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THE STANDARD ON BREMER

Go here. What I found heartening in this article is that Bremer appears to understand that along with security the issue of economics is crucial to establishing a democratic Iraq. Most State department types would have been in a hurry to establish all the forms of government control over the economy such as taxes, regulatory agencies and customs but Bremer clearly understands that such things will smother an incipient free market that is struggling to be born and send a bad signal that Iraq will be business as usual with corruption, baksheesh and statism as the norm. He’s content to let the country remain for a time as a duty free zone and inject capital into the hands of ordinary Iraqis.

No wonder the Nation is in a hurry to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Next to the invasion itself, capitalism breaking out is that crowd’s worst nightmare.

GEORGIA,THE CHECHENS AND AL QAIDA

The Chicago Tribune, whose foreign reporting seems to have improved markedly since 9/11, is reporting that the Republic of Georgia has rid itself of al Qaida connected Chechen rebels who had established themselves in the infamous Pankisi Gorge region.

The Chechens, a ferociously combatative Muslim minority known for their blood feuds and honor code called Adat have been battling Russian control of their home republic since the early 1990’s when a former Soviet Red Air Force General Dzhokar Dudayev siezed control of Chechnya and declared independence from Russia. Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile attack in 1996 and the Chechen rebellion, without Dudayev’s leadership, gradually lost it’s secular and nationalist character in favor of greater Islamist militancy. Previously the Chechens were not particularly noted for their religious piety and had provided a disproportionate number of NCO’s for the Red Army, especially in the elite combat units, where they were much feared for their reputation for violence. Under Stalin, the Chechens were persecuted for anti-Soviet feelings and exiled en masse to Khazakstan. Solzhenitsyn writes admiringly of their defiant attitudes in the Gulag Archipelago.

The Chechens have accepted aid from Islamist militants including al Qaida and Chechens have been found fighting as far afield as Afghanistan and Bosnia. The significant number of Chechens fighters with Soviet military training may have made the Chechens as valuable to Bin Laden as Bin Laden’s assistance was to the Chechen rebels. The danger of the al Qaida-Chechen relationship is primarily ideological – that the spread of Wahhabi extremist militancy among the Chechens, Daghestanis and Azeris could inflame the Trans-Caucasian region into a general jihad emulating the great uprising against Tsarist Russia by the Imam Shamyl in the 19th century, jeopardizing the stability of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and even eastern Turkey.

ZENPUNDIT BLOWS HIS OWN HORN – IRAQI RESISTERS WITH SOVIET SPETSNAZ TACTICS

General John Abizaid, the new CENTCOM chief confirmed the involvement of Iraqi Special Security Organization troops in the ambush attacks against American troops. SRO involvement was reported here first on July 13.

Iraq’s military was essentially built along the Soviet model in doctrine, training and armaments and it is easy to forget given the technological gulf between Iraq and the United States that by the start of the first Gulf War, Iraq possessed a very formidible military force – possibly the best in the third world and superior to anything else in the region except Israel’s IDF. The officers who led Iraq’s elite divisions – regular army heavy armor, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard and small unit formations of the SRO or other security services- were neither incompetent nor cowardly. SRG units maintained order as they were destroyed by American fire but they did not flee or wave a white flag, recalling the ethic of the Napoleonic era that ” …the guard does not surrender. It dies “.

The Soviets had very specific ideas about the purpose of unconventional special operations against a first class modern military:

“Thus, the primary concern of Soviet strategists and tacticians is to launch low-visibility operations that ensure surprise, induce operational paralysis, and obstruct enemy mobilization and deployment “

Essentially this is the Saddamite strategy in Iraq. For a fuller examination of Soviet doctrine on special operations behind enemy lines ( or against an occupation force) go here.

Presumably, the Pentagon and NATO sometime during the Cold War developed a counter-strategy for dealing with Soviet Spetsnaz and Osnaz troops operating behind our lines in the event of WWIII. It may be time to dust some of those plans off.

SADDAM’S LAST STAND ?

Prior to the invasion of Iraq there were rumblings in the media and the internet about the extent of Saddam’s underground bunkers, allegedly extended after consultations with the Serbians about the effects of the NATO air campaign in the Kosovo war. This website indicates a major American assault may be in the works on one of these underground complexes in the region where there has been heavy Saddamite guerilla activity.

AN ANCIENT EVIL HAUNTING THE MODERN WORLD

The revival of chattel slavery. A revival that to a great extent, thought not entirely, is interconnected with the spread of Islamism which teaches the moral rightness of the looting, murder and enslavement of infidels.