Note: Bush also uses a strategy to arm sectarian militias in Iraq to turn them one against the other however this policy is supposed a U.S. controlled chaos. This text speaks of a civil war outside the reaches of Bush’s approach. #msg-6272912
-Am
Why Sunnis blow themselves up By Spengler
Jun 14, 2005
Never in the course of human conflict have so many done so much so quickly to disillusion so few, referring of course to President George W Bush and his advisers. Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian leaders kicked away the props behind Washington's stage-set for democracy in the Middle East, all within the space of four days.
Hezbollah, after sweeping elections in the south of the country on June 5 in Lebanon's staggered polls, laughed at American demands that it disarm. Hamas holds the balance of power in Palestine after Mahmoud Abbas postponed parliamentary elections scheduled for July 17. Syria, meanwhile, went back to its usual business of intimidating local as well as Lebanese opponents. And on June 8, Iraq's Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders embraced the ethnic militias now engaged in a low-level civil war with the country's Sunni Arabs.
What should frighten Washington is not the quantity, but rather the character of attacks against coalition forces and their Iraqi auxiliaries. The resistance lost its capacity for frontal assault after Fallujah, but has undiminished capacity for suicide attacks, a method that bespeaks incurable desperation. As the chart below makes clear, the consistency of the coalition casualty rate suggests that a broader trend is at work, rather than a few instances of die-hard fanaticism. It is hard to obtain accurate monthly data for casualties among Iraqi forces, but they scale the same way.
Blowing oneself up to kill one's enemy is not the sort of gesture we expect from groups that have given serious thought to parliamentary democracy. The US authorities now admit that foreign fighters comprise an insignificant fraction of Iraqi resisters. It is not only the Islamist fanatics, but also the locals who walk into a crowd of Iraqi police recruits with a bomb belt.
Washington still refuses to believe that the Iraqis themselves are driving the situation toward civil war. Anthony Cordesman of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a May 12 draft entitled "Iraq's evolving insurgency", argues: Key insurgent elements include Arab and Islamist groups with significant numbers of foreign volunteers, as well as Iraqi Islamist extremists, like the one led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is unlikely that such groups make up more [than] 10% of the insurgent force, and may make up around 5%, but in some ways they are the most dangerous element in the insurgency since they seem to be deliberately trying to provoke a civil war between Iraq's Arab Sunnis and its Arab Shi'ites, Kurds, and other minorities. The insurgency already has long been a low-level civil war, and is being driven towards a broader Sunni vs Shi'ite conflict by Islamist extremists. [1] Cordesman, I think, has missed the point. Even if foreign Islamists provide more than their due share of the cannon fodder, Iraqi Sunnis are willing to kill themselves to get at their American as well as their Iraqi enemies.
No more than a dozen or so Sunnis engage in suicide bombings over the course of a given month, to be sure, and one might argue that these are singular individuals. But here the singularity defines the situation. What sort of population produces such a steady trickle of suicide bombers, much larger than the Palestinians sent against the Israelis? One cannot dismiss the suicide campaign of the Iraq resistance as Islamist extremism, because their leaders derive from Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, which drew on Nazism more than on the Koran. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka staged fewer than two dozen such attacks over the space of a decade. The Sunni rate of political suicide appears to be the highest in modern history, excluding a tribe or two of Amazon aboriginals. [2]
Evidently, the Sunnis see their prospects differently than does Bush. Rather than Wal-Mart and the Parent Teachers' Association, Iraq's Sunnis see an endless horizon of poverty and humiliation, such as they inflicted on the Shi'ites in the past. Since the British installed the Hashemite dynasty in the Mesopotamian province liberated from the Ottoman Empire, the Sunnis have held the whip hand against the Shi'ite majority. A few more seats in Iraq's parliament will alter their circumstances not a whit.
