Eric Umansky

Peeling Back the Picture in Fallujah

Nir Rosen, writing in the New Yorker has the best piece I've seen on who's behind the insurgency in town. The short version: It's a melange--including locals and a smattering of foreign jihadis, all of whom are nominally guided by local clerics. As for the Fallujah Brigade who are nomnally allied with the U.S., looks like they spend a good deal of time with the clerics mentioned above.

Another point, Rosen's piece seems to get far more details on the make-up of the guerrillas than anything else I've seen--including say, the NYT magazine's recent, lengthy story. The reporter for that piece doesn't speak Arabic and as an obviously western guy had very limited access. Rosen by contrast speaks the language and was able to hide his American identity. (He convinced the insurgents that he was Bosnian.)

That's not to bludgeon the Times. It's partially about my own doubts. I've done the same thing: Gone places where I don't speak the language, don't have in-depth knowledge of the culture, and then written long, seemingly knowing pieces. I think that story I did accurately portrays the situation I covered. But am I 100 percent sure? No. There's always a tension between trying to convey as much information as possible, molding it into some kind of understandable narrative, and just writing just what you know. And it's worth remembering that when you're in a strange place where you don't speak the language, what you know probably isn't all that much.

Zarqawi, con't

I mentioned last week that I was working on a longer story about him. Here it is.

Zarqawi and the Keyser Soze Factor, Con't

Told ya. From this coming week's Time :

Al-Zarqawi has become an inspirational figure, like Osama bin Laden, for militants who espouse his methods and religious fervor. "Most are not members of his group in a formal sense," says the insurgent. "But everyone, especially the foreigners in Iraq who share his ideals of jihad, considers himself part of Attawhid wal Jihad" [Zarqawi's group].

Read the whole article, it's one of the best I've seen on the insurgency.

Failed States Makes Good Neighbors...for Terrorists

From the Wall Street Journal:

In the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Liberia's [former dictator] Mr. Taylor hosted a cell of top al Qaeda leaders dealing diamonds in Monrovia, according to information that U.N. investigators have given to members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.

Zarqawi and the Keyser Soze Factor

A "senior Pentagon official" is telling CNN that the military just came close to killing Zarqawi:

The official said U.S. warplanes targeted a suspected safe house [in Fallujah].

As they began to drop 500-pound bombs on the house, a convoy of cars rolled up to the home. A man left the house, the bombs fell, and the man was thrown to the ground.

He was put into the convoy of cars and the cars drove away.

The official said al-Zarqawi is thought to be the only person in that network of terrorist insurgents who travels with such a large security detail.

The man they saw fall to the ground "wasn't wearing a name tag," but they believe it may have been al-Zarqawi.

The strike killed 20 to 25 people, a senior coalition official said.

The folks at CNN, hard-bitten skeptical journalists that they are, are now leading their site with, "U.S. official: Fallujah strike almost got al-Zarqawi." Now, according to one post-invasion study of 50 U.S. airstrikes against suspected "high-value" suspects in Iraq, the U.S. actually hit none of them. The problem wasn't bad bombs, it was bad intel.

Now consider the purported Zarqawi almost-hit: 1) It happened in Fallujah, a city the U.S. probably doesn't have many eyes since the town was essentially ceded to rebels and where the purported American-allied force, the Fallujah Brigade, doesn't seem, um, over-enthused about helping out. 2) Zarqawi himself is a mystery, about whom the military--and just about everybody else--doesn't know much. I'm not saying Zarqawi wasn't there. I'm just saying CNN should hire new Page One editors.

As for the regular invocations of Zarqawi, by the U.S. , the media, and now guerrillas, it could all be accurate. But another possibility is that there's some sort of a feedback loop going on. That is, the administration decides that it serves its interests to hype a foreign, Osama-connected bad-guy as the source of the troubles. The media, though I sense increasing skepticism, largely repeats the line, turning Zarqawi into an iconic figure. And then maybe guerrillas, who may or may not have real connections to him, decide, "This guy's a superstar, We're on his team!"

In other words, Zarqawi could become a rallying cry, regardless of his real role.

