“We had to imprison the city in order to sve it”
April 11th, 2007
Robert Fisk writes of the plan to turn half of Baghdad into a series of immense prisons, with entire communities completely cut off and surrounded by barrier walls, with IDs required for entry [Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad]:
US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of “gated communities” - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq….
S-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these “gated communities” and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, “visitor” registration and restrictions on movement outside the “gated communities”. Civilians may find themselves inside a “controlled population” prison.
Part of the reasons may be to prepare for a potential war with Iran:
But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.
The plan to turn Baghdad into a series of Fallujahs or Gaza Strips was devised by “wonder boy” General David Petraeus, beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike. The plan is based on the wildly successful counterinsurgency strategies uwed by the United States in Vietnam and the French in Algeria. In those conflicts they showed the ability of hated occupation forces to dominate and pacify resistant populations:
The senior generals who constructed the new “security” plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially “restricted” - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the “gated communities” campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing “civil operations and revolutionary development support teams” in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the “provincial reconstruction teams” in Afghanistan - a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.
FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. “With good intelligence,” it says, “counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact.”
As well as the renowned counterinsurgency successes in Algeria nd Vietnam, the Plan is also based on analysis of counterinsurgency failures:
* FM 3-24 points to Napoleon’s failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a “stable environment” for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.
Another former senior American officer describes the plan’s likely success:
“Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able,” he told The Independent. “They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the ‘gated communities’ to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
“The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being ‘protected’.”
Entry Filed under: Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Uncategorized, War and Peace