
Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War in the 6th century BC, so it is safe to assume guerrilla warfare had to have been a highly-developed art form by the time of his parent’s generation, if not long before. But, there is something very new about modern guerilla tactics and modern guerillas—new enough to merit a name change.
Today’s warfare seems less like that of 50 years ago and more like that of 500 years ago. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard Mansbach, in their book Remapping Global Politics, write “under the medieval system of overlapping property rights and obligations, it was virtually impossible to differentiate between internal and external wars.” (Pg. 232) As in medieval times, the concept of sovereignty is becoming amorphous and its tangible effect is diminishing, due to the proliferation and overlapping nature of identities wrought by the pressures of globalization. The country of Iraq, whose fledgling government was under attack before it was even in power, is a microcosm of this phenomenon, fighting multiple wars at a time against internal and external enemies.
Hence the war in Iraq is as multilayered and ambiguous as the concept of globalization itself. The combatants represent various global trends in motion, evolving rapidly in front of our very eyes. Some see the rise of localized, nonstate, guerilla—all of which I am putting under the umbrella of “asymmetrical”—warfare as a consequence of the end of the Cold War: “Ethnic, religious, economic, and political rivalries long suppressed by self-interested superpower interventions have resurfaced—some with vast amounts of small arms provided by the superpowers in earlier years—and old conflicts that had been defined in Cold War terms have continued under new labels.”[5] This analysis is apropos to the war in Iraq.
Despite all its promise, the end of the Cold War meant that a pressure valve had been released, and countless communal identities with scores to settle spewed forth. Many cite the early 80's as the time when the modern era of globalization began (Schoulte), and it is around this time when the United States was providing material and intelligence support to Afghan/Arab mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. With the fall of the Soviet Union a few years later, the disintegration of the “near abroad,” and the Islamic revolution still fresh in the minds of both Sunni and, of course, Shiite Muslims, well trained, battle-hardy Islamic warriors with Cold War weapons, under the influence of men such as Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Iqbal, and Abdul A’la Mawdudi, set out to challenge the state (Arab and Western), waging a new type of transnational, mostly low-tech, civilian-targeting warfare, which the West (rightly) calls “terrorism.”
Another poisonous vestige of the Cold War is the borders it left behind, especially those in the Middle East. Drawn up by British, French, and American politicians with little regard for or knowledge of Arab and Islamic history, the borders of modern Arab/Muslim countries are, in most cases, the worst possible measure for quantifying the identity (and thus loyalty) of the world’s Muslim population. The rise of Arab Nationalism and pan-Islamism were in essence transntional movements; they did not reflect these borders. In fact, most Arab nationalists grew disillusioned with the West because of the borders it drew, especially, of course, the one it drew around Israel. And, even though Saddam Hussein had been able to create and maintain centralized institutions in Iraq—a country made up of (at least) three disparate and rivalrous identities—Iraq was more a mirage in the desert than a desert “nation.” Thus, the U.S. military campaign that toppled the Hussein government “deepened existing [ethnic and religious] cleavages, and posed massive difficulties for [the] political, social, and physical reconstruction”[6] of a country that was never really meant to be. Hence the population’s reliance on armed militias and distrust of their American-backed “central” government.
Meanwhile, Iran is rising. Its tentacles reach all around the Muslim world. Some even argue that modern day terrorism—especially in the form of suicide bombing—began in Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war.[7] Moreover, Iran has mastered war by proxy. It created Hizballah in Lebanon (along with its allies in the Lebanese Amal militia), which is a virtual—and yet very real—extension of Iranian military power. The enmity between Saddam Hussein (secular by trade, Sunni by birth) and the Shiite fundamentalist ayatollahs in Iran had served as a hurdle in the way of Iran’s projecting its power. It also left Iraq’s Shiite majority--many of whom escaped persecution in Iraq by fleeing to Iran--in the dark for years. So, just as Iran’s power was growing, its proxy armies readying for battle, the United States’s war in Iraq brings down the remaining hurdle that held Iran’s power at bay. Hence, the “Shia Revival”[8] and its use of proxy/militia/terrorist armies.
As for the American side, it must be noted that PMFs did not originate in Iraq, and neither are they a concomitant of globalization: “Westphalian States willingly used mercenaries, privateers, and trading companies that had their own armies to extend state influence.”[9] (The British East India Company is one such example.) Nor is this trend purely American; in fact, many governments in Africa such as those of Sierra Leone and Angola, weakened by internal violence and a host of other institutional problems, have hired mercenaries from various countries to help subdue violent militias in their own land (Ferguson/Mansbach). But, what’s new here is the amount of companies that are sprouting up—especially after the 9/11 attacks— and the range of services they offer. There is little doubt that globalization’s eroding of state power has forced states to adjust their security apparatus in such a way.
Not only are civilians ever more becoming the targets and victims of this new type of warfare. Not only are taxpayers or charities or wealthy businessmen paying for the mercenaries’ weapons, equipment, and/or salaries. But also, due to technological advances and the increasing availability of weapons once only available to states, guerrilla tactics and weapons are more lethal than ever, with WMDs becoming the new hot item on the market[10]. The relationship between guerrillas and states is also becoming quite murky. Guerrillas are also becoming virtual “spheres of authority”[11] in their own right, for the rules of war based on the Westphalian-model of statism are becoming obsolete, and states’ ability to regulate actors within their jurisdiction is consequently wearing thin (Schoulte). And, for some states, this is just the way they’d like it.
Rules: No Rules?
