Iraq, what are we looking at here?

[Brother None]

If I was John Uskglass here, my biased hatred for the other side would make me smugly predict the death of thousands as American policy in the Middle East churns out the failures many of us have long since predicted. AKA "it begins".

Thankfully, I'm not John Uskglass. So without further ado, from Reuters:

UNDER PRESSURE

At least 450 people, by the most conservative official estimates, have been killed in sectarian bloodshed since then.

The government has ordered thousands of police onto the streets of Baghdad, backed up by U.S. troops, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties are uncertain in the face of sectarian militias to which many once belonged.

Jaafari is also under pressure from Sunni, Kurdish and other leaders threatening to seek his removal as the price for joining a national unity coalition -- seen by U.S. officials as the best hope for stability that would allow American troops to go home.

Opponents have also questioned why Jaafari failed to act on a warning from his own security staff about possible attacks on shrines, given two weeks before the Golden Mosque was destroyed.

U.S. and Iraqi leaders accuse al Qaeda militants of bombing the shrine to drag Shi'ites into a civil war that would wreck U.S. plans. Some Sunnis say Iranian-backed Shi'ites did it to justify reprisals against the Sunni Arab minority.

Sadr, a youthful cleric with a following among poor Shi'ites, led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004 that won him allies among Sunni rebels. But many Sunnis now blame his Mehdi Army militia for attacks on Sunni mosques this past week.

Sadr denies any involvement in reprisals against Sunnis and has called for joint Sunni-Shi'ite prayer services.

But appeals for calm have not halted the bloodshed.

Gunmen killed a Sunni imam in a mosque in the southern, mainly Shi'ite, city of Basra at dawn, the Muslim Clerics Association, a Sunni organisation, said.

Six Iraqi soldiers and three policemen were killed at a checkpoint in northern Iraq late on Wednesday night in an attack that again highlighted weaknesses in the U.S.-trained forces.

The assault, near Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, took place hours after four police officers travelling in a convoy of unarmed recruits were killed in an ambush north of Tikrit.

A roadside bomb exploded near a police station in southeastern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.

Three years after he invaded Iraq to topple Saddam, the crisis has jeopardised President George W. Bush's hopes of pulling out some of his 133,000 troops before mid-term elections in November. It also threatens turmoil across the Middle East.

MSNBC did a reasonable piece on it too.

We've got a bodycount of 329 from this sectarian violence officially, which is already pretty scary if we ignore realistic estimates like Washington Post's 1300. Angry populace, ineffective government rife with internal strife, disliked occupational forces, are we seeing Iraq flung into civil war?

In the meantime president Bush visits Afghanistan for the first time, congratulating them on being an example to democracy, ignoring the fact that for the past years president Karzai has been the mayor of Kabul and nothing else and being downright insulting in the face of the fact that the Taliban are currently strengthening their hold. Whispers even have it they might be mounting counter-offensive movements soon.

In other news, the Palestinian Authority would be bankrupt if not for the EU's intervention, but the EU won't keep this up forever. Bankrupt PA means a total disintegration of what's left of Palestinian society, and anarchy (sorry Wooz) inevitably leads to more violence.

Let's not mention Iran.

Oh, and where's Osama bin Laden? I haven't seen him, have you. "We will capture him," Bush repeats, but it's been 4 years and I have little doubt bin Laden will still be a free man when Bush leaves his little throne, no doubt partially thanks to Bush's short attention span preventing him from doing a proper sweep of Afghanistan.

Couple this with Bush's ineffectual homeland security policies and disastrous immigration policies, the only plus one could argue might be on economics, but that's pretty subjective. Are we all under the freedom-flag of what history will remember as the Wors President Ever®?

And what about the next one? Remember Lyndon B. Johnson? A fine president, *fine*, at least from the democratic's point of view. But he was left with the poisonous heritage of the only president possible more stupid and terrible at his job than George W., John F.K.

Will this be true of our next president too? Faced with two options, to continue Bush's policies leading to more horrors, like Johnson did with Kennedy, or try and slowly build off and go hands-off, which would spell yet another boat-load of shit. Bush is digging a hole deep enough for the whole world to stay in for the next ten years.

Hurray?

 

[Paladin Solo]

When you live in a world populated by nearly 6.5 billion people, someone will tend to fuck it up.

 

[John Uskglass]

democratic's

It is Democrat's.

