IRAQ - THE ENEMY WITHIN

by Bernie Lopez

A US general in Iraq recently admitted in a CNN interview that they are helpless to control the worsening civil war in Iraq because the split in loyalty for Sunnis and Shiites has led to Iraqi soldiers fighting Iraqi soldiers.

 

After questioning several Iraqi policemen and soldiers, American forces have discovered that the splinter among Sunnis and Shiites is so deep that it has infected the entire hierarchy of the Iraqi police and army, from the lowly foot soldiers to the top echelons. This is a very dangerous situation that invites a never-ending conflict, a civil war which may have no solution except protracted carnage or partitioning. It is understandable if the conflict is among soldiers versus rebels. But once it becomes soldiers versus soldiers, the enemy within invites total anarchy.

 

Historically, the Sunnis were the minority elite ruling group even before the rise of Saddam Hussein. Hussein strengthened the Sunni role even farther under the Baath Party. The majority Shiites were always suppressed and massacred, that is why they hated Hussein. When Hussein was executed, it was the Shiites in the judiciary and police force who fast-tracked his execution in fear that some Sunni force from within the government might pre-empt the decision.

 

The arrival of the Americans and the fall of Hussein led to the weakening of the Sunnis and the rise of the Shiites. The US occupation forces campaigned to install a new Iraqi government through a democratic election, and create a corresponding police and army forces which will eventually take over when US troops withdraw. The minority Sunnis, with lingering loyalty to Saddam Hussein even after his death, were reluctant to join a government and share power with the majority Shiite. And so the Shiites took the majority of positions in both government and police-army forces.

 

The blunder really came from the Americans, not so much for creating a Sunni power vacuum with the fall of Hussein, and the consequent Shiite power group, but more for installing a 'democracy' that became the very catalyst to the further polarization of the looming Sunni-Shiite conflict. They were in fact, by the very essence of occupation, inadvertently cooking up the civil war. The American premise that democracy would integrate was wrong all the while.

 

This was further exacerbated by the obvious pro-Sunni stance of US troops, only because they feared the Iran-backed Shiites who were reciliently anti-American. In fact, most recent US-British military initiatives in Basra and Falujah, were against the Shiites. And so the Shiites in the army and police forces, the enemy within, had no choice but to react to the situation. The collution and intelligence coordination among Shiites rebels and soldiers has led to the killing of about a hundred Iraqi policemen in such a short time.

 

About 600 Iranian-backed Shiite militias suddenly vanished in an obvious guerrilla retreat against advancing US-Iraq conventional forces. In frustration, the US-Iraq forces arrested 500 suspects, but they caught innocent Shiite civilians loyal to Sadr but unarmed non-rebels. The rebels had gone. What will they do with these large number of ‘suspects’, jail them forever, since they cannot prove innocence or guilt? It is a dilemma worse than the invisible Vietcongs.

 

It seems that, from recent turn of events and US military actuations, it is better if the US leave right away because their presence is further worsening the Sunni-Shiite civil war. American presence is ironically splintering and destroying Iraq, not unifying it, and prolonging the war, not ending it. They have an illusion that the 'surge' is working to justify US presence to the anti-war activists back home. It is like using a cup to place the ocean into a beach hole. It seems the only solution to the Iraqi civil war is the last resort, namely, partitioning of Sunnis and Shiites, who are historically beyond integration. The other choice is a protracted civil war, as in Serbia, where more and more civilians from both sides will die.

 

Partitioning is the ‘last resort’ incision to contain terminal cancer of unending ethnic rivalry. It was used to solve the never ending war between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, between Muslim Kosovo and non-Muslim Serbia as the only way towards long term peace. It may be the only solution in Iraq.

 

A UN peace keeping force in Iraq will be useless. If you recall UN personnel were bombed by rebel Iraqis, so they left Iraq. A UN initiative begins with a total withdrawal of US forces, then a UN contingent not of soldiers but of diplomats to oversee the process of partitioning.

 

The Sunnis will resist this partition just as the Indians and the Serbs, as the dominant groups, did, because it means the loss of their domination. A partition would be along the lines of population density. The majority Shiites are in the north where the oil fields are, and the barren south is left for the Sunnis. Damn if we partition, and damn if we don't.

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