Foreign Policy In Focus: Iraq and the Problem of Terrorism
Iraq and the Problem of Terrorism
By Adil Shamoo
Last year, 5,736 Iraqis died and 845 U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq War, many at the hands of the estimated 2,000 foreign terrorist fighters based in the U.S.-occupied country. If this conflict is part of a larger war on terrorism as President George W. Bush claims, it’s clear the U.S. is losing the so-called “global war on terror.”
Prior to the March 2003 invasion by the United States, Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism. It’s true that Saddam Hussein was connected to terrorism by his payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. But this act of bravado was meant to boost his image in the Arab world. As horrific as that support was, the continued attacks in the years since Saddam was toppled illustrate that payment to families was not the main fuel for continued attacks on Israel. It merely fed an image that helped to distract from Saddam’s misdeeds.
Today Iraq is entirely transformed. The country lacks both safety and security and suffers from daily kidnappings, frequent car bombings, and other violent attacks. And with porous borders and poor intelligence gathering U.S. efforts to truly secure Iraq have fairly come in to question. In 2005 there were 841 car bombs and an average of 70 attacks per day on U.S. forces.
Adil E. Shamoo, born and raised in Baghdad, is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
See full FPIF article online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3088
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://fpif.org/pdf/gac/0601shamoo-iraq.pdf
By Adil Shamoo
Last year, 5,736 Iraqis died and 845 U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq War, many at the hands of the estimated 2,000 foreign terrorist fighters based in the U.S.-occupied country. If this conflict is part of a larger war on terrorism as President George W. Bush claims, it’s clear the U.S. is losing the so-called “global war on terror.”
Prior to the March 2003 invasion by the United States, Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism. It’s true that Saddam Hussein was connected to terrorism by his payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. But this act of bravado was meant to boost his image in the Arab world. As horrific as that support was, the continued attacks in the years since Saddam was toppled illustrate that payment to families was not the main fuel for continued attacks on Israel. It merely fed an image that helped to distract from Saddam’s misdeeds.
Today Iraq is entirely transformed. The country lacks both safety and security and suffers from daily kidnappings, frequent car bombings, and other violent attacks. And with porous borders and poor intelligence gathering U.S. efforts to truly secure Iraq have fairly come in to question. In 2005 there were 841 car bombs and an average of 70 attacks per day on U.S. forces.
Adil E. Shamoo, born and raised in Baghdad, is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
See full FPIF article online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3088
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://fpif.org/pdf/gac/0601shamoo-iraq.pdf
posted by Jim Downey at 12:26 AM
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