Although armed attacks on American and Coalition forces began within days after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 brought the first phase of the Iraq War to a close, the U.S. Administration—under the sway of fantasies the U.S. would be greeted with flowers and cheers--was slow to acknowledge the attacks as an organic resistance.
Not so for journalists Steve Connors and Molly Bingham, who decided to record the stories of those joining the burgeoning resistance. The result, the recently released film Meeting Resistance is a remarkable document about what happened in Iraq, and about how insurgencies are born. Above all, the film makes it glaringly clear that the American occupation offered those with widely differing sentiments the opportunity to unite with one goal—kicking the Americans out or at least, as one of the interviewed fighters says, making it clear how unwelcome they are.
These sentiments are still relevant, even though much has shifted in the last four years. The U.S. fighting focus has shifted to hunting down militants claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda. In turn, these jihadis have turned to targeting members of the Iraqi resistance who agreed to join forces with the Americans in the last year. Former resistance members turned to the Americans in part because of their aversion to the severely conservative social and religious habits espoused by al-Qaeda in Iraq and their ilk. In the first two days of 2008, suicide bombings have killed at least 56 people, in attacks aimed specifically at Sunni patrols made up of former fighters.
Their fighting, however, should not be confused with loyalty to the U.S. in any way. As Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times notes:
Many Hussein loyalists have joined forces with U.S. and Iraqi troops in the past year to fight the religious extremists they once tolerated, a decision U.S. officials credit with helping to reduce bloodshed across the country by 60 percent since June. Although most remain opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq, the extreme violence and austere interpretation of Islam imposed by groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq dismayed them.
The attacks, meanwhile, become opportunities for the U.S. to claim the upper hand, at least from a public relations standpoint, by claiming Iraq's Sunnis' loyalties. One military spokesman, said of future confrontations with al-Qaeda in Iraq that: ""We know it will be a tough fight," he said. "But even in the midst of this tough fight, Iraqi forces and the people are standing up and reclaiming their communities, their neighborhoods and their lives."
The United States should be careful though, to distinguish Iraqi rejection of extremist ideologies from loyalty to their cause, or even presence. Not only do the majority of former resistance members still oppose the U.S. presence and, by extension, its project for Iraq and the Middle East, but also, local political turf wars between Iraqis, rather than grand ideological struggles, are indubitably part of what is afoot in the Iraqi provinces.
Finally, the U.S. has since September 11 envisioned a world in which there are three kinds of people: bad religious extremists; good, pro-American pluralists and everyone else. In this world, there is one kind of war, that for the hearts and minds of the undecided. Sunni Awakening councils and neighborhood patrols are being cast as one version of "everyone else," who have awakened to the right choice. It may very well be that these Councils are robust and out of them something good will be built. But it would be foolish to forget that this population did not and does not want an American occupation, especially when loyalties are as tenuously constructed as they are in Iraq.
Read more: Who is Fighting in Iraq? | Review of Meeting Resistance | al-Qaeda in Iraq