Submitted by mark kazais, Nov 10, 2006 18:11

The constantly increasing violence along with the little or no progress in the fight against terrorism in Iraq indicates that some important components are missing in the American strategy. One of those missing components is the secret police. Throughout history dictatorships have used both an army and a secret police to hold on to power. If effective, a secret police plays a crucial role infiltrating both overt and covert organizations and groups and identifying subversive elements. Under Saddam Hussein there was at work a highly effective apparatus with well trained professional agents as well as a large number of informants. Soon after the war was over the whole thing was eliminated despite there being an obvious need of people who knew well local terrain.

This need today is even greater and those people who were let go are still the best professional resource available. Of course, there are people with questionable loyalty among them and there should be some very stringent security clearance procedures in place. Recruitment and training of the new agents and informers would also be more successful if done by those they can trust. Considering high level of unemployment and a general poverty of the population there should be plenty of candidates to choose from. Israeli experience in the fight against terrorism shows what a network of well-paid and well-trained informers can do to help identify and eliminate a large number of terrorist leaders and thus drastically decrease violence.

The current situation in Iraq is so critical that it makes it necessary to adopt some laws which would severely punish all perpetrators of terrorist activities including a death penalty not only for the actual acts of terror, but also for aiding and abetting the terrorists.

Since the majority of the terrorist acts involves the use of the automobiles, a complete registry of all cars and their owners is necessary. The owners of stolen cars must report to the police immediately. Anti-theft devices installed in the cars could be a good solution.

Iraqi army and police must gradually conduct total house-to-house sweeps of those cities where most violent acts occur on a daily basis, confiscate all weapons and arrest all criminals.

To prevent entering the country from Syria and Iran it is necessary to recruit enough frontier troops to secure the border.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Army ended all operations against Shi'ite militias some time ago. As a result, their strength, popularity, and influence seriously increased. Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric whose Mahdi Army is the most numerous, might come to represent a danger equal to or greater than Osama bin Laden. It is absolutely essential to disarm all militias even if the Iraqi government is against it. There can only be one army in the country.

All those measures will require a very considerable outlay of money. Since a prevailing opinion is that an American taxpayer should not pay the bill this time, Iraqi oil reserves, the second largest in the world, will guarantee the repayment of the loans. If there is a chance of winning the war in Iraq, the country's stability is a key in it.

Mark Kazais

Email: mkazais@nyc.rr.com

Tel: (718) 886-8034

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