By DHinMI
For anyone fearful that Iraq might descend into civil war along sectarian lines, this has to be one of the most disturbing developments imaginable:
Political Instability in Iraq Causes Some to Form Militias
The rumors spread quickly last month around the central Baghdad neighborhood of Sab'ah Nisan that Salem Khudair's nephew had insulted the name of Imam Hussein, one of the most important historical figures in the Shiite branch of Islam. It fell to Khudair, the eldest son of a family from the Sunni branch, to meet with local Shiites and explain that his 26-year-old nephew had said no such thing.
A day later Khudair's family received a note insulting them as Sunni Muslims, calling them sons of whores. On March 27, Khudair was kidnapped.What came next has become typical for Iraq as sectarian tension and violence rise. Khudair's family formed an armed group of more than 20 relatives and neighbors who demanded Khudair's release and vowed to kill those responsible. "If something happened to my brother, no Shiite would be safe," Khudair's brother, Sameer, said at the time, convinced that Shiite militia members were behind the kidnapping.
Khudair's body was found on Saturday, dumped in the street. He'd been shot in the face, and there was evidence of torture. At the family home later that day, Sameer Khudair said there would be no funeral celebration until his brother's death was avenged. Young men stood on the rooftop with AK-47s, and others stuffed their guns into bags.
The political instability in Iraq and the ethnic divides behind it are pushing Iraqis toward gang-like violence that many worry could start a slide toward civil war...
The recent unrest, though, rather than coming from the top leadership of political and religious parties, is springing largely from the grass-roots of Iraqi society. It involves neighborhood-based forces, with Sunnis and Shiites seeking to protect themselves from each other or to exact revenge, and it chips away at Iraq's national unity.
More than eight months after the interim Iraqi government announced that the nation's largest Shiite and Kurdish militias would disband, they're still functioning.
Sectarian suspicions about the nation's official security forces also spur the urge to take up arms. Many Sunnis view the Iraqi National Guard, the main component of the nation's army, as working for the Shiite political elite. Many Shiites, in turn, are deeply suspicious that officers loyal to Saddam and his Baath Party have infiltrated the Iraqi police.
Between the neighborhood militias and a general distrust of security forces, Iraq is a tinderbox waiting for a spark, said Hassan al Ani, a Baghdad University political professor and analyst.
The article goes on to describe the negligible Sunni presence in the National Assembly--just 17 of the 275 seats are held by Sunni Arabs, and several of those 17 are allied with the Shia slates--as well as the important point that the real political struggle awaiting Iraqis is the drafting and ratification of a constitution:
"The center may not hold. If it survives the political process it may not survive the negotiations over the drafting of a constitution," said Joost R. Hiltermann, the Amman-based Middle East project director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank that tries to prevent and resolve global conflicts. "If that happens we're talking about civil war and the breakup of the country.
The first meeting of the National Assembly didn't accomplish much, and the second meeting was such a fiasco
that TV coverage of the session was interruputed just 22 minutes into
the proceedings. But those failures to display political progress are
nothing compared to what will happen if Iraq can't draft a
constitution. Based on the results of the January 30th election,
there's not much reason to be hopeful. The constitution can't be
adopted if rejected by voters in three or more provinces, and since
about 8 provinces are majority Sunni Arab--and where most of the
violence occurred on election day, the most violent day of the occupation.
The Sunni Arabs, if they vote in a bloc, have the ability to veto any
constitution not to their liking. Since it's hard to imagine that a
constitution written by increasingly intransigent Kurds asserting their
claims to petroleum rights and a long-supressed majority Shia majority
finally able to exert its political muscle would be to the liking of
the Sunni, it seems unlikely that the current political track will lead
anywhere other than constitutional gridlock.
If Iraqis fail to approve a constitution, and sectarian conflict continues to increase (along with the rate of dead and wounded American troops), it's hard to imagine the proliferating militias not morphing from neighborhood gangs into the armies of an Iraqi civil war.
Knight Ridder has done some great reporting in iraq... and the middle of the country is reading it.
Posted by: DemFromCT | April 06, 2005 at 07:25
Yeah, on any given day, the Detroit Free Press (and probably the Philly Inquirer and the Miami Herald and other K-R papers) is likely to have more "reality-based" coverage of Iraq than any of the prestige papers.
Posted by: DHinMI | April 06, 2005 at 12:06