Saturday, December 23, 2006
Our Iraqi Allies
Recently, security in the Najaf area was handed over formally from the Coalition forces to a unit of the new Iraqi army (NYT, December 20). Let me quote from the description of the ceremonies:
“The general public did not attend. Much of the audience was made up of powerful tribal leaders, who sat beneath a sign that read: ‘We are the sons of those who drove the British out in 1920.’
. . .
As soldiers paraded by a reviewing grandstand, commandos with their faces blackened gathered for a demonstration of their courage.
Each man reached into his right pocket, pulled out a frog and bit its head off. They threw the squirming legs to the ground as the group’s leader held aloft a live rabbit. He slit the belly and plunged his mouth into the gash. The carcass was then passed around to the rest of the soldiers, who took their own bites.
It was explained later that this practice was especially popular among Saddam Hussein’s feared Fedayeen militia, whose members had done the same thing with live snakes and wolves.”
Let me not comment on courage Iraqi-style. But it is instructive that this supposedly Shiite dominated army unit was more than happy to reflect in their actions the methods of the supposedly hated true believers in Saddam’s forces. One should also notice that their elders identify with the nationalist movement, when they say that they “drove out the foreigners in the 1920s”. Of course, the rebellion failed and they did not “drive out the foreigners”. Never mind. They want to believe it and we are now the foreigners. (And a faction in Washington suggests that we end the war by siding with the Shiites? The Americans appear to be truly lost in the desert.)
For an interesting comparison of British problems in the 1920s with our present problems the reader might be interested in comments by T. E. Lawrence. The reader should remember that the British were putting down their insurgency with 90,000 troops against a population of three million; we are trying to cope with 26 million Iraqis. When Lawrence writes, the British were planning on sending more troops. Of course, there are differences, but still worth pondering.
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