Most western media show the Iraqi Insurgents wearing black ski masks, or some type of face covering. Why do they wear such masks? Or face coverings? Are they really concerned about their face being seen?
That’s a great question. I have nothin authoritative to add. It did occur to me, though, that wearing ski masks makes double-sure that said insurgents can effectively blend back into the civilian population at a later time. There’s no use letting coalition soldiers see one’s face – that only increases the chances of being positively identified later on.
However, the mask does work in the opposite fashion as well. If said coalition troops see a bunch of men with black masks on weilding a weapon, they can be relatively sure they mean them harm. They don’t even really have to think twice. However, if they were unmasked, one would think a soldier would have to think twice.
There are probably some strategic considerations to mask-wearing. When the element of surprise is needed by small number of insurgents for a given mission, perhaps they go sans mask.
Masks may also not have any real strategy behind them – perhaps they are the “colors” of given sects of insurgents.
A very good question. I suspect that it makes it more difficult for the locals to identify the troublemakers and then inform on them. They took a page from the KKK.
It appears likely that some undeterminable portion of the insurgents are part-time terrorists. These are folks that may hold day jobs and provide occasional support to insurgents.
See this news story: "Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “Part-timers are difficult to count, but almost all insurgent movements depend on cadres that are part-time and that can blend back into the population,” he said.
There also appears to be some sort of tradition or expectation that militants in the Middle East wear masks, although I am by no means able to confirm or explain this. Many of the terrorist groups associated with the Palestinian-Israeli violence routinely use masks (doubtlessly inspired for practical reasons), and even the Saddam Fedayeen - the Baathist, terroristic militia - often used masks before the war began. See pics here.
Thm asks might also serve a psychological purpose. Even if if you’re a homicidal maniac, killing people isn’t a very nice thing to do. Being behind a mask is a way of hiding from the truth.
Again, q.v. KKK
For one thing, in that climate a headdress and face covering is sensible and traditional considering the dust/sand and heat factor (you want to trap persperation). That partially explains the use of the kaffiyya to cover the face/head. Doesn’t explain ski masks of course.
For another, remember that they’re not just attacking the US but people who collaborate with US forces, and that could mean retaliation against their families in addition to whatever consequences they’d face personally. So I imagine they’re protecting the identities of their families (in effect) as well.
How did these people become “Insurgents” or “rebels” anyway? They live there and obviously don’t accept an occupying army nor has there been any sort of legitimate government established since Hussein was ousted… turn the tables and we’d be calling them “patriots” and maybe even “freedom fighters.” This is exactly the type of thing all those militia people train for in the US, and if some army somehow defeated ours and was occupying, say, Michigan and Texas, I’d expect to be seeing very much the same thing happening here.
I suspect that there are a large number of Baath party apparatchiks and security service officers who are currently unemployed, have few prospects for legitimate jobs, and will join any “resistance” group that will provide them with food, housing and a position of authority over ordinary Iraqi civilians.
You forgot the dental plan and Casual Fridays.
Well, there are people with guns in Iraq who faced few decent employment prospects at home and were happy to join an organization that would feed them, house them and give them some future and authority, although I don’t imagine any of them envisioned that being over Iraqi civilians. Those people are in the US and UK militaries. (My father joined the US Army for these reasons in the mid-60s, not expecting to end up in Vietnam either.)
Why is it so hard to believe that after a dozen years of missile strikes and sanctions that total up, in all likelihood, to a million dead out of a population of 25 million or so (meaning the average Iraqi knows people who were killed) that some people might be a little miffed at occupying forces (who have been pumping oil - the one resource of the country - out more effectively than doing anything else rebuilding-wise lately) and take up arms against them?
Think about it: we had a revolution over taxes on playing cards, newspapers and tea. Watching your son bleed to death during a siege or having a large % of your family taken out by an errant missile should be more than enough reason for the otherwise reasonable person to put on a ski mask and start shooting foreign troops in his country.
I wouldn’t think you’d want to trap perspiration. The evaporation of perspiration carries heat away.
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True, but it keeps you from dehydrating. Most of the desert-dwelling peoples of the world try to keep as much skin covered as possible; compare this with wet tropical peoples in hot climates, who tend to be scantily-clad tradionally.
