Monday, August 21, 2006

Time for Change in Iraq

Middle East Comment and Analysis

I initially supported the war in Iraq for various reasons, including that, like almost everyone else, I believed that Saddam was developing WMD. Now it is clear to me, and it seems to most people both inside and outside Washington that Iraq cannot be pacified with 130,000 or 150,000 American troops. Increasingly, US troops are caught between warring factions. The best solution is to encourage a federal system to be in place within a given period, then get the troops out. Let the Iraqis sort it out among themselves.

For several years, Sunni insurgents and Jihadists freely attacked both armed US soldiers and unarmed Iraqi Shi'a civilians with impunity. The result was that many thousands of Iraqis died. Now it looks that the Shi'a militias have finally taken the security of their people into their own hands. It also seems that many people trust them over the government to provide some security and, failing that, to exact revenge on the suspected Sunnis. Increasingly, the once-dominant secular Iraqi Sunnis are also vanishing into exile or into fearful silence, and the salafi Jihadists are dominating the region west and north of Baghdad.

This is a low-intensity civil war that can only expand and grow more intense. Already regional states are either playing a role or are getting ready to play a role in trying to affect the outcome. That includes Iran and Syria as well as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some of their Persian Gulf allies like Kuwait and Bahrain.

Iran is supoprting some of the Shi'a militias and the Gulf states, flush with oil money, are strongly suspected of financing the Sunni insurgents and Jihadists.

Like the old Spanish Civil War, Iraq may be a test run for a wider regional sectarian confrontation. Except it won't be purely sectarian. Many 'rejectionist' Arabs, most Arabs on the street if polls are to be believed, would side with the 'rejectionist' Shi'as if the Palestinian-Isreali issue is thrown in as well.

The Arab elites are split now. Most in the Gulf region are already openly calling for 'defanging' Iran, something that many around the world would like to see as far as nuclear capabilities are concerned. One conservative Kuwaiti newpaper, AlSeyassah, close to the ruling circles in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has already called for cutting off the 'head of the snake', a term clearly borrowed from the late Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi who called Shi'as in Iraq snakes. This is taken as an invitation for the United States to attack Iran, since no Arab army seems to be massing anywhere to the east of the Tigris river. The same newspaper also urged Saddam to attack Iran back in 1980.

Perhaps this time there will be a regiment of volunteers from among the children of these Gulf Arab elites who are urging American families to send their sons and daughters to fight their civil and regional wars.

Cheers
Mohammed

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