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Iraq: The civil war has started
24.2.2006
By H. Thomas Hayden |
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The Civil War in Iraq has started and the US
planners had better get used to it.
The bombing of the Shiite Askariya shrine on
Wednesday and the reprisals that are continuing are
a sure sign that there will be no accommodation of
the three factions, Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, in
the political process for the new Iraqi government.
The damage to the Golden Mosque in Samarra also
undermined American political goals at a critical
juncture when U.S. envoys were struggling to keep a
delicate nation-building process from
disintegrating. It has started to disintegrate.
The blast that blew the dome off one of the holiest
Shiite sites in the world is expected to encourage
Iraq's Shiite militias and totally negate the US
Administration's trying to purge the radicals from
the newly created national security services.
Within hours of the Askariya attack, tens of
thousands of angry Shiites, many of them members of
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, carrying
AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, took to
the streets in Baghdad and many central and southern
Iraqi cities. A spokesman at Sadr's main office in
Baghdad said the militiamen were acting
spontaneously, and had not been ordered out onto the
streets.
Right.
Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most
respected Shiite cleric, issued a statement
forbidding attacks on Sunni mosques and calling for
seven days of national mourning; however, he also
called for public protests. Ayatollah Sistani had
previously called for peaceful protesters to stay
off the streets, fearing a downward spiral into
violence. This is a major change for the leading
voice for moderation. |
H. Thomas Hayden
About H. Thomas Hayden
H. Thomas Hayden is a retired Marine with over 35
years of government and defense industry service
with command and staff billets in combat related
assignments in Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War,
Somalia and Colombia. He has a Masters degrees in
International Relations (University of Southern
California) and a MBA (Pepperdine University). He
has written numerous articles and columns, two books
and contributed to a third. He is now working on his
fourth book.
Photo: Millitary.com |
Shiite political parties have to be strengthened by
the attack just when the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has
been prodding Sunni Arabs, Kurds and secular Iraqis
to form a counterweight to the long-repressed
majority Shiite's newly minted political power.
Shiites won 130 of the 275 parliamentarian seats in
the 15 December election. This is the biggest number
of any faction but not enough to rule without
partners. The Shiites now see that they remain at
risk for the Sunni extremists who have killed
thousands of Shiites over the years. They will
certainly seek to totally dominate any form of
government.
The US Embassy and the Administration thought the
only way they could speed a withdrawal was through a
genuinely integrated government with all three sects
working together to end the insurgency and permit a
graceful withdrawal of the US led Coalition. This
now will not happen.
The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds are already
packing their bags to leave the Arab Sunni areas.
They already see the coming civil war. Most have
already said goodbye to friends and neighbors in
Sunni dominated areas. In northeast Iraq, Erbil' the
capital of the de-facto sovereign Kurdistan Regional
Government is preparing for an influx of Kurds.
In January 2005, the Iraqi Kurds held an informal
referendum ands more than 80 percent turned out to
vote with 98.7 percent of those voting to secede
from Iraq. Not only have the Kurds long dreamed of
independence, when they look south they see only
radical Islamism, Sunni dominated Baathism, and now
the coming Civil War.
If Arabs and Kurds had drawn the current Middle
Eastern borders after World War II, Iraq wouldn't
even exist. Blame the British and French for
shackling Kurds and Arabs together when they created
the new post-imperial and post-Ottoman map with
their demand for oil and the spoils of war
determined the geographical and political borders.
Masoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan and party
chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has already
openly threatens secession. Not one Iraqi flag is
flown in Kurdistan's capital of Erbil, which is also
the stronghold of Barzani's KDP. The Iraqi flag is
flown on government buildings in Suleimaniya, the
stronghold of the PUK. But it's the old Iraqi flag,
the pre-Saddam Iraqi flag, the one that doesn't have
Allahu Akbar (God is Great) printed across the
middle of the flag.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has its own
ministers and they report to no one in Baghdad. The
Kurds have their own military, economy, and they are
the only police force in the area. Surprisingly,
they may even have their own foreign policy because
their government is already internationally
recognized. When Masoud Barzani travels to foreign
capitals he is recognized as the President of
Kurdistan. The only thing the Kurds don't have that
they want is the city of Kirkuk. The Peshmerga,
Kurdish army, can militarily take Kirkuk any time
they want. However, the Kurds want to bargain with
Sunnis to take back what they feel is rightfully
theirs.
Kirkuk sits right on top of one of the biggest oil
fields in current Iraq. It had always been a
Kurdish-majority city until Saddam Hussein's ethnic
cleansing took out a good portion of the people who
refused to change their ethnicity to “Arab” and when
Kurds were forced out, Saddam moved Sunni Arabs into
the Kurds' former homes.
Most recent census indicated that the city is
approximately 40 percent Kurdish, 30 percent Arab,
and 20 percent Turkmen. The remaining 10 percent are
composed of smaller minority groups.
Today we have the sad joke of the President
requesting the Congress to pass Legislation to
lessen the United States need for Middle Eastern
oil. Then we have the environmentalists who may have
been the real cause of the failure of the levees in
New Orleans because they refused to allow the Army
Corps of Engineers to build the proper dike system,
stopping all oil drilling in Alaska. Our concern for
a safeguard to the Iraqi oil is gone. Additionally,
we now face an insurgency in Iraq that has just
gotten smarter with time and near certain civil war.
The US needs to cuts some realistic deals to create
an independent Kurdistan and let the Sunnis fend for
themselves. They deserve whatever they get.
Shiites have always planned to align themselves with
Iran but the Pentagon dominated planners in the
Administration have never understood the difference
between a Sunni and a Shiite and the great religious
gulf between them that has existed for almost a
thousand years.
There is now a civil war in Iraq -- get used to it.
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