a voice of reason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:45:45
+0530
From: "a voice of reason" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Abdus Sattar Ghazali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"abdul wahid" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Subject: Only One Thing Unites Iraqis: Hatred of the US!!!
Only One Thing Unites Iraqis: Hatred of the US
By Patrick Cockburn , The Independent. Posted December 14, 2007.
The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra,
that they have few permanent allies.
As British forces come to the end of their role in Iraq, what sort of
country do they leave behind? Has the United States turned the tide in Baghdad?
Does the fall in violence mean that the country is stabilizing after more than
four years of war? Or are we seeing only a temporary pause in the
fighting?American commentators are generally making the same mistake that they
have made since the invasion of Iraq was first contemplated five years ago.
They look at Iraq in over-simple terms and exaggerate the extent to which the
US is making the political weather and is in control of events there. The US
is the most powerful single force in Iraq but by no means the only one. The
shape of Iraqi politics has changed over the past year, though for reasons that
have little to do with "the surge" - the 30,000 US troop reinforcements - and
much to do with the battle for supremacy between the Sunni and Shia Muslim
communities.
The Sunni Arabs of Iraq turned against al Qa'ida partly because it tried to
monopolise power but primarily because it brought their community close to
catastrophe. The Sunni war against US occupation had gone surprisingly well for
them since it began in 2003. It was a second war, the one against the Shia
majority led by al-Qa'ida, which the Sunni were losing, with disastrous results
for themselves. "The Sunni people now think they cannot fight two wars -
against the occupation and the government - at the same time," a Sunni friend
in Baghdad told me last week. "We must be more realistic and accept the
occupation for the moment."
This is why much of the non-al-Qa'ida Sunni insurgency has effectively
changed sides. An important reason why al-Qa'ida has lost ground so swiftly is
a split within its own ranks. The US military - the State Department has been
very much marginalized in decision-making in Baghdad - does not want to
emphasize that many of the Sunni fighters now on the US payroll, who are
misleadingly called "concerned citizens", until recently belonged to al Qa'ida
and have the blood of a great many Iraqi civilians and American soldiers on
their hands.
The Sunni Arabs, five million out of an Iraqi population of 27 million and
the mainstay of Saddam Hussein's government, were the core of the resistance to
the US occupation. But they have also been fighting a sectarian war to prevent
the 16 million Shia and the five million Kurds holding power.
At first, the Shia were very patient in the face of atrocities. Vehicles,
packed with explosives and driven by suicide bombers, were regularly detonated
in the middle of crowded Shia market places or religious processions, killing
and maiming hundreds of people. The bombers came from al-Qa'ida but the attacks
were never wholeheartedly condemned by Sunni political leaders or other
guerrilla groups. The bombings were also very short-sighted since the Iraqi
Shia outnumber the Sunni three to one. Retaliation was restrained until a bomb
destroyed the revered Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra on 22 February, 2006.
The bombing led to a savage Shia onslaught on the Sunni, which became known
in Iraq as "the battle for Baghdad". This struggle was won by the Shia. They
were always the majority in the capital but, by the end of 2006, they
controlled 75 per cent of the city. The Sunni fled or were pressed back into a
few enclaves, mostly in west Baghdad.
In the wake of this defeat, there was less and less point in the Sunni trying
expel the Americans when the Sunni community was itself being evicted by the
Shia from large parts of Iraq. The Iraqi Sunni leaders had also miscalculated
that an assault on their community by the Shia would provoke Arab Sunni states
like Saudi Arabia and Egypt into giving them more support but this never
materialized.
discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few
permanent allies.
ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
---------------------------------
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