“War is hell” they say, and to some the phrase “the rules of war” is an oxymoron--a concept expounded by naive intellectuals or warmongers posturing as statesmen. But there have undoubtedly been, both in theory and in practice, rules and norms (such as the Geneva Conventions) that have regulated the conduct of war.
The most pressing questions regarding today’s asymmetrical warfare are, “Who’s in charge?” and “Under what jurisdiction will offenders be prosecuted?”
Islamic terrorists following Qutb’s words—both in Iraq and around the world—do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians; both are fair game: “...kill[ing] the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it . . . ”[12] And so, regardless of who’s in charge, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, and Ansar al-Sunnah—whose leadership structures are loose and mutable—will not bow to any pressure but that which is exerted by their own interpretations of Islamic scripture.
In the beginning of the Iraq war, Osama bin-Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader (or figurehead), was wary about spilling Muslim blood, even if it was Shiite Muslim blood. Shiites, according to some Sunnis (especially radical ones), were not true Muslims; they were heretics. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian bedouin sex-offender turned Islamic terrorist leader, “was obsessed with fighting the Shiites, ‘the most evil of mankind,’ thinking that he would unite the much larger Sunni world into a definitive conquest of what he saw as the great Islamic heresy.”[13] Zarqawi, whose al-Tawhid wal Jihad (monotheism and Jihad) terrorist group at first rivaled bin-Laden’s, pledged his allegiance to the latter on the condition that bin-Laden support a bloody campaign against the Shiite Muslim majority in Iraq, a strategy which he hoped would spread around the world. And thus began the brutal, chaotic, and seemingly interminable sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, which makes most Americans recoil in horror, terrified by what they see on their t.v. screens.
In response to the horrific violence wrought by men such as bin-Laden and Zarqawi, many American political leaders—President Bush and his administration being the most prominent among them—have argued that, in short, “all bets are off.” In other words, because the “war on terror” is “a new kind of war,” the old “rules of war” no longer apply. The terrorists, so the argument goes, do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, so why should we? These “guerrillas” are not fighting on behalf of any “nation,” they wear no uniforms, they’ve signed no treaties, they kill civilians: Why should we treat them with the same “courtesy” we treat other enemies? Such is the state of global governance in the postinternational era, where the state’s greatest quandary is the issue of controlling transnational organizations. As a result, so far, both sides in this war have agreed on at least one thing: There are no rules.
In 1964, Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian literary critic and Islamic scholar, wrote “[t]he struggle between the Believers and their enemies is in essence a struggle of belief, and not in any way of anything else. The enemies are angered only because of [the believer’s] faith, enraged only because of [the believer’s] belief.”[1] The basic tenet promulgated in most of Qutb’s writings is that of “jihad”—not simply one’s internal “struggle,” which is what the word literally means, but an offensive struggle against the “secular” West, “corrupt” Muslim rulers, “impious” Muslims and anybodyQutb deemed an infidel in order to reestablish the Islamic caliphate ruled by Sharia, Islamic law.[2] Many attribute the rise of Islamic terrorism to the writings of Sayyid Qutb.
President George W. Bush may or may not have ever heard of Sayyid Qutb, but he has seen, as have we all, the gruesome consequences of Qutb’s words. Bush has made it quite clear (whether we choose to believe him or not) that the war in Iraq is not simply part of but is in fact the central front in the “war on terror”—a war, in Bush’s words, against “a radical ideology with an unalterable objective, to enslave whole nations and intimidate the whole world.”[3] He has also said that this “war on terror,” of which Iraq is at least a part, is a new war, “[a]nd in this new kind of war, civilians find themselves suddenly on the front lines.”[4]
He is right, and this is true in more ways than one.
On the other side of the Iraqi battlefield, another new trend in warfare is flourishing. Though mercenaries are as common to war as war is common to mankind, today’s new breed of mercenary “armies”—also called “private military firms” (PMFs)—have taken on a new shape. Companies such as Blackwater Security Consulting, Dyncorp, and AEGIS, a British company, do not simply offer soldiers for hire; they offer a myriad of services, ranging from protecting business and NGO personnel to providing food and transporting equipment to both civilians and soldiers—services formerly performed by the military.
Thus, on both sides of the battlefield in Iraq—a multi-sided battlefield with no clearly demarcated “lines”—men without uniforms but with an abundance of weapons are fighting each other for multifarious “causes,” ranging from religion to power to money to security to pride. Civilians are increasingly becoming the prime targets and/or prime benefactors of these mercenary soldiers. And states are not only not doing enough to counter this ominous trend–-one which seems to threaten their “monopoly on violence”—but in many cases are increasing its momentum because they perceive it is in their interests to do so.
This paper will discuss this new trend, what some call “asymmetrical warfare”: its historical context (e.g., etymology of the term: “guerrilla warfare”); how it is regulated (or not!); the trendsetters themselves (states and individuals); what causes their effect (how trendsetters set trends); and the trend’s normative consequences (the morals of the story).
Background: Trends in Motion
Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War in the 6th century BC, so it is safe to assume guerrilla warfare had to have been a highly-developed art form by the time of his parent’s generation, if not long before. But, there is something very new about modern guerilla tactics and modern guerillas—new enough to merit a name change.
Today’s warfare seems less like that of 50 years ago and more like that of 500 years ago. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard Mansbach, in their book Remapping Global Politics, write “under the medieval system of overlapping property rights and obligations, it was virtually impossible to differentiate between internal and external wars.” (Pg. 232) As in medieval times, the concept of sovereignty is becoming amorphous and its tangible effect is diminishing, due to the proliferation and overlapping nature of identities wrought by the pressures of globalization. The country of Iraq, whose fledgling government was under attack before it was even in power, is a microcosm of this phenomenon, fighting multiple wars at a time against internal and external enemies.
