IRAQ: Forecast calls for more violence, or not

There's an old Iraqi tale about a Baghdad native who moves to London and ends up never leaving the house because it rains so much. The joke is that as an Iraqi, he's used to staying inside whenever there's even a hint of inclement weather.

It's a commentary about Iraqis' attitude toward rain and cold. Indeed, they're notoriously squirmish about weather, sometimes opting to keep their kids from school even when there's little more than a sprinkling of rain outside.

Insurgents, too, seem to stay away during bad weather. Attacks always drop off somewhat during the rainy weeks of late winter, picking up steadily again in April.

Rain showers might increase traffic accidents in Iraq, but roads almost always become less prone to bomb attacks.

A Mahdi Army fighter once explained that his roadside bombs failed to work properly in bad weather, so he usually preferred to lounge at home when it rained.

Violence in Iraq dropped 60% since its peak last year, but the Middle East has also just experienced its worst winter in decades, with snow falling in Baghdad for the first time in recent memory.

Indeed, as the weather warmed and Baghdad temperatures began to heat up, violence began picking up. As Baghdad correspondent Alex Zavis reports in Tuesday's paper, violence exploded across the country Monday, with eight U.S. troops reported killed.

The idea was explored in an article by Michael Eisenstadt and Jeffrey White (PDF) that appeared in the May-June 2006 issue of Military Review:

Weather might likewise be a factor in the insurgency in Iraq, although the evidence is ambiguous. Thus, February and early March 2004 saw relatively low levels of insurgent activity, as did February and March of 2005. In both cases, insurgent activity increased after these winter lulls, which might have been caused by inhospitable (cold and/or rainy) weather conditions.

During the U.S. war in Vietnam, the authors note, the onset of the rainy season brought a slowdown in combat. In Iraq, a spring thaw might mean a spring offensive.

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: An Iraqi child carries an umbrella with a drawing of the old Iraqi national flag as he walks in the rain in central Baghdad earlier this winter. Credit: Sabah Arar / AFP / Getty Images

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[David M]

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 03/12/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.

http://thunderrun.blogspot.com/2008/03/from-front-03122008.html