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Are the insurgents in Iraq playing from a Cuban playbook?
George Will compares the insurgency in Iraq today with that of Algerian insurgents in the 1950s.
The Algerian insurgency was fueled by the most potent “ism” of a century of isms — nationalism. In contrast, one of the strange, almost surreal, aspects of the Iraqi insurgency is its lack of ideological content. Most of the insurgents are “FREs” — former regime elements — who simply want to return to power. [See here - DS]
Unlike most of the violent cadres of the 20th century, the insurgency does not have a fighting faith; it does not bother to have an ideology to justify its claim to power. …
By promiscuously dispensing death … the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.
I have to wonder whether the FREs are playing from a Cuban guidebook called, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, by Carlos Marighella. Originally published on paper (natch) in 1969, it was summarized thus by Claire Sterling in her 1981 book, The Terror Network:
In forty-eight densely packed pages, the Mini-Manual says it all. It explains whjy cities are better than rural areas for guerrilla operations, and how to behave there: no “foreign air” and “normal” occupations when possible. It suggests how to drill in urban courtyards; blow up bridges and railroad tracks,; raise money by kidnap ransoms and bank “expropriations” attacking the “nervous system of capitalism”; plan the “physical liquidation of ranking army officers and policemen,; deal with spies and informers, to be summarily executed … .
It goes into careful detail about choices of weapons, and the need to “shoot first” at pointblank range if possible; “shooting and aiming are to the urban guerrilla what air and water are to human beings.”
All this sounds almost identical to what the FRE and al Qaeda insurgents are doing in Iraq. It is well known in counter-terror agencies in Europe and the Americas that the Mini-Manual became the Bible of Western and Latin terrorist organizations; the Uruguayan Tupamaros were Marighella’s first international students. The MM teachings quickly crossed the Atlantic to find a home in the German Red Army Fraction and the Italian Red Brigades. In America the Symbionese Liberation Army (of Patty Hearst fame) tried to adopt the MM’s techniques. The MM was known to have been studied by some Middle Eastern terrorist groups as well.
All these movements failed, however. In Europe, the terrorists organizations were materially and financially supported by the old Soviet Union. When it disappeared, so did the USSR’s support. In America, ordinary law-enforcement measures broke the SLA, the Weathermen and other self-styled urban insurgencies; their members were never very skilled at long-term covert operations and information security. In Uruguay, the government finally awoke to the threat posed by the Tupamaros and crushed them, but in so doing the country became a military dictatorship in 1972. It had formerly been the most free and wealthiest country in South America.
All these failures lie squarely at the feet of Carlos Marighella himself, who fell victim to his own romantic notions of “freedom fighting.” The crackdown by the Uruguayan government and its increasing repression was not only anticipated by Marighella, it was actually an intermediate objective of the his urban guerrilla concept. But he badly missed the boat in two key areas. Marighella wrote that the insurgents use their violence in order to identify with popular causes, which wins them a base of support among the people. (Remember, the people are to the guerrillas as water is to fish.) Once that was done, he declared that,
… the government has no alternative but to intensify repression. Tbe police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people, make life in the city unbearable. The general sentiment is that the government in unjust, incapable of solving problems, and resorts purely to and simply to the physical liquidation of its opponents. The political situation is transformed [and so] the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnapings and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the guerrilla must act.
All these steps are intended to lead to what Marighella called, “the uncontrollable expansion of urban rebellion.”
Except that they don’t lead there. There are two fundamental errors of the theory that it cannot overcome and that play to Iraq’s long-term favor. The first error is the belief that in Iraq the increasing level of terrorist violence by either al Qaeda in Iraq or FREs will merge the terrorists with “popular causes,” that is, make them one with the people. In Iraq, except for the minority of Sunnis aligned with the old Baathist party or Saddam’s clan, the people’s cause is freedom and democracy. Violence by Saddam’s regime is what terrorized the people for more than 20 years; it will not lead them to submit to Baathist rule again. Quite the contrary, terrorist violence is unifying the Iraqi people with the new, sovereign government. As for al Qaeda’s terrorism, the Iraqi people certainly have no desire to live under Islamism (see here) and al Qaeda’s gruesome murders only convince the people evermore to shun it.
Al Qaeda is more guilty of this delusion than the FREs. Baathism in Iraq was never anything but simple, nepotist despotism to begin with; the ruling elite never were deluded that the Iraqi people were anything but subjects to be ruled with an iron hand. But one of Osama bin Laden’s (and hence al Qaeda’s generally) basic premises is that the Muslim ummah, the masses, are thirsting to live in a strict sharia society. But their powerlessness in the face of the apostate, repressive Arab governments keeps the ummah from their Islamic fulfillment. Since 9/11, though, events have proven that the Muslim masses are thirsting not for Islamism but for its opposite.
