It must have reached its boiling point and Samawa, a quiet town south of Baghdad, just broke loose. Quiet dissent transformed into mayhem with the town’s usually calm streets turning into scenes of uproar and anarchy.
Samawa has never been a hotbed of insurgency. But it was the residents’ cry for services that suddenly moved the populace to ‘rebel’, in their own way, out into the streets.
The pandemonium was largely undirected and uncoordinated but that basically was what should make the Samawa case a matter of concern for every administrator. Civil unrest can happen anywhere in Iraq at any given time. Lawlessness is just around the corner. Quick police action quelled the riots although it cost one death and injuries to dozens of protesters.
But the incident definitely does not end there. It could be just the beginning.
Lack of services can make an entire town lose control. It breeds lack of trust in a people supposed to be placing their faith in some mode of governance, or some entity that can keep things in order. Hapless Samawa citizens saw nothing of that. They sensed nothing of a functioning government that promised them basic necessities. Thus the only alternative left apparently was to take to the streets.
Ironically the Samawa residents staged the uprising just as US secretary of state Condaleezza Rice was announcing in Washington that the insurgency in Iraq was losing steam. Hers was a debatable statement. Insurgents were just on their murderous rampage last month with casualties claiming the lives of Arab diplomats and more than a dozen US marines.
Upon closer look, the steam of insurgency in Iraq may actually be boiling hot. The non-delivery of basic services long promised by the forces that deposed Saddam is only feeding the rebellion to win more allies to their side.
Samawa becomes a test case and the message this incident brings to policy-makers in Iraq – including Rice, the boys from Washington and Iraqi politicians – is that fighting insurgency is not the sole mission of the day. Fighting insurgency by force can only be effective with a concomitant policy to provide the basic services to a people supposedly ‘liberated’ from a tyrant. Any deadline to secure peace must be matched with every deadline to restore to the community the provision of basic services such as power, water and food.
At the rate things are going in Iraq, and at the poor rate the services are being provided, the danger of insurgency lurks in the occupied country. The danger of armed resistance to the US-guided government can occur regardless of political blocs, religious affiliations or ethnic groupings. Any community long deprived of its needs can become an army of guerrillas overnight.
Discontent as they say is the mother of all rebellions.