IRAQ REFLECTION: Foreign fighters
"CPTnet
22 September 2007
by Gene Stoltzfus
[Note the following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been adapted from a longer piece entitled, "Asleep at the fence," available at http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/]
The first time I went to Iraq in after the U.S.-led occupation in 2003, I was worried because I had no visa or papers to cross the border. Iraq had always been a stickler for fully stamped visas acquired after expensive visits to embassies and consulates, considerable paper work and official meetings. When I left Amman, Jordan about 9:00 p.m. for the four-hour paperless and permissionless ride to the Iraqi border, the nerves in my stomach were alive.
At the technical border, no one could tell us where to go. Just as I was deciding to look like I knew what I was doing and keep walking to the place where you find the taxis and buses to Baghdad, I saw the real border: two American soldiers sitting at a broken down old table, head in hands and fast asleep. I kept walking in the darkness and stumbled with others to a taxi and the six-hour ride northeast to Baghdad.
I think of the sleeping soldiers every time I hear of foreign fighters in Iraq. A year later, in a meeting with former US Senator Simon of Illinois, I told him about these soldiers and suggested that the early policy of open borders in Iraq was put in place intentionally to lure violent activists to Iraq for elimination. The Senator laughed at me. He said, "You give them too much credit. They [the Pentagon] didn't have the ability to think up such a sophisticated plan. These things just happened because they didn't have a plan." But I didn't abandon my hypothesis.
As events unfolded in the reporting to Congress last week, two reasons emerged for failure to reach benchmarks: the inability of the Iraqi government to make the factions work together, and the presence of what Gen.
Petraeus consistently described as "barbarous" foreign fighters in Iraq.
Viewed from this perspective, the decision this week by the Iraqi government to ban foreign fighters from Blackwater, a U. S. security contractor in Iraq, may be encouraging. Blackwater, with 1000 employees in Iraq, was involved in a Baghdad shoot out that killed at least nine people. The firm response of the Iraqi government reflects a positive will to address the problem of mercenary fighters regardless of where they come from.
I have lost confidence in any possibility that Americans will make their prescriptions for democracy work in Iraq, but I do take hope from the native Iraqi citizens I worked with, laughed with, planned with in 2003 and 2004.
When we began to meet, we discovered that we did not just have common goals for people's rights. We discovered deeper shared values, hopes for the earth, humanity and the environment as well as a curiosity about how nonviolence works. Some of them are now dead. Many have lost family members. Some have fled safety beyond Iraq's borders. Some have stayed.
And they can be depended upon to try to do the right thing."
22 September 2007
by Gene Stoltzfus
[Note the following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been adapted from a longer piece entitled, "Asleep at the fence," available at http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/]
The first time I went to Iraq in after the U.S.-led occupation in 2003, I was worried because I had no visa or papers to cross the border. Iraq had always been a stickler for fully stamped visas acquired after expensive visits to embassies and consulates, considerable paper work and official meetings. When I left Amman, Jordan about 9:00 p.m. for the four-hour paperless and permissionless ride to the Iraqi border, the nerves in my stomach were alive.
At the technical border, no one could tell us where to go. Just as I was deciding to look like I knew what I was doing and keep walking to the place where you find the taxis and buses to Baghdad, I saw the real border: two American soldiers sitting at a broken down old table, head in hands and fast asleep. I kept walking in the darkness and stumbled with others to a taxi and the six-hour ride northeast to Baghdad.
I think of the sleeping soldiers every time I hear of foreign fighters in Iraq. A year later, in a meeting with former US Senator Simon of Illinois, I told him about these soldiers and suggested that the early policy of open borders in Iraq was put in place intentionally to lure violent activists to Iraq for elimination. The Senator laughed at me. He said, "You give them too much credit. They [the Pentagon] didn't have the ability to think up such a sophisticated plan. These things just happened because they didn't have a plan." But I didn't abandon my hypothesis.
As events unfolded in the reporting to Congress last week, two reasons emerged for failure to reach benchmarks: the inability of the Iraqi government to make the factions work together, and the presence of what Gen.
Petraeus consistently described as "barbarous" foreign fighters in Iraq.
Viewed from this perspective, the decision this week by the Iraqi government to ban foreign fighters from Blackwater, a U. S. security contractor in Iraq, may be encouraging. Blackwater, with 1000 employees in Iraq, was involved in a Baghdad shoot out that killed at least nine people. The firm response of the Iraqi government reflects a positive will to address the problem of mercenary fighters regardless of where they come from.
I have lost confidence in any possibility that Americans will make their prescriptions for democracy work in Iraq, but I do take hope from the native Iraqi citizens I worked with, laughed with, planned with in 2003 and 2004.
When we began to meet, we discovered that we did not just have common goals for people's rights. We discovered deeper shared values, hopes for the earth, humanity and the environment as well as a curiosity about how nonviolence works. Some of them are now dead. Many have lost family members. Some have fled safety beyond Iraq's borders. Some have stayed.
And they can be depended upon to try to do the right thing."
posted by dm at 9:54 AM
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