More on the possible pre-peace overture from the 1920 Revolution Brigades

A quick search of Juan Cole’s blog revealed about 20 entries there to the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which is the way Juan (generally) renders the name of the Sunni insurgent group in Iraq that was apparently the one that recently forwarded a pre-negotiation proposal to Bob Fisk. (As I posted about yesterday, here.)
Juan really has done an extraordinarily valuable job of drawing together, and presenting to the English-reading public, nearly all the main news developments out of Iraq, day after day after wearying day since late 2002. What a truly incredible archive that blog now represents!
The earliest of Juan’s references to the 1920RB was, as far as I can figure, this one, from November 15, 2004. Juan wrote there:

    The 1920 revolution against the British is key to modern Iraqi history. One of the guerrilla groups taking hostages named itself the “1920 Revolution Brigades.” Western journalists who don’t know Iraqi history have routinely mistranslated the name of this group.

And the most recent was this one– from last Saturday (February 10), in which he wrote:

    Al-Hayat also says that the 1920 Revolution Brigades (also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement) refused to join the “Islamic State of Iraq” coalition or “al-Qa’eda and its allies on the other side. The US has called on the group to enter talks with Washington.

This indicates to me that the document passed to Fisk may have been an early 1920RB response to that invitation from the US? Interesting that they should try to communicate a document to and through Bob Fisk, presumably as a way of trying to win it a bigger readership in English-speaking countries than it could expect if it were handed only to Al-Hayat or other Arabic media.
(This, even if Bob Fisk did apparently misunderstand the exact name of the group communicating with him.)
Anyway, as I wrote in my earlier post and was well established by other commenters there, it is evident that this position from the 1920RB, if they are indeed, as I believe, the originators of the “Jeelani-Fisk proposal” is not one that the US can immediately agree to. But, and I can’t stress this enough, it looks like a good, solid pre-negotiation communication; and it should therefore be met with considerable interest by all Americans, as well as with a cautious– and possibly highly circumspect– welcome by our government, and a commitment to actively explore all aspects of the topics raised.
For example, the demand for the release, “as a goodwill gesture” of 5,000 of the more than 11,000 Sunni Iraqis currently being detained in US prisons in Iraq is surely one that could be looked at and responded to in some measure, or perhaps even fully?
Of course there is still massive distrust between these two sides– the Sunni insurgents and the US government– and this is fed by numerous sizeable grievances that are still vividly remembered by each side. No point trying to silver-coat or ignore that… And numerous vast questions still remain, as I noted in my earlier post, about the “shape” of any negotiations for a final peace in Iraq, including the roster of the parties that should be represented at them.
But as I told Juan in a private communication, I tend to go by “the Oliver Tambo rule”– remembering that that great leader of South Africa’s ANC once recalled that, when he was living in exile in Lusaka, the one thing he was terrified of was that he would not understand or correctly interpret the peace overture from the apartheid regime when– as he confidently expected– they finally decided to send it… and that through his inattentiveness on that score he would thereby consign his people to additional decades of quite unnecessary conflict…
When the peace overture did come to Tambo from Pretoria, in 1989, he did correctly interpret it; and it was he and the ANC’s exile-based National Executive that then authorized Nelson Mandela to proceed with the in-prison negotiations that we all know so much about… (Tambo died soon thereafter, RIP.)
Thank God Tambo went by “the Tambo rule” on that occasion, eh?
In this connection, too, I would recall that great quote from T.E. Lawrence that I wrote about back in this post, last month… In 1919-20, when he was considering the challenges of “dis-imperialism”, i.e. extricating a country’s armies and people from distant and damaging imperial entanglements, Lawrence wrote:

    In pursuing such courses [getting out of empire] we will find our best helpers not in our former most obedient subjects, but among those now most active in agitating against us, for it will be the intellectual leaders of the people who will serve the purpose, and these are not the philosophers nor the rich, but the demagogues and the politicians.
    The alternative is to hold on to them with ever-lessening force, till the anarchy is too expensive, and we let go.

So okay, the 1920RB seems like an organization that still uses violence– perhaps considerable amounts of it.
(So, of course, is the US military, especially in Iraq.)
The 1920RB’s politics seem to be– as Juan Cole described them to me– “murky”. In November 2005, he wrote this about “Iraqi guerrilla groups such as ‘the Islamic Army,’ ‘The Bloc of Holy Warriors,’ and ‘The Revolution of 1920 Brigades’: “Despite the Islamist names of these groups, they are probably mostly neo-Baathist.”
I have no way to judge that claim, for which Juan adduced no further evidence there.
But he also noted there that, at a key Iraqi resistance groups’ conference that was held in Cairo that month, those three groups had,

    conveyed their conditions behind the scenes… Among their demands are 1) working to end the foreign occupation, 2) compensation to the Iraqis for the damages arising from the American invasion; 3) the release of prisoners; and 4) building political and military institutions that are not subservient to American and regional influence.

