In this issue:

U.S., Russian Military Sources: U.S. Losing War in Iraq

Powell's Call for 'More Democracy' Rebuffed at Summit

Barghouti Quits Race, Issues Demands

From Volume 3, Issue Number 51 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 21, 2004
Southwest Asia News Digest

U.S., Russian Military Sources: U.S. Losing War in Iraq

A former Russian military intelligence officer, who maintains close contacts on the ground inside Iraq, told EIR last week that the U.S. military situation is becoming more and more untenable. He reported that the insurgents once again control 70% of Fallujah, operating out of the rubble that is all that is left of major portions of the city. U.S. troops are targets of constant ambushes there, and the insurgents have an elaborate tunnel and bunker structure under the city, that allows them to operate. The source said that recent reports that the U.S. Marines may soon pull out of Fallujah are due to the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult to conceal the true situation on the ground there.

The same Russian source reported on an eyewitness account of a major car bomb or rocket attack on a U.S. military camp near the Iraq-Jordan border. His source, an Iraqi businessman, arrived at the scene of the attack shortly after it took place, and was forced to wait for many hours, as the entire Iraq-Jordan border was sealed, while U.S. forces hunted, unsuccessfully, for the insurgents, and while emergency medical rescue operations were conducted. The eyewitness reported that U.S. military medivac helicopters took six hours to fly out all of the wounded and dead, indicating a high number of casualties. The Russian source reported that the "official" casualty figures are a cover-up and conceal the actual number of killed and wounded.

A similar reading came from retired U.S. Army Col. Patrick Lang, who has decades of experience in counterinsurgency. Commenting on a Washington Post story about an increase in U.S. Air Force airlifts, to deliver supplies in Iraq, to avoid the constant attacks on truck convoys, Lang wrote: "It has to be said that General Jumper's decision to relax USAF restrictions on the use of intra-theater airlift is the right decision in this situation. The level of violence on the roads in Iraq is so high in the critical areas that airlift makes sense as the way to move people and materiel around. At the same time, the necessity of such a decision to adopt distributions of this service which are inherently inefficient should be understood to be evidence of the success of the insurgents in creating enough 'friction' in the system to cause us to move in the direction of reducing our presence on the roads. The objectives of any well-run insurgency are always the same.

"1. Restrict the movements of the counterinsurgents. Make the enemy unable to freely move about the country. This reduces the ability to interact with the population and causes the counterinsurgents to cede 'de facto' control of more and more of the population to the insurgents.

"2. Since the insurgency is inherently a political process, the insurgents must seek to control more and more of the population. A counterinsurgent's progressive withdrawal from the roads directly contributes to the strategic insurgent goal of controlling the population."

Powell's Call for 'More Democracy' Rebuffed at Summit

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pushed the Bush Administration's Arab democracy schemes at a summit meeting of 20 Arab states in Rabat, Morocco, and received a very cold reception from the official attendees. The Dec. 10-11 event launched the U.S.'s Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) initiative, a program for regime change and looting through deregulation and liberalization of the Arab economies.

The Arabs who attended the "Forum for the Future," argued simply that no democracy could come unless there were a settlement of the Palestine crisis, an end to the occupation, and a real peace.

In the final statement, meeting participants said "their support for reform in the region will go hand in hand with their support for a just, comprehensive, and lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Although the United States signed onto the statement, Powell disagreed with the conditions attached. "We can't hold up reform or slow the pace of reform or keep reform from accelerating because of these other issues," he said at a news conference with Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa, who co-chaired the meeting.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa insisted that peace in the region was necessary for the reforms envisioned by the BMENA initiative that has been endorsed by the Group of Eight industrialized country. He said an independent Palestine "is a must" if the U.S. plan is to have any chance of working.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal put it even more bluntly, telling the conference that the U.S. bias toward Israel was the main obstacle to promoting reform in the region. "The real bone of contention is the longest conflict in modern history," he said. "For too long the Arabs have witnessed the Western bias toward Israel." The prince said the Arab world understood U.S. security guarantees to Israel, but "what the Arab peoples cannot fathom is why these guarantees are translated into unrestricted backing of unrestrained Israeli policies [that are] contrary to international legality."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit echoed his Saudi counterpart and said reform moves would remain stalled without action on the internationally backed "Road Map" peace plan.

Barghouti Quits Race, Issues Demands

West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is in prison serving a life sentence in Israel, issued some strong demands last week, in announcing his withdrawal from the January 2005 race for the Presidency of the Palestinian Authority. Speaking at a press conference along with Barghouti's wife Fadwa, Fatah steering committee member Ahmed Ghanem said that Barghouti's original decision to run was in part to "underscore that the charade of a democratic Palestinian election under international sponsorship cannot hide the fact that the election is taking place under occupation and violations of international law." He said that "Barghouti's decision is not based on personal reasons having to do with his situation as a prisoner of cell No. 5 in solitary confinement in the Be'er Sheva prison, but derives rather from his understanding and vision of the general Palestinian interest."

Ghanem then spelled out 18 demands that Barghouti had made in exchange for his withdrawal. These include adherence to the Intifada; resistance to occupation as a fundamental principle alongside negotiations; refusal of any partial or temporary agreements in future negotiations; insistence on reaching agreements with all other Palestinian factions as a condition of any future negotiations; continued struggle against the separation fence and the Judaization of Jerusalem; removal of checkpoints; an end to assassinations and persecution of wanted Fatah militants; withdrawal from all P.A. territories as a precondition for any future negotiations; and preserving the principle of armed resistance. He also demanded that no agreement be signed unless there is a timetable for the release of prisoners. He also called on Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), who is favored to win the election, to support and compensate the families of all victims of the Intifada, set a date for parliamentary elections, and establish a legal committee to bring to trial those involved in corruption.

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