The Sunni Arabs should get over their loss of power and privilege
By: Shexmus Amed
April 17, 2004
The recent upsurge of violence in Iraq and the apparent unwillingness or inability of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) to effectively aid the coalition forces in suppressing the violence in Fellujah have given fuel to an earlier charge that it was a mistake to disband Sunni dominated Iraqi army and the security apparatus by the occupation authorities in Iraq. Among them of course is Jay Garner, the former general who was the early appointee to head the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and most recently Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council.
I beg to differ from them on that point and I believe most Kurds would also. There are various communities in Iraq each one of whom has sufficient motivation to use force to bring about their respective aims, yet they do not for sake of a peaceful, democratic and united Iraq. Needless to say, the Kurds who are the best armed and the best organised community in Iraq, and also the most deserving of their own dreams, an independent Kurdish state, is currently the most cooperative major community in Iraq. The longer the conflict in Sunni areas continues, the more the Kurds consider the concept of united Iraq to be a folly. The preservation of the Saddam era security apparatus in Iraq would certainly have deterred Kurds from working towards a united Iraq for this would have meant ongoing Sunni Arab domination of state affairs.
Disbanding the Baath party, the police, the intelligence apparatus and the army was perhaps the most unexpected and the most virtuous act, if not the only one, of Garner�s successor, Paul Bremer. These institutions were simply beyond reform. The decision making cadre of these institutions were totally controlled by the minority Sunni Arab elite and, although they too might (just might) have been pleased with the removal of Saddam, they were not easily going to let go the Sunni Arab dominance in the state administration.
These institutions would have been a source of instability in Iraq as they would have been hotbeds of intrigues, corruption, plots and coups. (Does anyone remember the bomb that went off in the office of the foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari within days of him taking charge?) Surely, the USA would also have been a target of even greater criticism. For many people, particularly for those in the left of the political spectrum, the preservation of these institutions would have been the irrefutable proof that all the USA wanted was another dictatorship in Iraq and not democracy, not a real change that reflected the realities of the state and the communities comprising its population.
The nearest analogy to this wholesale reform of state institutions is the disbanding of the Nazi party and its state apparatus (i.e. Gestapo) in post-war Germany. Sure the army was not disbanded but it was cut down to size considerably. After all it was a German army, run by Germans for Germany, unlike in Iraq, where it was a Sunni Arab army run by Sunni Arab minority for the Sunni Arab minority and the "glorious" Arab nation in Palestine, the Middle East and the rest of the world. There could not be any positive change in Iraq and, may I say, throughout the Middle East with these fascists and their cohorts still in charge of significant power in Iraq.
The fact that the armed resistance to the new order takes place in overwhelmingly Sunni Arab regions of Iraq and overwhelmingly by Sunnis Arabs in the rest of Iraq, and the fact that it is now rather than a year earlier, strongly suggest that the Sunni Arabs did not expect to lose power to such a degree and are too traumatised by it. It suggests that the ruling elite, particularly the officer corps, were hopeful that the USA would keep the army in place and the Sunni establishment in power because they have experience in running a state and its bureaucracy. They expected that the USA would do the same as post-1991 war. That is, leaving the Sunni Arabs in charge of running Iraq once Saddam was deposed.
If they could predict the current outcome surely the Baathist army and the Republican Guards would have fought a lot more ferociously than they did during the war. Last year they were fighting reluctantly for the interests of Saddam (as the leader of their privileged minority). This year they are fighting for the interests of the Sunnis Arab community en masse. That is why they have not even an apparent leader, a proper organisation, their heavy guns but they are prepared to suffer huge casualties, fighting suicidally.
As a community they gambled with Saddam and they lost. They stood by him to the end and they went down with him at the end. If they are too traumatised, so be it. They shall survive as a community and as a people for nobody is out there to destroy them or take revenge from them. They should drop their AK-47s and RPGs and take Valium and Viagra instead. It will be better for them and better for the country, if they really care about the country rather than their own privileged minority's loss of power. Their loss is not as great as the Kurdish people's loss of opportunity for an independent state.
As for the Shia, they are not as well armed, as well organised and as motivated as the Sunnis. Clearly most Shia think that so long as there is a massive US military presence in Iraq, they are not going to get what they want by force. That is a smart political move, for come the election time their huge numbers holding ballot papers will speak louder than their few men with guns. They clearly want a theocracy (democracy is their guise) but they are not likely to get it. They too would better get over their dreams, again just the way the Kurds have been made to forget about the independence for sake of a united Iraq.
By the way, the Kurdish leadership, which have been very cooperative with the occupation authorities thus far at the expense of calling for a referendum for Kurdish self-determination, have already stated unequivocally that Kurdistan will not be part of any theocratic Iraqi state. Good for them and good for the Kurdish people. The USA will no doubt support such a secession if Iraq becomes theocratic at any time in the future.
One wonders what the so called anti-war protestors, myriad of left wing political parties and the socialist movement will do then. Will they support the imperialists or the fundamentalists if the choice came to that? I put my money on the fundamentalists. After all when the choice came down to between imperialism and fascism, they chose fascism without much thought. They threw their support behind the fascist tyrant Saddam for the last twelve years of his regime. For example, they called for the ending of the no-fly-zones, the only international protection that the oppressed, dispossessed and genocided Kurds had from their fascist tormentor, because it was a breach of Iraqi sovereignty. They wanted Saddam to be able to roll his tanks and fly his helicopter gunship all over Kurdistan again. If these people had their way fascist Saddam would still be in power, thousands would still have been killed, tortured and raped but no one would have heard their screams. And Al Jazeera, the doyen of the "alternative media", would not have broadcast them either. No intentional offence. That is just the fact.
So let us allow the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council get on with their jobs, rather than criticise them for the situation in Fellujah. The sooner the violence stops, the sooner peace and stability in Iraq and the sooner the Americans will go home.
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