The Mesopotamian Sunnis, like Hezbollah or Hamas, well may understand their position better than does the president of the United States. Minorities that have withstood a thousand years of invasions, oppression and massacres now face a new and deadlier threat. During the past century, 2,000 ethnic groups have gone extinct, but an equal or larger number will go extinct during the next decade, as two spoken languages disappear each week.
Prosperity today comes at the price of leveling traditional relationships of all kinds, everywhere, that is, except for the oil-producing nations of the Middle East, where petrodollars have kept traditional society alive in a sort of iron lung. The oil producers did not have to send their young men to work in German factories, like Turkey, or their young women to work in German brothels, like Ukraine. The complex of tribal, religious and linguistic associations that divide the peoples of Iraq will not go out with a whimper, like cultures that the global marketplace slowly has eroded. Instead, they will go out with a bang.
Sudden impoverishment motivates men to fight to the death. In the modern era the most remarkable example is the American Civil War, in which died an astonishing two-fifths of Southern men of military age. The South fought for its "way of life", that is, for the fact or opportunity of membership in a leisure class supported by slave labor. [3]
Gaming the odds on civil war in Iraq has blossomed into a minor industry during the past few months. I wrote in January 2004, "No one in the Bush administration wants to let slip the dogs of civil war. On the contrary, the White House still hopes that Iraq will set a precedent for democracy in the Muslim world. Yet civil war is the path of least resistance." [4] This is tragedy, not malice or forethought, even if Bush comes across like an outtake from Aristophanes rather than a character in Aeschylus. Some in the Bush camp view the promotion of Arab democracy as an asymmetric bet. "Either it will be very good for us [if it works], or it will be very bad for them [if it doesn't]."
America lacks the cultural capacity to create the sort of military and intelligence assets that would be required to manipulate local events. Just 3,000 British officers staffed the British Raj in India, Sir John Keegan observes (in Intelligence in War), and they "wore a version of native dress, spoke Indian languages and prided themselves on their immersion in the customs and culture of their soldiers". No such imperial adventurers can be found among the Shi'ite militias (although there are a few advisers working with the Kurdish peshmerga).
I continue to argue, as I have for two years, that the meat grinder of civil war will reduce the numbers of those who would rather die than accept the mediocrity of their circumstances. Washington will make gestures to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Sunni resistance to no avail; the latter will demand that America fight them to the death. Reluctantly, Washington will have to oblige.
Notes [1] See www.csis.org/features/050512_IraqInsurg.pdf
[2] See Live and Let Die, Asia Times Online, April 13, 2002.
[3] See Happy birthday, Abe – pass the blood, Asia Times Online, February 10, 2004.
[4] See The Devil and L Paul Bremer, Asia Times Online, January 21, 2004
"We can never accept any process orchestrated from behind the scenes by the occupation," said Sheikh Abdel Salam al-Kubaisi from the committee. Such pronouncements should be taken seriously, as they have in the past provided a clear indication of the mood among the insurgents.
Imposed constitutions orchestrated from behind the scenes by the occupation do not work, Iraq has only to look at Nigeria.
Nigeria is an African Iraq suffering the dire consequences of foreign influence and an imposed constitution. #msg-3115754 #msg-6721353
-Am
By Ferry Biedermann
Jun 21, 2005
AMMAN, Jordan - Now that Sunni Arabs have been included, Iraq's parliamentary committee that is drafting the new constitution is the closest to an elected, representative body the country has ever seen. In the two months the committee now has to come up with the draft, and in the referendum that will follow in October, it will become clear if that is enough to stabilize the country and reduce the violence.
It is by now a truism to say that the Sunnis who ruled the country for centuries before the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago, despite being a minority, are largely responsible for the insurgency. They are said to chafe at their loss of power and, consequently, income, and are fighting either to restore their old dominance or to cut a better deal. The coming months should show whether the rest of Iraq can cope with these issues and whether this really is what it's all about.