I don't have any hope for the Mid East any more. Frankly I just want to get off oil so we can embargo the entire area and watch them devolve into the barbarity the Islamofascists long for.

I'll be a hippie before I say that we pull troops out of Iraq though.

 

[Carib FMJ]

The Middle East will eat itself up, right now with Sadaam out of the way, they are using the ultra fascist means of securing power --- Iran's brand of Islam is spreading and I am sure Osama and his gentlemen are gaining ground, so the war will expand, just where the boarders lie will be confusing.

If the Soviets were still around the Middle East would have turned their attention that way, but since there is a vacuum, someone has to fill it.

 

[Brother None]

I don't have any hope for the Mid East any more. Frankly I just want to get off oil so we can embargo the entire area and watch them devolve into the barbarity the Islamofascists long for.

Heh, oh yes, barbarity of Islamofascists.

Still dodging the subject there, eh John. Did they destabalize out of themselves? Did they just up and jump off a cliff? Who decided to fuck up the NPT by dodging India in? Who decided to force the Palestinians to have elections? Who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan half-arsedly throwing both countries into long-term turmoil?

But sure, "islamofascism". Answer to everything.

I'll be a hippie before I say that we pull troops out of Iraq though.

Because of all the good you're doing?

 

[Arquebus]

Buy Norwegian oil instead!
The profits goes to my pension fund!

 

[John Uskglass]

I don't like these arguments anymore, but for old time's sake I guess I have to.

Did they destabalize out of themselves?

That's bullshit. No political incident is isolated globally.

Who decided to fuck up the NPT by dodging India in?

Bullshit, India is a functional democracy, let them have nukes. They may need them if Musharraf is ever deposed.

Who decided to force the Palestinians to have elections?

The PNA was as bad as Hamas, and at least when Hamas turns out to be corrupt and insane it will be thrown out of office and loose popularity. Stupid ideas tend to fade away when they are actually tried.

Who invaded Iraq

We did.

and Afghanistan

The entire West did that.

half-arsedly throwing both countries into long-term turmoil?

Afghanistan is doing much better today then it was during the Taliban, and the problems we have there have more to do with the fact that we are paying way too much attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan.

But sure, "islamofascism". Answer to everything.

You are slipping into Eurosexual "Blame Ourselves/West/US" routine again Kharn. It's not cute. Islamofascism evolved through local as much as western influence, and the Western influence was primarily from the Nazis, Vichys and Commies, not us.

Because of all the good you're doing?

The action-pulling out- is wrong. We owe it to Iraq to at least TRY and KEEP TRYING to help them get on their feet.

 

[Sander]

The PNA was as bad as Hamas, and at least when Hamas turns out to be corrupt and insane it will be thrown out of office and loose popularity. Stupid ideas tend to fade away when they are actually tried.

This just screams for a Godwin.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

The PNA was as bad as Hamas, and at least when Hamas turns out to be corrupt and insane it will be thrown out of office and loose popularity. Stupid ideas tend to fade away when they are actually tried.

This just screams for a Godwin.

Only a nazi would say something like that.

 

[Paladin Solo]

Godwin's Law sounds like Nazi propoganda...

HAH!

Seriously, though, it's idiotic to proclaim that just because you're using a historical reference to try and prove a point, you are automatically debunked from the debate... Sounds more like whining to me.

 

[Carib FMJ]

Nukes in the middle east are pretty scarry, especially where Israel is concerned, since the '70 muslims in that region have been chanting death to Israel.

 

[John Uskglass]

This just screams for a Godwin.

The Nazis where at the healm of the captial of the intellectual, technological and cultural world in one of the three greatest countries on earth at the time. Palestine is a shithole full of people with nothing left but the will to eek out an existance while killing as many Je....Zionists as they can.

If you need a visual comparison, lookie here:

is not
Please, please, please take medium-resolutions into account

 

[Sander]

The Nazis where at the healm of the captial of the intellectual, technological and cultural world in one of the three greatest countries on earth at the time. Palestine is a shithole full of people with nothing left but the will to eek out an existance while killing as many Je....Zionists as they can.

This in no way counters my point that stupid ideas don't just fade away when tried. And the nazis happen to be the perfect counter-example, since they had a crap-load of stupid ideas. All this does is say that the nazis were in a better position and where better at economically controlling a country.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

and where better at economically

Jeez, now you're doing it too...