Hence the war in Iraq is as multilayered and ambiguous as the concept of globalization itself. The combatants represent various global trends in motion, evolving rapidly in front of our very eyes. Some see the rise of localized, nonstate, guerilla—all of which I am putting under the umbrella of “asymmetrical”—warfare as a consequence of the end of the Cold War: “Ethnic, religious, economic, and political rivalries long suppressed by self-interested superpower interventions have resurfaced—some with vast amounts of small arms provided by the superpowers in earlier years—and old conflicts that had been defined in Cold War terms have continued under new labels.”[5] This analysis is apropos to the war in Iraq.
Despite all its promise, the end of the Cold War meant that a pressure valve had been released, and countless communal identities with scores to settle spewed forth. Many cite the early 80's as the time when the modern era of globalization began (Schoulte), and it is around this time when the United States was providing material and intelligence support to Afghan/Arab mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. With the fall of the Soviet Union a few years later, the disintegration of the “near abroad,” and the Islamic revolution still fresh in the minds of both Sunni and, of course, Shiite Muslims, well trained, battle-hardy Islamic warriors with Cold War weapons, under the influence of men such as Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Iqbal, and Abdul A’la Mawdudi, set out to challenge the state (Arab and Western), waging a new type of transnational, mostly low-tech, civilian-targeting warfare, which the West (rightly) calls “terrorism.”
Another poisonous vestige of the Cold War is the borders it left behind, especially those in the Middle East. Drawn up by British, French, and American politicians with little regard for or knowledge of Arab and Islamic history, the borders of modern Arab/Muslim countries are, in most cases, the worst possible measure for quantifying the identity (and thus loyalty) of the world’s Muslim population. The rise of Arab Nationalism and pan-Islamism were in essence transntional movements; they did not reflect these borders. In fact, most Arab nationalists grew disillusioned with the West because of the borders it drew, especially, of course, the one it drew around Israel. And, even though Saddam Hussein had been able to create and maintain centralized institutions in Iraq—a country made up of (at least) three disparate and rivalrous identities—Iraq was more a mirage in the desert than a desert “nation.” Thus, the U.S. military campaign that toppled the Hussein government “deepened existing [ethnic and religious] cleavages, and posed massive difficulties for [the] political, social, and physical reconstruction”[6] of a country that was never really meant to be. Hence the population’s reliance on armed militias and distrust of their American-backed “central” government.
Meanwhile, Iran is rising. Its tentacles reach all around the Muslim world. Some even argue that modern day terrorism—especially in the form of suicide bombing—began in Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war.[7] Moreover, Iran has mastered war by proxy. It created Hizballah in Lebanon (along with its allies in the Lebanese Amal militia), which is a virtual—and yet very real—extension of Iranian military power. The enmity between Saddam Hussein (secular by trade, Sunni by birth) and the Shiite fundamentalist ayatollahs in Iran had served as a hurdle in the way of Iran’s projecting its power. It also left Iraq’s Shiite majority--many of whom escaped persecution in Iraq by fleeing to Iran--in the dark for years. So, just as Iran’s power was growing, its proxy armies readying for battle, the United States’s war in Iraq brings down the remaining hurdle that held Iran’s power at bay. Hence, the “Shia Revival”[8] and its use of proxy/militia/terrorist armies.
As for the American side, it must be noted that PMFs did not originate in Iraq, and neither are they a concomitant of globalization: “Westphalian States willingly used mercenaries, privateers, and trading companies that had their own armies to extend state influence.”[9] (The British East India Company is one such example.) Nor is this trend purely American; in fact, many governments in Africa such as those of Sierra Leone and Angola, weakened by internal violence and a host of other institutional problems, have hired mercenaries from various countries to help subdue violent militias in their own land (Ferguson/Mansbach). But, what’s new here is the amount of companies that are sprouting up—especially after the 9/11 attacks— and the range of services they offer. There is little doubt that globalization’s eroding of state power has forced states to adjust their security apparatus in such a way.
Not only are civilians ever more becoming the targets and victims of this new type of warfare. Not only are taxpayers or charities or wealthy businessmen paying for the mercenaries’ weapons, equipment, and/or salaries. But also, due to technological advances and the increasing availability of weapons once only available to states, guerrilla tactics and weapons are more lethal than ever, with WMDs becoming the new hot item on the market[10]. The relationship between guerrillas and states is also becoming quite murky. Guerrillas are also becoming virtual “spheres of authority”[11] in their own right, for the rules of war based on the Westphalian-model of statism are becoming obsolete, and states’ ability to regulate actors within their jurisdiction is consequently wearing thin (Schoulte). And, for some states, this is just the way they’d like it.
Rules: No Rules?
“War is hell” they say, and to some the phrase “the rules of war” is an oxymoron--a concept expounded by naive intellectuals or warmongers posturing as statesmen. But there have undoubtedly been, both in theory and in practice, rules and norms (such as the Geneva Conventions) that have regulated the conduct of war.
The most pressing questions regarding today’s asymmetrical warfare are, “Who’s in charge?” and “Under what jurisdiction will offenders be prosecuted?”
Islamic terrorists following Qutb’s words—both in Iraq and around the world—do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians; both are fair game: “...kill[ing] the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it . . . ”[12] And so, regardless of who’s in charge, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, and Ansar al-Sunnah—whose leadership structures are loose and mutable—will not bow to any pressure but that which is exerted by their own interpretations of Islamic scripture.
