The anxiety of Iraq’s Sunnis, Robert Rabil

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

The anxiety of Iraq’s Sunnis

The Daily STar, 7/8/03

Robert Rabil

Since the fall of the Baath regime in Baghdad, a soldier is killed almost daily in an anti-American operation. Most of the attacks have taken place in the so-called “Sunni triangle” mainly north and west of the capital, a region from which the ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein once recruited many of his Republican Guards and security officials. The attacks have gradually become more organized in their scope and tactics.
The US occupation authorities have attributed this budding resistance to remnants of the Baath Party, Republican Guards and paramilitary fighters. In response, they have launched Operations Desert Scorpion and Sidewinder to pacify trouble spots such as Fallujah, Khaldiyya and Tikrit, where the anti-American insurgency is strongest. Although these operations are necessary to nip the anti-American insurgency in the bud in Sunni areas, they should not be perceived as targeting the Sunni community as a whole. In fact, the main objective of the insurgents is to turn the Sunnis against US forces and transform their uprising into a popular intifada.
The Sunnis are especially concerned about their political, economic and social status vis-a-vis other communities. The decision by US civil administrator Paul Bremer to dismantle the institutions of the former Baath state, including the army and ministries, has mainly affected Sunnis by stripping them of their privileges. Moreover, rarely a day passes by without former Baath members being attacked or their property ransacked. These concerns have been intensified by a growing feeling that the occupation authorities have been ignoring Sunnis in their reconstruction of Iraq, regarding them as sympathetic to the former dictator.
This uncertain situation in the community has led to the emergence of several political movements, only a few of which have demonstrated an ability to attract followers, including former Baathists. Two political movements stand out: The Islamic Liberation Party of Ayad al-Sammarai and the Unified Iraqi National Movement of Ahmad Qobeissi, both religious scholars. In explaining the appeal of his movement, Qobeissi, who hails from a large family on the outskirts of Ramadi in western Iraq, emphasized that his “movement is an embodiment of the relationships among Iraqis whose goal is to build Iraq. It is a movement open to all by common denominators; it is an Arab Sunni movement.” Apparently, former low- and medium-ranking Baathists see the movement as a security guarantee for their precarious future.
So far, Qobeissi has been ambivalent with respect to the growing resistance against US forces. On the one hand he has questioned the benefit of anti-American attacks, stating, “these (attacks) are of an individual nature (and) we don’t support them.” On the other hand , he has blamed the US occupation and its pressure on Iraqis for the growing resistance. He noted that resistance “starts individually and ends collectively, and it began in the Arab Sunni areas because they have been the most ignored by the coalition.”
At the same time, the two other main communities, the Shiites and the Kurds, have been seeking to advance their interests. The Kurds want to protect and institutionalize what they already have a de-facto autonomous region that is only Iraqi in name. The Shiites want to assert their political rights in a way that is commensurate with their majority status in Iraq. As such, Iraq’s three main communities not only have different concerns, but are also victims of weak national integration.
Iraqis need to forge a national identity. This is no less a direct challenge they pose to themselves than one that will affect the US civil administration. One could argue that in the absence of a shared collective identity, Iraqis may soon recreate one based on fighting the coalition. Significantly, the Iraqis did not themselves liberate their own country. Even during the American blitzkrieg on Baghdad, the army dissolved rather than turn against the regime of Saddam Hussein. This deprived Iraq of a national-resistance myth, similar to French Gaullism, upon which a new identity could be constructed.
Herein lies the danger for the United Strates, especially if hostility against coalition forces continues to grow and spread to all of Iraq’s communities.
Considering this, the occupation authorities will fare better by taking specific measures to restore law and order. They must investigate whether the budding insurgency is the product of Baath attempts at sabotaging reconstruction efforts or of Sunni fears that they will be stripped of their privileges, or a combination of the two. In addition, the US has to further examine the emerging nexus between Qobeissi’s and Sammarai’s organizations, former Baathists and ordinary Sunnis. In protecting the territorial integrity of Iraq, the Americans also have to deal with Iraq as a unitary state, favoring no community over another, while also preventing de-Baathification from becoming a witch-hunt.
Bremer needs all the support he can get. That means Iraqi political groups should help him start a national dialogue, which involves every sector of Iraqi society, to help lay the groundwork for true democracy. This could constitute a more peaceful process through which Iraq’s national identity is forged.

was program manager for the Iraq Research and Documentation Project in Washington. He is the author of Embattled Neighbors: Syria, Israel and Lebanon. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).