U.S. Military Can't Defeat Iraq Suicide Bombers

by Franz Schurmann

(PNS) -- When it seemed that American forces faced a fierce battle for Baghdad, they got a tip that Saddam Hussein was dining in an upscale restaurant in the city. They moved rapidly to get four huge, "bunker-buster" rockets in the air before Saddam finished his supper. The world has forgotten the many dead and maimed civilians were felled by those bunker-busters. But Iraqis, both defeated Sunnis and politically ascendant Shiites, have not.

In the following months, many Iraqis carried out armed resistance against the U.S. occupation with whatever weapons they had: rifles aimed at GIs, shoulder-fired rockets aimed at helicopters, roadside explosives detonated from a distance. But increasingly, one form of resistance is beginning to predominate: suicide bombers, or as many Arabs call them, "shuhada," or martyrs.

Suicide-bombings had been occurring all along but on Feb. 2, the biggest and most portentous martyrdom/suicide bombing yet in Iraq took place in the Kurdish capital Irbil. At least 101 people were killed, mostly Sunni Kurds celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice, the premier holy day of Muslims. A cameraman filmed a heavy-set man pushing his way through the crowds. When the man shook hands with Kurdish officials he detonated his explosives. The cameraman and his camera were splattered with blood.

Kurdish leaders, quoted in As-Sharq al-Awsat (Middle East) of Feb. 6, a London-based Arab-language daily, called what happened a "huge earthquake," referring not only to the carnage, but also to the blast's effect on the political situation in Kurdistan. The two top are very close to the United States, but one, Mas'oud Barzani, leans toward Turkey and the other, Jalal at-Talibani, tilts toward Iran. The message conveyed to these two, as in the "Sunni Triangle," was clear: "You will pay dearly for your closeness to the Americans."

The Kurds believe that either the Muslim militant group Ansar al-Islam (Comrades in Islam) or Al-Qaeda (The Base) was responsible for the Irbil blast. But what worries them most is that the Ansar, like many other militant Muslim groups in the Islamic world, may have signed up with Al Qaeda.

One incident likely drove the Ansar toward Al Qaeda. On March 20, 2003, the same day President Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, American missiles and planes smothered Ansar villages in northern Iraq with bombs. The death toll of villagers must have been high. Washington explained it was striking against Al Qaeda territory. But the net effect of the deadly raids may have been to push the Ansar into Al Qaeda's arms, thereby spreading the Iraq war from the "Sunni triangle" of central Iraq to the Sunni Kurdish regions in the north.

Al Qaeda is an ideological center presiding over many branch organizations throughout the world. Some Arab observers believe, as does Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, that it wasn't Osama bin Laden who engineered 9/11, but the latter's now second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They reason that bin-Laden, as a strong believer in fundamentalist Islam, had to regard suicide as a Quranic sin of the highest order, and the killing of innocent people in battle as a one-way ticket into the eternal fire. Zawahiri, on the other hand, as a leader of a Jamaa al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), had long been involved in the killings of Coptic Christians and foreign tourists in his country of origin, Egypt.

What may have changed Osama's view is bound up with one Arabic word: takfir. The word means a Muslim who brands another Muslim as an apostate. An Islamic website explains: "Muslims are not allowed to wage war on each other, but they can on unbelievers. If a society or group can be labeled as unbelieving, it becomes acceptable to engage them in armed battle." The awesome U.S. bombing of Afghanistan must have cemented Osama's view (the number of civilian casualties was sizeable, but the Pentagon till now has refused to make public any estimates, assuming there are such figures).

In Iraq, suicide-bombings are producing more and more victims, most recently in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, on Feb. 10, where 53 were killed, and the following day in central Baghdad, where more than 47 died when a man drove a car-bomb into a crowd of US-sponsored Iraqi Army recruits. But suicide bombing seems to be increasing outside Iraq, too. In Moscow's subway several days before the Iskandariya blast, a suicide bombing allegedly carried out by a Chechen Muslim woman killed at least 39. Earlier in Afghanistan, a Kabul Muslim bomber killed scores.

Only the Creator knows what is in the hearts, minds and souls of those who willingly choose to die. Yet there are indications that leaders on both sides of the conflict now want at least a truce. If a truce doesn't materialize, than a decades-long war, as predicted by Vice President Dick Cheney, could come about.

In such a scenario some bombs will rain from the sky, while others will walk softly into rooms. Neither can win except the god Chaos who, in Greek mythology, rules the Underworld. In Arabic the corresponding word is "the fire;" in English, it's "hell."