In the beginning of the Iraq war, Osama bin-Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader (or figurehead), was wary about spilling Muslim blood, even if it was Shiite Muslim blood. Shiites, according to some Sunnis (especially radical ones), were not true Muslims; they were heretics. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian bedouin sex-offender turned Islamic terrorist leader, “was obsessed with fighting the Shiites, ‘the most evil of mankind,’ thinking that he would unite the much larger Sunni world into a definitive conquest of what he saw as the great Islamic heresy.”[13] Zarqawi, whose al-Tawhid wal Jihad (monotheism and Jihad) terrorist group at first rivaled bin-Laden’s, pledged his allegiance to the latter on the condition that bin-Laden support a bloody campaign against the Shiite Muslim majority in Iraq, a strategy which he hoped would spread around the world. And thus began the brutal, chaotic, and seemingly interminable sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, which makes most Americans recoil in horror, terrified by what they see on their t.v. screens.
In response to the horrific violence wrought by men such as bin-Laden and Zarqawi, many American political leaders—President Bush and his administration being the most prominent among them—have argued that, in short, “all bets are off.” In other words, because the “war on terror” is “a new kind of war,” the old “rules of war” no longer apply. The terrorists, so the argument goes, do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, so why should we? These “guerrillas” are not fighting on behalf of any “nation,” they wear no uniforms, they’ve signed no treaties, they kill civilians: Why should we treat them with the same “courtesy” we treat other enemies? Such is the state of global governance in the postinternational era, where the state’s greatest quandary is the issue of controlling transnational organizations. As a result, so far, both sides in this war have agreed on at least one thing: There are no rules.
But, not only are there no (or very few) rules governing the conduct between enemies in this war, there is also little states can do to control their own mercenaries or hold them accountable. It is hard to tell just how much influence Iran has over militias which sympathize with the Iranian revolution and Iran’s government, as well as what role, in terms of direct influence, Syria and Saudi Arabia play in this complicated affair (more about this to come). Likewise, PMFs working for the U.S. military may or may not be American companies; their employees may or may not be American; crimes they commit (if they do) may or may not be on American soil: so where can they be tried? and by whom? These are crucial legal questions state officials have to answer in order to maintain relevance in the postinternational era. As of yet, as they say, “the jury is still out.”
And what about the other militias and armed groups that make up most of the insurgency in Iraq—the ones not aligned with Sunni Islamic terrorists and who in fact may be fighting those terrorists as they all fight the U.S.? What norms or rules do they follow? “They” are many disparate groups (who will be discussed in greater detail below). In general, most of these groups were also guided by the credo of not shedding Muslim blood, aiming all their attacks against the United States Military and their privatized subsidiaries. But, as was al-Qaeda in Iraq’s goal, these groups were drawn into a civil conflict and have been at each other’s throats—as well as al-Qaeda’s—for some time now. Compounding the problem is the fact that many militias either are loosely affiliated with political parties in the fledgling Iraqi government, or are themselves represented in the Iraqi parliament. Thus, though it may seem glib and simplistic, it is safe to say that at this moment in time chaos rules Iraq.
Actors at Play
The most obvious actor on the Iraqi battlefield is the United States Military and, as regards asymmetrical warfare, private military firms are ever-increasing their role in combat. The majority of PMF employees are “‘typically former special operations community personnel who are highly trained in the use of deadly force, also in surveillance detection and also in risk avoidance.’”[14] Many of these former soldiers are attracted by the lucrative pay—350$ to 1,500$ a day[15], which is substantially more than the average soldier’s pay.
And businessmen are raking in the dough, with some contracts valuing upwards of 290 million dollars.[16] Most CEOs and senior personnel at such companies are also tied to the military and the intelligence community: Cofer Black, formerly the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, is now vice-chairman of Blackwater Security Consulting[17], and his bosses, the company’s founders and co-chairmen, are both former Navy SEALS.[18]
Without a doubt, the Pentagon is also a major player in this game. The relationship between the Pentagon and PMFs—half business, half personal, one may assume—is murky since the Pentagon keeps most of the details of their contracts secret, but “industry experts estimate Iraq’s security business costs tens of billions of dollars.”[19] As to the amount of actual mercenaries on the ground: “Private security firms are now the third largest international contributor of forces to the war effort in Iraq—after the U.S. and British troops.”[20] American-backed mercenaries and the companies which hire them are thus major actors at play in the war in Iraq.
Potential enemies in Iraq for these mercenaries are numerous. The most lethal enemy is al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied terrorist groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunnah. In the beginning, al-Qaeda in Iraq comprised mostly foreign fighters from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim nations; there have also been reports of European Muslims who answered the call of Jihad (Sayyid Qutb’s “jihad”) and went to Iraq to fight. All in all, the amount of “foreign fighters”—a highly-debated topic—is thought to be small, comprising only 3 - 5 percent of the Iraqi insurgency, according to various experts and U.S. general John Abizaid. Unfortunately for American efforts in Iraq and an ominous sign for U.S. goals in the “war on terror,” it has also been reported (but is hard to confirm) that many Iraqi Sunnis are joining al-Qaeda’s ranks, most likely as a means for protection against Shiite militias: “U.S. officials have estimated that the Sunni insurgency [both al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists, who will be discussed next], which has no single leader [some Sunni groups fight with each other], fields perhaps 3,500 Iraqi fighters and as many as 20,000 members all told, along with 1,000 or so foreign jihadists.”[21] These insurgents are thought to be strongest in al-Anbar province (western Iraq, bordering Syria), where at times military officials have admitted that al-Qaeda has intermittently controlled entire villages and cities.
