News n Notes from the Web

Outrage and Silence

New York Times - May 18, 2005 - By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.

That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both religious and political terms.

Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization.

At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.

Salama Na'mat, the Washington bureau chief for the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat, wrote the other day: "What is the responsibility of the [Arab] regimes and the official and semiofficial media in the countries bordering Iraq in legitimizing the operations that murder Iraqis? ... Isn't their goal to thwart [the emergence of] the newborn democracy in Iraq so that it won't spread in the region?" (Translation by Memri.)

In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers?

Inside Iraq, obviously, credible Sunnis have to be brought into the political process and constitution-drafting, as long as they do not have blood on their hands from Saddam's days. And outside Iraq, the Bush team needs to be forcefully demanding that Saudi Arabia and other key Arab allies use their media, government and religious systems to denounce and delegitimize the despicable murder of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq.

If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks, and if credible Sunnis were given their fair share in the Iraqi government, I am certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop, as happened with the Palestinians. Iraqi Sunnis would pass on the intelligence needed to prevent these attacks, and they would deny the suicide bombers the safe houses they need to succeed.

That is the only way it stops, because we don't know who is who. It takes the village - and right now the Sunni Arab village needs to be pressured and induced to restrain those among them who are engaging in these suicidal murders of innocents.

The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates.
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Doak: Big Thinkers let us down

By RICHARD DOAK - DES MOINES REGISTER COLUMNIST
May 16, 2005
Watching events in Iraq from 6,600 miles away is like trying to discern shapes in a sandstorm. What's going on? The insurgency grows ever more bloody, and it seems to make ever less sense.

Some 29 Iowans had died as of last week, and the losses are accelerating. Still, the greatest losses are among Iraqis themselves who are blown up and assassinated by their fellow Iraqis in the most horrific ways. Why? It can't be to drive out the American troops. If that's what the insurgents wanted, all they'd have to do is stop the killing and lie low. Americans would declare the country stabilized and go home. The Big Thinkers in Washington are supposed to understand what's going on. But our government hasn't been very helpful in explaining things. The official line is that the insurgents are a bunch of blood-thirsty terrorists who kill because they hate democracy. Only a simpleton would believe that.

As the insurgency drags on, Americans have had time to learn a little about the land and the people about whom we knew practically nothing before the invasion. About all we knew was that Iraq was an oil-rich Arab country ruled by a ruthless dictator. Now we know that Iraq in some respects is still a tribal society where loyalty to clan is stronger than loyalty to country. We also are realizing that the insurgency seems to be a power struggle between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with a subplot of ethnic enmity between Arabs and Kurds. There's probably more to it than that. The insurgency might have many causes. There might be more than one insurgency happening at the same time. But smoothing over the Sunni-Shiite division seems to be the key to restoring order. We have learned that the Sunni Arabs are a minority in Iraq, but they have always been the ruling class. Atrocities were sometimes committed against the lowly Shiites and Kurds.

Now an election has produced a government led by a Shiite-Kurd coalition, and the Sunnis are not meekly accepting their loss of top-dog status. At least, not all Sunnis are. From this distance, it's hard to fathom why theological differences between Sunnis and Shiites would be strong enough to produce suicide bombers. It might help to recall that not so long ago, as history measures time, Christians often slaughtered other Christians who adhered to the wrong branch of the faith. Even today, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland live in an uneasy truce. When Christians killed one another, it wasn't so much about the fine points of theology as it was about power - which group got to lord it over the other group. It must be the same in Iraq today.

If the Big Thinkers in Washington who cooked up the invasion had known more about Iraq and its people, they might not have been so cocksure that setting up a post-invasion government would be a cinch. What's happening in Iraq has been compared to the attempted reconstruction of the American South after the Civil War. The victorious North imposed democracy on the region, which resulted in the election to high office of many former slaves. The former slave-holding aristocracy resisted fiercely. Largely by terrorizing blacks, they regained power as soon as Northern troops departed. White supremacists in the South bombed black churches. Sunni supremacists in Iraq bomb Shiite mosques.