Early signs are not encouraging, especially from the Sunni side. While members of the Sunni political, social and religious groups that negotiated the deal to join the constitutional committee voiced hopes that their participation would increase peace and stability, the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars denounced the deal.
"We can never accept any process orchestrated from behind the scenes by the occupation," said Sheikh Abdel Salam al-Kubaisi from the committee. Such pronouncements should be taken seriously, as they have in the past provided a clear indication of the mood among the insurgents.
The phrasing of the denunciation also chimes with what other pro-insurgency politicians have said: any deal that flows from the post-invasion structure of the country will be rejected. The only possible solution for the hard-core militants is either to return to the pre-invasion government or to a government dominated by them.
The hard core may not represent the whole Sunni population, and it is encouraging that the groups that negotiated participation in the constitutional committee in the end accepted a compromise of 17 seats. That will give them two more seats on the 70-member committee than the Kurds to whom they are roughly equal in size. But it is well below the 27 the Sunnis had demanded.
Iraq's Shi'ites make up approximately 60% of the country's 26 million people, with the Kurds and the Sunnis both at around 16-20%, and other minorities, such as Christians, making up the rest.
That the Sunnis have now joined the constitution drafting process is seen as a sign they are willing to join the political system after having largely boycotted January's parliamentary elections. They only hold 17 seats in the 275-member National Assembly.
Another positive sign is the apparent willingness of the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to embrace inclusiveness, albeit after US urging.
But powerful Shi'ite leaders, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have made very clear that they will not tolerate any challenges to the political dominance of their group in the new Iraq, based on their numbers. How much leeway he will give the Shi'ite politicians may well depend on how his more radical, and anti-American rival Muqtada al-Sadr reacts to the constitutional process.
All groups are restrained by the terms of the interim constitution under which the new one is being drafted.
The final document will first have to be approved by parliament, but then it will face a much tougher hurdle in a referendum that is set for October. In that poll, the draft will have to get the nod from at least 16 out of Iraq's 18 governorates. Four governorates have Sunni majorities, giving them a blocking vote.
If the constitution is rejected, new elections will follow and the process will start all over again, which may be an attractive option for the Sunnis, who feel seriously underrepresented, and for the insurgents, who could see a chance to wreak more havoc.
Ironically, this outcome may also suit the George W Bush administration since it would give the United States more reason to keep its troops in Iraq. Following a dip in support for the war among Americans, some lawmakers have demanded an early exit, by the beginning of next year. The Bush administration has rejected this.
Even without all this, it would be hard to see whether Iraqis can ever draw up a constitution that will reconcile the positions of all groups. Unfortunately, this has little to do with high-minded demands and more with a fight over the division of the spoils.
It is hard to see, for example, how Kurds and Sunnis will resolve their disagreement over the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by both. And will oil income from the Shiite south be shared with the rest of the country?
Will the presidency, the prime minister's position and central government ministries be assigned on a sectarian basis? And what about government contracts and jobs? That is what it is all about, with each group demanding its share and not having any confidence that a neutral system will emerge.
On questions of principle, the divisions run at least as deep. Kurdish autonomy is a foregone conclusion, but how about the role of Islam in the country? Kurds are dead set against it, Shi'ites are in favor of a strong Islamic flavor, and Sunnis are somewhere in the middle, in favor of their own brand of Islam but furiously opposed to what they see as the "Iranian" tendencies of the Shi'ites.
In the end, Iraq may not be able to solve all these questions, and the only thing that may really count is strengthening of the army and the security forces so that a central government can impose its will on reluctant parts of society.
Unfortunately, progress toward that goal is extremely slow and uneven. Iraqis who see that the government has no power to impose its own laws may be even less inclined to vote for a then-meaningless constitution.
The script was Brussels does Baghdad this Wednesday at an international conference of foreign ministers - co-sponsored by the US and the European Union - high on rhetoric and low on practical decisions, designed to support nation (re)building in Iraq as a "pluralist democracy". UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Iraqis should "take heart from this strong message of support".