The second basic error in Marighella’s theory is that increasing government countermeasures inevitably become so repressive of the ordinary people that the masses are driven thereby into embracing the revolutionary cause. Uprising results, the government is overthrown and the revolutionaries gain power. This is of course pure European Marxism-Leninism (by way of classically communist Cuba) so I don’t want to claim it translates directly into Arab Iraq, but that’s the concept, if not the source, that George Will sees, which is what got me going on this tear anyway.
But again, history shows that harsh reactionary repression is not inevitable. The European countries never did it, the United States never did it and Israel hasn’t done it either, although Israel’s security measures are very strict. The first test case was Uruguay, where the Tupamaros succeeded in goading the government into the crackdown. However, the crackdown utterly crushed the Tupamaros and there the revolution ended, though the government dictatorship remained. But the worldwide communist underground didn’t learn the lesson.
I’ll leave the last word to Claire Sterling. She was referring to Marxist urban guerrillas using the Marighella playbook, but her words fit to a tee the FRE and al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq:
[They become] corrupted - by the power they discover in the mouth of a gun, or by outsiders with something less selfless in mind, or by the growing estrangement from the society they want to improve. Often they are rejected by an overwhelming majority of their countrymen, reduced to a minority so absurdly small that tragedy almost becomes black comedy. Their response is to kill with increasing ferocity - to punish the profane, and because nothing elese is left for them to do. From killing for a cause, they slip into killing for their vested interests. Nobody’s freedom but their own inspires them.
And they are losing, though there are miles to go before we sleep.
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April 29th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
You can’t properly equate the insurgency with the Cubans or Algerians. They were backed by nation states. Al Qaida is privately funded by some incredibly deep pockets. and we can’t seem to cut off their funding entirely.
They may eventually lose. But it’s pretty clear that the insurgents in Iraq have been allowed to gain a foothold.
April 29th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Sorry, no. The insurgencies in Iraq are funded and backed - though very
covertly - by Syria and Iran. They also receive state-tolerated support
from Saudi Arabia.
As I pointed out in and earlier post, the insurgents who are now the FREs actually
planned for this eventuality. Al Qaeda did, too, though not as well (at first,
anyway).
Besides, I was not equating the Iraq insurgencies with those of Cuba or
Uriguay or anywhere else, and it was Will, not I, who compared Iraq to
Algeria. My point is that the insurgent tactics in Iraq bear strong similarities
with those that were deliberately patterned after the urban-guerrilla theory
in the Mini-Manual. I am not claiming the Iraq insurgencies are taken from the
MM, but I do say the similartities are striking and can offer insights for
what countermeasures Iraq and the US can take.
April 30th, 2005 at 7:53 am
An Empty Insurgency
While the Iraqi insurgency has shown an aptitude for dispensing violence, the question remains as to what exactly the insurgents and al Qaeda have to offer as an alternative political plan. Donald Sensing weighs in with an insightful post (which…
April 30th, 2005 at 8:11 am
The MM approach implies that the people need liberating and that they will respond positively to MM-style tactics and strategy and eventually support the rebels. If the people don’t feel they need liberating, and if they sure as heck don’t want to be liberated by MM rebels with agendas anathema to the population for religious and political reasons, the MM rebels will burn out in impotent fury and be crushed. Sadly, we may need an exampl of this in Iraq to teach other nations that supporting the rebels is a dead end process and to self-discipline themselves to never let idiots like these to take root in their societies to begin with.
April 30th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
MilBlogging at BlogNashville
May 1st, 2005 at 4:43 am
I think there is a fundamental flaw in your premise that the Iraqi insurgency wants popular support. They most definitely do not want or need it.
Saddam ruled for decades without popular support. He only needed popular fear.
The thugs in the insurgency only wish to keep the people in a cow-like status, so that they do what they are told to do. They merely need to wait out the patience of the multi-national forces and then they will resume controlling whoever is in power, be it the new government or another entity that they prop up.
There is only one hope for Iraq, and that is if the people of Iraq stop behaving like cows and fight the insurgents rather than succumb to their terror.
