Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (163499)	6/3/2005 12:57:38 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I think the real truth of it Nadine, is that we really don't know who's blowing themselves up in Iraq. As with so much else that's going on there, we're clueless. Just because there are some disagreements and some things are unknown doesn't mean that everybody is clueless. There is such a thing as a state of partial knowledge. There are some very good clues coming from recent arrests and intelligence, besides what AQ boasts of. The question being disputed was, are Iraqis now getting into the act? - strictly as the splodeydopes, we know Iraqis are involved in the planning. The insurgency has switched tactics several time and it looks like it has decided that attack on American troops didn't work very well (they are up somewhat from the Feb lull, but running less than Dec or Jan), let's concentrate purely on suicide bombing, with police or civilians as targets. As an example of the latter, a market in Baghdad was machine gunned today. This hardly wins sympathy for the cause among the Iraqis, but the insurgents are clearly betting everything on achieving pure chaos. Whether they can keep it up, in light of the operations going on, remains to be seen. Strategypage doesn't think so. If attacks drop in June they will be right. The current operations do not need that many men; that's the advantage of suicide bombing as a weapon. All that attention for a cheap bomb, with a cheaper targeting device. On the other hand, a fairly extreme Salafi group announced cooperation with the government today, following other Sunni groups. If this continues the insurgency will have to spend half its time killing Sunnis who have 'sold out', a process that has started in Al Anbar. An insurgency can't win without a popular base somewhere. Here's the Iraqi blogger Ali Fadhil's opinion. He's a lot more worried about corruption inside the government than the insurgents' bombs: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 will operation thuderbolt work? I really hope so but I have many doubts regarding such measures and their usefulness. First of all I want to say that personally if I had to choose between living in constant danger and living in a police state, I'd chose living in danger without hesitation. It's the reason why we welcomed OIF with knowing very well the risks and hazards of a war like that, as we have been in similar situations before. But then why does this operation come now? Why did it take the Iraqi government so long to take such measures? To be fair I have to say that such measures although strengthen the government's grip on everything and allow its officials more power than possibly acceptable, it's still a public demand by the majority of Iraqis that the government could not ignore totally even if it wanted to. I also believe that the surge in suicide attacks comes as a result of two causes. First there's an obvious panic on the side of ALL the governments of Iraq's neighbors from the nature of the current Iraqi government. It's technically a She'at-Kurdish government and that is way too unacceptable for all of our neighbors who would like to see it look inefficient and if possible then topple it. Second I believe that there's less support now among Iraqis for terrorism that the governments supporting violence in Iraq had to rely mainly on suicidal attacks mainly. This is still not what I'm concerned about, as like I said in the beginning I'm not that concerned about terrorists now. The deaths and destruction terrorists are bringing to Iraq are too much to just ignore or deal with lightly but I still see that the government's priorities for now should be the corruption and the sectarian congestion. I'm aware of the difficulty in setting priorities in Iraq these days, as terrorist attacks make any progress in other fields extremely difficult, yet we should always try and seek to treat the primary cause not the result. I see the destruction brought by terrorism in Iraq as a phenomena rather than a cause. I'm not talking about the etiology of terrorism in general, as that's a different issue that needs to be dealt with with no less care and in fact it should be the focus of the war on terror efforts, but I'm talking about why terrorists have been able to inflict such damage in Iraq. I'd like to divide terrorists into two main groups; the hardcore Ba'athists and the Islamists who come mainly from outside Iraq. But these two parties are resented by the majority of Iraqis and have no real support. So how can they operate so smoothly at many times inside Iraq and why aren't Iraqis reporting them? To be more specific, why aren't the majority of Sunnis reporting these terrorists and Ba'athists and why are they silent and even sometimes supportive of their actions. I have so many Sunni friends who are far from being religious or Ba'athists and who are more westernized than the majority of Iraqis but who are watching everything going in Iraq as outsiders without supporting any party yet with more resentment towards the current Iraqi government and therefore to America as they see it as the one responsible for bringing this government to power. The problem is that till now Sunnis have not found their representatives, as they don't have a Marji'ya like the She'at and they weren't oppressed just because they were Sunnis and therefore they didn't have such a tie to bring them together as one mass. After the war, well-known pro-Ba'athist clerics grouped together and formed "The Association of Sunni Scholars" that