The other Sunni fighters, who make up the vast majority of the Sunni side of the insurgency, have been labeled “Saddam loyalists” and/or “former regime elements” (FRE). These are members of the former regime’s military and intelligence services, but they also collaborate with criminal gangs and have collaborated with al-Qaeda and other jihadists—both foreign and domestic—before. In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. general John Abizaid described these former regime elements thus: “FRE dominate the insurgency and seek a return to power. They employ a campaign of mass intimidation against the Sunni population coupled with stand-off attacks against Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, governmental figures and international assistants to the Iraqi government.” Even though they are not mentioned by name (though “international assistants” may be their “pseudonym”), PMFs have definitely felt the “wrath” of the Sunnis. In 2004, in a predominately Sunni town called Fallujah, not far from Baghdad, four members of the Blackwater company who were “providing security for a convoy delivering U.S. government food”[22] were ambushed by Sunni insurgents. They were killed and their bodies were mutilated and then hung off a bridge for the whole world to see.
Alarmingly, this type of brutality may not even win the prize. The Shiite militias, also known as “death squads” (though some Sunni militias have also been labeled as such), are just as gruesome. Many of these militias are directly tied to Iraqi government and/or religious leaders. Some of them, to varying degrees, have direct ties with Iran. The two most prominent of these militias are the Badr Brigades and the Mehdi Army. The former is under the control of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent Shiite member of parliament (who only a few days ago was in Washington meeting with President Bush!). Al-Hakim heads the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party, one of the Iraqi parliament’s most powerful political parties. According to NEWSWEEK, “[t]he group was first recruited, equipped and trained by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War” and “has 5,000 fighters.”[23] The other militia, the Mehdi Army is run by Moqtada al-Sadr, a young Shiite cleric whose father was one of Iraq’s most venerated Shiite leaders before he was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s security services—a fate which made him, and by extension his son, even more powerful in the hearts and minds of Iraq’s Shiites. The Mehdi Army is made up of poor, working class Shiites mainly from the slums of Baghdad (especially in a neighborhood which bears the family name, “Sadr City,” which used to be called “Saddam City”) and the Shiite-dominated southern provinces of Iraq. According to the same NEWSWEEK article, the Mehdi Army has a “few thousand full-time fighters . . . along with 10, 000 or so who report for duty when needed.”
One less talked-about armed militia in Iraq is the Peshmerga militias, a combination of various Kurdish militias comprising up to 100,000 fighters[24], who operate with relative autonomy in the North. The reason why these groups are not talked about as much as the others is that they do not, as far as I know, fight against U.S. forces. These militias stick to protecting their own people; and, so far, they have not been drawn into the brutal sectarian violence that has been terrorizing the streets of Iraq for some time now.
So much for the groups inside Iraq; now to actors who lie outside. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (to a lesser, though possibly growing, degree) all hold sway over certain elements of the Iraqi insurgency, to varying degrees. It is hard to determine just how much sway these governments and their citizens hold, but there is no doubt that money, weapons, and fighters are coming into Iraq, and these countries—both the citizens and government officials—are the main providers of one or more of these things. Iran is by far the nation with the most influence of the three, and some would argue that, if not now, then soon, Iran will have more influence in Iraq than the U.S. does.
Influencing Spheres
So, what accounts for these actors’ influence? First, (proof that geography still counts in the postinternational era) the fact that the three nations mentioned directly above border Iraq and have religious and ethnic ties with different segments of the Iraqi population, accounts for much of their influence. As alluded to before, many Shiites fled Saddam Hussein’s oppressive Sunni (though “secular”) dictatorship by escaping to Iran. It was just recently reported by the AP that Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Shiite Iraqi exile who worked closely with the Bush administration on drawing up plans for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, may have been working for Iran all along. As mentioned before, the leader of one of Iraq’s largest political parties and largest militias, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is funded by Iran.
And what about the other militias and armed groups that make up most of the insurgency in Iraq—the ones not aligned with Sunni Islamic terrorists and who in fact may be fighting those terrorists as they all fight the U.S.? What norms or rules do they follow? “They” are many disparate groups (who will be discussed in greater detail below). In general, most of these groups were also guided by the credo of not shedding Muslim blood, aiming all their attacks against the United States Military and their privatized subsidiaries. But, as was al-Qaeda in Iraq’s goal, these groups were drawn into a civil conflict and have been at each other’s throats—as well as al-Qaeda’s—for some time now. Compounding the problem is the fact that many militias either are loosely affiliated with political parties in the fledgling Iraqi government, or are themselves represented in the Iraqi parliament. Thus, though it may seem glib and simplistic, it is safe to say that at this moment in time chaos rules Iraq.
Actors at Play
The most obvious actor on the Iraqi battlefield is the United States Military and, as regards asymmetrical warfare, private military firms are ever-increasing their role in combat. The majority of PMF employees are “‘typically former special operations community personnel who are highly trained in the use of deadly force, also in surveillance detection and also in risk avoidance.’”[14] Many of these former soldiers are attracted by the lucrative pay—350$ to 1,500$ a day[15], which is substantially more than the average soldier’s pay.
