The battle of Baghdad
The American president is trying to correct the course. A 10-member bi-partisan committee headed by former US Secretary of State James Baker III and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton has submitted its 79-point recommendations on withdrawal from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008. The great Mongol ruler, Halaku, put Baghdad to sword in 1258, but even that was a passing wind in comparison to the toll Iraq is paying today.
The Americans have let the genie out of the bottle. Iraq is paying the wages of an inequitable ethnic order. It is the age-old Shia-Sunni bug and the pride of the blue-blooded Arabs. There is, in principle, little to divide the Shias and Sunnis except the legacy of Imams and the supremacy of the Shiite clergy.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The chasm is clear as far as the Kurds are concerned. They have their own language. It is not an issue for Iraq alone. The Kurds are a regional ethnic issue. There are Turkish Kurds and Iranians Kurds as well. They are a nation in their own rights. Statehood for the Kurds has a formidable opponent in Turkey. They do not want any disruptive force around to harm the national unity of the Turks. It is a fact that the Kurds have suffered terrible persecution. Nothing less than a broad autonomy will satisfy them.
It is not the Kurds, but the Shiites and the Sunnites that will fight out the sectarian feud that may overwhelm Iraq once the Americans are gone. It is going to be a battle for Baghdad, for the heart of Iraq. Central Iraq is a Sunnite zone, but the Shiite holy places of Karbala and Najaf are in it.
The Shiites will naturally be resolved to maintain a strong presence in Baghdad and strengthen their hold on the holy places. They may find it necessary to clip the Sunnites in their own land. For that they have the men and arms. The Islamic Army, the Jihad Army and the Mahdi Army and fierce clerics and warlords like Muqtada al- Sadr, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Abu Derra. The Sunnites will more than make up their apparent weakness in numbers with Jihadist volunteers from Jordan and other Sunnite Arab countries.
Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are the key to lasting peace in Iraq. It is proper that the Iraq Study Group report has advised the American government to engage Iran and Syria and to enlist the support of Saudi Arabia. Iran has the greatest clout in Iraq.
Shiites are the largest majority in Iraq. The Iranian patronage is the number one ground reality in Iraq.
The Saudis do not eye the Shiites with much favour. For in their eyes they are a potential threat to hereditary and clannish rule. Besides, the Saudis and the Shiites are far part, although they practice the same faith. While the Saudis are dour enforcers of strictest purity, the Shiites glorify emotional steadfastness of enforcing fairness in the legacy of Islam. These are two bastions of power in the Islamic world. They are as intense in disapproving each other's ways as they are in practicing their faith.
History has an unkind pattern for Iraq. There are few countries in the world that have seen such great civilizations, such glittering dynasties. The Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians excelled in mathematics, astronomy and advanced agriculture practices. It has seen Hamurabi (1792-1750 B.C.) as a legendary Babylonian ruler. The Abbasid caliphs with all the pageant and pomp that still regale the world with the tales of the Arabian Night.
Yet the land and its people suffered. They were subjected to invasions and interferences of pestilential and unwarranted nature. The fall of the Ottoman Turks brought on the wily trusteeship of the British. Faisal the eldest son of Emir Sharif Hussain was planted as the King of Iraq after the French drove him out from Syria. He only spread disaffection among the Iraqi people till the regime was toppled in a bloody coup in 1958.
Saddam had plus points in his favour. He rose as a son of the soil. And he did not have any love for religious extremists. It was the time and he was the leader that could have brought the ethnic groups together. He could not. He saw Iraq as a nation of Arabs. It was the Kurds who were the target of his glare. The Shiites were marginalized. As the UN sanctions caged him in central Iraq, he increasingly became a megalomaniac. The misery was passed on to the Iraqis.
America indeed could have become the saviour for Iraq by putting pressure on Saddam for popular participation. Instead America's mission for the destruction of weapons for mass destruction has turned out to be a 21st century scourge for the Iraqis. Now that the ethnic and sectarian compact has broken down, the rage will have no master.
The battle of Baghdad, if it starts, will definitely take a heavier toll, for it will not stop at anything. The message of the American misadventure in Iraq is that the greatest good for a people is best served when it is left to them to build it.