That makes me wonder how wise it is for the U.S. to keep invoking his name.

P.S. I'm going to be writing more about Zarqawi's history, maybe on the blog but also a longer piece.

P.P.S. (UPDATE 6/28): From this coming week's Time:

Al-Zarqawi has become an inspirational figure, like Osama bin Laden, for militants who espouse his methods and religious fervor. "Most are not members of his group in a formal sense," says the insurgent. "But everyone, especially the foreigners in Iraq who share his ideals of jihad, considers himself part of Attawhid wal Jihad" [Zarqawi's group].

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

CNN is reporting that the Pentagon is considering adding another 15,000 troops to Iraq. The problem is that there aren't many troops left to add--especially ones with the skills needed (MPs, civil affairs officers, engineers, etc). The latest work-around being considered: Call up about 6,500 troops from what's known as the Individual Ready Reserve. Contrary to its name, the IRR isn't ful of ready soldiers. They've left the military, don't train anymore, but had contracts stipulating that they could be called back over some period of time in the event of a national emergency. The last time this happened: Gulf War I. Of course, simply in terms of time commitment, it's one thing to be called for an invasion (especially one that turns out to be a 100-hr event) and another thing to be shipped off for occupation duty.

Dateline Fallujah

One of the bigger mysteries about the current fighting is what's happening in Fallujah. It's hard making an accurate assesment while sitting in Brooklyn Heights, sipping ice coffee. And it's probably not much easier while sitting in the Green Zone, where many journalists--understandably--appear to be hanging.

Anyway, I've only seen one story datelined Fallujah, a Agence France Presse dispatch (cribbed off Nexis; no link). The reporter, Ahmed Fadaam, seems to be on the city outskirts rather than inside. Still, here's an snippet:

Hundreds of panicked residents in cars, buses and pick-up trucks flooded out of Fallujah as explosions and gunfire crackled across this flashpoint Iraqi city after insurgents shot down a US helicopter.

"It was total chaos inside. Everyone was confused, everyone was running. Everyone was trying to find shelter or get out of the city. It was just like a state of emergency," said a witness.

"You can feel the stress and the danger. You start to shiver because you think at any moment they may shoot you. There were hundreds of insurgents at every corner, at every intersection."

One of the bigger questions has to be what role the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade is playing. Reports filed from Baghdad suggest that everything is A-OK. As the Chicago Tribune puts it, "U.S. military officials said Marines and members of Iraq's Fallujah Brigade worked together to quell insurgent attacks." But unless I'm misreading it--a distinct possibility, Im hungry... and cranky--the AFP story suggests something murkier:

A series of checkpoints manned by young men toting Kalashnikov rifles and wearing red or black keffiyeh headscarves stopped and searched cars heading toward the southern exit of the city of 500,000 residents.

Some of the checkpoints were also guarded by members of the Fallujah Brigade, the force made up of remnants of Saddam Hussein's former army now patrolling the city after the US marines' withdrawal two months ago.

Truth in Reporting

"Coalition: Vast Majority Of Iraqis Still Alive" - The Onion

BAGHDAD—As the Coalition Provisional Authority prepares to hand power over to an Iraqi-led interim government on June 30, CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer publicly touted the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"As the Coalition's rule draws to a close, the numbers show that we have an awful lot to be proud of," Bremer said Tuesday. "As anyone who's taken a minute and actually looked at the figures can tell you, the vast majority of Iraqis are still alive—as many as 99 percent. While 10,000 or so Iraqi civilians have been killed, pretty much everyone is not dead."

According to U.S. Department of Defense statistics, of the approximately 24 million Iraqis who were not killed, nearly all are not in a military prison. Bremer said "a good number" of those Iraqis who are in jail have been charged with a crime, and most of them have enjoyed a prison stay free of guard-dog attacks, low-watt electrocutions, and sexual humiliation.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt explained the coalition's accomplishments in geographical terms.

"There are vast sections of the country where one can go outside unarmed during the daylight hours," Kimmitt said, speaking from a heavily guarded base outside of Baghdad. "Even in cities where fighting has occurred, many neighborhoods have not been torn apart by gunfire. And, throughout the country, more towns than I could name off the top of my head have never been touched by a bomb at all."

