Sunday, November 26, 2006
Insurgency or Civil War? When Will It End? How Will It End?
Today's paper discusses at great length the controversy over whether what we have in Iraq is a civil war or something else. The Bush people do not want to say "civil war" because they fear that the American public would be even less likely to back the effort in the long run if it were so designated. The difficulty in deciding this matter is compounded by the fact that violence in Iraq represents several different types of "things" at once. There are revenge killings at every level, from personal to sect to Iraqi versus American. There are planned killings by Sunnis against Shi'as, but also of groups within each of these groups against one another, and occasionally (in Mosul and Kirkuk) against Kurds as well, or Kurdish Islamists against the secular Kurdish majority. There is also a lively "war" of the nationalists and their Islamist and Shi'a allies (temporary or not) against the Coalition forces (a nativist movement if you will). To me, this is the "real war". To us it is an illegal war against the opponents of a duly established regime; to the insurgents it is a war of national liberation.
Whatever we may call it, today's paper also brings some of the most discouraging news we have heard for a while. It quotes from a SECRET study by the Pentagon. (We read a lot of SECRET stuff in the papers these days; I wonder what the country would do if it was really in a "serious" war again and it made a critical difference if papers stamped SECRET got out as easily as they seem to today?) The study concludes that the insurgency is able to raise all the funds that it requires for its present level of activity from within Iraq. Funds are obtained primarily by kidnapping and smuggling, especially of petroleum. The importance of the demonstrated ability of the insurgents to support themselves within Iraq is that many observers, including myself, were hoping that the time would come when the millions stolen by Saddam and his people and the weapons caches they had placed around the country would begin to dry up. This evidently is not happening. Indeed, for a while the insurgents did rely in part on these funds and supplies (primarily brought in from Syria). But the report says that such outside sources are no longer necessary. The report also confirms the excellent organization and resiliency of this primary insurgent movement.
Again I will remind readers that because the Sunnis are a minority does not mean they are the inevitable losers in a sectarian war. A much smaller sectarian minority has managed to dominate Syria for many years. A much smaller percentage of the Sri Lanka population has managed to fight off its government for years, and even within its own Tamil minority, it has had to contend with a large, less extremist Tamil group including many in government. Tutsi minorities famously dominate their societies in Rwanda and Burundi. If, then, the real enemy in Iraq remains the Baath-Sunni alliance (and to add confusion, some former Baath are in fact Shi'as), then the result of sectarian violence plays right into their hands. Sectarian violence has confused the Americans, causing them to fight the best organized competitors to the Baath in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. Every member of this Army we kill, the fewer the Baath nationalists will have to kill after the Americans leave. AND by shifting our attention in this way, the Baath is able add to the calls from the American home front to bring the soldiers home. (They know what they are doing; they read our papers.)
As and when we eventually leave, the Baath-Nationalist-al Qaeda forces may be able to fill in behind us. As they begin to exert control over larger and larger areas, the only group standing in the way of a restoration of a refashioned Baathist tyranny will be the Iranians. At first, they will try to help their co-religionists by increasing support for Shi'a militias. But if this is not enough, they will send in regular army units. These forces will be the best available to save Iraq from itself, preserving, ironically, the constitutional state that we erected. But although they will have much better trained and equipped forces than the locals, their efforts may eventually fail for some of the same reasons ours have been failing. For the more they actively intervene, the more the old Baath will be able to turn nationalist fury against Iran, as Saddam was able to do in spite of atrocities against his own people. Iraqis of all kinds would again be mobilized against foreigners, this time labeled the "Iranian-American alliance". Or so the story might unfold.
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