Sunni Resistance Receptive to Sadr Alliance Based on Ending Occupation

[BurtWorm]

http://electroniciraq.net/news/3092.shtml


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Gareth Porter, Electronic Iraq, 24 May 2007

WASHINGTON (IPS) - Nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bid to unite Sunnis and Shiites on the basis of a common demand for withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces, reported last weekend by the Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan, seems likely to get a positive response from Sunni armed resistance.

An account given Pentagon officials by a military officer recently returned from Iraq suggests that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, who have generally reflected the views of the Sunni armed resistance there, are open to working with Sadr.

According to Raghavan's report on May 20, talks between Sadr's representatives and Sunni leaders, including leaders of Sunni armed resistance factions, first began in April. A commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Abu Aja Naemi, confirmed to Raghavan that his organization had been in discussions with Sadr's representatives.

Sadr's aides say he was encouraged to launch the new cross-sectarian initiative by the increasingly violent opposition from nationalist Sunni insurgents to the jihadists aligned with al Qaeda. One of his top aides, Ahmed Shaibani, recalled that the George W. Bush administration was arguing that a timetable was unacceptable because of the danger of al Qaeda taking advantage of a withdrawal. Shaibani told Raghavan that sectarian peace could be advanced if both Sadr's Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgent groups could unite to weaken al Qaeda.

Raghavan reports that the cross-sectarian united front strategy was facilitated by the fact that Shaibani had befriended members of Sunni nationalist insurgent groups while he was held in U.S. detention centers from 2004 through 2006. Now Shaibani, who heads a "reconciliation committee" for Sadr, is well positioned to gain the trust of those Sunni organizations.

The talks with Sunni resistance leaders have been coordinated with a series of other moves by Sadr since early February. Although many members of Sadr's Mahdi Army have been involved in sectarian killings and intimidation of Sunnis in Baghdad, Sadr has taken what appears to be a decisive step to break with those in his movement who have been linked to sectarian violence. Over the past three months, he has expelled at least 600 men from the Mahdi Army who were accused of murder and other violations of Sadr's policy, according to Raghavan.

The massive demonstration against the occupation mounted in Najaf by Sadr's organization on Apr. 9, which Iraqi and foreign observers estimated at tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, was apparently timed to coincide with his initiative in opening talks with the Sunnis.....

[acmavm]

1. Uh oh.

[Kagemusha]

2. Previously it'd been accepted that this had no chance of success at all.

Has the US unwittingly changed the situation?

[BurtWorm]

4. It's very much in both camp's interest to kick the US out so they can get back to killing each other

again without wasting weaponry on Americans.

[dave_p]

7. BS

What do you mean, "get back to killing each other"? They weren't even doing that before the US-British aggression.

[BurtWorm]

8. Before the US-British invasion? Gee, I wonder why that was....

:eyes:

Do you think they're going to all of a sudden make nice all by themselves? What a wonderful world that would be.

[dave_p]

9. Heck, why not?

They've seen the alternative. Hundreds of thousdands dead concentrates minds when it's your people.

[BurtWorm]

10. That's just the thing, however, dave_p.

There hasn't been much evidence that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites consider each other "our people." Violence--especially of the sectarian kind--has its own logic and momentum. It isn't a given by any stretch of the imagination that the Sunnis and Shiites will be able to make peace with each other given the intensity of the violence that the invasion and lawlessness combined unleashed.

One of the main reasons for not going after Saddam in 1991 was precisely the fear that chaos would result. It's not just a product of the invasion.

Now maybe the situation has miraculously changed and all will suddenly be forgiven. Maybe the two camps really will see that their common enemy, the occupier, is truly a cause for a nationalist union to combat it. I think that would be pretty wonderful, even if it meant the US getting its ass kicked out of that region for decades to come, which I think would be best for everybody. But I'm not going to pretend that I don't fear what will happen when the coast is clear for a resumption of the struggle for power and control of Iraq's oil wealth, not to mention for an evening of all the score settling that's been going on while the US scratched its ass cluelessly wondering what to do.

