Maysan is worth our attention for another reason: for the past two-plus years it has been the site of a low-intensity, low-visibility war that may be a better measure of the fate of the occupation than higher profile battles in cities like Fallujah and Tal Afar.
It has been the subject of some excellent but little noted investigative journalism, notably a magnificent recent report by Pamela Hess of United Press International and an earlier background piece by Doug Struck of the Washington Post.
Maysan province has a rebellious history. Saddam was never able to bring it to heel and this was a key motivation for draining the marshes and displacing the Marsh Arabs. But even this draconian solution didn't pacify Maysan. For years, the Saddam regime maintained an occupying force of 20,000 troops there, partly because of the province's proximity to Iran and partly to suppress local guerrillas, who remained active right up to the American invasion.
Since then, the British have had no better success than Saddam in subduing the province. The resistance there has evolved through several stages, each a response to changing occupation strategies and their own capabilities. At first, insurgents fought sporadic guerrilla battles with the British. This so strained the capacity of the 1,000 strong occupation force that the British actually withdrew from Majar al Kabir, the town with the most militant and aggressive resistance cells. During this period, the province became a center of strength for the Mahdi Army, the military wing of the Sadrist movement that would eventually fight major battles with the Americans in Najaf and Sadr City, Baghdad's enormous Shi'ite slum.
The British claimed complete victory - 800 guerrillas killed without the loss of a single British soldier - but they also discontinued virtually all patrols in the city, leaving local governance to the supporters of the resistance. This withdrawal also marked an end to various ambitious reconstruction projects that had been promised and scheduled by the occupiers. In January 2005, the Sadrists won the provincial elections.
Construction began on 13 impregnable police stations in an attempt to convert the police into a viable weapon against the resistance. According to the US Command in Iraq, these stations were to be the most imposing structures in town, equipped with "guard towers, security walls, generator installation, exterior lighting, bullet-proof glass, bars on exterior windows, steel exterior doors, and an antenna". These, in turn, would "improve the morale of the police so they will do a better job", and so, supposedly, deal with a pattern found in rebellious areas across Iraq - police unwilling or unable to fight the guerrillas.
At this point, the guerrillas abandoned their failed effort to confront the British directly and settled into the pattern that characterizes the war everywhere in the country: improvised explosive devices (IEDs)by roadsides and hit-and-run attacks targeting the patrols of the occupying power. By the middle of summer, the new strategy had begun to inflict consistent casualties on the British, and Maysan province officially became a hot spot of insurgency.
The ongoing battle in Maysan catches something of the nature of the guerrilla war in other under-reported parts of Iraq. UPI's Hess pointed to the hallmark of guerrilla warfare when reporting, "Despite the violence, the Iraqis here consider Maysan to be safe and secure because - unlike in the Sunni triangle - local civilians and police are not the targets of the insurgents."
In other words, the local Shi'ite resistance is mainly in the business of expelling the occupation. They target British soldiers, and mostly try to avoid civilian casualties. Because the police have not attacked them, they usually do not target the police. They are for the most part (in the classic guerrilla mode) defenders of the local order, and there would be little violence if the British did not enter the towns and cities where the resistance is strong. In these circumstances, the local population feels safe (when the British are not around) because they do not expect attacks from the resistance.
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