The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.
Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.
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Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.
I don’t know what the solution is either, but I do know that brutalizing and displacing the entire population won’t make the average Palestinian friendlier to the Israeli cause. Say what you will about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but at least they attempted to be more surgical.
Anything else is more surgical than basically unconcentrated carpet bombing of the Gaza cities a few times over. But yeah, at least the U.S. had a bit of “hearts and minds” approach.
The U.S. also had local opposition fighters to help them gain sympathy from the local population, and we were actually trying to nation build.
You can say that Fatah is basically that for Israel, but they aren’t fighting in Gaza. If the fighting in Gaza was being done by Fatah, then global perceptions would probably be a lot different.
It would also probably involve less civilian deaths as Fatah would be much less likely just to bomb a neighborhood to get 10 Hamas fighters as opposed to actually fighting for it and taking casualties which is what Israel is currently doing.
Of course, this couldn’t happen under the current Israeli government. They barely trust Fatah with enough weapons to be policemen in the West Bank, let alone enough to take a city of 2 million.
“local” is a relative word their “local” fighters were generally ppl from north who didn’t even speak pashto and were looking for a paycheck and required local translators and were seen as foreign us backed fighters themselves. Whatever truely local opposition they managed to create in southern rural areas were an integral but small part of the afghan fighting force . Their english translators required translators themselves in a lot of the rural areas because they didn’t speak the language just like the westernerns. . Thats why they folded and lost very easily once us support ended they had very few truly “local” fighting force that were from the areas they were supposed to defend.
Yeahhhh Afghanistan was a shitshow. We were actually nation-building, not just nation rebuilding like we did in Iraq, a lot harder to create a national identity out of several tribes and ethnic groups than it is to change/“modernize” a nation like we did in Iraq.
Even Iraq had that issue with the sectarianism, but atleast almost everyone spoke the same language (sorry Kurds). Iraq had also had a national identity beat into them by the monarchy and then the Baathists, which probably helped as well. Afghanistan never really had that.
there are many more tribes languages and groups in iraq though. That is why they are pretty federated as well and usa only controls and occupies certain areas not all of it today. the westerners only know about kurds mostly and don’t really understand the differences between other groups ( kurds I think were mentioned heavily in your media during the 80s and again in 2010s ( also they occupy some of the oil rich areas )Not everyone ( yes I know you said almost ) speak the same language or share the same identitity or even the same arabic dialect . From turkmens ( 5-6 mio) to assyrians to the yezids shabaks marsh arabs (7-8 mio) to different sub tribes of same tribes etc… etc… etc. and even more arab groups with totally different world views and politics that come from vastly different regions. so that ALMOST is a big overstatement in terms of how different iraqis are + the fact that you basically gave the country to the iranian backed political groups which forms the backbone of a lot of political parties - security forces and businesses clashing with the rest of the very diverse iraqi society whether shia or sunni.
Yeah I was aware of the other ethnic/religious groups in Iraq, but haven’t done enough research into them (except the Yazidis, ISIS made us get exposed to them in the west). I know about the Iraqi kurds and the factionalist fights they have, so it would make sense if the rest of the country was similar.
My point was really that a state structure already existed in Iraq, all the U.S. had to do was seize it while not damaging it too much in the process. (Or doing something stupid like idk firing the entire military and all the teachers and anyone remotely tied to Baathism) Afghanistan would’ve taken far, far, far, more effort.
Possibly a bigger mistake than invading in the first place. Not completely sure how it could’ve been avoided without an endless occupation, but there had to have been a better solution than letting them fund opposition groups, and then letting them be one of the key military components against ISIS with the PMF system.
Well the point I am trying to emphasize is the state structure you keep mentioning was already an oppressive subjugation machine created with “to an extent” cia support, favoring certain groups and erasing the culture language and needs of all of the rest (mostly non arabs or not the right kind of arabs) . Because before that there was General Qasim and he wanted to side with social-democrats and the iraqi communist party. That is way he was assassinated in 63 by the ba’athist with cia and egyptian support, back then ba’athist were the more acceptable option for the west and then in 79 Saddam took over did the ba’ath party purge which took the country to full on authoritarianism and severed ties between iraq and syria ( making them both more susceptible to outside intrusions ). There wasn’t an identity , just a lot of massacres and people who are afraid of speaking out or acting out ( or their villages got bulldozed gassed.) . Saddam was the state structure it wasn’t like some organic thing existed through a shared nationalist identity.
Oh you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said. Sadam definitely wasn’t some good leader that united the country, and I know we helped put him in power to stop the Iraqi Communists.
I’m just saying that the oppression had effectively held the country together for decades, and so when we arrived, stuff was a little more stable, and then we fucked it up.
Afghanistan had already been going through a civil war for a long, long, time. I wasn’t making any value judgements like “Saddam is good”, I was simply saying that Iraq was an easier situation than Afghanistan.