|
Trending Topics
|
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30085-2003Dec2.html
Can We Win the Guerrilla War in Iraq?
(Washington Post) Jim Hoagland - This week in Samarra, Iraqi bandits ambushed a U.S. convoy carrying money to Iraqi banks, and were repulsed with heavy losses. At one basic level, the guerrilla war waged by Baathist remnants of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is about money and privilege. The warring Arab Sunnis of Iraq want the money. And they want to regain the privilege of dominating the country's other population groups. The country's majority Arab Shiite population offers tacit political cooperation to the occupation force, and the Kurdish Sunni minority is allied with the coalition. That represents three-fourths of the nation's population. This war is led and fought by a small, embittered minority of oppressors.