In that post, which was mainly Juan’s rendering of a long Hayat article on the topic, he presented many details about the sharp differences between those three, determinedly Iraqi guerrilla group and Abu Musaeb al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaeda-affiliated group. Zarqawi has, of course, since then been killed… And that sharp difference of opinion and strategy apparently still continues to the present. In this post from January 8, 2007, Cole writes– again citing Hayat– that,

    “al-Qaeda” in Fallujah assassinated Muhammad Mahmud, the head of the 1920 Revolution Brigades in the district of al-Saqlawiya, threatening al-Anbar Province with a feud between the two Sunni guerrilla groups…

All in all, I think the “Jeelani-Fisk proposal” is a pre-peace overture to which all of us who want to see the US get out of Iraq in a way that is orderly, total, and speedy should give serious consideration. Let’s hope the relevant figures in the Bush administration are doing the same.
Is it too much to ask that they follow the “Tambo rule” too?

34 thoughts on “More on the possible pre-peace overture from the 1920 Revolution Brigades”

  1. Helena, you might have missed this link (via Diana) on the earlier thread: a different spokesman for “the 1920 revolution Brigade” has denounced the Fisk offer as a forgery.
    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m30525&hd=&size=1&l=e
    Shaykh Abu Anmar az-Zawbi’i, one of the top commanders of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, told Mafkarat al-Islam that “the report has no truth in it and is a cheap lie that no reasonable person could believe.”

  2. Look, Vadim, of course the delivery of a pre-negotiation communication– if that is what this was– has a high possibility of being a contentious matter within a resistance organization… And of course it’s likely that, given their circumstances of work, their internal communications might be fraught with problems. But I’m not in a position to know whether Abu Salih Al-Jeelani or Shaykh Abu Anmar az-Zawbi’i is in a more “legitimate” position to represent the organization. Are you? Is anyone else who is reading this?

  4. I’m not in a position to know whether Abu Salih Al-Jeelani or Shaykh Abu Anmar az-Zawbi’i is in a more “legitimate” position to represent the organization. Are you? Is anyone else who is reading this?
    Of course not, and neither is Fisk. Neither ‘spokesman’ appears in any earlier news reports. For all any of us knows this note was planted as part of some psyop (pleas to disarm the Sadrists and outlaw their militias? an open ended “Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq”? It’s a neocon’s wish list!)
    Like you I’d love to read the primary text and maybe learn more about Fisk’s source and his status within this group.

  6. Good response vadim.
    More generally, I do not see any epistemological difference between Middle East blogers and mass media. The only thing that differentiates one from the other is whom they chose to ‘believe’ – not ‘knowledge’. Just because one writes a lot about 1920 Revolution Brigades or any other group, it does not logically follow that they know anything more than what they get from ‘sources’. Cole for example, has been BSing about Iraq since the beginning of the war. Yet, because he covers his BS with quotes from Arabic sources, which the vast majority of readers cannot verify, he creates the illusion of being knowledgeable and therefore his public policy positions are more valid than say CNN or the NY Times. Cole is a case study is ‘psyops’.
    Sorry Helena. I’m no boy. But, I know a naked emperor when I read one.

  8. What is there to argue about here? The Iraqi resistance would certainly be willing to negotiate the terms of a US withdrawal, in a manner that would leave them in control. We don’t really have to learn more about Fisk’s sources to accept that, do we?
    The North Vietnamese were always willing to negotiate similar terms. We are really negotiating with ourselves, not the enemy. That is, we are seeking an internal compromise among political elites that will allow the war party to retreat from Iraq while blaming someone else for their failure, in a manner that their political base will accept.

  10. “Iraq will close its borders with Syria and Iran for 72 hours”
    They can’t do that if they work on it for 72 days! 2000+ km., mostly treacherous mountains over 2500 meters altitude, southern end of it hundreds of km.s of “rumaileh” desert (the kind with massive dunes and blinding sandstorms). Over the past few days, it seems like Maliki and his men have been BSing non-stop, and sometimes they really get carried away.
    Great point John C.
    And someone who can talk to boy in a language he understands please ask him how the weather is on his planet.

