US in Iraq: crumbling?

So many indicators of a crumbling of the US-Allawist position in Iraq!
(1) The emergence of the news about Wednesday’s mini-mutiny by 18 members of a supply US Army supply company in Tallil, near Baghdad.
Seems like this supply unit, at least, reached a vital breaking point?
Interesting, too, that the news emerged in public–via cellphone calls that the soldiers were allowed to make even during their detention– and that an (un-named) “senior Army officer” told the NYT that the soldiers had raised “some valid concerns” about the dangerous nature of the mission they’d refused to undertake…
The NYT writes: “Though the soldiers have been released from detention, they could face anything from reprimands to courts-martial.”
(2)The US has been asking the Brits to move “up to 650” of the troops they now have in Basra somewhat further north, so they can help protect the US troops’ rear during the projected push into Fallujah.
The British government has so far not been able to say yes. Meanwhile, the opposition parties in London (where Blair faces re-election fight in the next few months) have expressed their intention that this proposal not be implemented easily:

    Tory leader Michael Howard … said: “If it’s the case that British troops are to be moved out of area, it’s vital that a statement is made in Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity so that we can ask the relevant questions.”
    Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Paul Keetch warned against placing British forces under US command.
    He said: “British forces should remain under direct British control within the British sector. Any change to this basic command structure should be brought before the House of Commons.
    “With the public disquiet about ongoing operations in Iraq, placing British forces under direct US control would not be supported by the British people.”

(3) Yet more signs of the massive unreliability of the newly-organized “Iraqi” national forces: First, this from the NYT, about how the Iraqi National Guard troops staffing the “weapons collection centers” set up earlier in the week to collect guns in Sadr City in return for a cash payout have been demanding bribes from Iraqis hoping to participate in the scheme.
The story says that a good proportion of the people who’d brought weapons along to the collection point to turn them in were not even being allowed into the collection point before paying a bribe to get in… And the clear implication was that many of these people finally took their weapons back home with them.
Great. Just what Sadr City needs.
Another possible sign of the unreliability of the Iraqi forces came in this NYT story, written Oct. 9 by embedded reporter James Glanz. He writes about going on overnight patrols with US soldiers doing “surprise” house-to-house searched in Yusufiya, southwest of Baghdad.
The idea is to try to catch “insurgents and their weaponry” when they’re least expecting it… But when the Americans arrived at house after house after house, they found nobody home:

    Out of the hundreds of homes here and in a neighboring town, Mulla Fayyad, most were empty when the soldiers descended at dusk and began an overnight search, house by house, for insurgents and their weaponry. Families were at home in only a small number of houses, perhaps a few dozen.
    It is not as though no one lives here. Fresh onions and tomatoes sat on a counter, some of them cut up and ready to eat. Children’s sandals lay where they were kicked off on a porch or at the bottom of a stairway. Small Iraqi banknotes tumbled to the floor when a cupboard was pulled open.
    But nobody was home. While terrorism suspects and militia fighters have routinely slipped away from their pursuers ever since last year’s invasion, the sudden emptying of whole towns before unannounced raids appears to be a new phenomenon.
    “Something happened, and they knew we were coming,” said Staff Sgt. Norm Witka of the 1st Brigade, 23rd Infantry Regiment, whose unit was one of those that poured into the towns and searched nearly every room of every house.
    The mystery of the disappearing populace has repeated itself during sweeps by soldiers and marines in northern Babil Province, a patch of land about 30 miles south of Baghdad. It is an area that is not only hostile to the American occupation but thought to contain important supply lines for insurgents elsewhere in the country…
    Theories about why the people are fleeing are varied, and little is known of where they go, or for how long. ..
    When asked where all the people had gone, one of the few residents shrugged and made a sweeping gesture toward the countryside. “Felah,” he said, using the word for farmer.

12 thoughts on “US in Iraq: crumbling?”

  1. I think the empty houses, resulting perhaps from warnings from “Iraqi forces” indicates that while there are a good number of people who are mad as hell and shooting and bombing the Coalition, the vast majority is doing what it can to keep their heads down in a crazy situation.
    This is of course very bad for US plans for Iraq. It means the US has no real allies. But that of course has been pretty obvious since April, if not even earlier.
    In a situation like this, the US position could crumble in a minute.

  5. Speaking of towns being emptied, is this leading to a refugee crisis? The Christian Science Monitor reports that 80% of Fallujans have fled before the upcoming US assault on that city. That means there are over a quarter of a million internal refugees in Iraq from this city alone. I have seen no coverage of the effects of forced flight on so many people, but it can’t be good.

