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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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