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Morgan Norval - Contributor

Morgan Norval is a former soldier and author. ([Norval index]

Bloody Baghdad
The desperation of the Sunnis...
[Morgan Norval] 9/17/04

The recent terror attacks in Baghdad demonstrate the vicious brutality of the terrorists and show the desperation of the Iraqi Sunnis. The hit and run attacks, car bombs, kidnappings, and assassinations are targeting Iraqis more than our troops.

These attacks are designed to thwart efforts to build a new Iraq government run by Iraqis for Iraq. The terrorists--dissident Baathists, former Saddam loyalists, foreign jihadists, and criminals freed enmass by Saddam before the start of Gulf War II--are fighting a war of terror to prevent the emergence of a new government which will diminish Sunni influence in Iraq.

The real reason why the Sunnis are still fighting and escalating their terror campaign lies in the perception of their fate in the new Iraq. Sunni Iraqis are only about 20 percent of the population, yet they have been running Iraq for centuries, and feel they are entitled by birthright to continue. They ruled Iraq for their Ottoman masters when Iraq was part of the Turkish Empire and they've been running it ever since the formation of the artificial Iraq state established after the First World War. Kurds and the Shiites, who compose 60 percent of the population, have been under the not so tender yoke of the Sunnis and are now poised to be the dominant players in a post-Saddam Iraq.

Paybacks are hell and the Sunni realize the Kurds and Shiites are sharpening the knives in anticipation of settling age-old scores with their former overlords. The Iraqi Sunni, not burdened with the Wilsonian nonsense driving our foreign policy, know they will not be the big bullies on the block and will, instead, be on the receiving end from here on out. Their only survival strategy is to play the Mogadishu card and inflict enough casualties on US forces until public pressure forces a withdrawal of Americans from Iraq. After the withdrawal, the Sunni's hope they will be able to re-exert their control, under an equally brutal Saddam-like murderous thug. It is their only hope, they feel, and it is driving the current attacks upon Iraqi governing coalition officials and the new emerging Iraqi police force.

Coping with this will not be easy, especially under current US doctrine. We think of ourselves as being liberators – and we did liberate Iraq from Saddam and his murderous regime – the Sunnis view us as a direct threat to their existence, and they certainly don't look forward to being the low man on the totem pole in the brave new Iraq.

The ancients had particularly brutal ways of handling such insurrectionists. Both Genghis Khan and the Roman legions didn't hesitate to sack and lay waste cities and areas that resisted their forces. We, however, being more modern and less bloodthirsty, would not consider such a policy. We must either continue to absorb casualties, withdraw, or come up with a political solution that will solve the problem.

Iraq is not a viable nation state. Forged from three different Ottoman provinces of old, they have never created a sense of common nationhood. Being a Shia, Kurd Sunni, or other tribal-clannish identity comes first in the hearts and minds of the people. Being an Iraqi is a distant choice and thus they are ill-prepared for a dose of nation-building American Wilsonian democracy.

The solution that makes most sense is to partition Iraq into three separate political entities: a Kurdistan in the north; a Shiite entity in the south; and, the Sunni triangle in central Iraq. This solution, while obvious and logical, is anathema to the striped pants in the State Department who feel that borders, once drawn, are forever etched in stone. This is nonsense as the partition of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia demonstrates. But the State Department, spurning common sense, will reject it out of hand.

Meanwhile, our forces are continuing to spill their blood at the expense of Sunni Iraqis who are desperately trying to hold on to their dwindling power. We should either partition the country or tell the Kurds and Shiites they have a free hand in sorting out the Sunni on their own. Otherwise we are playing the Sunni's game and it is costing us dearly. CRO

copyright 2004 Morgan Norval

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