Unscripted response in the streets of Baghdad: four car bombs, 32 dead, more than 50 wounded.
Behind all the diplomatic gloss, observers in Brussels say that nobody was really paying attention to the usual routine by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accusing Syria of destabilizing Iraq (Syria has 7,000 troops patrolling the border) or insisting that Iraq was "on its way to democracy".
What really counts is where the money is coming from - the crucial issue at a donor conference in Amman, Jordan, next month. For starters, one wonders whether any "donor" will dare ask the Americans what happened to US$8.8 billion of Iraqi money that "disappeared" under former proconsul L Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. For their part, wealthy Iraqi neighbors such as Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia will only pledge substantial financial help if Sunnis are represented en masse in the political process.
It's virtually impossible for US President George W Bush's Iraq to be "on its way to democracy" when real unemployment reaches a staggering 50% (a scarier prospect for most people than car bombs or snipers), 25% of children under five years old are malnourished, 78% of the households in the country (and 92% in Baghdad) have electricity only a few hours a day, only 37% of urban households (and a mere 4% in the countryside) have sewage-disposal systems, only 61% have access to drinking water, 5% of households have been destroyed by bombing or search-and-destroy missions, only one in 10 households in rural areas can be reached by a paved road, and more youngsters than in any previous generation are illiterate. This is the appalling legacy of the occupation - and the US and UN-imposed regime of sanctions in the 1990s.
Now, to complete the picture, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has just "discovered" in a classified report leaked to the New York Times that Iraq - rather, Bush's Iraq - is breeding the new, lethal generation of jihadis, just like former president Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters" were bred in the 1980s in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad. Anyone familiar with the invasion and occupation of Iraq knew this for a fact as far back as two years ago - at a time when Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld was, on the record, very happy with the idea of Iraq as the new jihad Mecca. The CIA report cannot but conclude that the new jihadis - who are now taking their higher education in urban warfare in the Sunni triangle - will be even deadlier than the famous Arab-Afghans. There was blowback in Afghanistan - after the US financed a jihad. There is now blowback in Iraq - after the US invented a jihad out of the blue.
The lies that lead to the killers The Downing Street memo - or memos - whose authenticity both Washington and London didn't even try to deny, have once again proved that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [Bush administration's] policy", in the immortal words of Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British M16. The memos once again proved that Bush knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction as well as no connection whatsoever with the attacks of September 11, 2001. The memos also prove, more lethally, that the British government viewed the invasion of Iraq as a war crime.
Whatever the spin, a majority of Americans are now finally starting to wake up to the fact that the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and corporate media simply lied about the whole Iraqi imperial adventure. George W Bush's response, on a June 18 radio address: we invaded Iraq because we were attacked - once again the non-existent connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam. Bush also said the war on Iraq would be won, despite "cold-blooded killers" trying to derail the US.
The "cold-blooded killers", as the CIA's Porter Goss would tell his friend Bush in an improbable, frank exchange, now exist because Bush's Iraq made them happen. And that's just part of the problem. American "intelligence officials" in Baghdad now are also "discovering" that Iraq's new security services, or the new Mukhabarat, largely responding to former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi ("Saddam without a moustache", in Baghdad parlance), are totally infiltrated by the resistance. These "intelligence officials" must have spent the past two years sipping martinis by the pool inside the Green Zone.
Iraq is the new Afghanistan in more ways than breeding a new generation of jihadis. The US has alienated Sunni Arabs in Iraq, just as it has alienated the Pashtun in Afghanistan. Sunni Arabs control the heart of Iraq's industrial economy, just as the Pashtun control the heart of Afghanistan's rural economy - based on opium-trading. The Pashtun will fight to the death against the remake of Afghanistan as a docile pupil of International Monetary Fund/World Bank dictates, just as Sunni Arabs - and many Shi'ites as well - will fight to the death the remake of Iraq as a US-controlled neo-liberal paradise.
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