Kimmitt said the bulk of the nation's public buildings are still standing.

"Throughout the nation, four out of five mosques have not been obliterated," Kimmitt said. "That's way, way, way more than half. Also, 80 percent of the nation's treasures and artifacts have not been destroyed by artillery or stolen in the widespread looting. If we were in school, that'd be a B-minus."

Continued here, complete with helpful graphic.

Taguba Report Release Questions

The White House just announced it's going to release various documents relating to the interrogation of prisoners at Gitmo and in Iraq. Among them will be the list of interrogation techniques that SecDef Rumsfeld approved. My guess—and I mean guess—is that the docs will just reiterate what we already knew about (fear of dogs, sleep deprivation, perhaps water-boarding). At the same time the NYT is reporting that government lawyers in the Abu Ghraib abuses cases have "agreed to declassify all parts ” of the Army's Taguba report. The story doesn't have any details yet, and I can't find any references to it elsewhere. But this could be big (bigger than the other releases).

So far, the public has only seen the summary section of the Taguba report. But there have been a few stories hinting about things in the 6,000-page annex. It's ugly stuff, including apparent rapes and electrocution.

Despite the Times' unequivocal phrasing, I wonder whether the Army will really release the whole report and or what sections will be redacted . Following standard classification procedures, paragraphs in the Taguba are given little marks, namely (S), meaning secret, or (U), meaning unclassified. The idea is that once a whole document is marked for release, soldiers can look at the little marking and redact the graphs marked (S), since those are still secret. It's seems like a reasonable policy--and called "portion marking" if you care. The key though is that the (S) be used legitly.

And that's the problem. The rules say something can only be kept secret if it's a question of national security and explicitly not as part of an effort to conceal crimes. But as the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood has noted, the leaked bits of the Taguba report have are scads of (S)s in that don't seem to qualify. Straight from the report:

(S) Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

(S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked
detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a
picture;

(S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles)
to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least
one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

As I mentioned, the still-unseen portions of the report apparently have far worse. Are those going to make it out?

9/11 Panel to back (a bit?) down on Saddam - AQ ties?

There's a story inside Saturday's New York Times saying that the 9/11 commission wants VP Cheney to put up or shut about his continuing insistence that al-Qaida and Saddam were bosom buddies. (Cheney said he "probably" had intel that the panel hasn't seen, so the panel said he should hand it over.) That's sort of interesting. But slog through to the 20th paragraph and you'll find this:

Commission members said Friday that as result of the furor created by that portion of the report, they may rewrite it significantly in preparation of the panel's final report, which is expected to be released next month.

[The commission's chairman] Thomas Kean [a Republican] suggested that the commission may want to limit the scope of the conclusion about ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq to only what is known about any possible collaboration between them on terrorist attacks against the United States, not against other targets.

"That's our mandate," he said. "This was a staff statement, and we've had commissioners who have disagreed occasionally with the staff statements, and this may be one of those occasions," he said.

Keep in mind, Kean doesn't seem to be backing off the staff report's conclusions. In other words, he appears to agree with Lee Hamilton, the Democratic vice chairman, who is quoted elsewhere in the story saying: The panel has found no evidence "of any collaborative relationship — period." Also keep in mind that there are some members of the panel who are, say, slightly more partisan than Kean and Hamilton and might, just might, object not on the basis of substance but just because something might look bad for the White House.

Now honestly, I feel for the panel. Fact-checking pre-war justifications isn't part of their mandate and they already have enough tsuris as it is. Then again, they've probably spent a wee bit of time--certainly more than you or me--examining the purported AQ-Saddam connections. And wouldn't it be, you know, a service to the country, if they don't try to hide their conclusions?

P.S. Total speculation: All this might be moot, not just because the panel might not back down, but because even if they do I suspect the media won't make a stink of it. I bet they won't even really cover it. That's because they'll (we'll) know that whatever the final report says, the commission doesn't have evidence that Saddam and AQ worked together on squat. But who knows, and all things being equal, probably better not to rely on others to put the final report in proper context.