Al Qaeda Attacks Abu Ghraib

While the western media and public's attention was focused on the events at the Vatican, the civil war in Iraq continued. Insurgents, claimed by Al Qaeda, attacked the American-run prison at Abu Ghraib. The wall of the prison wasn't breached, and there were no American deaths. Yet, the firefight went on for almost an hour including concentrated mortar fire, and helicopter gunships had to intervene. When the shooting stopped, almost four dozen US soldiers had been wounded. The attack wasn't militarily significant, but it shows that the anti-US forces in the country are far from defeated.

The Abu Ghraib prison was the site of the sexual torture a few US troops committed in earlier days of the occupation, and before that, it was one of the darker spots in the prison system of the Saddamite regime. The coalition's provisional authority, which botched the occupation at almost every turn, could hardly have done worse than choosing to use Abu Ghraib. By doing so, it identified the US authorities (both military and pseudo-civilian) with the Ba'athist regime -- same stuff, different day. A demolition might have required other prison facilities to be erected at some cost and inefficiency, but in 1945, the allies had enough sense not to use Dachau as a place of detention.

In attacking the prison, the insurgents have made a symbolic attack not just on the US forces, but on the perversion that occurred at Abu Ghraib. In the more militant mosques and madrassas of the Islamic world, the attack will be seen as an attack on western immorality. The offensive refocuses Al Jazeera and the rest of the Arabic-speaking media on Abu Ghraib. And the US in physically defending the prison is morally going to be cast as defending the torture. In the battle for hearts and minds, this lost more than a few of each.

This was also a much different attack than the insurgents have undertaken most of the time. They do not mass as a rule, and they do not stay put long enough to engage in what might pass for conventional combat. Improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers are more their style. They are easier, cheaper and they require less planning. A skirmish (the Abu Ghraib attack wasn't quite a battle) like this requires men, planning, training and supplies. While they did not achieve much militarily, the fact that the attack occurred at all should give Washington and its pals in Baghdad grounds for worry.

In any counter-insurgency, the ability of the weaker power to persist is the basis of defeat of the stronger party. And in the attack on the prison, the Al Qaeda-claimed insurgents (terrorists if they are Al Qaeda) have shown that they are far from giving up. Moreover, getting Iraqis loyal to the emerging government more deeply engaged will not change anything. Penetration of the rebel force structure by intelligence operatives of the central government may improve, and that could prove to be a key in the years ahead. But the end of this war is years ahead, not months.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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