The Washington Post's Amit Paley files a report from Iraq today titled, "Iraqis Joining Insurgency Less for Cause Than Cash."
Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said he didn't join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a Muslim caliphate. He signed up for the cash.
"I was out of work and needed the money," said Abu Nawall, the nom de guerre of an unemployed metal worker who was paid as much as $1,300 a month as an insurgent. He spoke in a phone interview from an Iraqi military base where he is being detained. "How else could I support my family?"
U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations.
I have a feeling that this news is largely going to spun as further proof that the "surge" is "working," if only for that misleading headline, which implies that ideological motivations are somehow in decline. The article offers no evidence of this. But if there's good news to be found here, it's that there's evidence that the insurgency's coffers are running bare and that forces on the ground are having some success identifying and disrupting the flow of income.
But while the potential cashflow difficulties of the insurgency are something to cheer, it nevertheless remains impossible to view the ranks of anti-coalition forces growing with financially desperate, yet ideologically neutral, individuals as anything other than a bad thing. The piece quotes one Abu Nawall, a self-described "middle-management accountant for the insurgency" (the insurgents have corporate workflow hierarchies?) and killer of "four Iraqi police officers, who says, "Of course we hate the Americans and want them gone immediately...But the reason I and many others joined the Islamic State of Iraq is to support our families."
Of course, a strong, functional central government could play a big role in alleviating this sort of desperation (to say nothing of taking on the law-enforcement burden that's necessary to fully investigate and eliminate the insurgency's monies), but that's the key promise that the so-called "surge" has failed to deliver. In the meantime, our forces are being told, in all apparent seriousness, that, "A good way to prepare for operations in Iraq is to watch the sixth season of 'The Sopranos.'" Don't stop believing, I guess.