I found this to be a very interesting essay, which argues that Obama sees Iraq through a lens of sectarian conflict which is no longer strictly operative. I intend to write about this at City of Brass, but I need some more information about the post-sectarian phase. Can I tap the braintrust here and ask you all for links that support the contention that Iraq’s obstacles to stability and political reconciliation are now largely non-sectarian in nature?
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Conflict between sects of the same general religious faith never quite go away, and remain operative — strictly or otherwise — for century after century.Â
The conflicts between shi’a and sun’a Islam have, periodically but most regularly, been murderous. Which, of course, is not much different from the equally murderous conflicts between catholic and protestant Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, it is obvious to non-Muslims that the sun’a-shi’a conflicts have never stopped since the martyrdom of the imam Hussein outside Karbala in the late 7th century.
So whatever his numerous other shortcomings in his quest for the presidency of the United States, Obama may not be too far off in his assessment of Iraqi society and its endless and not infrequently bloody shi’a-sun’a struggles. And not even to mention that fact that the Kurds are not Arabs at all, do not speak Arabic, and mostly want an independent Kurdistan. Which they now have on a de facto basis in any case.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I’d say they’re still sectarian to a large extent, but sectarianism is greatly reduced.
Shia and Sunni have coexisted in Baghdad, and even intermarried, for centuries. Saddam’s Baath Party eroded those ties, replacing them with the brittle cement of a brutal, blood-soaked pseudo-nationalist (but in fact mostly sectarian) police state dotted with rape rooms and torture chambers.
When Iraq was liberated, the power vacuum that ensued meant power flowed to the only power centers that Saddam had not crushed or controlled: extremist militant sectarian elements like the Mahdi Army and Al Qaeda (which grew quickly due to Sunni anger over being removed from power), built around sectarian identity. Once stakeholders (esp. tribal leaders) within the sects were given the ability reject the extremists by the U.S. backing of the democratic political system and the Awakening movements, the violence ebbed.
The Sunni Baathist pseudo-nationalists built around former regime elements also threw in the towel once they recognized that 1) they weren’t going to be able to seize power again 2) AQ was very unpleasant to live with and 3) a democratic system wasn’t that bad, and probably the best Sunnis could hope for.Â
There are, of course, still ethnosectarian disputes, many (such as Kirkuk) arising from the brutal actions of the Saddam regime and the argument over how best to redress those actions.
Dave, whats your take on the argument by the paper i linked? specifically Obama’s reading of the Oil/kurd issue?
It strikes me as a fairly typical misreading of the Iraqi political situation as atypical of democracies, as though Republicans and Democrats in our own country never deadlocked over critical issues.Â
We were told over and over that the Iraqi politicians couldn’t meet this or that goal — agreeing on a Constitution, forming a unity government, reconciling with the Sunni parties, etc. The remaining disputes are relatively minor and will be resolved eventually (for instance, preparations for provincial elections are continuing even without the law, and the Kurds are negotiating over oil revenue sharing even as they sign deals in defiance of the federal gov’t).
The article also exaggerates Iran’s influence over Iraq’s rulers, as though those leaders had not spent the last several months routing the Iranian-backed Shia militias.  This is a common error, stemming from the succor SCII/Dawa received during Saddam’s regime, but it’s a bit like someone saying in the 1950s that the Stalinist USSR was a U.S. pawn because of Lend-Lease.
You have to consider the proposition that it was never really operative, but rather that it was a meme that sounded like an incisive, profound insight but really put a thoughtful looking face on just plain opportunistic opposition to the war.
Well, I can’t make you consider it, Aziz, so you don’t really "have to."Â But "Obama sees Iraq through a lens of sectarian conflict which is no longer strictly operative" sounds like a very euphemistic way of saying, "Turns out Obama was dead wrong, but on the bright side it’s possible that he never really believed what he was saying in the first place."
Ron Coleman’s last blog post..Plus ça change
Well, I tend to give Obama (and Bush) the benefit of the doubt in that they mean what they say. And the sectarian conflict angle was in fact quite dramaticall operative during the first few years of postwar occupation. You may have forgotten the ethnic cleansing that ravaged Baghdad and other cities, but I haven’t. And it was the ferocity of that ethnic sectarian civil war that really brought those divisions alive in Iraqi society, where as Dave notes they hadnt really been significant before. So yes, "no longer operative" is in fact quite accurate a way of putting things, I think.
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