Page 226 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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Throughout June 2d Squadron continued executing cordon and search missions at cavalry-
troop level to develop its intelligence picture. By the end of the month, the squadron had
come to understand more fully the organization and heterogeneous nature of the insurgency.
Acting on this improved understanding, 2d Squadron adjusted its information operations,
which were designed to woo the resistance and other Sunni nationalists by stressing that
the Takfiri, puritanical Sunnis hoping to incite an intra-Islamic civil war, were the common
enemy of the Shia and secular Sunni alike. The campaign emphasized that operations were
intended to help the Sunnis—not punish them. At the very least, Hickey hoped to avoid
alienating the population and creating new enemies. one method in which the squadron
underscored its intentions was by treating released detainees with respect and returning them
to their homes with cash and new clothes. 31
The insurgency, 2d Squadron discovered, was anything but monolithic. It was instead
a marriage of convenience between disparate, even mutually hostile groups, linked only by
a shared antipathy toward Coalition forces and Iraqi collaborators. The first group, known
popularly as the “Resistance,” was generally comprised of native-born Sunni nationalists
fighting for the establishment of a secular Arab nationalist government, similar to a Baathist
regime, dominated by Sunnis. Others’ motives included “Anger, revenge, economic need,
opposition to the US invasion and any government that grows out of it or sheer lack of
hope in the current system.” Sunni Turkmen nationalists, receiving support from within and
outside Iraq, were especially angry because of their perceived exclusion from the political
process, their perceived disenfranchisement following the departure of the 101st Airborne
from Tall ‘Afar in February 2004, their lack of trust in follow-on US and Iraqi forces, and
their exclusion from the ranks of the local security forces. Although not easily placated, many
of the Turkmen nationalists later proved amenable to American overtures that addressed their
concerns. 32
The other insurgent element facing the Brave Rifles was the intractable group of religiously
motivated zealots known as Takfiri, adherents of a puritanical strain of Sunni belief, many of
whom viewed civil war as a desirable goal in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world. Hoping
to create a pure Sunni state free of Jews and Christians, the Takfiri deemed it their duty to

convert all “apostate” Muslims, or Kafirs, to their ways of belief, or barring that to eliminate
them. the Takfiri, as the Mounted Riflemen discovered, had no compunction about attacking
innocent civilians, much less police and soldiers. In their interpretation of struggle, jihad, the
Takfiri considered civilian sacrifices as justifiable acts committed on behalf of a godly cause.
They believed they were doing God’s will by fighting a global war on Islamic apostasy. 33
the Takfiri took strength from their conviction that a conventional victory was unnecessary
to their cause. A protracted and ever-growing civil war within all Islam, according to their
way of thinking, would herald a much larger and welcome conflict signaling the end of the
world, an inevitable struggle they believed they would win because God was with them.
The insurgency in Tall ‘Afar demonstrated in microcosm a greater struggle within Islam

York Times, 8 June 2006.
31 Simmering, 2/3 ACR Actions, 23; Hickey interview.
32 Cordesman, “War for a Civil War,” 1; Simmering, 2/3 ACR Actions, 1, 2, 5; Hickey interview.
33 Cordesman, “War for a Civil War,” 1; Simmering, 2/3 ACR Actions, 1, 2, 5; Hickey interview.