And businessmen are raking in the dough, with some contracts valuing upwards of 290 million dollars.[16] Most CEOs and senior personnel at such companies are also tied to the military and the intelligence community: Cofer Black, formerly the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, is now vice-chairman of Blackwater Security Consulting[17], and his bosses, the company’s founders and co-chairmen, are both former Navy SEALS.[18]
Without a doubt, the Pentagon is also a major player in this game. The relationship between the Pentagon and PMFs—half business, half personal, one may assume—is murky since the Pentagon keeps most of the details of their contracts secret, but “industry experts estimate Iraq’s security business costs tens of billions of dollars.”[19] As to the amount of actual mercenaries on the ground: “Private security firms are now the third largest international contributor of forces to the war effort in Iraq—after the U.S. and British troops.”[20] American-backed mercenaries and the companies which hire them are thus major actors at play in the war in Iraq.
Potential enemies in Iraq for these mercenaries are numerous. The most lethal enemy is al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied terrorist groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunnah. In the beginning, al-Qaeda in Iraq comprised mostly foreign fighters from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim nations; there have also been reports of European Muslims who answered the call of Jihad (Sayyid Qutb’s “jihad”) and went to Iraq to fight. All in all, the amount of “foreign fighters”—a highly-debated topic—is thought to be small, comprising only 3 - 5 percent of the Iraqi insurgency, according to various experts and U.S. general John Abizaid. Unfortunately for American efforts in Iraq and an ominous sign for U.S. goals in the “war on terror,” it has also been reported (but is hard to confirm) that many Iraqi Sunnis are joining al-Qaeda’s ranks, most likely as a means for protection against Shiite militias: “U.S. officials have estimated that the Sunni insurgency [both al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists, who will be discussed next], which has no single leader [some Sunni groups fight with each other], fields perhaps 3,500 Iraqi fighters and as many as 20,000 members all told, along with 1,000 or so foreign jihadists.”[21] These insurgents are thought to be strongest in al-Anbar province (western Iraq, bordering Syria), where at times military officials have admitted that al-Qaeda has intermittently controlled entire villages and cities.
The other Sunni fighters, who make up the vast majority of the Sunni side of the insurgency, have been labeled “Saddam loyalists” and/or “former regime elements” (FRE). These are members of the former regime’s military and intelligence services, but they also collaborate with criminal gangs and have collaborated with al-Qaeda and other jihadists—both foreign and domestic—before. In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. general John Abizaid described these former regime elements thus: “FRE dominate the insurgency and seek a return to power. They employ a campaign of mass intimidation against the Sunni population coupled with stand-off attacks against Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, governmental figures and international assistants to the Iraqi government.” Even though they are not mentioned by name (though “international assistants” may be their “pseudonym”), PMFs have definitely felt the “wrath” of the Sunnis. In 2004, in a predominately Sunni town called Fallujah, not far from Baghdad, four members of the Blackwater company who were “providing security for a convoy delivering U.S. government food”[22] were ambushed by Sunni insurgents. They were killed and their bodies were mutilated and then hung off a bridge for the whole world to see.
Alarmingly, this type of brutality may not even win the prize. The Shiite militias, also known as “death squads” (though some Sunni militias have also been labeled as such), are just as gruesome. Many of these militias are directly tied to Iraqi government and/or religious leaders. Some of them, to varying degrees, have direct ties with Iran. The two most prominent of these militias are the Badr Brigades and the Mehdi Army. The former is under the control of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent Shiite member of parliament (who only a few days ago was in Washington meeting with President Bush!). Al-Hakim heads the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party, one of the Iraqi parliament’s most powerful political parties. According to NEWSWEEK, “[t]he group was first recruited, equipped and trained by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War” and “has 5,000 fighters.”[23] The other militia, the Mehdi Army is run by Moqtada al-Sadr, a young Shiite cleric whose father was one of Iraq’s most venerated Shiite leaders before he was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s security services—a fate which made him, and by extension his son, even more powerful in the hearts and minds of Iraq’s Shiites. The Mehdi Army is made up of poor, working class Shiites mainly from the slums of Baghdad (especially in a neighborhood which bears the family name, “Sadr City,” which used to be called “Saddam City”) and the Shiite-dominated southern provinces of Iraq. According to the same NEWSWEEK article, the Mehdi Army has a “few thousand full-time fighters . . . along with 10, 000 or so who report for duty when needed.”
One less talked-about armed militia in Iraq is the Peshmerga militias, a combination of various Kurdish militias comprising up to 100,000 fighters[24], who operate with relative autonomy in the North. The reason why these groups are not talked about as much as the others is that they do not, as far as I know, fight against U.S. forces. These militias stick to protecting their own people; and, so far, they have not been drawn into the brutal sectarian violence that has been terrorizing the streets of Iraq for some time now.
So much for the groups inside Iraq; now to actors who lie outside. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (to a lesser, though possibly growing, degree) all hold sway over certain elements of the Iraqi insurgency, to varying degrees. It is hard to determine just how much sway these governments and their citizens hold, but there is no doubt that money, weapons, and fighters are coming into Iraq, and these countries—both the citizens and government officials—are the main providers of one or more of these things. Iran is by far the nation with the most influence of the three, and some would argue that, if not now, then soon, Iran will have more influence in Iraq than the U.S. does.
Influencing Spheres
So, what accounts for these actors’ influence? First, (proof that geography still counts in the postinternational era) the fact that the three nations mentioned directly above border Iraq and have religious and ethnic ties with different segments of the Iraqi population, accounts for much of their influence. As alluded to before, many Shiites fled Saddam Hussein’s oppressive Sunni (though “secular”) dictatorship by escaping to Iran. It was just recently reported by the AP that Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Shiite Iraqi exile who worked closely with the Bush administration on drawing up plans for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, may have been working for Iran all along. As mentioned before, the leader of one of Iraq’s largest political parties and largest militias, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is funded by Iran.
