CPTnet
22 September 2007
IRAQ REFLECTION: Foreign fighters
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.
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