Sunnis v Shiites
Sunnis v Shiites
Iraq’s knife-edge charter victory will not solve the Iraqi Sunni insurgency or help bring Assad to heel
DEBKAfile:
(While the world focuses on the the Israel/Palestine conflict and the insurgency in Iraq, it totally ignores the real battle for dominance between the Sunnis and the Shiites which underlies and determines everything in the ME. The US is trying to manage this conflict to its advantage [you know, divide and conquer] with little success. In the eighties, the US supported the Sunni dominated Iraq against Shiite Iran and now they have enabled the rise of Shiite power by supporting democracy in Iraq. I wonder what their Saudi friends think of this. I wonder what they themselves think of this. Ted Belman)
DEBKAfile’s analysts allow this [constitutional] victory is a technical achievement for the Iraqi government and Washington. It will jump Iraq onto its next stepping stone to democracy, the December 15 general election. But it will not draw the fangs of the Sunni-backed insurgency and al Qaeda terror. The former rulers of Baghdad will infer again that the US 2003 invasion bring them only defeat and forces them to knuckle under the Shiite and Kurdish rule.
Washington made extreme efforts to bring the Sunnis into the political process in Iraq, in projects led mainly by the Jordanian king Abdullah and the former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. These efforts failed.
The outcome of the constitutional referendum may well be interpreted by other Middle East rulers as a further American boost for the changing existing Sunni-dominated regimes by raising up ethnic and religious communities to power and espousing separatism. Neighboring Sunni Arabs view the charter as a recipe for federalism and therefore Iraq’s partition between the Shiites and Kurds. They are totally averse to a second Shiite republic rising alongside Iran. As for the Alawite minority Assads who govern Syria, they will conclude that by kowtowing to US –French demands, they will hasten the total eclipse of Sunni influence in Iraq. Damascus will therefore dig in its heels even further against US pressure, while the Palestinians who were closely allied with the Saddam Hussein regime, will do their utmost to keep the Americans out of their affairs.
Posted by Ted Belman at October 27, 2005 05:01 AM
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1
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BobW
said:
"Federalism" is really condominium status with a neocolonial rule.
The Iraqi partition of the Shiites and Kurds, by default, also partitions off the Sunnis. This is no different than President H.W. Bush's (B41) so-called "no fly zones".
Kol tuv,
BobW
Posted by: BobW on October 27, 2005 11:27 AM
2
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Leonard
said:
Iraq is destined to be split into three separate countries in accordance with ethnic lines - Kurdish, Shia and Sunni. The country was always an artificial creation by UK/France following the end of WWI and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. It has been a futile exercise to try to preserve the country as a single entity. Its destined to go the same way as Yugoslavia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire even if it takes a civil war to achieve this. America should accept this inevitability and focus on consolidating and securing friendly relations with the Shias and Kurds, and abandon the Sunni's to their fate.
Posted by: Leonard on October 27, 2005 07:23 PM
Sunnis v Shiites
Iraq’s knife-edge charter victory will not solve the Iraqi Sunni insurgency or help bring Assad to heel
DEBKAfile:
(While the world focuses on the the Israel/Palestine conflict and the insurgency in Iraq, it totally ignores the real battle for dominance between the Sunnis and the Shiites which underlies and determines everything in the ME. The US is trying to manage this conflict to its advantage [you know, divide and conquer] with little success. In the eighties, the US supported the Sunni dominated Iraq against Shiite Iran and now they have enabled the rise of Shiite power by supporting democracy in Iraq. I wonder what their Saudi friends think of this. I wonder what they themselves think of this. Ted Belman)
DEBKAfile’s analysts allow this [constitutional] victory is a technical achievement for the Iraqi government and Washington. It will jump Iraq onto its next stepping stone to democracy, the December 15 general election. But it will not draw the fangs of the Sunni-backed insurgency and al Qaeda terror. The former rulers of Baghdad will infer again that the US 2003 invasion bring them only defeat and forces them to knuckle under the Shiite and Kurdish rule.
Washington made extreme efforts to bring the Sunnis into the political process in Iraq, in projects led mainly by the Jordanian king Abdullah and the former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. These efforts failed.
The outcome of the constitutional referendum may well be interpreted by other Middle East rulers as a further American boost for the changing existing Sunni-dominated regimes by raising up ethnic and religious communities to power and espousing separatism. Neighboring Sunni Arabs view the charter as a recipe for federalism and therefore Iraq’s partition between the Shiites and Kurds. They are totally averse to a second Shiite republic rising alongside Iran. As for the Alawite minority Assads who govern Syria, they will conclude that by kowtowing to US –French demands, they will hasten the total eclipse of Sunni influence in Iraq. Damascus will therefore dig in its heels even further against US pressure, while the Palestinians who were closely allied with the Saddam Hussein regime, will do their utmost to keep the Americans out of their affairs.
Posted by Ted Belman at October 27, 2005 05:01 AM