WHY THE U.S. ATTACKS ON FALLUJAH ARE LETHALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

I recently discovered the blog Empire Notes, the work of Rahul Mahajan, who teaches at New York University and is the author of "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond" (June 2003, Seven Stories Press), and of "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" (April 2002, Monthly Review Press). Mahajan's blog--like his books--is intelligent, literate, and thoughtful, particularly on Iraq (which he has visited twice).

In a recent posting on Empire Notes, Mahajan draws an apt comparison between the mad and sanguineous terroist thugs of Algeria's GIA (Groupe Islamique Armee) and the target of the continuing U.S.-led attacks and air strikes on Fallujah, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War). Mahajan is, I think, largely on the right track in his view that it is the continuing U.S. occupation and its military striikes on cities heavily populated by non-combattants which is--more than anythng else--sowing the seeds of civil war.

Although the Algerian GIA mounted a series of mid-90s bombings in Paris, its principal targets were other Algerian muslims. They were particularly fond of assassinating popular cultural figures, like the singers of rai, a melange of traditional and modern music, born in Oran, with modern themes--like sex, alcohol, and love outside marriage--which made rai the music of Algerian youth and its singers their heros, but which were considered abhorrent by GIA's puritanical gunmen. The GIA was the extremist spearhead of the Algerian civil war that consumed over 100,000 people in a decade of murderous armed attacks--including many women and children, phenomenal numbers of whom had their throats slit by the GIA in its bloodlust. (For a good sense of the Algerian civil war, read the superb "Comme il a dit lui--Chroniques (au vitriol) d'Algerie,", a collection of acid columns by Y.B., the pseudonym of Yassir Benlimoud, former columnist for the francophone Algerian daily El Watan, which was brought out in France in the pocketbook collection "J'ai Lu" by the publishing house Flammarion. Y.B. was chased into exile for his cutting criticisms of both the Algerian military dictatorship and the Islamist fundamentalist puritans, and now lives in France writing novels--among them the darkly hilarious Allah Superstar.)

In today's Iraq, writes Mahajan of Zarqawi's equally puritanical Iraqi mirror-image of the GIA, "by monotheism they mean primarily anti-Shi’ism. They are not primarily an anti-occupation force; they target Shi’a directly, with American soldiers occasionally as collateral damage.

"So virulent are their methods and ideology that they would have had no chance to grow in the absence of the occupation. Zarqawi emerged openly on the Iraqi scene with a missive in which he denounced the Shi’a for being inherently collaborators with the occupation. Then he had the Ashura bombings of early March carried out, with over 180 killed. At this point, nobody in Iraq supported him.

"Then came the assault on Fallujah, and the concomitant defeat of U.S. forces for the first time since Vietnam. Zarqawi had nothing to do with this defeat. But he capitalized on it. In the highly charged, radicalized recruiting ground that was Fallujah after the assault, Tawhid wal Jihad could pose as the most radical organization of all. Since that time, its name is everywhere and its political influence among the Iraqi resistance is growing.

There are some indications that it is still small; perhaps as few as 100 Iraqi members. It can still be nipped in the bud by other indigenous forces if the United States lays off further assaults. Another offensive into Fallujah, though, and all bets are off. If Iraq goes the way of Algeria, it will be because of, not in spite of, the U.S. presence."

For a view from Fallujah that adds weight to Mahajan's argument, read Kim Sengupta's October 17 report in The Independent, "'They want Zarqawi. They can't kill him so they're killing us."...

AND THE KILLING IN ALGERIA HAS RESUMED after several months of peace. El Watan reports in its latest edition that a massacre of several agricltural families returning from a harvest of dates has taken place in the province of Medea, leaving 16 dead and one wounded at the hands of Islamist terrorists. One of the bodies was beheaded.