After one reads things such as this:
Immediately after Saddam was toppled in the Spring of 2003 thousands of Badr Brigade militiamen flooded back across the border from Iran, along with their political leaders who’d spent years waiting for this moment. They wanted the new Iraq to become a pro-Iranian, Islamic country where the Shia, who are 60% of Iraq’s population, would also be the dominant political force.
And:
Those consequences became clear very quickly. In June 2004 an American soldier, Kevin Maries, was looking through his sights of his sniper rifle from his usual position on the top floor of the Ministry of the Interior building when he saw Iraqi police commandos bring hundreds of prisoners into a Ministry compound directly below him.
He took a series of astonishing photographs through his rifle sight showing what happened. ‘They were forced onto their knees, beaten with rubber hoses,’ he remembers, ‘The beatings got more severe, a metal bar was used and they were beating the soles of their feet’. When he thought some of the prisoners might die, Kevin alerted his unit and American troops turned up to stop the torture. But an hour later US Headquarters ordered them to withdraw and leave the prisoners to the mercy of their captors. As far as Kevin knows, most of the prisoners were later moved to an official prison but only after they were beaten again.
And after one reads the news that people are being murdered in Iraq just because they have the name ‘Umar:
For police in Baghdad’s Al Adil neighborhood, the 14 corpses looked like the products of just another night’s work in Iraq’s sectarian war. All were young Sunni men, all had been killed with a bullet to the head, and all were found tossed into a garbage dump.
Only when they noticed their identity cards — carefully placed on the victims’ chests — did officers realize what else they had in common. All shared the same first name: Omar. The victims’ only crime, it seemed, was to be namesakes of Imam Omar, a prominent historical figure in the Sunni religious tradition.
Does anyone honestly believe that if the United States and her allies left Iraq today that all this killing would simply stop? That the Iranian-infiltrated Iraqi Ministry of Interior would just ask its death squads to politely refrain from killing Sunnis? That the people who are murdering Sunnis simply because their parents named them a revered companion of the Prophet Muhammad would just stop?
I don’t profess to have the answers to these questions but it does make one wonder whether we have reached a point in the Iraqi conflict where, having unleashed the genie of sectarian violence, the presence of huge numbers of Western troops isn’t acting as some sort of bulwark against an even greater crisis. For example, the only reason we are even hearing about what is going on is because the presence of Western troops means a presence of Western journalists and there continues to be a lot of attention paid to Iraq.
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As the days go by it looks more and more hopeless for the region as a whole.
The only humane solution I can find would be to break Iraq into 3 countries, the Kurdish North, The Sunni West and South West, and the Shiite South and South East.
That would not stop the blood shed but it would severely decrease it. But also risk opening up a Pandora’s box and starting a regional war anyway.
Iran will want influence over the Shiite country, and the Arab nationalists amongst the Shia would reject this.
Turkey will declare war on Kurdistan (Iran and Syria would most likely be involved).
Syria and Saudi Arabia would compete for influence amongst the Sunnis of Anbar. (The Syrians seem to have influence in the al-Awdah block whilst the Saudis seem to have influence in the clerical block Association of Muslim Scholars).
The risky part would be the process of each regional power settling into its region of influence.
The other option would be to allow the ex-Baath General to retake the country, let them purge the Mahdi Army, Badr Brigades and Al-Qaida in Iraq and let Iraq return to a Socialist Dictatorship allied with the Arabs. This is done whilst the US begins talking to Syria and prying it away from Iran could work wonders.
And then come the answers anyway. The correct (verbal) response to this is to admit that all we are left with is the most pathetic kind of ignorance:
There are no factual “answers” because we – like Iraqis themselves – have no idea what’s going on. (Everything must be prefaced with “might,” “maybe,” “perhaps.” Everyone who has not done this has turned out to be wrong in their predictions-cum-”facts.”)
There are no moral “answers” because Iraq is now a moral vacuum. It is the ultimate existential nightmare. Talk of lesser evils in x or y by The Armchair Generals is little more than phantastic musings, signifying nothing.
Since the invasion, we’ve all been saying “America out, America out” but then what? Maybe things will become worse or maybe they will improve?
It’s depressing.
Of course, none of us can be absolutely sure as to the “truth” of what is going on or what will happen. However, the question is relevant to Muslims in the West because many of us and our leaders have been engaged in ‘activism’: calling for the US to leave, Australian troops to come home, etc. In light of Iraq’s descent into what E. Mariyani describes as the “utlimate existential nightmare”, we probably need to work out whether, to mix metaphors, we are going to keep singing from the same songbook or whether its time to change our tune.
In its most elemental form, intelligence can be defined as the capacity to act in ones own interest, the degree of which can be further defined by the time into the future one is willing to delay gratification, to achieve ones ultimate aims.
Using this measure, Iraqi Sunni Muslim leaders have their brains in their backsides. They should have been supporting US troops from the very start and become loud supporters of a open pluralistic society and a strong federal government with an independent senate based on ethnicity and religion.
But like most contemporary Muslims, they are self indulgent to their emotions, which are manipulated by demagogues. So Sunni’s opposed the one thing that could safeguard their interests from a Shia clergy run from Iran, The US army.
Congratulations!
When Iraq descends into chaos that engulfs the whole region, the Sunni decadents of Iraq can hold the head up high, as the pilots of the ship who steered it directly into the iceberg, without flinching.
I sometimes wonder if a Sunni/Shi’a bloodbath was actually part of the neocon plan for Iraq. Perhaps they thought that it would discredit Islamists in both communities, just as the carnage of the Thirty Years’ War was a major factor in secularizing Europe.
Steve Forbes on Iraq:
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