  12. A commenter wrote: “And someone who can talk to boy in a language he understands please ask him how the weather is on his planet.”
    I take your metaphoric language to mean that you disagree with what I wrote. If you could be more specific, I would be interested in why.

  13. The Iraqi resistance would certainly be willing to negotiate the terms of a US withdrawal, in a manner that would leave them in control
    The North Vietnamese were always willing to negotiate similar terms.
    I bet it’s tempting to reify the fractured ‘Iraqi resistance’ & imagine for it/them all kinds of coherent motives and capacities and ambitions. But as this case shows, some of Iraq’s many insurgencies lack a clear chain of command, or even any one spokesman. There’s no provisional Iraqi government waiting to ‘take control’ and enforce any treaties once the US withdraws, as there was with the Vietnamese NLF. Certainly none that would need (er-demand!) help with disarming political rivals.

  14. I bet it’s tempting to reify the fractured ‘Iraqi resistance’ & imagine for it/them all kinds of coherent motives and capacities and ambitions.
    But what matters is the ambition of the Americans. If they want to withdraw, they probably would find channels to talk about it with some of the guerilla groups. But as far as we know, the Bush administration has not the slightest intention of leaving Iraq.

  16. If they want to withdraw, they probably would find channels to talk about it with some of the guerilla groups.
    Perhaps you’ve forgotten that there have been negotiations with Sunni leadership going back to 2003.
    JWN, 2/1/06: ‘Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, is– with the full backing of President Bush and apparently the US Congress– engaging in negotiations with leaders of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq’
    NYT: 1/7/06: ‘Americans Said to Meet Rebels, Exploiting Rift’
    JWN 12/29/05: ‘Khalilzad seems to be trying hard to bring at least some of the Iraqi Sunni political class into the political tent that he’s creating in Baghdad.’
    MSNBC 2/06: ‘Direct Talks—U.S. Officials and Iraqi Insurgents’
    Rumsfeld: ‘Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time.’
    CFR: ‘In the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion, there were talks between ex-Baathists and U.S. officials in Mosul’
    What’s plagued these negotiations is the nagging issue of murky command structure & accountability. Jeffrey White: The issue has always been whether the Sunni leaders who come forward and say they have contacts with the insurgency actually have those contacts or simply are using this to enhance their own status. Exhibit A: “Az-Zawbi’i” or “Al-Jeelani?” Nobody knows. No Madame Binh, no Paris Accords.
    By the way menno, though its command structure is intact the “Bush administration” is no more monolithic than any other political bloc. But unlike Iraq’s civil war it’s certain to end in less than 2 years. If I were Iraqi I wouldn’t find this terribly comforting.

  17. the “Bush administration” is no more monolithic than any other political bloc
    The Bush administration is no “political bloc”. It is the government of the most powerful state on earth (and one of the most aggressive ones, by the way).
    If I were Iraqi I wouldn’t find this terribly comforting.
    I doubt you know what Iraqi’s would find comforting (I certainly don’t). What I do know, is that poll after poll after poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Iraqi’s want the Americans out, the sooner the better.

  18. It is the government of the most powerful state on earth
    Actually menno, the Bush administration isn’t the ‘government of the United States.’ The executive office is one of three branches of the US federal government and can’t do a lot of things on its own authority. A congressional resolution for example, could effect the immediate withdrawal of US troops. FYI, Democrats control both houses of Congress, not the dreaded Bush administration.
    What I do know, is that poll after poll after poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Iraqi’s want the Americans out, the sooner the better
    And like you I’d be happy to see the US out of Iraq tomorrow. But in the vocabulary of both John C. & George Bush, this would amount to some kind of ‘defeat.’ (It’s interesting to see how often the Bush-haters adopt Bushisms: Bush is emperor, Bush is conqueror or vanquished… even though Bush is irrelevant to the long term political outcome of Iraq.)

  19. Helena – Could you give your assessment of this article by Robert Dreyfuss in Washington Monthly suggesting that the assumption that the worst-case scenario will occur in the event of a US withdrawal might be as mistaken as the Administration’s assumption of a best-case scenario going in?
    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0703.dreyfuss.html
    (Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I didn’t see any other way of contacting you.)
    Thanks!

