Jim Hoagland: The 30 Year War in Iraq
Iraq has endured civil war for 30 years. It has not suited Western policymakers or the media to call it that, nor to face up to the implications of the appalling sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing that this long conflict has generated. That must now change.
What peace there was in Iraq before the American invasion was the peace of the graveyard. Saddam Hussein's forces launched the genocidal campaign against the Kurds in 1987. The Shiite south was the target of mass murder and environmental warfare throughout the following decade. That history of violence lives on in today's bomb blasts destroying Shiite shrines and the equally despicable "retaliatory" butchering of Sunni civilians.
When Sunnis kill Shiites on a wholesale basis, American front pages, news broadcasts and official policy statements call it insurgency. When Shiites kill Sunnis, it's called civil war or, more teasingly, imminent civil war. There is an unacknowledged psychological basis for this seemingly irrational differentiation of massacres. Diplomats and reporters know that if the Shiite majority were to rise in a sustained onslaught against the Sunni minority, the resulting bloodbath would be horrendous -- and could spark regional intervention.
The neighboring Arab states have helped shape the perception that Shiite violence is somehow different -- and more dangerous -- than the violence used at first by Saddam and now by Sunni guerrillas, whether they are Baathist remnants, the Wahhabi fanatics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or a combination of the two.
The Kurds and Shiites are determined that their populations will never again be subjected to organized brutality from a strong central government. Their determination needs to be taken into account more thoroughly by the Bush administration, which pursues an unrealistic vision of peaceful national reconciliation in Iraq.
The Kurds take a Garbo approach: They want to be left alone. The Shiites increasingly see the same degree of autonomy and separation from the center as the answer for the south as well. A genuine decentralization of power -- a loose federalism that maintains Iraq as a concept for today and a real possibility for tomorrow -- is both inevitable and desirable at this point.
That means that the U.S. has every interest in maintaining a strategic relationship with the Kurds -- who will need American help to keep Turkey from taking them over -- and a tolerable working relationship with the mainstream Shiite forces. To promote an enforced phony national reconciliation built on concessions to Sunni extremists to wean them from violence is self-defeating....
Read entire article at WSJ
What peace there was in Iraq before the American invasion was the peace of the graveyard. Saddam Hussein's forces launched the genocidal campaign against the Kurds in 1987. The Shiite south was the target of mass murder and environmental warfare throughout the following decade. That history of violence lives on in today's bomb blasts destroying Shiite shrines and the equally despicable "retaliatory" butchering of Sunni civilians.
When Sunnis kill Shiites on a wholesale basis, American front pages, news broadcasts and official policy statements call it insurgency. When Shiites kill Sunnis, it's called civil war or, more teasingly, imminent civil war. There is an unacknowledged psychological basis for this seemingly irrational differentiation of massacres. Diplomats and reporters know that if the Shiite majority were to rise in a sustained onslaught against the Sunni minority, the resulting bloodbath would be horrendous -- and could spark regional intervention.
The neighboring Arab states have helped shape the perception that Shiite violence is somehow different -- and more dangerous -- than the violence used at first by Saddam and now by Sunni guerrillas, whether they are Baathist remnants, the Wahhabi fanatics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or a combination of the two.
The Kurds and Shiites are determined that their populations will never again be subjected to organized brutality from a strong central government. Their determination needs to be taken into account more thoroughly by the Bush administration, which pursues an unrealistic vision of peaceful national reconciliation in Iraq.
The Kurds take a Garbo approach: They want to be left alone. The Shiites increasingly see the same degree of autonomy and separation from the center as the answer for the south as well. A genuine decentralization of power -- a loose federalism that maintains Iraq as a concept for today and a real possibility for tomorrow -- is both inevitable and desirable at this point.
That means that the U.S. has every interest in maintaining a strategic relationship with the Kurds -- who will need American help to keep Turkey from taking them over -- and a tolerable working relationship with the mainstream Shiite forces. To promote an enforced phony national reconciliation built on concessions to Sunni extremists to wean them from violence is self-defeating....