from today's Juan Cole website (
www.juancole.com)
<<Wednesday, July 16, 2008
<<Bombs Kill 40, Wound Dozens;
<<Al-Duri Calls for Continued Resistance;
. . . .
<<Guerrillas launched a series of bombing campaigns in the eastern mixed province of Diyala and in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing at least 40 and wounding dozens. In Diyala, recruiting stations for security forces were hit, as potential recruits lined up. In Mosul, likewise, the targest were Iraqi security forces. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had sent the new Iraqi army up to Mosul, where it is encountering heavy resistance in the form of bombings and sniping from Sunni Arab guerrillas, some of them apparently neo-Baathists. Diyala is violent and the government is saying that it will send troops there, too.
<<McClatchy reports that local Iraqis interpret the attacks as jockeying for position in the upcoming provincial elections. The election of legitimate Sunni-majority provincial governments could undermine a key propaganda point of the guerrillas, which is that Iraq's government is a Shiite/Kurdish Iranian puppet that also is in Washington's back pocket.
<<Former vice president of Iraq Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, called on Iraqi guerrillas to drive the US out of the country on Tuesday. Duri's cell and other Baathists in the north have been one important source of Iraq's violence, but the press tends to ignore the neo-Baath in favor of Muslim fundamentalists.>>
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This looks like a positive development in the war against foreign occupation, since the Ba'ath party is secular and can certainly attract secular Shi'ites. This would be the same combination of forces utilized by Saddam to suppress the religious elements of both the Sunni and the Shi'ites and force a secular socialist regime on the country with all of the usual Socialist benefits to be found in a resource-rich country (free education from JK through grad school, free medical care, independent foreign policy and total control over the people's natural resources with none of the profits siphoned off by foreign exploitation.)
If a neo-Ba'athist Party gets its shit together, the current alliance of bought-off local sheikhs probably won't stand a chance - - they're just local thugs operating purely on the profit motive and no match for the discipline of a hard-core socialist movement and its highly motivated and disciplined hit teams. Same applies to the Shi'ite militia - - punk fanatics willing to die for God, but sorely lacking in the organization of a disciplined Communist movement. The current "Awakening" Sunni leaders seem to have been primarily organized against the relatively tiny al Qaeda in Iraq movement, but once they start to see who they're really up against now, there could be a sharp and sudden fall-off in their energy and initiative in promoting the occupation agenda.