  20. “Mr Howard rejected the suggestion that Australian troops might be in Iraq for decades to achieve the desired level of security.
    “I wouldn’t describe it as decades, but I am not going to try and put some target date,” he said.
    “I certainly believe that if the Americans decided to go, then I don’t think any other members of the coalition would remain. But America is not about to go.”
    “Self-evidently Australia is not going to remain in Iraq on her own. Everybody knows that and it is just foolish to play the game that it is otherwise.”
    “He said Australia’s current contribution to Iraq – about 1,400 personnel in the Middle East, of whom some 900 are in Iraq – was appropriate considering Australia’s size and other regional commitments.”
    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21230026-29277,00.html

  21. “I bet it’s tempting to reify the fractured ‘Iraqi resistance’ & imagine for it/them all kinds of coherent motives and capacities and ambitions.”
    Vadim, I’m not above imagining things. However, I don’t need a good imagination in order to conclude that the people (whoever they are) that are currently shooting down our helicopters and blowing up our tanks and humvees would like to negotiate a withdrawal of our troops and a turnover of power to themselves. It is convenient for certain parties to argue that we can’t find any appropriate representatives of the enemy with whom to negotiate. Gee, that kind of reminds me of another situation in the Middle East . . .
    “in the vocabulary of both John C. & George Bush, this would amount to some kind of ‘defeat.'”
    What do you call it in your vocabulary?

  22. I don’t need a good imagination in order to conclude that the people (whoever they are) that are currently shooting down our helicopters and blowing up our tanks and humvees would like to negotiate a withdrawal of our troops and a turnover of power to themselves.
    John, the people “blowing up our tanks” (really, killing 3 or so soldiers a day out of a force of 130,000, mainly through the use of roadside bombs) are in no position to assume power over any significant part of Iraq, nor is the US in much of a position to grant it. If anything the US military is an impotent bystander in a widening civil war, so framing a US departure as “surrender” sounds absurd. Mostly the violence there is intra-Iraqi, accounting for 70% of the fatalities cited in the Lancet study, hundreds of times more than US military dead. And Iraq’s best armed and manned militias are Shi’a, most of them attached to US-supported political parties within the Iraqi government. Should the US leave, they would likely “take over” to whatever extent possible.
    t is convenient for certain parties to argue that we can’t find any appropriate representatives of the enemy with whom to negotiate.
    Convenient or not it’s clearly the case. Let’s take the example of the “1920 revolutionary Brigade”: maybe you can clarify whether “Az-Zawbi’i” or “Al-Jeelani” speaks for them but Helena and I are stumped. No such mystery surrounded the communist insurgency in Vietnam. They had a leader, spokesmen, a clear chain of authority, even a provisional government.
    That said, I still believe that the US isn’t helping and quite likely is catalyzing much of the violence in Iraq and should leave ASAP. No negotiation required.
    What do you call it in your vocabulary?
    A welcome policy change. “Defeat” assigns the US military and GWB undue significance, and implies a football-style victor (whether “the terrorists” — boo! or the equally murky “insurgency” — hoorah!) The US is making no progress toward its declared goal of pacifying Iraq; that’s a failure, not a defeat.

  27. Kurdish leader sees two possible scenarios for Kirkuk: either they take it by force as part of an all-out civil war, or they just take it by force:
    “If Iraq is in an all-out civil war, then the PUK and KDP have put themselves in a position to protect Kurdistan by very quickly taking Kirkuk and making it a part of an independent Kurdistan,” Haider said. “Or, if we exhaust the peaceful, political means of gaining Kirkuk for Kurdistan, we will take it by force.”

  28. Salah,
    Thanks for the link to Brzezinski’s “A road map out of Iraq.”
    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-brzezinski11feb11,0,7746114.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
    Brzezinski makes a lot of sense:
    =snip=
    First, the United States should reaffirm explicitly and unambiguously its determination to leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time.
    Second, the United States should announce that it is undertaking talks with Iraqi leaders to jointly set a date by which U.S. military disengagement should be completed.
    Only by holding serious talks with Iraqi politicians about an exit date can we identify the authentic Iraqi leaders with the self-confidence and capacity to stand on their own legs, without U.S. military protection. The painful reality is that the current Iraqi regime, characterized by the Bush administration as representative of the Iraqi people, largely defines itself by its physical location: the 4-square-mile U.S. fortress within Baghdad — protected by a wall 15 feet thick in places and manned by heavily armed U.S. military — popularly known as the Green Zone. Only Iraqi leaders who can exercise real power beyond the Green Zone can eventually reach a genuine Iraqi accommodation.”