I think you have summed up some of the insurgency, however, many of them are foreign fighters with paramilitary/military training. Many of them are under 25 y/o and are playing follow the leader. It is unfortunate that none of them are old enough to know that the post Saddam regime will bring them more than Oil for Food programs and a more legitimate sense of security.
I think the masks and face coverings do keep a certain amount of anonymity, but I would think the everyday Iraqi would not want bullets flying in their neighborhoods, and most know that the guys living next door are causing a great deal of that very thing.
In my mind they are cowards, and should help establish a free Iraq, and a nation with some semblance of power among the mid east nations…not keep fighting a battle they are sure to lose.
I think there is also an aspect of psychological attack here, the insurgents seem a lot less human with masks on than with off. The insurgents may feel they have a greater effect on both soldier and civvie through anonimity and inhumanity.
Assuming this is the case, and I doubt that’s true for the majority by a long shot, we’re also describing the American Revolution again. How many people would delegitimize our revolution because we couldn’t have won without the French, Prussian officers, Polish officers, etc.? These were also outsiders who sympathized in principle, whether we agree with it or not.
The age of the fighters seems rather to make my point; they’ve been getting attacked and sanctioned (we’re talking about pretty severe sanctions which casued a lot of young, elderly and already ill to die from lack of medical supplies and clean water in a country that used to have both) since they were 12 or younger. Now the people who were doing that (not the very same people of course, but poor American schlubs the same age who joined for college money and/or to get the heck out of North Bumblecrapville ) have finally showed up in person, on their streets with guns, instead of lobbing missiles overhead. They make ripe targets… the first real targets on the ground a lot of very angry people have had.
I’m really kinda amazed that people don’t seem to see that we’re very much in a Vietnam situation again, in which “hearts and minds” won’t be won over and in which the concept of “free” for “the enemy” once again means Yankee Go Home. … and yet, having lived that history just 30 years ago, the US is sleepwalking right back into the same situation. How many years were the Viet Cong reported as a tiny minority of outside troublemakers who we were just about to overcome any day now?
Nearly the entire length of the campaign if I remember correctly. Tho your common everyday Viet Cong did not have access to the internet, or mass media like the children born after Viet Nam have today. And it’s those kids born in the mid-seventies that are out there now in their mid to late 20’s fighting the American occupancy.
I think what we are getting at here, is that the masks are to hide themselves from the every day Iraqi, who would not think to highly of them taking up arms and causing danger for their friends and family.
I vote for:
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Concealment of identity serves to deny intelligence to the enemy. Who lived? Who died? Who knows? Is the guy in the Paris cafe the same guy from the Nairobi embassy? Unless you have photos of his face, you can’t be sure.
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Psychological shock value to viewers - immediate brand recognition of the death and destruction that these guys have brought to the world since the 1972 olympics.
Before we go establishing too many moral equivalents, you might consider that the American revolution was fought so that people could be free, and the insurgents are essentially fascists who are fighting so that they can put their own people under the boot. The insurgency is made up in large part of ex-Saddam thugs who have committed so many atrocities that they literally have nothing to lose - they either fight in the insurgency or wind up against a wall. Couple that with a LOT of foreign fighters (the U.S. has indentified plenty of them among the casualties in Fallujah), Islamist radicals who want to oppress their women and impose brutal and harsh religious laws on the people, and no doubt quite a number of disaffected youth - possibly ex soldiers who lost their means and a lot of face when the armed forces were disbanded by the U.S. - what I consider one of the biggest mistakes of the war. Those groups make up the vast bulk of the insurgency, IMO.
So no, they aren’t freedom fighters. They’re slavers, trying to take power. Any moral equivalence with the American Revolutionary is, to say the least, repugnant.
Perhaps it deserves its own thread, but this one makes me wonder: what are the Iraqi insurgents fighting for? They’re fighting against their own countrymen for…what?
While their goal ultimately was proved a flawed social construct, we at least had some idea of what the Viet Cong and NVA were fighting to achieve. Not just independence, but fraternity with the then communist sphere of influence.
Now we know we battle insurgents, but I’ve yet to see much that articulates their cause.
Well, they aren’t a single unified group. As far as I can tell, the only thing you can say about the insurgents as a group is they’re opposed to the foreign occupation and the folks who were put into power by the occupiers.