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The Calm Before the Conflagration
By Chris Hedges
25/02/08 "Truthdig" -- -
The United States is funding and in
many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq-the Kurds,
the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over
partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival
ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a
unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by
thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are
often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is
Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons,
lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode.
And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat,
means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to
scurry like rats for cover.
The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen.
John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the
surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around
Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The
decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni
Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little
choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S.
casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares
in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing
that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control
throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass
executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it
was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.
The United States cut a deal with its Sunni Arab enemies. It
would pay the former insurgents. It would allow them to arm and
form military units and give them control of their ethnic
enclaves. The Sunni Arabs, in exchange, would halt attacks on
U.S. troops. The Sunnis Arabs agreed.
The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars
to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in
the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters-Shiite,
Kurd and Sunni Arab-are not only antagonistic but deeply
unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central
government officials, including police, and taken over local
administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their
control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic
community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong
enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will
accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace
failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to
tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the
payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed
back into the embrace of the Taliban.
The Sunni Arab militias are known by a variety of names: the
Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups,
Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The
militias call themselves “sahwas” (”sahwa” being the Arabic word
for awakening). There are now 80,000 militia fighters, nearly
all Sunni Arabs, paid by the United States to control their
squalid patches of Iraq. They are expected to reach 100,000. The
Sunni Arab militias have more fighters under arms than the
Shiite Mahdi Army and are about half the size of the feeble
Iraqi army. The Sunni Awakening groups, which fly a yellow satin
flag, are forming a political party.
The Sunni Arab militias, though they have ended attacks on U.S.
forces, detest the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki and abhor the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi
soil. They take the money and the support with clenched teeth
because with it they are able to build a renegade Sunni army, a
third force inside Iraq, which they believe will make it
possible to overthrow the central government. The Sunni Arabs,
who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most
positions of power under Saddam Hussein. They dominated Iraq’s
old officer corps. They made up its elite units, including the
Republic Guard divisions and the Special Forces regiments. They
controlled the intelligence agencies. There are several hundred
thousand well-trained Sunni Arabs who lack only an
organizational structure. We have now made the formation of this
structure possible. These militias are the foundation for a
deadlier insurgent force, one that will dwarf anything the
United States faced in the past. The U.S. is arming, funding and
equipping its own assassins.
There have been isolated clashes that point to a looming
conflagration. A Shiite-dominated unit of the regular army in
the late summer of 2007 attacked a strong Sunni Arab force west
of Baghdad. U.S. troops thrust themselves between the two
factions. The enraged Shiites, thwarted in their attack,
kidnapped relatives of the commander of the Sunni Arab force,
and American negotiators had to plead frantically for their
release. There have been scattered incidents like this one
throughout Iraq.
If the U.S. begins, as promised, to withdraw troops it will be
harder to keep these antagonistic factions apart. The cease-fire
by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, extended a few
days ago, could collapse. And if that happens a civil war,
unlike anything U.S. forces have experienced in Iraq, will
begin. Such a conflagration, with the potential to draw in
neighboring states and lead to the dismemberment of Iraq, would
be the final chapter of the worst foreign policy blunder in
American history.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and
was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New
York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian
Right and the War on America.“
©2008 TruthDig.com
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