 

[welsh]

Whoever has the long sig had best fix it or be banned.


War!
Whooo
What's it good for?
Absolutely Nothin'
War!

Civil War!

Ok, where are the defenders of US foreign policy when you need them?

Oh yeah, John Kerry is way to pessimistic! Why? Because he thinks we can fuck this thing up!

ANd sure enough! We did!

I find it really hard to be pissed off with all the Bush supporters from the last election. I mean the guy from Slingblade can do a better job as president than W.

Sunnis and Shias
Does it have to be war?
Mar 2nd 2006 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

Iraq is the obvious example, but not the only one, of new and alarming hostility between the two faiths.

And so the new madness sweeps the world. One that has disown science and rationality for fanaticism and superstition. Christians, you're probably next.

EVEN before the invasion three years ago, there were warnings that the shock of violent change could fragment Iraq into ethnic and sectarian parts. Iraqis themselves have tended to dismiss such fears. But the spectre of a civil war, pitting the historically dominant Sunni minority against the newly enfranchised Shia majority, is now looming, most alarmingly.

In the early morning of February 22nd, saboteurs overcame guards at the Askariya shrine at Samarra, north of Baghdad, an important site of Shia pilgrimage. The explosives they planted did more than destroy the gilded dome that hoods the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams in what most Shias believe to be a divine chain of leadership among descendants of the Prophet. The bombs ignited an unprecedented spate of sectarian bloodletting. At least 500 Iraqis have lost their lives in the past week alone, cut down by suicide bombs or summarily shot, for no reason other than that they belonged to a different sect from vengeance-bound vigilantes.

If we assume that this move is meant to trigger civil war, and even if we were to argue that this is the last effort of desperate insurgents...
Even if... A civil war in Iraq means that the US foreign policy was a disaster.

The current upsurge in violence may yet be contained. Some Iraqis even speak of the events as a wake-up call that could prompt a general retreat from the precipice. But there is a seeming inexorability to the circle of attrition that began in August 2003 with the bombing of another Shia shrine, the mosque of Imam Ali at Najaf, which killed a prominent cleric and some 85 of his followers.

Calls for calm from Shia leaders, effective at first, lost their appeal over time. Shadowy Shia groups began to hunt down individual Sunnis. One recent scandal revealed the existence of an underground prison in central Baghdad, where Iraq's interior ministry, now led by members of a Shia political party, routinely tortured scores of suspected Sunni insurgents. Militant Sunni factions, bent in their turn on revenge, have caused even greater grief. Accusing Shias of collaborating with Iraq's western occupiers, they have targeted them singly and in groups, at mosques, funerals, bus stations and anywhere frequented by the nascent police force largely manned by Shia recruits.

Minority vs. majority politics comin! More bloodshed expected.
The US failed to create a viable political order in which all major parties were willing to become constitutive members. No one was willing to give up armed violence, and once begun it is only more difficult to stop the chain of violence from escalating, especially as the central power has no control.

So... this means that Bush is a fuck up.

The violence has clearly driven a wedge into Iraqi sensibilities. In each election since the toppling of the Baath party, voters have opted in ever-greater proportion for parties with explicitly sectarian platforms. These parties have taken over government ministries, and turned them into fiefs manned by their supporters. In regions such as the environs of Baghdad, where the two sects overlap most closely, sectarian slayings have prompted fearful households to move to zones where their own sect predominates—a sparse but grim evidence of ethnic cleansing.

Absent the state's ability to provide basic security, individuals will look to alternative bodies of authority to achieve that protection. What you have is called by Job the the "insecurity dilemma" and which, if unstopped, leads towards state collapse as the state becomes increasing ineffectual and irrelevant to the lives of the people within that state.

Things might not have turned out this way, were it not for the sequential misfortunes of recent history. Discrimination against Shias was pervasive but generally mild before the cruel and turbulent rule of Saddam Hussein. His regime, dominated by Sunni clans from his home town of Tikrit, not only persecuted religious Shias, but systematically crushed alternative bases of Sunni power. Its collapse left Sunnis, many of whom were bitter opponents of the regime, with no credible leaders to resort to except for religious ones.

SO does this mean we should put Saddam back into power? Or perhaps a Saddam clone?

Because obviously the US is not doing it.

