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Fear and Loathing
May 21, 2006: The new Iraqi government, finally assembled six months after the elections for the new parliament, finally gets to work. The long negotiations were a reminder, to both Iraqis and foreigners, that democracy isn't easy, and Iraqis don't come naturally to the give and take required to make it work. Americans in Iraq, especially those who go outside the wire to fight or aid in reconstruction, get a bit of culture shock once they see how Iraq functions in its natural state. Unlike the United States, trust is in short supply. This makes cooperation difficult, and violence a convenient alternative. Much more than the U.S., this is a gun culture, and always has been. While there is also a tradition of palaver and negotiation, it is backed by the potential for violence. Many Iraqis, raised on regular exposure to American movies and TV shows, think that the United States is the same. There is some disappointment, and not just about the violence, when Iraqis learn the truth.
The truth is that Iraqi is a beat up society that has not yet decided where it will go, and who will lead the move. That's why it took so long to form the new government. The new Iraq requires a lot of Iraqis to get familiar with new realities, and try to adjust to them. The main new realities are this;
@ The Shia Arabs, who are about 80 percent of the population, are in charge for the first time in five hundred years. That takes some getting used to. But the Shia Arab community is split into many factions (mainly tribal), which generally line up as either pro-theocracy (religious dictatorship like in Iran) or pro-democracy. Nearly all Shia Arabs agree that it is most important that they remain sufficiently united to keep the Sunni Arabs from taking control once more.
@ Sunni Arabs, the main supporters of Saddam Hussein (and many more Sunni Arab tyrants before him) may be out of power, but thousands of them, mainly men who used to work for Saddam, want back in. Not a government job, but the government. Control. To these men, the Shia Arabs are a bad joke, and will sell out the country to the hated (by all Arabs) Iranians. Many Sunni Arabs are Islamic conservatives, and no fan of Saddam, but they agree with the concept of Sunni Arab supremacy, mainly because they consider the Shia form of Islam to be heretical. And heretics must recant, or die. Sunni Arabs are only 15-20 percent of the population. They used to be closer to 20 percent, but increasing numbers of Sunni Arabs have been fleeing the violence, and Iraq. Most missed are the middle and upper class Sunni Arabs who form the backbone of the Sunni Arab community, and the Iraqi economy and business community. Harassed by gangsters and terrorists, these Iraqis are giving up on the new Iraq, at least for now, and heading to nearby Arab nations or, for the most disenchanted, the West. To many Kurds and Sunni Arabs, all Sunni Arabs should be expelled from Iraq. For these bitter victims of Saddams decades of abuse, Sunni Arabs have been the cause of most of Iraqis problems, and don't seem to have changed their attitudes much since 2003. But many Sunni Arabs have changed their attitudes, and are trying to work out deals that will give them a place in a democratic Iraq. But first, the Sunni Arab community has to purge itself of its thugs and gangsters. This isn't easy.
@ The Kurds are not Arabs, and don't really want much to do with Arabs, be they Shia or Sunni. For the Kurds, the Arabs have been nothing but trouble. While the Turks (who ran things for some five centuries) were bad, the Arabs (who took control of Kurdish northern Iraq in the 1920s) have been worse. The Kurds won't say it unofficially (they will unofficially), but all they want is the northern oil fields (or just the right to control new wells), and as little to do with Iraqi Arabs as possible. The Kurds share one thing with the Turks, a loathing of the Arabs. The Turks, who tend to be very disciplined and businesslike, considered the Arabs more prone to factionalism and vendetta. An old Turkish adage warned about getting involved in the affairs of Arabs. This is one bit of Turkish culture that the Kurds agree with. Meanwhile, however, they have to pretend they believe in a united Iraq.
@ The Americans won't go as long as there are Islamic terrorists in residence. The Americans would like Iraqis to settle all their differences, and live in peace and prosperity, but mainly the Americans want Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, to stop plotting violence against the United States. The Americans are, the Iraqis fear, prepared to stay as long as it takes. Moreover, the Americans know a lot more about what goes on in Iraq than they let on. American intelligence has collected, and continues to collect, a lot of information on what Iraqis are up to. American advisor teams are present in every Iraqi battalion, and these men report a lot about the Iraqi troops they are advising. All this information is analyzed to provide a remarkably accurate picture of the state of Iraqi politics, and society. It's largely kept secret, lest the process be corrupted by politics and media manipulation. What the U.S. intel picture shows is that the Iraqis are making progress, but it's slow going. There are so many traditionalists, or vested interests, that resist change, and resent the American presence.
Taming Tribal Militias
May 21, 2006: American advisors have suggested that Iraq might benefit from creating a US-style "National Guard." That is, locally-based troops with a dual provincial/national service liability. This would please the Sunni and Kurdish elements, who fear that full integration of their militias into the national armed forces would not only reduce their influence in the country, but also strip them of any capability of defending themselves. The National Guard is but one of many defining aspects of the federation that is the "United States" of America. Other nations have similar forces, but are usually just military reserve units that are recruited, and stationed, in the same area.