To understand why Iran is so influential among Iraq’s Shiites, one must understand both Islamic history and the history of Saddam Hussein’s regime. To summarize, Sunnis and Shiites have had a long history of animosity and have fought bloody battles with each other on and off since the death of the prophet Muhammad. And, as mentioned before, Iran was the sanctuary of many Shiites who were being oppressed under Saddam’s rule—the rule of a minority sect over the majority, while Shiites comprise the majority in Iran. Hence the Shiite identity—as well as Sunni identity—is and has always been transborder/transnational, and is, in most cases, the primary identity of any Shiite, not just Iraqis.
The role that religion plays in the asymmetrical warfare in Iraq cannot be overstated. Every day Iraq inches closer to civil war (if it’s not there already!), which is split along religiously sectarian lines. Neighborhoods which were once a heterogeneous mix of ethnic and religious groups are now being ethnically cleansed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are being internally displaced and forced to live in makeshift sectarian refugee camps. Al-Qaeda terrorists use religion as their main propaganda and recruitment tool, for they believe (or so they say) that they are the soldiers of God exacting justice on the infidels. These terrorists are globalization’s first transnational political-military organization/movement with worldwide reach; though many believe (and al-Qaeda leaders themselves have said) that their goal is to take control of a state, like the one they had in Afghanistan, in order to gain enough money, resources, manpower, and weapons to defeat other “apostate” Arab/Muslim regimes and thus reestablish the caliphate.
The other major source of influence in Iraq is pure might. In the chaotic vacuum that is the Iraqi street, the man wielding the biggest gun and most likely to use it without regard for human life is king. This may account for why moderate religious leaders such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, once regarded as Iraq’s most promising moderate figure, have lost out to men such as Moqtada al-Sadr.
On the American side, what accounts for the rise of “privatized” war? The same thing that accounts for almost everything in America: money! Moreover, because the U.S. military-industrial complex is so closely tied to politics and politicians—many former members of the one become members of the other, and vice-versa—the business of war seems to be an exercise of political power. This does away with the notion that such mercenary armies are a threat to the state’s monopoly on violence. But it does portend ominous signs for the people’s monopoly on being the main clients and beneficiaries of American military might.
The Morality of Money and Murder
America’s war in Iraq began as a state on state war (in the good-ole Westphalian tradition!) in the name of defeating a transborder (globalization) movement, namely al-Qaeda, and those who sponsor or harbor terrorist groups like them.[25] It then became an insurgency (localization) and has “sprouted” into many wars demonstrative of both the globalizing and localizing trends — the fission and fusion (Ferguson/Mansbach) or “fragmegration” (Rosenau) — of the postinternational era. Ironically, al-Qaeda is hoping to take control of Iraq, rebuild it as a state in their name, and use it for transnational aims.
The diffusion of military actors with loose ties to states and an abundance of weapons, fighting in civilian areas, sometimes purposely targeting civilians to achieve their goals—this is not the sort of world globalization enthusiasts had in mind. Hundreds of thousands of people have already left Iraq to avoid the death squads, the terrorists, the torture, the car bombs, the marines, the contractors, etc. Most of these people came from Iraq’s middle and upper classes—those with enough money to leave—and were in many cases Iraq’s “best and brightest”: doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, journalists, poets, etc.
President Bush has stated that his goal is to build up the Iraqi government, rebuild or create and cultivate its institutions, and reconcile the differences among its people in order to establish a democratic and peaceful nation that is an ally in “the war on terror.” As of now, the war in Iraq has sparked an incessant cycle of violence that has the potential of spreading—through the transborder identities of the Sunnis and Shiites—to other parts of the Islamic world.
Furthermore, as an American, it scares me to think that there are companies in my country made up of former soldiers that sell war. I fear the rise of an “untouchable class” made up of and/or protected by—because it has enough money to hire—mercenaries. Imagine a world in which private citizens control private militias. Imagine if most of these private citizens are either members of or friends of members of the government, and their mercenaries share their same political ideology. Privatizing war, in my opinion, is the most dangerous trend threatening the American people’s way of life—more than al-Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea—because it pits Americans against each other.
The wholesale slaughter of civilians by stateless armies, the rise of militias for hire, and the apparent lack of any central authority to do anything about these alarming trends, demands the need for either strong states made up of homogeneous populations or a global community based on a universal philosophy. I, for one, choose the latter.
[1] http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/hold/chapter_12.asp
[2] http://www.answers.com/topic/sayyid-qutb-1
[3] http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/06/bush.iraq/index.html
[4] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/20040319-3.html
[5] Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, “Remapping Global Politics,” pg. 228.
[6] Ibid., pg. 248.
[7] See: “The Cult of the Suicide Bomber,” a documentary by former CIA agent Robert Baer.
[8] The title of a book by Dr. Vali Nasr, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
[9] Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, “Remapping Global Politics,” pg. 257.
[10] There have been relatively few cases of insurgents using WMD (chemical weapons only) in Iraq, and it is difficult to ascertain whether or not they even knew the mortars or rockets they fired had chemical weapons in them.
[11] A term coined by James N. Rosenau.
[12] Fatwa issued by Osama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (among others): http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
[13] Lawrence Wright, “The Master Plan,” The New Yorker, September 11th, 2006.
[14] Ken Robinson quoted in a CNN.com article: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[15] Ibid. (Chris Boyd quoted).
[16] http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/12/iraq.contractors/index.html
[17] Ibid.
[18] http://www.answers.com/topic/blackwater-security-services
[19] http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/12/iraq.contractors/index.html
[20] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[21] Jeffrey Bartholet, “Sword of the Shia,” NEWSWEEK, December 4, 2006.