A recent, authoritative report by the International Crisis Group explains how three subsequent years of occupation aggravated such divisions. It notes, for example, how American administrators alternately overestimated the influence of the secular Iraqi politicians they favoured, and unwittingly empowered religious factions by applying sectarian formulas to government appointments.

Iraq's experience may be unique, yet it is far from being the only example of tension between Sunnis, who make up 85% of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, and the multiple sects of the Shia minority. In places as far apart as Pakistan and Lebanon, a centrifugal momentum appears to be exacerbating sectarian feelings. The emergence of revolutionary Iran as an ambitious Shia regional power, and potentially as a nuclear-armed state, has combined with the coming to power of Shias in Iraq to encourage greater assertiveness by Shias in the many countries where they have been historically disenfranchised.

This, in turn, has aroused the awareness of Sunnis to what many see as strangers in their midst. Shia empowerment has been matched by the evolution of radical Sunni chauvinism. Saudi Arabia's Wahhabists, for example, have always taken a dim view of Shias, but this has been amplified by the country's oil wealth (which happens to be in the region where Shias live), and twisted by some into the violence of terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda.

Living together, amicably
In fact, throughout most of Islam's 14 centuries, the Shia-Sunni divide has been peaceful. Geography, for one thing, largely separates the sects. Both the far west and east of the Muslim world are solidly Sunni. Moroccans or Indonesians hardly know what a Shia is. Egyptians or Bangladeshis have little knowledge of what Shias believe. Shias have tended to cluster in small, often isolated communities in the centre of the Muslim world—in the Levant, the Indian subcontinent, Yemen and the Gulf—and on the Arabic-, Turkish- and Urdu-speaking fringes of historic Persia.

But wait a minute. Does this really matter? I mean you got sects of all sorts of religions that generally live in peace with each other. Can we really say that this is because of some Sunni-Shia differences in opinion?

That's bullshit. It's one thing for people to disagree on religion. But it's quite another for them to start bashing each others' brains in with machete's over that difference in opinion.

In terms of basic rituals, such as prayer and fasting, the two are not radically different. Before the modern era, the practice of Sunni Islam in many places was imbued with folk beliefs, such as veneration of Sufi saints, that softened the contrast with Shia customs. In mixed cities such as Baghdad and Beirut, the sects often intermarried. Some Iraqi tribes include clans from both. And while at times Shias have thrived under Sunni rule, in Mughal India for example, Sunnis fared well during the reign of the Fatimids, an illustrious and tolerant Ismaili Shia dynasty that ruled Egypt, the Levant and the heart of what is now Saudi Arabia from the 10th to the 12th centuries.

Tit-for-tat wrecks a Sunni mosque

More recently, concerned Muslims have made sincere attempts to reconcile the branches. In 1959, for example, the Grand Sheikh of Cairo's al-Azhar University, the foremost seat of Sunni scholarship (founded, incidentally, under Fatimid rule), issued a fatwa that officially recognised mainstream Shiism as a legitimate school of thought.

In India today, the Shia scholar, Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, has won a large following among both Sunnis and Shias with his passionate calls for Islamic ecumenism. Mr Sadiq often declares that the two branches share 97% of their beliefs, cautioning that extremists from both sides are as big a danger to Islam as its infidel enemies. Both Sunni and Shia leaders in Iraq frequently call for national unity. Less comfortingly, evidence has emerged of radical elements in the Iranian regime giving furtive aid to extremist Sunni groups, allowing the passage of some al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Yet the danger of conflict has always existed, ever since the murder, 29 years after Muhammad's death in 632AD, of the Caliph Ali, who was the Prophet's son-in law and the father of his grandchildren, Hassan and Hussein. The word shia derives from the Arabic shi'at Ali or the partisans of Ali, and referred at first to the political faction that believed leadership of the Muslim community should remain in the hands of the Prophet's family. When the caliphate passed instead to a rival branch of Muhammad's tribe, other disgruntled groups, including many non-Arabs recently converted to Islam, joined the Shia cause, which drew further emotive strength following the martyrdom of Hussein at the hands of a Sunni army.

Hey Fuck that! So what if the Caliph Ali got murdered. The Jews murdered Christ!..... Well you know....

Come on folks, this is all bullshit. People don't need to even like each other to live with each other. Something has to push people to want to kill each other in large numbers.

