Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iraqi leaders must face responsibilitie
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iraqi leaders must face responsibilitie
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: June 13 2007 19:39 | Last updated: June 13 2007 19:39
When the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda blew up the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February last year, it triggered a paroxysm of violence between Sunni and Shia that would take an estimated 35,000 lives. The destruction yesterday of the stricken shrine’s two minarets is a transparent attempt to take Iraq’s ethnosectarian carnage to an as yet unplumbed depth. It should have been anticipated.
In 2006, there was a Sunni backlash against the ultra-violent jihadi wing of the overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency. Then as now, Sunni tribes, nationalists and neo-Ba’athists from mainstream insurgent groups revolted against the sickeningly indiscriminate violence of al-Qaeda. The jihadis’ tactical response was brilliant: it polarised Shia and Sunni and stampeded everyone back into their ghettoes.
The jihadis are trying to repeat the trick, after pitched battles against their co-religionists in central Iraq and after US occupation forces have started arming some Sunni insurgents to take on al-Qaeda. It was obvious they were going to stage some provocation, but amazing they could do it at the same shrine, supposedly under a special security blanket.
If clear proof were needed that nothing in Iraq and nothing in US policy on Iraq is working, this is it.
The “surge” is not working. The lull in ethnic cleansing has ended and, in any case, was not the result of troop levels that have not yet materialised. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia radical against whom the new US strategy was partly aimed, ordered his militia to stand aside and sent his top commanders to Iran. Nor was he unhappy to see US and Iraqi troops take out renegades he had lost control of.
The tactic of arming Sunni insurgents is bound to boomerang. The US seems to have learned nothing from a long history of fatal attraction to proxy forces and “blowback” from Vietnam to Afghanistan. A promiscuous search for allies will do nothing to mend the desperate catalogue of errors already committed by the Bush administration.
Iraq’s political leaders, meanwhile, foremost among them the non-governing Shia-led government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, continue to pursue their communalist agendas. They give every sign of believing US forces will prevent a descent into total anarchy and that they can therefore carry on with winner-takes-all politics, displaying all the statesmanship of militia commanders. If the US presence is encouraging Iraq’s leaders to resist all compromise, it is perhaps time to see if the certainty of US withdrawal will concentrate their minds.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: June 13 2007 19:39 | Last updated: June 13 2007 19:39
When the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda blew up the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February last year, it triggered a paroxysm of violence between Sunni and Shia that would take an estimated 35,000 lives. The destruction yesterday of the stricken shrine’s two minarets is a transparent attempt to take Iraq’s ethnosectarian carnage to an as yet unplumbed depth. It should have been anticipated.
In 2006, there was a Sunni backlash against the ultra-violent jihadi wing of the overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency. Then as now, Sunni tribes, nationalists and neo-Ba’athists from mainstream insurgent groups revolted against the sickeningly indiscriminate violence of al-Qaeda. The jihadis’ tactical response was brilliant: it polarised Shia and Sunni and stampeded everyone back into their ghettoes.
The jihadis are trying to repeat the trick, after pitched battles against their co-religionists in central Iraq and after US occupation forces have started arming some Sunni insurgents to take on al-Qaeda. It was obvious they were going to stage some provocation, but amazing they could do it at the same shrine, supposedly under a special security blanket.
If clear proof were needed that nothing in Iraq and nothing in US policy on Iraq is working, this is it.
The “surge” is not working. The lull in ethnic cleansing has ended and, in any case, was not the result of troop levels that have not yet materialised. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia radical against whom the new US strategy was partly aimed, ordered his militia to stand aside and sent his top commanders to Iran. Nor was he unhappy to see US and Iraqi troops take out renegades he had lost control of.
The tactic of arming Sunni insurgents is bound to boomerang. The US seems to have learned nothing from a long history of fatal attraction to proxy forces and “blowback” from Vietnam to Afghanistan. A promiscuous search for allies will do nothing to mend the desperate catalogue of errors already committed by the Bush administration.
Iraq’s political leaders, meanwhile, foremost among them the non-governing Shia-led government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, continue to pursue their communalist agendas. They give every sign of believing US forces will prevent a descent into total anarchy and that they can therefore carry on with winner-takes-all politics, displaying all the statesmanship of militia commanders. If the US presence is encouraging Iraq’s leaders to resist all compromise, it is perhaps time to see if the certainty of US withdrawal will concentrate their minds.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 10:39 AM
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