[22] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[23] Jeffrey Bartholet, “Sword of the Shia,” NEWSWEEK, December 4, 2006.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Let’s, for a moment, ignore the Saddam-WMD claim, especially since it was false, after all.
The role that religion plays in the asymmetrical warfare in Iraq cannot be overstated. Every day Iraq inches closer to civil war (if it’s not there already!), which is split along religiously sectarian lines. Neighborhoods which were once a heterogeneous mix of ethnic and religious groups are now being ethnically cleansed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are being internally displaced and forced to live in makeshift sectarian refugee camps. Al-Qaeda terrorists use religion as their main propaganda and recruitment tool, for they believe (or so they say) that they are the soldiers of God exacting justice on the infidels. These terrorists are globalization’s first transnational political-military organization/movement with worldwide reach; though many believe (and al-Qaeda leaders themselves have said) that their goal is to take control of a state, like the one they had in Afghanistan, in order to gain enough money, resources, manpower, and weapons to defeat other “apostate” Arab/Muslim regimes and thus reestablish the caliphate.
The other major source of influence in Iraq is pure might. In the chaotic vacuum that is the Iraqi street, the man wielding the biggest gun and most likely to use it without regard for human life is king. This may account for why moderate religious leaders such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, once regarded as Iraq’s most promising moderate figure, have lost out to men such as Moqtada al-Sadr.
On the American side, what accounts for the rise of “privatized” war? The same thing that accounts for almost everything in America: money! Moreover, because the U.S. military-industrial complex is so closely tied to politics and politicians—many former members of the one become members of the other, and vice-versa—the business of war seems to be an exercise of political power. This does away with the notion that such mercenary armies are a threat to the state’s monopoly on violence. But it does portend ominous signs for the people’s monopoly on being the main clients and beneficiaries of American military might.
The Morality of Money and Murder
America’s war in Iraq began as a state on state war (in the good-ole Westphalian tradition!) in the name of defeating a transborder (globalization) movement, namely al-Qaeda, and those who sponsor or harbor terrorist groups like them.[25] It then became an insurgency (localization) and has “sprouted” into many wars demonstrative of both the globalizing and localizing trends — the fission and fusion (Ferguson/Mansbach) or “fragmegration” (Rosenau) — of the postinternational era. Ironically, al-Qaeda is hoping to take control of Iraq, rebuild it as a state in their name, and use it for transnational aims.
The diffusion of military actors with loose ties to states and an abundance of weapons, fighting in civilian areas, sometimes purposely targeting civilians to achieve their goals—this is not the sort of world globalization enthusiasts had in mind. Hundreds of thousands of people have already left Iraq to avoid the death squads, the terrorists, the torture, the car bombs, the marines, the contractors, etc. Most of these people came from Iraq’s middle and upper classes—those with enough money to leave—and were in many cases Iraq’s “best and brightest”: doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, journalists, poets, etc.
President Bush has stated that his goal is to build up the Iraqi government, rebuild or create and cultivate its institutions, and reconcile the differences among its people in order to establish a democratic and peaceful nation that is an ally in “the war on terror.” As of now, the war in Iraq has sparked an incessant cycle of violence that has the potential of spreading—through the transborder identities of the Sunnis and Shiites—to other parts of the Islamic world.
Furthermore, as an American, it scares me to think that there are companies in my country made up of former soldiers that sell war. I fear the rise of an “untouchable class” made up of and/or protected by—because it has enough money to hire—mercenaries. Imagine a world in which private citizens control private militias. Imagine if most of these private citizens are either members of or friends of members of the government, and their mercenaries share their same political ideology. Privatizing war, in my opinion, is the most dangerous trend threatening the American people’s way of life—more than al-Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea—because it pits Americans against each other.
The wholesale slaughter of civilians by stateless armies, the rise of militias for hire, and the apparent lack of any central authority to do anything about these alarming trends, demands the need for either strong states made up of homogeneous populations or a global community based on a universal philosophy. I, for one, choose the latter.
[1] http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/hold/chapter_12.asp
[2] http://www.answers.com/topic/sayyid-qutb-1
[3] http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/06/bush.iraq/index.html
[4] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/20040319-3.html
[5] Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, “Remapping Global Politics,” pg. 228.
[6] Ibid., pg. 248.
[7] See: “The Cult of the Suicide Bomber,” a documentary by former CIA agent Robert Baer.
[8] The title of a book by Dr. Vali Nasr, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
[9] Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, “Remapping Global Politics,” pg. 257.
[10] There have been relatively few cases of insurgents using WMD (chemical weapons only) in Iraq, and it is difficult to ascertain whether or not they even knew the mortars or rockets they fired had chemical weapons in them.
[11] A term coined by James N. Rosenau.
[12] Fatwa issued by Osama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (among others): http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
[13] Lawrence Wright, “The Master Plan,” The New Yorker, September 11th, 2006.
[14] Ken Robinson quoted in a CNN.com article: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[15] Ibid. (Chris Boyd quoted).
[16] http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/12/iraq.contractors/index.html
[17] Ibid.
[18] http://www.answers.com/topic/blackwater-security-services
[19] http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/12/iraq.contractors/index.html
[20] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[21] Jeffrey Bartholet, “Sword of the Shia,” NEWSWEEK, December 4, 2006.
[22] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[23] Jeffrey Bartholet, “Sword of the Shia,” NEWSWEEK, December 4, 2006.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Let’s, for a moment, ignore the Saddam-WMD claim, especially since it was false, after all.
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