How it all began
Over time this political division deepened into doctrinal splits, with each branch elaborating its own interpretations of sharia, or religious law. Sunni Muslims preserved their unity by coming to accept four rival, but equally valid legal schools of varying rigour. Shia Islam followed a different course. It continued to split into subsects over questions of whom to recognise as the imam, a leader whose blood links to the Prophet were held to render him an infallible interpreter of God's will.

Whereas the Zaydis in Yemen recognised only five succeeding imams, Ismailis recognised seven, and Jaafaris 12, before the line of the imamate passed into occlusion, meaning that the imam is hidden but will one day return. The Jaafari, or Twelver branch now predominates among Shias, while most Ismaili communities are small and scattered, although esoteric offshoots of Ismailism, such as the Druze and Syria's Alawites, remain concentrated in the mountain redoubts of the Levant, their historic refuges from persecution.

While often remote from each other in beliefs, all these Shia sects retain relatively defined clerical hierarchies. The Jaafaris, who make up around nine in ten Shias, sustain a loosely church-like clergy through the application of a tax. The faithful are expected to pay one-fifth of their personal profits every year to whichever of several rival ayatollahs they choose as a marja, or source of authority. This tax base has given the Jaafari clergy both power and independence, while the pressure of constituents' choice has pushed them towards relatively innovative interpretations of scripture. In imposing laws over such things as inheritance and marriage, their rulings appear sometimes to be guided by practical considerations as much as by sanctified texts.

You better watch it or I am going to jihad your ass!

Sunni clerics in Iraq have tended to view the pursuit of jihad against the occupation as a binding religious obligation, but clash with each other over how best to pursue it. Most Shias, by contrast, have bowed to the quiet words of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's foremost marja. His counsel has been that although infidel invaders are a threat, their presence is likely to be temporary, so there is no need to oppose them physically so long as their presence brings some benefit.

Clerical agendas
There is a powerful subtext to such arguments. The main benefit that the ayatollah has in mind is an end to centuries of Sunni domination, culminating in Mr Hussein's brutal suppression of the 1991 Shia uprising. And the underlying fear that provokes violent Sunni resistance is no longer of becoming an American colony, but of being swamped and politically marginalised by the 60% Shia majority, which is supported by non-Arab Iran.

Among a growing number of extremist Sunnis, there is a further fear, which is that Shias are a sort of fifth column, whose historical mission it is to undermine the faith. Ultra-puritan Sunnis, known as takfiris, denounce the Shias as apostates from Islam, and claim that it is therefore legal to kill them (incidentally, it is takfiri mosques that the Shias now claim they are targeting in revenge). Radical Iraqi insurgents, aligned with al-Qaeda, have inflicted the most horrific casualties not on American troops, but on unarmed Shia civilians.

I can sympathize. God knows all those Protestants aren't real Christians. Martin Luther... my ass.

Belief in Shia perfidy has prompted discrimination against Shia communities in other places. Vicious sectarian attacks in Pakistan targeting the country's 20% Shia minority (costing 4,000 lives over the past two decades) are often explained by their perpetrators as being a weapon against Indian infiltration via imagined agents. Sometimes, the attacks are ascribed to Indian saboteurs in the first place.

Shias in Kashmir lament what happened in Baghdad

Saudi Arabians are inclined to excuse discriminatory practices against the kingdom's 15% Shia minority, such as denying them promotion in government service, on the grounds that Iran, or perhaps America, wants to enlist them as part of a plot to grab the huge oilfields that lie along the largely Shia-populated Gulf coast. (But this does not explain the even starker persecution of the small Ismaili Shia community that lives in the oil-free south of the kingdom.) A worry that the 60% Shia majority in the small island state of Bahrain will rally to the command of foreign ayatollahs is one reason that keeps the country's Sunni ruling family from granting its citizens greater rights. Similar paranoia may be what prompted the Egyptian authorities in 2004 to arrest leading members of the country's minuscule Shia community, and hold them under the country's emergency laws.

In the case of Lebanon, such fears are less self-serving and more concrete. The poorest of the country's many sects, the Shia emerged during the 1975-90 civil war as a highly organised force, largely due to the tenacity and discipline of Hizbullah, the militia-cum-party

He he
he he
He said 'cum'

that took the lead in hounding Israel out of its long, messy occupation of the Shia-dominated south. But Hizbullah's main supplier of arms and cash is Iran, whose supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the party officially recognises as its spiritual marja. In opposition to the anti-Syrian trend that has swept Lebanese politics over the past year, Hizbullah remains loyal to Syria, because Syria is allied to Iran. Many Lebanese, including quite a few Shias, now accuse the group of holding the country hostage to Iranian policy, particularly during the current stand-off between Iran and Israel.