May 1st, 2005 at 5:27 pm
I have believed for two years that we should have followed the Navy’s plan and sent two(2) divisions of Marines in. We still do not have enough troops on the ground to kill enough terrorists to maintain peace. I think we can win in the very long run, if we do not pull a Nixon and run away. The news this week shows how much more work we have to do. If we do not kill the perpetrators when they blow up a building or kill some people (like at a funeral) they will come back later and do it again. We lack sufficient grunts to get a platoon to the scene in minutes after an attack. So they keep coming back. And each one they live through makes them bolder. These folk are neither cowards nor quitters the only way to win is to kill them.
I know that we did not go in with two because we did not have five (5) divisions like we did in WW2. But it has been over three years since the war started. Much more than enough time to build an additional two divisions. What we seem to lack is will. Peace with Honor is just as bogus as Peace in Out Time. Neither Goldwater nor I bought Peace With Honor in 74 and if we try to claim a phony victory we will end up with Nixon.
May 1st, 2005 at 9:44 pm
I think the similarities are coincidental. The message that I’ve seen from the Iraqi insurgency is “Just Not Them”. They abuse the Iraqi pride at loosing the war to goad citizens into supporting them. Actually, supporting them enough to terrorize the rest into keeping silent.
May 1st, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Monday Winds of War: May 02/05
Pirates and Terrorists; Qatar pays al Qaeda; Terror in Egypt; Do the Iranians want regime change?; EU-3/Iran nuke talks collapse; Iranian nukes scares Russia; Israel gets bunker-busters; Abbas’ “iron fist”; The Saudi’s strategic shift?; Saudis whip…
May 19th, 2005 at 9:39 am
The State of the Insurgency
How is the insurgency faring as a political entity, and what are their chances at defeating the democratically elected government and driving the Americans from Iraqi soil? Last weekend the New York Times published an article by James Bennett titled…
May 19th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
The State of the Insurgency
How is the insurgency faring as a political entity, and what are their chances at defeating the democratically elected government and driving the Americans from Iraqi soil? Last weekend the New York Times published an article by James Bennett titled…
October 8th, 2005 at 2:57 am
i have just found this blog. Its a shame that the debate petered out so quickly. i found the original argument compelling. Not least because i used the MM as a teaching tool when teaching in the Army years ago and have referred to it continuously in lectures since then.
Whereas i agree the author’s premise, that the manual was and remains strategically flawed, I am not sure that this is important. I saw its basic tactical tenets in action in Northern ireland for many years and i see the Iraqi insurgents acting according to the MM’s premises today.
i offer that the MM has relevence if combined with the teachings of Fanon (Wretched of the Earth) arguably the philosophical author of the Algerian revolution and the early nihilists of late 19th cenrury europe. i for one think Nial Fergusons description “islamonihilist” is more apt a description than Hitchins’ “islamofascists”.
Marighella’s tenet, “the strategy of militarization” which argues that every terrorist action will produce an over-reaction from the government, leading to an eventual loss of faith by people in their government’s ability to protect them, has real merit. But there is a fine line between forcing this failure of confidence and initiating a popular backlash against the insurgency. (Which was his downfall)
The key to [government]success, it seems to me, is the actions of military and police forces.
If forces are committed to restore/uphold the law
then it is imperative for those forces always to act within the law. Failure to do so will undermine the very purpose for which these forces were deployed. This is particularly so when those forces of law and order are perceived to act with impunity.
The Iraqi insurgents and their supporters are very adept at demonstrating how Coalition Forces have acted outside national and international laws. The fact that they have never acted within them is irrelevant, the world never expected them to.
i currently live in northern uganda where a long-running war has been fought by forces of the government against a shadowy rural insurgency, the Lord’s Resistance Army. Whereas the MM has no real relevance here, some of its basic tenets and tactics apply. The government’s reactions have often been outside ugandan law and even those within the law have been so severe as to alienate the local people. The most egregious has been to confine 1.5m people in IDP camps in order to a) protect them from the LRA (they have singularly failed to do so) and b) to deny the LRA “a sea to swim in’.
Finally, with regard to the Iraq insurgency, i think it was the an early commentator on this blog who offered that the insurgents dont need to offer an alternative agenda, political or otherwise, chaos is sufficient. nature abhors a vacuum. i am in total agreement with this premise.I admit to the dangers of peering through the fog of war but i think i see a former sovereign state in the throes of breaking up into three ethnic/tribal regions and i dont see what can be done to prevent it because i think the [iraqi) people perceive this as “the least worse option” and this was always the insurgency endgame.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Readed
Intel: where Quality is job number 0.9998782345!
November 21st, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Beatifully
Yes, I’ve heard of “decaf.” What’s your point?