  29. John C. wrote:
    “We are seeking an internal compromise among political elites that will allow the war party to retreat from Iraq while blaming someone else for their failure, in a manner that their political base will accept.”
    John C., one can be reasonably certain that insurgents would never accept an outcome that would allow the U.S. to retreat and a) claim victory or b) blame someone else in some cockeyed “plausable” way, or c) a combination of both.
    Let’s backtrack for a moment. We all know that the U.S. has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq. The steaks are too high. They have every intention of staying, the very survival of the American Empore depends on victory and nothing less. They would have to be forced out. Assuming the insurgency has the power to do so, they would then be in a position to make unconditional demands.
    Insurgents have unequivocably stated that they will not negotiate, they will DEMAND, and they are unwilling to yield or compromise on those demands. That’s what victory is all about, isn’t it?
    Wars are inherently fought to win, not to compromise. If people were willing to compromise there wouldn’t be wars.
    Thus, neither side will accept anything less than victory and the total defeat of their enemy. It remains to be seen which side will ultimately prevail in this “Mother of All Battles.” I’m reasonably confident the insurgents will win, if they haven’t already. The U.S. is simply trying to delay, if not deny, the inevitable catastrophic defeat. A defeat that has been well earned I might add, for this war is a moral failure of Biblical proportions that goes far beyond mere politics but has to do with the nature of evil itself.

  30. “insurgents would never accept an outcome that would allow the U.S. to retreat and a) claim victory or b) blame someone else in some cockeyed “plausable” way, or c) a combination of both.”
    Of course they would. They don’t care about our domestic politics, they just want their country back.
    “Insurgents have unequivocably stated that they will not negotiate, they will DEMAND”
    I must have missed this. When was this “unequivocable” statement made?

  31. You’re apparantly not following insurgent sites.
    Here is one, with the Baath Party statement before Saddam’s execution, warning…
    2. The execution of the President [Saddam Hussein] and his comrades will make further negotiations between the Resistance and the Baath on the one hand and the occupation on the other impossible; the US forces in Iraq will be regarded as hostages to be slowly destroyed and not allowed to withdraw peacefully.
    http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2006/1206/iraqiresistancereport_271206.htm
    John C, I think it would be naive to think they don’t pay close attention and even play to our domestic politics, knowing that American public opinion can utimately cause the U.S. to withdraw, thus giving them their country back. And on the other side of the equation, the U.S. propaganda machine works overtime to maintain public support for a continued U.S. presense in Iraq.

  32. John C., in case you think the Baathists were making empty threats, consider that the reality on the ground corroborates their statement: IEDs have boobeytrapping all roads, 7 helicopters downed since Jan. 20th, increased attacks on bases.
    Only today another attack on a U.S. outpost was reported by the NYtimes:
    In a recent attack on an American combat outpost three car bombs were detonated that differed from past attacks. The detonations and following gun battle led to the death of two soldiers with 17 wounded. The attackers initially drove two cars into the perimeter of the outpost that has a 100ft high blast wall. Then as soldiers helped their injured and figure out a course of strategy a third car filled with explosives drove into the crowd. The military helicopters were called in to remove the wounded from the scene. Another fear of the military is that the inurgencies will attempt to attack places where the military presence is less abundant. In a city there was a curfew imposed and people were not allowed to leave their houses. This town’s police force had collapsed after they were intimidated by kidnappings and murders.
    These attacks show that these are well planned attacks by the insurgents. These insurgents are thinking about ways to make their attacks as deadly and detstructive as possible. This is exactly what these groups are hoping to achieve which is to strike fear and make people believe the American military and Iraqi security forces are weak.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/world/middleeast/19cnd-iraq
    What happens when U.S. forces can’t use the roads, can’t fly without being shot down, can’t safely hunker down in U.S. bases without being attacked. And how will bases be resupplied without helicopters?
    I see a pattern, a strategy, and it doesn’t look good for the U.S.

  33. Diana
    What happens when U.S. forces can’t use the roads, can’t fly without being shot down, can’t safely hunker down in U.S. bases without being attacked. And how will bases be resupplied without helicopters?
    Diana, I keep asking this question for 4 years now no one come and tell us any answer for that.
    The Question is
    Why US military (tanks, Hammer, Hamvies) run wiled on the street in Iraq (through the residential areas all over Baghdad specially) for years now?
    This one very provocative seen from Baghdad this is a real story you can ask any Iraq he will tell you more with facts.
    The story is
    “when US tanks moving on the roads in Baghdad they deliberately destroying all the road’s kerbs or the side lines of highways “Motorway” …ect, in on seen one Tank was moving in Baghdad on the road it passed a part of a road’s kerb was not damaged what the Tank’s driver “US Solder” did he drove back and went over the road’s kerb and damaged that portion of road kerb!!!?
    Tell me what’s these acts and other more abusive and stupid doing in a country they occupied by lies and humiliating the nation.
    Good save Iraq and Iraqis ……Amen…

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