Examples of recent sectarian hostility proliferate. In India last year, Shia Muslims broke away from a long-established board that governs Muslim family law to establish their own board. Shortly afterwards, three people were killed in a communal riot in the mixed, hitherto quiescent city of Lucknow. In sleepy Kuwait, where Shias have formally protested that their 30% share of the population is not matched by a similar share of top posts, Sunni militants sprayed a Shia mosque with gunfire.

It's politics, stupid
Yet taken together, what all these examples really show is that the essential splits between Sunnis and Shias, beginning with their original schism, have had far more to do with politics than with doctrine. If Shias have been cast as traitors, it has been because their survival depended on internal unity, and occasionally on aligning themselves with stronger powers.

As for the fear, expressed by Jordan's King Abdullah at the end of 2004, of the formation of a “Shia arc” stretching from Lebanon through Iraq to Iran and the Gulf, it might be noted that the Shia themselves do not necessarily share common political interests. Iran, for instance, has often favoured “Christian” Armenia in its nasty and continuing border disputes with “Shia” Azerbaijan. Many Iraqi Shias are perplexed and dismayed by the enthusiasm of their Lebanese brothers in Hizbullah for perpetual “resistance” against the Great Satan which, after all, rescued them from Baathist rule.

The Shia clergy themselves are hardly united, and seldom have been. Throughout much of the 19th century gangs backing rival ayatollahs clashed in the holy city of Najaf. Bitter debate has persisted in modern times over the crucial issue of relations with the state. Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution, aroused fierce opposition from other marjas with his declaration of Velayet al Faqih, or the rule of the jurisprudent, which was, in effect, a ruling that only learned religious scholars were qualified for worldly power. Even within Iran, many clerics believe closeness to power has tainted rather than embellished their reputation. And in Iraq, part of Mr Sistani's reluctance to commit his followers to jihad rests with his unwillingness, as a matter of principle, to take on the mantle of military command.

The likelihood of a grand Shia alliance, then, is slim. And since Sunni-Shia differences are largely political, they are surely also possible to resolve. Yet there is a rising sense in both communities, and not only in Iraq, of some kind of impending historical showdown.

One obvious factor is the upsetting of old balances by the intrusion of western power, not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan and more widely, through the global campaign against Islamist terrorism. But this intrusion was in turn largely provoked by something else, the radicalisation of large numbers of Sunni Muslims, fired by ideas of a return to “pure” Islam and of uniting Muslims into a single nation modelled on the early caliphate.

The most famous proponent of such ideas, Osama bin Laden, has always carefully refrained from any reference to the Shias. Yet he and many fellow-travellers adhere to a school of thought, influenced by Saudi Wahhabism among other currents, which holds the rival sect to be an elemental threat to Islam as a whole.

His future in jeopardy

Before their overthrow, Mr bin Laden's protectors in Afghanistan, the Taliban, mounted merciless pogroms against that country's Shia minority, the Hazara, on purely doctrinal grounds. It is the parties in Pakistan most closely aligned to al-Qaeda that have bombed Shia mosques and torched Shia villages, simply because they hold the Shia to be infidels. Mr bin Laden's lieutenant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, refers to Shias as al-Rafida, a Wahhabist slur meaning rejectionists or turncoats. They are the near enemy, as opposed to the American far enemy, he says, “and far more destructive”.

The vast majority of Sunni Muslims find such notions as repulsive as anyone, yet even milder forms of Sunni chauvinism have had nasty effects. Pakistani analysts, for instance, tend to trace the origin of communal strife to the 1980s, when General Zia ul-Haq, then in power, tried to bolster his legitimacy by imposing Islamic law. The trouble was that his laws were those of the Sunni majority, and met with protest from Shias. Their resistance, in turn, provoked radical Sunnis to form vigilante groups, which in some cases recruited among peasants working on large, Shia-owned estates. The result was tit-for-tat killings, culminating in a series of bloody bomb blasts at Shia mosques.

The lesson to learn from all this
If there is a lesson in Pakistan's experience, it is one that Mr Sistani, as well as many Sunni leaders, would recognise. It is that it is a bad idea, especially in a confessionally diverse society, to bring religion and state too close together. That appears to be a lesson that other Muslim societies, where political expression often takes a sectarian course, will have to learn the hard way.