  6. Bill, I don’t know about the 80% number. I would be surprised, for a number of reasons, if it were accurate. For one thing, the Americans have had a nasty habit of barring the exit of males who are not either very, very young or very, very old, and since very few Fallujan women can drive, women and children have been forced to stay in the city. During the attack and siege of Falluja last spring there were also numerous credible reports of columns of fleeing families being vapourized by American aerial and tank attacks.
    I have heard that “as many as 50%” of residents of Falluja have fled the city, which is already a huge number of human beings, and who knows what will be left of this “charmless city” (as it is described by some western sources) after the Americans – oh, excuse me, Iraq forces, assisted by the Americans – are finished with it? But this is not likely to produce the kind of obvious refugee situation you might expect since almost all Iraqis have family in other parts of the country they can go to who will shelter them and take care of their needs. That does not, of course, make it any less horrendous, it just masks the horrendousness of it all from the delicate sensibilities of American and other westerners.
    To my mind it is critical for people to understand how Falluja became such a “hotbed of insurgency” (I object to the term insurgency – clearly the term directed by the Bush adminstration spinmeisters – because it implies revolt against legitimate authority, and there is no legitimate authority in Iraq).
    I will try to write more about this later, as I do not have time right now, but in brief, contrary to propaganda Falluja was never a strong point of support for Saddam Hussein before the invasion, and the invasion did not transform it into a bastion of “Saddam loyalists”.
    Falluja became a “hotbed of insurgence” (sic) only as a result of the actions of the U.S. occupation forces.
    As I said, I will try to elaborate on this later.

  7. Shirin: I will try to elaborate on this later.
    That would be great!
    Bill: I have seen no coverage of the effects of forced flight on so many people, but it can’t be good.
    You are completely right. Forced flight can be lethal in itself for vulnerable members of the population– the old, the sick, the handicapped, young babies, etc. Also, if people can’t be rehoused quickly the harms continue.

  8. According to the reports I am hearing the Americans are aerial bombing Falluja during the night and attacking from the ground during the day, meaning this “charmless town” of 300,000 souls is under virtual 24 hour a day attack. I also heard today that, just as they did last spring, they are not allowing Iraqis to leave the city, thereby imprisoning them – men, women, children, infants, elderly – in a death trap they, the Americans, have created. Families who attempt to leave the city are, as they were last spring, turned back at check points, or attacked from the air or the ground as they attempt to escape the bombardment of their city.
    As I said yesterday, Falluja has never been the “hotbed of Ba`thists and Saddam supporters” the propagandists would have us believe – far from it, in fact. (In truth, the so-called “privileged Sunni triangle”, and the “Shi’ite south” and the “Kurdish north” and everything that flows from that myth is ignorant nonsense (including the manufactured spectre of sectarian/ethnic civil war), but that’s another discussion for another time.)
    Certainly there were people in Falluja who supported Saddam Hussein for various reasons – or at least went along with the regime in order to survive, and even reap benefits – just as there were in every part of the country. There were no doubt people there who were genuinely loyal to him and his regime. There were Mukhabarat agents in Falluja, and there were people who were coerced into working on behalf of the government, just as there were in every part of the country (and let us not forget that the U.S. has also used various forms of coercion to induce Iraqis to act as their agents). However, Falluja was very well known for its dislike of and defiance against the Ba`thist regime, and was subjected to periodic purges as a result. Fallujans would say “if Saddam said to work harder, Falluja would take two days off”. When Saddam ordered that Friday services all over the country include prayers for and praise of him, the Falluja mosques defied that order.
    During the American invasion Falluja remained quiet and passive. There was no fighting from the city either during the invasion or in the early days of the occupation. For that reason, American forces saw no need to take any action regarding the city. Like most Iraqis, Fallujans were glad to be rid of Saddam, and hoped for the best from the Americans. Falluja also remained quiet and free of the chaos and looting and violence that was taking place in most of the country.
    Then, in late May American forces came rolling into town, took over one of the schools as its base, and, completely ignoring the city leaders, and the needs, concerns and interests of the population, proceeded to take it over. They disrupted virtually every aspect of life in the city. They drove tanks up and down residential streets all night long and flew helicopters over neighborhoods, shining bright searchlights on the families trying to sleep on their roofs in the late spring and summer heat, thus violating the privacy of the home, and giving the impression they were spying on the women. They stopped families on the streets and male soldiers frisked women in front of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. They did a great deal to confirm many of the wildest rumours about their intentions to violate the honour of Iraqi women. They treated men in humiliating ways in front of their families and neighbors.
    If their purpose had been to antagonize the residents of Falluja they could not have done a better job. But even then the people of Falluja remained non-violent, though they were becoming more and more enraged. Then, when the American forces ignored the requests of city leaders to vacate their school, a group of Fallujans decided to exercise their “new-found freedom”

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