presented itself as a legitimate representative for Arab Sunnis without any obvious call from Sunnis to form such a representation, a cause that looked necessary only after the elections by calls from the "Council of Sunni property", "Iraqi Islamic party" and some Sunni officials who took part in the elections like Al Yawir. (Most Sunnis who voted in the elections voted for Allawi). This group has extremely dangerous effects on the Iraqi scene and that's not just because of their involvement in terrorist activities. They worked from the beginning on inflaming sectarian feelings and not just by inflammatory speech. They worked with Ba'athists and Islamists to assassinate many She'at religious figures. As a reaction, the Badr brigade expanded their activities from assassinating hardcore criminal Ba'athist elements to include figures in the association of Sunni scholars. This was not welcomed by average Sunnis who were able to turn a blind eye to killing Ba'athists but Sunni scholars remain Sunnis first and foremost and are not seen as a pure political group by them although not one that average Sunnis like or support. The Sunni scholars are less hated by the majority of Sunnis being not really Ba'athists and not hardcore Islamists and thus they have been acting like a link between average Sunnis and the two major terrorist groups giving some legitimacy and support to them. And when seeing Kurds and She'at stick to their sects and without many alternatives, as working in politics has been extremely dangerous in Sunni areas (even the Islamic Iraqi party with its connections to Ba'athists and fanatics was threatened and forced to not take part in the elections) some Sunnis found these scholars as the lesser evil compared to She'at clergy that they fear would turn Iraq into another Iran. People tend to fear the enemy they know and the one that knows them more. I don't know Zarqawi and his fighters just as they don't know me. They don't know where I live, where I work or what my views are. Their threat is a random one and therefore I worry about it less than I worry about the pro-Ba'athis clerics in my city who know enough about me and can direct those terrorists to kill me. In addition to the Sunni scholars there's al Mehdi army that acts in a similar way among She'at still supporting the same B'athists and terrorists although pretending to do the opposite in public. Their role therefore is more in preventing average She'at from really engaging themselves in the democratic changes and working together with the multi national forces and even foreign NGOs in rebuilding Iraq. Their more dangerous role is in inciting civil war through assassinating Sunni figures in She'at areas. There's a negotiation process going on between Sadr and the Sunni scholars that is supposed to solve the crisis between the Scholars and the SCIRI. Personally I think this is just one of these anti-democracy groups' stupid games. They are trying to make the dispute between the SCIRI and the scholars look as a dispute between She'at and Sunnis and one that requires a third party to solve when all it required was arresting Harith Al Dhari for throwing such a dangerous accusation against the SCIRI in such a critical time in an obvious attempt to incite civil war. The Badr brigade should've been banned too. I won't be surprised if after a moment of "optimism" Sadr will go in public to state that his negotiations have "failed" and that the problem is bigger than to be solved even by a "moderate third party" only to create more distrust between Sunnis and She'at. Back to operation "thunderbolt", such security measures will have bring real permenat or longstanding benefit as long as these two groups (the Sunni Scholars and Al Mehdi army) are free to poison Iraqis minds and hearts and support terrorists both logistically and morally. These two groups should be banned and all their leaders should be arrested and put on trial, and there are tons of evidences of the crimes they committed that should be more than enough to put them behind bars for a long time. Would that be an un-democratic action? Was it un-democratic to ban the NAZI party? These people have not only committed serious crimes but have stated that they're against democracy (Sadr said that he doesn't believe in democracy and that we should all resort to the Share'a, his Share'a of course which is even worse than the standard She'at or Sunni Share'a). In a joint press conference for the Iraqi ministers of interior and defense, the defense minister said that part of the security measures would be dealing with those who provoke violence in the same manner the government is dealing with terrorists and that no one is above the law. I understood that he meant the two groups I'm talking about, as they're the most prominent pro-terror Iraqi groups and have got away with so much so far. I believe that most Iraqis understood the same and I really hope the government would stick to its commitments here. Recent experiences have taught us though that the Iraqi government is still too weak and too divided to do that and I hope they prove me wrong. Getting rid of these opportunist hypocrites who have no real support together among Iraqis would clear the way for more mature less radical representation for both Sunnis and She'at, would leave terrorists alone in the scene with not enough moral or logistic support to carry on with even half of their strength and would increase people's trust in their government and set an example for any other group that might want to replace those two gangs in the future afreeiraqi.blogspot.com