Where Did These Insurgents Come From?

I've heard many different theories, but have never heard or seen any proof.

I certainly don't believe what the bubsh administration have to say about it.

So, who are they?

Are they the prisoners that saddam let out just before the invasion?

The tens of thousands of police and military personnel thrown out of work?

The thousands of disaffected ex-prisoners held and tortured without trial, only to be proved innocent at a later date?

The mahdi army?

"Freedom fighters" fighting on behalf of their fellow muslims?

A combination of all of these?

Is Iran involved in a fight against coalition forces by proxy - in much the same way as russia and the US fought by proxy in the past?

And are the US to blame?
Forcing people out of work, allowing the country to rip itself apart by going in with no clear plan of occupation or reconstruction, allowing riots, looting, pillage, plunder, rape, kidnap and murder - martial law was not implemented but could have been under the geneva convention. Did the planners get it all wrong, did they even have a plan?

The US and the media dumb things down and portray the conflict as being the coalition and the Iraqi government vs al Qaeda . This simply isnt true and has lead to a gross over oversimplification of the war. Admittedly it is hard to get a grip on the war because I would no more trust crack pot websites then I would the mainstream media to report on the war.

Generally speaking I would say that Ba'athists , the differnt ethnic groups , al Qaeda , Al Sadar and foreign fighters. Throw in any groups that I have missed out on and there are way to many fingers in the pie. I have no doubt that many of the insurgents are ex solders.

As to where foreign fighters come from to your pick Iran , Syria , Saudi Arabia they all want to influence the outcome in there favour. I wouldn't be surprised to find Mossad agents running about in Iraq either.

It was known pretty soon that the few plans that were in place for post Saddam Iraq were fatally flawed. Aside from that another problem was that it took three for coalition leaders and there supporters to wake up to this fact. When I first joined ATS I was accused of being anti American for pointing out the simple facts.

A lack of basic law enforcement and planning allowed Al Sadar and co to take control of neighbourhoods. The notion that the differnt insurgent groups are some kind of noble resistance is dis proven by the simple fact that there primary target is there fellow Iraqis rather then coalition and local forces. Aside from improved medical practices this is why coalition causalities have been relatively low in Iraq.

This is where you wont by able to use the will this notion stand up in a court of law ? measuring stick. Your just going to have to use logic and rational thinking .

For example take recent claims that the recent surge wasn't responsible for an improvement in the security situation in parts of Iraq. The people that following this line of thinking ignore the fact that the surge took place in the north and central areas of the country . The recent Al Sadar lead uprising took place in the South of Iraq. Nor could it be explained how al Qaeda was put on the back foot by there former allies turning against them which has been backed up by an increase in troops and change in tactics.


Here is a must see video.







[edit on 3-4-2008 by xpert11]

And yet knowing all this 9 years before the current occupation, they still had no plans in place to police the country effectively, re-build the government and quell parts if the insurgency.

In WW2 they had two years of planning (at least) for re-construction after the war - it seems that in this case there was very little, if any, planning for anything except how to make money for private companies and get a little foreign experience on the CV of their cronies' kids.

It appears to me that the insurgency is the fault of the war planners, and could have been avoided - at least enough to install government and effective policing, rather than the lawless state which prevailed for so long.

It smacks quite a bit of going in half-cocked.

Originally posted by budski
In WW2 they had two years of planning (at least) for re-construction after the war - it seems that in this case there was very little,

Indeed Marshall , Ike and MacArthur would turn over in there graves if they knew just how badly things were botched . It never occurred to the wars supporters that the key reason for war Japan success was Emperor Hirohito playing ball with democratic reforms . Hirohito was a figure who the entire Japanese people rallied behind . There is no such figure in Iraq.

The ethnic differences aside I hold the belief that there is a psychology associated with defeat. The people of Germany and Japan knew that they had been defeated because there cities were in ruin , there shortages of food and the majority of basic services had been destroyed.

Chaos in Iraq is a part of the plan. It keeps the oil in the ground. This is why we are seeing record-shattering profits by big oil companies while our economy collapses aroung them. Keeping the oil in the ground is also a military strategic concern. When the next World War starts up, the US military will already be in control of the biggest, most centrally located fuel dump in the world.

reply to post by budski


I saw a documentary on the BBC where a British person responsible for restarting Iraq's economy after the war was given some documentation from the US about what was intended to happen. He read through it and realised it was a verbatim copy of part of the rebuilding strategy for Germany after WWII. It even talked about Reichsmarks. That's how screwed up this is. It turned out there was no planning for after the war.

Loads of the fighters are the old Iraqi army. Disbanding them was the single greatest error the Coalition made, after the invasion itself. Instead of offering them good pay to protect Iraq, they dissolved into the population, poor and fed up, and used the only thing they know how (fighting) to try to affect a better future for themselves, their families, and their neighbours.

Say what you want about Saddam, but at least he kept everyone in check, and made it relatively easy for Iraqis to go about their business unhindered by his regime. Now people can't even get food and water without being scared of being shot up or blown up. Tragic.

IMO the coalition needed to have a seperate force or be ready to police the streets themselves. Former members of Iraq's military should have been put into POW camps with the worst of them being weeded out. I agree that that Iraqi military shouldn't have been cut lose but having them maintain law and order would have been like having the SS maintain order in Germany after the surrender.

While I don't agree with jackinthebox the way Al Sadar has been treated with kid gloves could indicate that such a conspiracy exists or why people hold those perceptions.

[edit on 6-4-2008 by xpert11]

reply to post by dave420


So the best thing to do is be as ruthless like Saddam? You know the usually like torture and gassing everybody. That will definitely solve some of the problems. I guess thats why many ATS members here were posting about how Iraqis loved being under Saddam since he did a better job doing what he does best while we suck as such things.

Slightlyoff topic here, but isn't the torture still going on?

It seems that for most iraqi's there is less of everything these days.
Less water, power, food, heating - torture still happens and civilians are still dying.

I wonder just how much better off they are?

Originally posted by budski
Slightlyoff topic here, but isn't the torture still going on?

I regard what is happening and has happened in Iraq as a holocaust.

I wonder just how much better off they are?

The only group that I can say for certain is better off is the Kurds. They are now semi autonomous and waiting for the right time to declare independence. The Kurds have been gearing up for a fight for quiet a while now.

reply to post by deltaboy


No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not talking about his genocidal tendencies (which are obviously horrific), but two different aspects of his rule: secularism and security. Compared to him, for many Iraqis, we DO suck, as under Saddam they could go to the shops, drink coffee on the streets, use their internet computers at home 24/7, sail boats up and down the rivers, basically live lives we in the west would recognise. Now, it's completely different for most Iraqis, and they don't appreciate the change.

I'm not saying we should be as brutal as Saddam - far from it. I'm saying we shouldn't have screwed up so massively, and actually thought about the country, its security, and its infrastructure. That's one thing Saddam and his regime did actually do, and they did it pretty well, compared to us at least.

Insurgency:
If there is a rebellion against the authority (for example an authority recognised as such by the United Nations) and those taking part in the rebellion are not recognised as belligerents then the rebellion is an insurgency.
Resistance:
A resistance movement is a non-military group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country. The term can also refer to any organized effort by supporters of a common goal against a constituted authority . The term resistance has political overtones, as people have used it (and historically, other terms like it) to drum up support in opposition to "foreign intervention".

I prefer the terms invaders and resistance. They convey the truth. Hitler used the term insurgents in order to further his goal of world domination. A puppet goverment does not really count as a real goverment.