The Multi-faced Sunni Insurgency: A Personal Reflection

Abstract

In October 2005, I met an official from the Pentagon in Washington and asked him if the US forces are aware of whom they are fighting in Iraq. He replied: ‘We have a lot of intelligence reports but our information about whom the insurgents are, and most importantly how many they are and where they are, is still limited.’1Four years after the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency still remains somewhat of an enigma. Working as journalist in Baghdad, I have personal experience of the difficulties in collecting and disseminating objective information over the true nature of the insurgency in Iraq. In December 2004 while conducting an interview with some Iraqis in a Shia district of Baghdad, I was arrested by the Iraqi Police who, without an explanation forced me inside a car, pointed a gun to my head and drove me to a house in a remote district of Baghdad. I was lucky to have survived that incident, not least because according to the International Federation of Journalists over, 135 reporters have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.2 Even so, enough material has emerged from the shadows of the insurgency to question what many regard as its unitary nature and structure. By concentrating on the scope and dynamics of the Sunni based insurgency, this article highlights the fragmented nature of many of the insurgent groups, and examines whether the violence that threatens to dismember Iraq along sectarian lines can be assuaged by the very factors that now drive the insurgency.