The Jehad Of Daily Cuts

Will the reported deaths of Uday and Qusay, the sons of former President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, in anencounter near Mosul in Iraq weaken the jihad of daily cuts against the US troops in the Sunni triangle inCentral Iraq?

That is the hope everyone in the Bush Administration concerned with the conduct of the military operationsin Iraq is expressing. Will the hope materialise or turn into yet another instance of wishful-thinking as hadhappened to the expectations voiced before the war that the Iraqi people were waiting keenly to be liberatedand would welcome the US ‘liberators"?

The widely-expressed hope about a turn for the better in the situation is based on certain assumptions.

First, that Saddam Hussein and his two sons were playing a central role in the co-ordination and control ofthe jihad.

Second, that the entire jihad is largely due to the Iraqi fidayeen, with the role of the foreign jihadielements as yet only minimal.

And third, that the indigenous fedayeen elements and those in the population supporting them were motivatedmore by fear of adverse consequences to them in the event of their not participating in the jihad shouldSaddam and his sons return to power than by patriotism and hatred for the Americans.

The role of the patriotism of the Iraqi people as a motivating factor has been consistently under-estimatedby the US troops and intelligence agencies.

It is argued that if Saddam and his sons were neutralised, there would be no effective command and control,the fidayeen would be denied local support by the public which would no longer hesitate to co-operate with theUS troops and hence would wither away and the foreign elements could be easily taken care of.

The jihad, involving hit and run raids, ambushes and attacks with rockets, has been going on for over twomonths now. Certain worrisome (for the US) aspects need to be underlined. First, the apparent absence oftechnical intelligence (TECHINT) regarding the identities and whereabouts of the jihadis despite the largepresence of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the DefenceIntelligence Agency (DIA) on the ground in central and northern Iraq. Not a single significant arrest orcapture attributable to TECHINT has been reported. It is apparent that the US forces are even unable todetermine where the rocket attacks are coming from.

Contrast this with the ground situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, many of the significantsuccesses of the US intelligence such as the arrests of Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammadand Waleed bin Attash were due to excellent TECHINT, but in Afghanistan, the frequent jihadi cuts beingsuffered by the troops of the US, Afghanistan and other countries are due to a lack of TECHINT of similarquality.

What does this indicate? That the survivors of the Al Qaeda in Pakistan, who have split into a number ofsmall groups and are no longer able to operate as a cohesive jihadi formation, are taking risks bycommunicating through wireless or electronic means in their desperate attempts to remain in touch with eachother, but in Afghanistan, the survivors of the Taliban, Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami (HEI) and thevarious Pakistani components of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front IIF), operating fromsanctuaries in Pakistan, have been relying more on interception-proof means of communication such as by wordof mouth through couriers. When Al Qaeda was a cohesive force before 9/11, it too avoided means ofcommunications susceptible to easy interception.

Second, the flow of human intelligence (HUMINT) from sources located inside the Iraqi fidayeen groups hasalso been meagre. The US troops have been rounding up a large number of suspects during their patrolling, butdo not appear to have been able to get any worthwhile intelligence during their interrogation.

The most spectacular piece of HUMINT so far was about the exact location of Uday and Qusay, which isreported to have come from a walk-in source, as distinguished from a cultivated or planted source. If mediareports are to be believed, the walk-in source was none other than the owner of the house in which the twosons had taken shelter. It is said that before the US-UK occupation of Iraq, he had become persona non gratawith the Saddam regime and hence had a ground for anger against the family. It is also said that the sons hadbeen staying in his house since June, that is, for over a month.

If this version is true, certain conclusions emerge. First, the sons were so desperate for cover that theydid not mind taking shelter in the house of even someone who had suffered under their regime. Second, they hadno means of communication with their followers and supporters through wireless, telephone or other means orwere deliberately avoiding the use of such means of communications. If they had been using such means, it wasvery likely that the US agencies would have obtained TECHINT regarding their location.

And, third, despite their lack of communications with their followers and supporters, the latter were ableto maintain a low, but sustained level of jihad against the American troops.

After considering all this, one could make the following assessment, which, for want of further evidence,is still tentative and not as definitive as I would have liked it to be:

a) The plans for the jihad against the American troops, including the modus operandi to be followed, thecommunications drill to be adopted etc had been drawn up long before the US-UK invasion of Iraq. It hasdefinitely not been improvised after the occupation. To have maintained even this low level of jihad for overtwo months without suffering a single capture of the foot-soldiers of the jihad is no mean achievement.

b) The experience gained by the pro-bin Laden jihadis in Afghanistan has played a role in the planning andexecution of the operations. This would indicate that the degree of involvement of the jihad-innoculatedforeign elements from Afghanistan such as the cadres of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been higherthan estimated by US analysts.

c) The jihadis have been trained in such a manner as to be able to operate autonomously in small cellswithout the need for much of centralised command and control. The autonomy of operations has been not only inrespect of ground strikes, but also intelligence collection and exploitation. Many of the strikes have beenagainst targets of opportunity and not against pre-selected ones.

d) The role played by Saddam Hussein and his sons in the co-ordination and control and in the motivation isnot as high as seemed to have been estimated by the US analysts. Even if Saddam is ultimately killed orcaptured, it would be over-optimistic to expect the jihad to collapse immediately.

The level of popular support enjoyed by the jihadis is considerable.

B. Raman  is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennaichapter. This article was written and sent from Chicago