http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA06Ak04.html
Jan 6, 2012
Sectarian conflict flares in Iraq
By Brian M Downing
Sectarian conflict in Iraq is again a concern as the Shi'ite government seeks
the arrest of a Sunni vice president whom they tie to an assassination team.
Implicit in the accusation is the charge that Sunni politicians were complicit
in a number of bombings over the past two years that have killed hundreds of
Shi'ites. At present, the conflict is political and judicial, but it may not be
settled by dialogue and legal rulings.
Sunni Iraqis want to establish an autonomous region in central Iraq; regional
Sunni powers, who oppose Iranian-Shi'ite influence, support that goal. Shi'ite
Iraqis want to keep the Sunnis a weak minority; their Iranian ally seeks to
punish the Sunni powers conducting clandestine warfare against it. There is
considerable danger of a return to sectarian warfare and also of regional
conflict.
The sectarian situation
Conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites has been part of the Mesopotamian region
ever since the time of the Ottoman Empire, when Sunnis, though a minority, were
politically dominant. Sunni pre-eminence continued as the British installed the
Hashemite monarchy after World War I and various politicians and generals,
including Saddam Hussein, came and went.
Saddam's ouster in 2003 led to an insurgency aiming to prevent Sunni
marginalization and Shi'ite dominance. Mollified temporarily by United States
and Saudi bargaining in the troop "surge", the Sunnis later faced systematic
arrests and exclusions at the behest of the Shi'ite government.
Over the past two years, a deadly bombing campaign has been directed against
the Shi'ite population and security forces, killing scores of people every
month.
The Sunni resistance differs from the old Sunni insurgency. It has no prominent
leaders or bold manifestoes; it has moved from dozens of tribal, Ba'athist and
army movements to a reasonably unified entity of nebulous leadership and
uncertain size. It generally eschews firefights and ambushes - commonplaces
during the insurgency - in favor of bombs. Puzzlingly, it only rarely attacked
US troops, though they were prime targets during the insurgency.
The new resistance's coherence and discipline suggest considerable indigenous
political organization and also substantial foreign support - almost certainly
from Saudi Arabia. Riyadh cautioned Washington angrily that ousting Saddam
would lead to Shi'ite and Iranian ascendance, and it now seeks to contain or
even roll back their power.
The conflict coming to a head in Iraq, then, is not simply a conflict between
indigenous Sunnis and Shi'ites. Amid concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions and
Shi'ite restiveness in Sunni-ruled countries, it has become part of the
geopolitical contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Prospects for a Sunni insurgency
Though outnumbered three to one in Iraq, the Sunnis have strengths and
resources that could make the impending sectarian strife protracted and costly.
Many of their assets stem from ties to Saudi Arabia, most of which are
relatively recent.
The largest of the Sunni tribes is the Dulayim of central and western Iraq,
whose martial skills and outlooks did not fade over the many decades of change.
The Dulayim were mainstays of Saddam's army and security forces but retained a
strong tribal identity that led to a ferocious insurrection against him in 1995
when some of its generals were mistreated.
As sheiks lost patronage and revenue from Saddam's state and young men were
unceremoniously demobilized from the army, Dulayim tribal networks played
important roles in the anti-US insurgency of 2006-2008, providing recruits and
leaders and supply links.
Those networks are nor confined to Iraqi soil. Fellow Dulayim in Syria
supported the insurgency; fellow Dulayim in Saudi Arabia did the same but later
were helpful in calming the insurgency during the "surge".
Dulayim men remain skilled in light infantry weapons and tactics, though
bomb-making is especially useful at present. They can fight in conventional
formations with Sunni units in the new Iraqi army should these revolt or as
guerrillas in irregular warfare and insurgency.
Sunni regions also have a formidable Salafi presence. The Anbar province town
of Fallujah has long been a center of that austere and militant form of Islam,
which is an unappreciated reason for its importance in opposing the US
occupation.
After the humiliating defeat in the First Gulf War (1991), Salafi thought
spread through Saddam's army. Soldiers saw the crushing loss as the result of
personal impiety and looked to Salafism as the path to personal and national
regeneration.
When Western powers became occupiers of Iraq, Salafists saw their duty. During
the peak of the insurgency, when Saudi and other volunteers had arrived in
numbers, Fallujah was virtually a Salafi theocracy with Wahhabi-like morality
police roaming the streets, menacing the unbearded and unveiled.
Fallujah and Anbar have been taken from Salafist control, but the consciences
and aspirations of Iraqi Salafis have not been eased. The intellectual and
financial wellspring of Salafism is Saudi Arabia, which has encouraged its
study as a means of spreading its influence through young militants. In this
respect, Salafism links various nationalities not only to Saudi religion but
also to Saudi geopolitics.
Salafist hostility to Western values is well known - so well known that it may
overshadow its hostility to Shi'ism, which it sees as an exceptionally
loathsome corruption of Islam. Salafis in Iraq share Riyadh's hostility to
Shi'ism in general and also to Shi'ism's political incarnations in Tehran and
now in Baghdad. They are the the most ideologically motivated soldiers in the
anti-Shi'ite forces coalescing in Iraq.
They mesh well with the anti-Iran states that Riyadh is coordinating among the
Gulf States. Anti-Shi'ite forces in Iraq will not lack funds or safe havens -
or plausible denials of foreign support.
Prospects for a regional war
A sectarian conflict in Iraq with one side backed by Iran and the other by
Saudi Arabia will be extraordinarily difficult to contain within the borders of
Iraq. The conflict could be used to (further) intimidate Iran or even as a
pretext to attack it.
All three principals - Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia - have large hydrocarbon
deposits; the latter two are key oil exporters, the other soon will be. An
enemy's oil fields, pipelines, and export terminals would naturally be tempting
targets with immense significance in world capitals and exchanges.
Granting the Iraqi Sunnis ambition for autonomy might seem a judicious or at
least an appealing way to defuse a dangerous situation, but two problems
readily stand out.
First, Sunni and Shi'ite regions are not cleanly divided, not even after the
murderous fighting of recent years, and the two faiths are interspersed in many
parts of central and southern Iraq.
Second, a Sunni autonomous region would, given the present regional alignments,
remain a haven for attacks on Shi'ite and Iranian targets. Neither Iraq nor
Iran wants another enemy, especially one with promising though undeveloped
hydrocarbon wealth and a slew of Sunni allies.
Events taking place in Syria are already shaping events in Iraq. The overthrow
of the Shi'ite Assad regime and the advent of a majority Sunni government would
bolster the Iraqi Sunni drive for autonomy and perhaps lead to their
integration into a Sunni-dominant Syria.
Alternatively, Iraqi Shi'ites may come down hard on the Sunnis and drive large
numbers of them into Syria where they may gladly help to overthrow the Shi'ite
regime there. The Saudis will be eager to assist in either scenario.
The looming conflict comes close on the heels of the US withdrawal from Iraq,
which left little goodwill for the US save in the Kurdish north - happily but
warily aloof from events to its south.
The Sunnis see the US as a foreign power that arrogantly and unwisely ended
their domination of the country. The Shi'ites see the US less as the power that
ousted Saddam and made Shi'ite rule possible, rather more as benefactor of the
Sunni tribes since the surge, as well as an enemy of Shi'ite militias, ally of
the House of Saud, and a linchpin of an anti-Iranian coalition with Israel and
Saudi Arabia.
Though US foreign-policy makers cling to ideas of intimidating Iran and
aligning Iraq with the West, the Americans might well be fortunate that Baghdad
has shown them the door.
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military
Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change
in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdown...@gmail.com
.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
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