A question of terminology,
As so many have said.
The Soviet/Russian conception of "snipers is " is probably closest to what the Iraqi partisans are using. That makes sense, really, given that the Iraqi army used primarily Soviet equipment and doctrine. And, of course, the fact that nowhere outside of the Army or security police would an Iraqi under the age of 40 have had the opportunity to learn to shoot well enough. It was a police state, after all. Armed citizens? Right.
As I understand it, with some few famous exceptions, none of whose names I can remember (or spell), the Soviet "sniper" was more like what we used to call a "sharpshooter", back in the Civil War. A member of a small unit, typically a better shot than the average infantryman, using weapons that have been selected out of regular issue production for improved accuracy, but not typically heavily modified, maybe a rugged, low-fixed-power scope, if anything. Such men are used to deliver precision aimed fire at particular (usually important, but not always) targets, as compared to the less-well-directed "area" fire of a line infantry unit. They could be deployed individually, dispersed around a larger infantry unit, in small teams, or en masse, as needed.
We wouldn't consider such men "snipers." I don't know that the US Army still fields "sharpshooters" in this sense. We used to, but may well have stopped. I did my time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club, so I'm not at all up to speed on current US ground-pounder doctrine.
All of which is a round-about way of trying to revive the term "sharpshooter" for this kind of person.
--Shannon
PS: The use of the term "partisan" is intentional. Not out of a desire for strict neutrality (or it's opposite), but in search of accuracy. It's the only term that seems to fit well. "Insurgent" implies someone trying to overthrow a government, and lots of these guys work for the government. "Terrorist" doesn't cover groups of irregulars fighting on behalf of some faction in the government, nor those who just want to get rid of "outsiders" in their lands, nor necessarily those who fit the definition of "insurgent" . There are groups in Iraq that fit any (and sometimes all) of these terms, but "partisan" was as close as I could think of to an accurate universal one-word label.
