Iraq and Afghanistan

Today's paper has an Op-Ed whose purpose is to record for the month of April the many good things that were going on in Iraq during a period in which all we heard were reports of killing and mayhem. Some of these good news reports were important and I certainly had not heard them before, others were less so. I did not know that Iraq's educational television service began again on April 19 after a twelve year hiatus, that the inflation rate fell in March, or that nine residential districts in Diyala received new electricity supply through an energy-cooperation project with Iran.

Yet in spite of the good news items that we do not hear about, the killing remains out of control. Everyone now realizes that the attacks are by the Sunni Arabs (although al-Sadr's people still wave their fists at the Americans). The Shi'a remain restrained, but we are coming to realize that this restraint is explained by the fact that the government forces are nearly all Shi'a. Gradually, the fighting between the insurgents and the government has willy-nilly become a fight of Shi'a and Sunni Arab. In this, the worst fears of everyone are being confirmed. The situation is much worse than I thought if what I read today about the makeup of the commission parliament has set up to write the constitution is true. According to the story, of the fifty persons selected only two are Sunni Arabs (the same number as there are for the Christian community). This can only suggest to the Sunni Arabs that in a few months they will be living in a country in which they will have little or no say in what happens. In addition, many Shi'a on the popular level may want to use this opportunity for massive revenge. The Sunni Arabs are well aware of the danger. The United States is reported to be so concerned by the increasing Sunni alienation that they are increasing their pressure on the government to give the Sunni Arabs more of a say. But what we can accomplish in this manner is limited and all sides know it. We have been applying this pressure for months with little result. And if we apply too much pressure, everyone turns against us.

So it appears that we have a sectarian war on our hands. We call it an insurgency against a democratically elected government. This may make us feel good, but this is not the way the Iraqis and particularly the Sunni Arabs see it. I do not have a ready solution. Maybe it was simply inevitable, something that should have been foreseen more clearly than it was. Again, I would think there could eventually be a division of the country that could be a basis for an end of the insurgency. But I do not see this in the cards now, particularly when the watching world would condemn any result that destroyed the "territorial integrity" of the country (a sacred concern for the international community).

The continued toll in the Iraq war has occasioned some rethinking of what we are up against. The number of attacks and their sophistication continues to increase, and any number of optimistic statements that this must be their last hurrah ring increasingly hollow (even though they may be true --remember the Tet offensive). While much is still unclear, the consensus is that the old Baath-Sunni leadership generally calls the shots and arranges the finances. The preferred tactic these days is the use of suicide bombers driving vehicles. The insurgency is said to have a stockpile of such vehicles, some already loaded. In addition, they have large stockpiles of munitions from which more can be made. The people carrying the weapons appear mostly to be foreigners recruited for the war against the crusaders. Some, however, may be Iraqis who are compelled to play this role (by, for example, threats to family members that are in the hands of the insurgency).

One result of this latest understanding is a major offensive against insurgent areas near to the Syrian border. This area near Qaim has been the known source of infiltration for a long time. I was surprised to see that the Coalition had not secured the area long ago. This is another one of the costs of simply not having enough troops. We and our Iraqi allies need to be able to go into such critical areas in force and stay there. Campaigns, such as that in Falluja, are often not the answer. (However, the situation in Falluja in spite of everything is actually much improved over the situation when we went in.)

It is a war of Sunnis against everyone else. Yet it is more complex than that. Many in the Sunni leadership are actually secular, as are Baath leaders in general. Interviews suggest that the fears of the Sunnis includes some mixture of having to live in a theocracy and losing their leading role in Iraq to the Shiites. One interview suggests that the Baath-Sunnis also see the struggle as developing into one between Iraq and Iran. They even suggest that many of the bombers are set up by the Iranians as a way to cause trouble. And they thoroughly believe that the new Prime Minister is simply a tool of Iran. One does not have to believe any of this to understand the rather dark implications of such beliefs. My own experience in the area suggests that even more than most peoples, the Muslims believe what they want to believe: talking them out of it is often impossible.

In many ways, President Bush represents a dream of democracy advocates come true. He is willing to crisscross the world bringing the message that the job of this century is to democratize the world and the United States has taken it upon itself to be the leader in this enterprise. Unfortunately, his inconsistencies and reliance on others in the administration with other agendas makes the message less credible than it should be.

He lectures Putin on the need for more democracy and the correctness of the American policy directed toward supporting emerging democracies on the periphery of Russia. He seems to say that successful states in the modern world must be democracies, states that have "freedom of worship, freedom of the press, economic liberty, the rule of law and the limitation of power through checks and balances". However, at the same time, he continues to support the authoritarian regimes in Pakistan and Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia for economic reasons or because of the help they afford us in the war on terrorism. Most glaringly, he does not lecture China or Singapore on the necessity for democracy.

The latter failure is traceable to the desire of many in the Bush Administration to continue the cold war against Russia. From their perspective, old friends in that war, such as China and Pakistan, are not to be lectured to or interfered with, while antagonists in that war, such as Russia, are to be surrounded and pressed on all sides until they follow our direction. Even from a democracy perspective this is a dangerous strategy, one that risks a backlash. Right now, Putin seems willing to go along grudgingly. The latest exercise in Moscow seems to have gone well on the atmospherics level. But if Putin does not, there are many others in Russia who will raise the nationalist banner to everyone's detriment. We see from recent events in Latin America how alliances and good feelings can wax and wane.