generalspeaking

Tribal, Sectarian Enmities

"My heart goes out to the Iraqis. The innocent always pay the bill": the words of a departing American warrant officer as the last 500 U.S. troops left in a secret night-time convoy to cross from Iraq into Kuwait. A small number of American troops will remain in the country, their purpose being the protection of the immense, sprawling American Embassy and its large diplomatic staff.

The trifling war to unseat a dictator and free a people from his tyranny, the second-tier reason for invasion over nine years earlier, which was to have ended almost nine years earlier, has now, technically, ended. For the American invaders and their 'coalition of the willing' international supporters, that is. The tribal, sectarian enmities that the forced departure of Saddam Hussein unleashed is yet another kind of war.

One that broke into active, brutishly bloody carnage when Sunnis stalked Shia neighbourhoods in Iraq's cities, and Shias reciprocated by visiting Sunni neighbourhoods and creating bloody massacres there; each challenging the other for the levels of primitive brutality they descended to. The nation cowered in fear and loathing of the presence of outsiders, and of the misery and death they themselves gifted one another.

If it wasn't outright, no-killings-barred civil war, it was pretty close to it. The death toll soared. Iraqis slaughtering one another. The shocked and bewildered international troops hardly imagining how they might deal with it. And to add to the excitement, the incursion, mostly through Syria, of al-Qaeda militants who took it upon themselves to mercilessly murder both Shia and Sunni.

Leading, finally, to an improbable alliance of Iraqi Sunnis with American troops in a joint determination to defy the killing splurge of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq. The Sunni-American-troop coalition worked wonderfully well. Until that time when the U.S. military turned them over formally to the government forces which chose not to accept them for the most part into the regular Iraqi military of mostly Shia.

The 'interim' government, comprised of Sunni, Shia and Kurd representatives strove to work together for the welfare of their country. Rather than consider seriously what looked like a solution at one time; the division of the country between all three factions, and the further division of oil production profits so one faction would not be favoured too heavily over the others.

That did not occur; instead the determination to work together with equal representation in a new kind of Iraq, one which rationally recognized the need for equality between its people to be paramount in a new, civilized 'democracy', took precedence. And Iraqis began to feverishly wish for the foreigners to vacate their land. But for those who feared the consequences when they did.

The hundred vehicles and 500 American troops silently left the country, giving no advance notice as to timing. Lest they be attacked by insurgents. For the new, pacified Iraq hosts insurgents, otherwise labeled terrorists who indulge in suicide bombings and other modes of self-expression as radical Islamists cleaving to death and martyrdom; for themselves and their victims.

The U.S. warrant officer who declared his sympathies with the Iraqis left behind, the friends made, the interpreters who worked for and with the Americans, knew intimately that all was not well. It was predicted, by some within the administrations - both American and Iraqi administrations - that the Iraqi government was succumbing to a crisis situation.

Distrust, treachery, hatred and revenge, for the Sunni and the Shia both seek the advantage, neither trusting the other, neither fully committed to set aside their heritage of customary antipathy for the greater good of the country and its people. Each convinced the other has evil intentions that will give the ascent to themselves and the other will suffer loss of honour, they plot against one another.

Sunni MPs walked out of parliament with the news that the Shia-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki had ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice-president, claiming that he was responsible for a car bombing in the centre of Baghdad in the government compound last month. Two of Tariq al-Hashimi's guards have already been arrested.

And al-Maliki has called additionally on MPs to withdraw confidence from another Sunni leader,the deputy prime minister, Saleh Mutlaq, who had publicly described al-Maliki as a "dictator", who happened to be "worse than Saddam Hussein". The stage is obviously set for a showdown, setting the sects at one another's throats. Once again.

And this time there is no Saddam Hussein to maintain dictatorial order. And there will be no assemblage of professional and neutral foreign troops to maintain civil obedience to the concept of Arab 'democracy'.

Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islam, Traditions, Troublespots, United States

posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 19, 2011