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              Could Iris Scans Stop a New Iraq Insurgency?
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
By Noah Shachtman | Iraq’s government and Sunni militias appear to be headed for a showdown. One of the things that just might keep a full-blown insurgency from erupting again, a leading expert in the region says, is a set of databases of fingerprints and irises, built by the U.S. military — and fed with data from Saddam. The extra troops get all the credit, in the dumbed-down political debate. But one of the biggest reasons for Iraq’s turnaround was the decision by Sunnis — many of them former insurgents — to begin backing the U.S., instead. They were organized into local militias, called “Sons of Iraq,” and promised government jobs, in return for the service. And just to convince the Sunnis that American forces had their best interests at heart, we they fed ‘em a steady diet of anti-Shi’a propaganda. But the jobs never completely materialized. And Iraq’s largely Shi’ite national government is slamming down on the Sons of Iraq, with apparently American backing. “Our goal is that by June 2009, the Sons of Iraq are out of business,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer said over the weekend. “It is obvious where this road might end,” Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl write in today’s Los Angeles Times. “The last time tens of thousands of armed Sunni men were humiliated in Iraq — by disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army in May 2003 — an insurgency began, costing thousands of U.S. lives and throwing Iraq into chaos. Yet Maliki and his advisors risk provoking Iraq’s Sunni community into another round of violence.” So what’s to stop another Sunni insurgency from boiling over? After all, “it doesn’t take 100,000 of these guys to revert to insurgents to cause big trouble. Remember, at the height of the insurgency, the U.S. estimated that there were 8,000-20,000 fighters,” Kahl — a Georgetown professor and a Center for a New American Security senior fellow — tells DANGER ROOM. Well, The Government of Iraq can make good on its promises to hire these militiamen. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki can hold provincial elections that give Sunnis a bigger stake in the political process. And Maliki can hope that the “high degree of ‘conflict exhaustion’ among Sunnis” stays high. The Iraqi government has one other card to play, says Kahl, just back from the Middle East. Over the years, the American military in Iraq has assembled a series of biometric databases; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis’ fingerprints and irises are stored inside. In Fallujah and other Sunni-dominated cities, the only way to get in or out is within a U.S.-issued badge, complete with this biometric info; that restricts potential insurgents’ freedom of movement. The Sons of Iraq have also been iris- and fingerprint-scanned; that makes them easier to identify, if they’re caught rejoining the insurgent team. Finally, the databases — partially built on the backs on Saddam’s crminal records — “provides a useful enemies list to the Government of Iraq, if they chose to use it,” Kahl says. That echoes what U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Velliquette told DANGER ROOM last year, when he said that the biometric info becomes “a hit list if it gets in the wrong hands.” Or the right ones. Have Your Say: Could Iris Scans Stop a New Iraq Insurgency? Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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