Interesting piece in the latest Time magazine about US negotiations with Iraqi "insurgents" (and I'm still not entirely comfortable with that phraseology - doesn't the word itself imply foreign rather than domestic fighters? Instead, it's most commonly used as a catch-all for "anti-occupation forces").

(NOTE: I stand corrected - turns out the word in most definitions refers only to those "rising in active revolt")


excerpt:

"Although they have no immediate plans to halt attacks on U.S. troops, they say their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the U.S. military's offensive in the Sunni triangle. Their model is Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which ultimately earned the I.R.A. a role in the Northern Ireland peace process. "That's what we're working for, to have a political face appear from the battlefield, to unify the groups, to resist the aggressor and put our views to the people," says a battle commander in the upper tiers of the insurgency who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Marwan. Another negotiator, called Abu Mohammed, told TIME, "Despite what has happened, the possibility for negotiation is still open."


Their choice of the IRA as a role model is telling - does that mean that they perceive a lack of political will for a protracted involvement on behalf of the US?

Just as Gerry Adams was able to exploit a desire on the part of successive British governments to "solve" the Northern Ireland problem by means of a negotiated, staged disengagement; have the Iraqi rebels - through whatever limited diplomatic contact - been made aware that the US wants to withdraw and save face in the short-to-medium term?

And interesting also that the motivations for both occupying forces to disengage was at least in part economic, rather than political. And what about that part of the population the occupying forces are theoretically "protecting"?

Let's see....