Arming sunni insurgents...a breif note from WWII history
So, last week when I read about the recent U.S. attempts to arm selected members of the Sunni insurgency in order to harm al-Qaeda a couple of relevant thoughts came to mind:
A. Probably the best historical comparison is the German attempts to guide "Home Army" Polish resistance towards attacking Soviet allied partisans in eastern Poland. Probably inevitably, the home army (Armia Krajowa) attacked various Soviet oriented resistance groups occasionally, while using the German support to obtain intelligence information, gather weapons, and attack Germans on the side. At least as far as I know, the historical example is pretty good and relevant: occupying power supplies major resistance organisation in the hopes of attacking additional insurgent groups by emphasizing ideological differences between groups. Heck, Sadaam methodically avoided arming or supporting al-Qaeda since he rightfully believed it would rather weaken his regime than help control his Kurdish problems.
B. If we're going to mess with arming the "friendly" insurgents, we shouldn't be giving them 7.62x39mm AK's since the ammo is all over iraq. We should pick an unusual, and lower performance (i.e. sucks against body armor) weapon to minimize damage from misuse and theft and enable forensic tracking. I'd suggest pistols and submachine guns or carbines in 40SW or 45 ACP. Heck, buy 40SW Hipoints for ~$175/rifle or something like the M3A1 grease guns (still in US inventory?), but don't give them untraceable, easily resupplied AKs or other comblock weapons.
A. Probably the best historical comparison is the German attempts to guide "Home Army" Polish resistance towards attacking Soviet allied partisans in eastern Poland. Probably inevitably, the home army (Armia Krajowa) attacked various Soviet oriented resistance groups occasionally, while using the German support to obtain intelligence information, gather weapons, and attack Germans on the side. At least as far as I know, the historical example is pretty good and relevant: occupying power supplies major resistance organisation in the hopes of attacking additional insurgent groups by emphasizing ideological differences between groups. Heck, Sadaam methodically avoided arming or supporting al-Qaeda since he rightfully believed it would rather weaken his regime than help control his Kurdish problems.
B. If we're going to mess with arming the "friendly" insurgents, we shouldn't be giving them 7.62x39mm AK's since the ammo is all over iraq. We should pick an unusual, and lower performance (i.e. sucks against body armor) weapon to minimize damage from misuse and theft and enable forensic tracking. I'd suggest pistols and submachine guns or carbines in 40SW or 45 ACP. Heck, buy 40SW Hipoints for ~$175/rifle or something like the M3A1 grease guns (still in US inventory?), but don't give them untraceable, easily resupplied AKs or other comblock weapons.
posted by Bob at
3:17:00 AM
2 Comments:
Another good post, Bob.
James
By
James R. Rummel, at 5:08 PM
I think the untraceable aspect is probably part of the appeal... the government in these types of situations prefers having as little to do with the groups as possible.
Whereas if you have the groups coming back for ammo/supplies repeatedly, there's more a chance that something could go wrong and look bad - and things are delicate enough as is over there.
What do you think?
By
Anonymous, at 10:17 PM
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