Luckily, the extreme example of Iraq remains an exception. Even there, what underlies the impulse to adhere to sectarianism is the fact that alternative possibilities of political allegiance have lost credibility. That is a temporary phenomenon, a result of the failure of secular parties and leaders such as Mr Hussein. In time, Muslims of both sects, who now cling to political manifestations of Islam, may find that the common ground of secular politics is a better place to contest their rights.

Funny, the lesson I get from this is that religion is fucked up. What a lot to do about a lot of superstition.

But in terms of a clash of civilizations, (yo Kharno), it seems that the clash is more likely to be within the civilization than between one civilization and another.

3K people killed on 9-11. How many dead in Iraq because Sunni and Shia can't get along.

Oh yeah! Let's bring more religion into the state! More morality!
Bullshit.

 

[welsh]

More on Iraq?

Iraq
At war with itself
Mar 2nd 2006
From The Economist print edition

It is a time of misery, of tragedy, of brutality

SOMETIMES after people peer into an abyss, they have the sense to step back. For the moment, however, Iraqis are continuing their march of folly. The bombing last week of the Shias' revered Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra unleashed the most intense sectarian violence since the American invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago. What began as a Sunni-dominated insurgency against the occupiers is now beginning to look increasingly like a civil war between Iraqis themselves. This is no doubt exactly what the mosque's attackers were hoping for. Such a war would plunge Iraq deeper into mayhem and mark the definitive failure of George Bush's vaunted “freedom” project in the Middle East, not just in the eyes of Arabs but in those of Americans, too. In the aftermath of the new violence, one poll showed Mr Bush's approval rating at 34%, the lowest of his presidency.

True but W's chain of fuck-ups goes beyond Iraq. How the fuck can he rebuild Iraq when he can't even rebuild New Orleans.

A schism not just in Iraq, but also in Islam
The prevention of a Sunni-Shia civil war should now be America's foremost priority in Iraq. Such a war might not only suck in Iraq's immediate neighbours, pitting Saudi-backed Sunnis against Iran-backed Shias. It might have effects even further afield, along the Sunni-Shia fault-line that runs through Islam as a whole (see article). At this point, however, it is no longer in the power of the Americans alone to prevent such a catastrophe. It is primarily a job for Iraqis themselves. And it is not so much a military job as a political one. The Shia majority that came out on top in January's general election needs urgently to show that it is willing to share real power with the parties that represent the Sunni minority.

Why would they bother. As long as the US is there to crush the more violent, they can easily take power.

Until now, two menacing factors have worked against this. First, most Sunni Arabs, who have run Iraq since its creation nearly 90 years ago, seem bizarrely loth to admit that they number barely a fifth of the population—and cannot see why they should not continue to run the show. Hence their endorsement of the insurgents, even while electing representatives to parliament. Second, the newly dominant Shia Arabs, with 60% of the people, seem increasingly loth to grant the Sunnis a fair share in government, especially since they seem unable or unwilling to stop insurgents from carrying out sectarian outrages such as bombing the shrine. Many Shias now think they simply can and must bash the Sunnis into submission—and may better be able to do so once the ring-holding Americans and their allies go. Worse still, the Shias are divided among themselves, with three of their parties competing bitterly within the ruling alliance. After the shrine's bombing, many prominent Shias actually blamed America for the deed. With so deep a reluctance to embrace compromise or reason, what possible hope for the future?

SO far there are few incentives to stop the violence and many incentives to tolerate it. So why try to stop the violence from spreading?

Optimistic as it may seem in the circumstances, the events surrounding the bombing of the shrine may hasten the much-needed first big step towards forestalling all-out civil war: the formation of a unity government embracing all the main ethnic and religious factions. Though the new constitution gives the recently renominated prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a couple more months to forge a ruling coalition, he should speed things up before sectarian hatreds overtake the country. It is vital that at least the four—and preferably the five—leading alliances in parliament (the Islamist Shia list to which Dr Jaafari belongs, the Kurds, the main Sunni Islamist group and the non-sectarian secularists led by Iyad Allawi, a Shia who has Sunni partners) team up in a government. It is equally vital that key ministries—defence, interior and finance, among others—be shared out, with Sunnis getting serious ones, and that ministers are prevented from packing them, as before, with cronies. And the Shias should respond to the urgings of America's ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, that the present interior minister, a Shia who is said to have allowed sectarian death squads to operate out of his ministry, be sacked.