The Iraqi National Guard concept would, initially, see these reserve units on active duty a lot, at least until the Sunni Arab terrorism is eliminated. Thereafter, these regional militias would remain a reserve force. This would give the national government time to train their officers, and educate them to the importance of upholding the constitution and law and order, instead of just being enforcers for some local warlord.
Afghanistan has a similar situation, and may end up borrowing a similar idea from their neighbor, Pakistan. There, the government has long recruited a local security force, the Frontier Corps, which operates in the "Federally Administered Tribal Areas" of the northwest frontier. The Corps, which is heavily engaged against local tribesmen and elements of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, presently numbers 30-40 thousand troops, and is being increased to as many as 80 thousand. In addition, the government has decided to expand the "tribal police," who are recruited from the local people. While the tribal police are often corrupt and even collaborate with the resisting tribes, they offer a conduit into tribal society.
The tribes on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border are Pushtun. But the Pushtun of Afghanistan have long dominated national politics (and still do), while in Pakistan, the Pushtun are a rambunctious minority. But the Pakistani government has long managed to exercise some control with local paramilitary organizations like the Frontier Corps and tribal police.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Losing Hope About Winning in Iraq
The exodus of a portion of Iraq's population is a sign of defeat. The media wants you to think this means we are losing. But this is not the case.
The Sunni middle class is leaving Baghdad, it seems. The New York Times concludes this is a sign of things going to Hell in Iraq.
Me, I figured that the exodus probably consisted of Sunnis who used to benefit from the Saddam regime. The Christian minority, too, benefitted from Saddam who offered them some protection from Moslem hatred:
Yet throughout the article there is no hint other than identifying one man is a Sunni about who is leaving. Given all the ink spilled by the press on the subject of civil war, you'd think that they might say which portion is going. Could it be Sunnis? The article hints this might be so given that it mentions that Shia anger after the Samarra bombing is fueling the fear that propels leaving Iraq. So just how "ordinary" are these people? The fact that the family portrayed looks pretty well off might clue you into the fact that they had benefitted from Saddam's rule. Some might actually be former oppressers who deserve to worry after decades of face stomping orgies against the Shia and Kurds. But the Times wasn't curious enough to explore this angle.
And Strategypage does confirm that Sunnis are taking off:
Sunni Arabs are only 15-20 percent of the population. They used to be closer to 20 percent, but increasing numbers of Sunni Arabs have been fleeing the violence, and Iraq. Most missed are the middle and upper class Sunni Arabs who form the backbone of the Sunni Arab community, and the Iraqi economy and business community. Harassed by gangsters and terrorists, these Iraqis are giving up on the new Iraq, at least for now, and heading to nearby Arab nations or, for the most disenchanted, the West.
Like I wrote, it is important to recognize who is unhappy with Iraq' future. Well-off Sunnis are leaving or contemplating leaving Iraq. Given that the new Iraqi government is incorporating Sunnis into the government and not going on organized pogroms to get revenge for five centuries of abuse at the hands of the Sunnis, just who would flee now? Is violence in Baghdad new this year? Shouldn't Sunnis have been fleeing all along? Why is this a more recent trend?
The reason these Sunnis flee now is that these backers of the former regime of Saddam are probably losing hope that their killers can sweep them back into power with their campaign of terror and intimidation.
The fact that backers of the Baathists are now leaving Iraq is not a sign that we are losing. It is a sign that the enemy is losing. They see little hope of running things any time soon and are getting out of town before the new cops come around with war crimes and human rights violation charges in hand. They see that even Saddam is in the witness stand with his own life on the line and have no desire to follow him to the gallows.
So don't transform the fleeing Sunnis into poor oppressed victims. They are former neck-stompers who have given up on their dreams of continuing their neck-stomping. This is a good thing.
UPDATE: Instapundit, commenting on this post, rightly notes that those fleeing Iraq shouldn't all be lumped into the guilty category:
That's no doubt true for some. Others, though, are probably feeling pinched between pressure from the remaining holdouts (who, like guerrillas in general, put the most pressure on their own people) and fear of Shia retribution on a fairly undiscriminating basis. True, that hasn't happened yet, and probably won't, but I can understand why people wouldn't want to take their chances.
But still, the other two categories of those under pressure from the enemy to back the resistance and those who fear Shia retribution against all Sunnis show that these groups consider the Baathist and Sunni enemy are losing, too.
Consider the innocent Sunnis who are afraid of enemy pressure to support the insurgency. Surely they were afraid before, but they reacted to this fear by supporting the enemy--even if just passively. But now with the Baathists and Sunnis losing, it is no longer nearly as safe for these Sunnis to just give in to insurgent and terrorist demands for money, sanctuary, manpower, or information. So they leave in larger numbers.
And then there are those who simply fear Shia retribution. These people likely always feared Shia retribution. But as long as the insurgents looked like they might win, retribution would not happen. With the Sunnis and Baathists losing, these fearful Sunnis think they will lose all that stands between them and the official revenge campaign--however unlikely that may be. As Instapundit notes, it is not irrational to fear that. But the fact is, they do fear it now and are acting on the fear when in the past they did not.
For whatever of these three reasons the Sunnis are leaving, each certainly can be interpreted to mean that it is because the insurgency is losing and the Sunnis increasingly believe the insurgents are losing.
posted by Brian J. Dunn
