A Jordanian company has vowed to pull out of Iraq in response to the demands of kidnappers who hold two of it’s employees. A Saudi Arabian company did likewise a few weeks ago. I can’t help but wonder if these companies aren’t feeling a sense of relief to have a legitimate excuse to get out of Iraq. With operating costs so high due to the need for massive security, it is possible that the companies are making very little or losing money in Iraq, as well as placing all their personnel at extreme risk. Collier Lounsbury writes that even Halliburton might be losing money in Iraq.
In a demonstration of just how much territory they control, an Iraqi rebel group has announced that they will close the vital Jordan-Baghdad highway in 72 hours:
Militants bent on disrupting the supply chain to the U.S. military threatened Tuesday to cut the highway linking Iraq to Jordan in 72 hours and said it would hit at Jordanians as well as Americans.
The threat, from a group calling itself “The Group of Death,” was made in a video obtained by Associated Press Television News. The video showed seven men wearing black clothing and masks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rifles.
The group’s warning comes amid a wave of kidnappings of foreigners, mainly truck drivers, entering Iraq from neighboring countries to deliver supplies and other cargo needed for this war-ravaged nation’s reconstruction effort.
A militant who read a statement on the tape criticized Jordan, Iraq’s western neighbor, for letting trucking firms enter Iraq to support the U.S.-led coalition.
“We consider all Jordanian interests, companies and businessmen and citizens as much a target as the Americans,” the speaker said.
You might remember that the insurgency successfully cut off US military supply routes before, to the point that Bremer and the rest of the Fortress Green Zone occupants were eating MREs. Clearly, the guerillas are slowly isolating the Americans by driving businesses out of Iraq, assassinations and attacks on collaborators, and relentless attacks on US military positions. Consider this bit from Knight Ridder’s Tom Lassiter:
“After more than a year of fighting, U.S. troops have stopped patrolling large swaths of Iraq’s restive Anbar province, according to the top American military intelligence officer in the area…. In the wreckage of the security situation, [Army Maj. Thomas] Neemeyer [the head American intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, the main military force in the Ramadi area] said, U.S. officials have all but given up on plans to install a democratic government in the city [Ramadi], and are hoping instead that Islamic extremists and other insurgent groups don’t overrun the province in the same way that they’ve seized the region’s most infamous town, Fallujah…
“‘The only way to stomp out the insurgency of the mind,’ [Capt. Joe Jasper, a spokesman for the 1st Brigade] said, ‘would be to kill the entire population’… Pointing to a neighborhood outside the town of Habbaniyah, between Fallujah and Ramadi, he said, ‘We’ve lost a lot of Marines there and we don’t ever go in anymore. If they want it that bad, they can have it.’ And then to a spot on the western edge of Fallujah: ‘We find that if we don’t go there, they won’t shoot us.'”
“If they want it that bad, they can have it.” How long before this line is in a Bush or Kerry speech?