[dave_p]

11. Violence spends itself

One overlooked aspect of violence in these situations is that it ultimately isn't sustainable. Civil wars end either in victory for one side or in compromise when both sides see that if they go on the country won't be worth having. Iraq could go the way of Lebanon, which embarked on national coalition politics after losing some 5% of its people to sectarian conflict in 1975-90.

I think this is the first sign of that happening in Iraq. It could all go wrong as in 2004, but we're another half-million or so dead further along the road. And perhaps most important, Iran needs friends more than ever and is less likely to make things easy for BushCo. And Sunni resisting US invasion are natural allies for an Iran faced with similar threats. I'm hopeful. I think it'll happen: if this isn't it, it's coming some time in the next few months.

[BurtWorm]

12. Tell that to the Israelis and Palestinians.

When will that violence finally spend itself? Some problems (usually concerning land, wealth and power) are more intractable than others. I hope the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites will come to terms with each other much sooner than the Lebanese Maronites, Druse, Sunni and Shiites have taken.

[dave_p]

13. Different rules apply

I was talking about civil conflicts where ideology or group rather than national existence or status is the issue: yes, external national conflicts can go on for a good deal longer, but in a civil conflict national existence is the ultimate brake rather than fuel for ongoing conflict.

Lebanon switched gear very rapidly after 1989, in fact: without foreign interference and the opportunism of a few leaders its progress lately would have been a good deal smoother. I suspect Iran's learned a lot from its friends there, too.

[BurtWorm]

14. But you have noticed what's been going on in Lebanon in the last couple of years, right?

I'm not rooting for violence to continue, of course. I'm just perhaps a bit less optimistic about human nature than you are.

[dave_p]

18. Yes

But the impetus for that's been coming from outside Lebanon - Western confrontation with Syria, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It's time everyone left Lebanon alone (including returning detainees held elsewhere).

A bit like Iraq, I guess.

[magellan]

15. Most problems are made intractable

...by a few powerful people with the muscle to remain intractable. They're the ones who deliberately promote division and thereby enable violent radicalism to further their cause.

The sorrow is that the vast majority of people will get along with each other, and happily so, without that negative influence from above.

If however those in power decide to work together instead of against each other towards a common goal, the holdouts who stand in their way will quickly be marginalized and ousted.

There's no telling what will come of this alliance between the Sunnis and Shia. If it gets us and AQ out of their country only to devolve into more in-fighting, that is down to them, and we should respect their right to sort out their differences themselves. Lord knows 60 years of British and US meddling hasn't done the job.

[BurtWorm]

16. I'm totally in favor of them sorting out their differences without us

and I wish them well.

"Hope for the best. Expect the worst."
--Theme from Mel Brooks' The Twelve Chairs

[magellan]

3. I've been waiting for this

The majority of Iraqis have never accepted the (relatively few) foreign fighters entering their country since the invasion. And they despise the extreme Sunni Islamist faction that has resulted from their influence: "al Qaeda in Iraq". Ordinary Shia and Sunnis have been living side by side and intermarrying for some time. It's not only logical but necessary that they put aside the differences fueled by our occupation and unite again, to take back control of their country.

[dave_p]

6. Me too

These guys can stamp out aQ in days if they're united; this also makes all Washington's claims of "preventing civil war" (which it's happily presided over for years) redundant, along with the rancid puppet regime in Baghdad.

[dave_p]

5. This was always on the cards

"... the cross-sectarian united front strategy was facilitated by the fact that Shaibani had befriended members of Sunni nationalist insurgent groups while he was held in U.S. detention centers"

This shouldn't come as a surprise. The Sunni nationalist resistance (as distict from the pan-Islamist jihadi fringe) was always just that: nationalist. It's Iraq's Shia who've exhibited a nationalism deficit until now. Unity seemed about to happen in April 2004 when Shia were sending aid to besieged Sunni patriots in Falluja, but the main Shia groups were bought off with a share of power.

If this works out it plugs the gaping, bloody Iraq hole in Iran's bridge-building with non-jihadi anti-imperialist Sunni forces across the region. It will also make a US-Israeli strike against Iran all the more costly.

[Nimrod2005]

17. Soon the Iraqi govt. will vote to send us packing, then what?

[dave_p]

19. That's its problem

No business of anyone in the US. It's caused enough damage.