TWO LESSONS FROM SAMARRA

Before it slips into the memory hole, the three-hour battle in Samarra on Nov. 30 needs further attention. The bloody firefight in that city of 300,000, 70 miles north of Baghdad, was hailed as the biggest U.S. victory over Iraqi insurgents since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April. U.S. spokesmen claimed that the occupation forces killed 54, many of them wearing uniforms of the elite Fedayeen militia, after an ambush of a convoy delivering new currency to two banks.

Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the battle a grim lesson for America’s enemies: “They attacked, and they were killed. So I think it will be instructive to them.” The New York Times quoted a senior military official in Washington: “They got whacked, and won’t try that again.”

But another, contradictory, lesson quickly took hold, this one for the American occupation forces themselves. Local officials told reporters that the Americans returned fire after the guerrilla attackers had fled, firing cannon and tank weapons indiscriminately, killing only eight people, all civilians, but wounding many others. Among the first on the scene was National Public Radio’s Ivan Watson. He and The Times, Agence France Presse, The Australian (“Australia’s national daily newspaper “) and Al Jazeera, the popular Arab broadcasting agency, all reported a heavy toll on civilians rather than a punishing blow against the Fedayeen. The accounts by local residents, Samarra’s police chief, the imam of a mosque hit by canon fire, the director of a hospital, and a leader of the Samarra tribal council added up to a major killing of civilians.

It seems clear that the ambush was a well-planned attack, intended to disrupt the occupation. Exactly what happened afterward will likely remain swathed in the fog of war. But, fairly or not, to many in Samarra and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, the battle will go down as a U.S. massacre of civilians.

This other lesson, then, is well known in the history of guerrilla warfare. Harsh, big-weapon counterattacks can trigger new resentments among the very people they are intended to protect. The same goes for a new U.S. strategy of wrapping entire villages in barbed wire, requiring all residents to register, and posting guards to check them in and out. The new system probably reduces the threat to U.S. soldiers, but it also can alienate the people whose hearts and minds America is trying to win over.

Israel has been trying similar measures in Palestine, but that insurgency goes on.

The United States tried to isolate the Vietcong by creating “strategic hamlets” surrounded by barbed wire and poisoned punji stakes, which didn’t turn out as the U.S. planners hoped, either.