Or shot. Here's the thing- the state has no control over the society. The major groups themselves are divided, and if any one is kept out of the game or doesn't get the share of power they want or think they deserve, they are going to start killing people, setting off a cycle of retaliation.

Once in place, it is no less essential that a unity government amends the new constitution. Much of the constitution is sound, and it was duly approved in a national referendum. All the same, it has become increasingly vital to reassure the Sunnis both that their provinces will get a fair share of future oil revenues and that a Shia “super-region” will not emerge in the south and so break Iraq up. The hardest task of a new government will be to disband militias and reintegrate them into genuinely national forces. So far, most of the Iraqis recruited into the new Iraqi army have been Shia, and their loyalty to the idea of a multi-confessional state is at best uncertain.

Wait a second! They got a constitution! that means they got democracy! Yeah! America Fuck ya!

Oh what.. the paper isn't worth the ink that's used on it... Oh.
You mean, it's just a piece of paper?

oh...

For the Shia leadership, making compromises such as these will require a supreme effort of self-control. Having been long oppressed, Iraq's Shias feel that they are gathering strength and are owed their place in the sun. The insurgents have sorely provoked them, striking mercilessly at their homes, markets and holy places. Until recently, influential politicians and clergy, especially the Shias' Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had succeeded, as outrage followed atrocity, in restraining the hotheads from wholesale communal revenge. But their words are now being less dutifully heeded.

No one wants to make sacrifices. People often have to be forced to accept sacrifices.

America in the middle
It would be wrong to say that the insurgents are beating the Americans on the battlefield. But they don't have to. The insurgents win merely by making Iraq ungovernable. The occupying forces and their Iraqi allies have been losing fewer men than before. But they are no longer the main targets. The Americans and their allies must not stay indefinitely: virtually all Iraqis long for them to go. Yet most of Iraq's elected leaders, struggling to build a coalition, agree that an American rush for the exit would, at this stage, still be likelier to provoke a descent into all-out civil war than prevent it.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The greater the sectarian mayhem, the happier the insurgents. Only when the sour Sunni minority is properly represented in a new government is there the faintest chance of persuading enough of the insurgents and their supporters that they have a stake in the new order. Dr Jaafari and his Shia friends have no time to lose. They must compromise, and fast, or risk being left with only the rump of what was once Iraq.

Forget about it. The slow descent has become the fall.

And sorry, but yes, America fucked this up.

 

[John Uskglass]

This in no way counters my point that stupid ideas don't just fade away when tried. And the nazis happen to be the perfect counter-example, since they had a crap-load of stupid ideas. All this does is say that the nazis were in a better position and where better at economically controlling a country.

Nazi economics where terrible before Speer. It only proves that Palestine is no Germany, and thus Hamas can NEVER be the NSDAP.

 

[Jebus]

This in no way counters my point that stupid ideas don't just fade away when tried. And the nazis happen to be the perfect counter-example, since they had a crap-load of stupid ideas. All this does is say that the nazis were in a better position and where better at economically controlling a country.

Nazi economics where terrible before Speer. It only proves that Palestine is no Germany, and thus Hamas can NEVER be the NSDAP.

Go read something on Hjalmar Schacht.
Shoo!

 

[Sander]

Nazi economics where terrible before Speer. It only proves that Palestine is no Germany, and thus Hamas can NEVER be the NSDAP.

You really need to work on your logical reasoning, Johnny. In no way is this an implication.

 

[Roshambo]

Afghanistan is doing much better today then it was during the Taliban, and the problems we have there have more to do with the fact that we are paying way too much attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan.

There's only one correct part of that sentence, and it has nothing to do with the Taliban.

It was actually organized to some point with the Taliban. Now with the increased civil unrest, continued demolition of what little is left of their country, and the increased heroin trade coming from there, I'd say the Taliban were doing a better job than the puppet that Bush wants to insult by saying the shithole of a country the US turned Afghanistan into is an example of democracy. That teaches those who grow up through it one thing - democracy fucks up their world while some rich idiot on the other side of the world can try and look good and make money from their suffering. It is hardly the same "democracy" the US' founding fathers envisioned and created.