It's possible that most Sunnis do not support the insurgents. They might be willing to accept their loss of dominance and try living peaceably under Shiite-Kurdish rule, but their willingness apparently doesn't extend to stopping the insurgents from freely moving among them to plant their bombs. The insurgents wantonly kill Shiites, Kurds, Americans and Sunnis whom they view as collaborators. It's hard for those of us 6,600 miles away, and with no particular expertise on the Middle East, to feel comfortable suggesting what should be done. My first instinct was that the most sensible course would be to divide Iraq into three countries - one Kurdish, one Sunni, one Shiite. Iraq, being artificially created after World War I, was never a real country anyway.

But the Big Thinkers in Washington cite geopolitical reasons - some of them involving oil - why Iraq must be kept intact. So America stays the course, trying to quell a religious/ethnic civil war in a faraway land. What are the odds of success anytime soon? The Big Thinkers in Washington won't even hazard a guess. They won't even give an inkling of what conditions would have to be met before American troops can come home. Perhaps they don't know themselves. Sometimes it turns out the Big Thinkers aren't any smarter than the rest of us. One of these days, we ordinary Americans out here in the hinterlands are going to have to stop letting them do all our thinking for us.
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Doak: Big Thinkers let us down

By RICHARD DOAK - DES MOINES REGISTER COLUMNIST
May 16, 2005
Watching events in Iraq from 6,600 miles away is like trying to discern shapes in a sandstorm. What's going on? The insurgency grows ever more bloody, and it seems to make ever less sense.

Some 29 Iowans had died as of last week, and the losses are accelerating. Still, the greatest losses are among Iraqis themselves who are blown up and assassinated by their fellow Iraqis in the most horrific ways. Why? It can't be to drive out the American troops. If that's what the insurgents wanted, all they'd have to do is stop the killing and lie low. Americans would declare the country stabilized and go home. The Big Thinkers in Washington are supposed to understand what's going on. But our government hasn't been very helpful in explaining things. The official line is that the insurgents are a bunch of blood-thirsty terrorists who kill because they hate democracy. Only a simpleton would believe that.

As the insurgency drags on, Americans have had time to learn a little about the land and the people about whom we knew practically nothing before the invasion. About all we knew was that Iraq was an oil-rich Arab country ruled by a ruthless dictator. Now we know that Iraq in some respects is still a tribal society where loyalty to clan is stronger than loyalty to country. We also are realizing that the insurgency seems to be a power struggle between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with a subplot of ethnic enmity between Arabs and Kurds. There's probably more to it than that. The insurgency might have many causes. There might be more than one insurgency happening at the same time. But smoothing over the Sunni-Shiite division seems to be the key to restoring order. We have learned that the Sunni Arabs are a minority in Iraq, but they have always been the ruling class. Atrocities were sometimes committed against the lowly Shiites and Kurds.

Now an election has produced a government led by a Shiite-Kurd coalition, and the Sunnis are not meekly accepting their loss of top-dog status. At least, not all Sunnis are. From this distance, it's hard to fathom why theological differences between Sunnis and Shiites would be strong enough to produce suicide bombers. It might help to recall that not so long ago, as history measures time, Christians often slaughtered other Christians who adhered to the wrong branch of the faith. Even today, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland live in an uneasy truce. When Christians killed one another, it wasn't so much about the fine points of theology as it was about power - which group got to lord it over the other group. It must be the same in Iraq today.

If the Big Thinkers in Washington who cooked up the invasion had known more about Iraq and its people, they might not have been so cocksure that setting up a post-invasion government would be a cinch. What's happening in Iraq has been compared to the attempted reconstruction of the American South after the Civil War. The victorious North imposed democracy on the region, which resulted in the election to high office of many former slaves. The former slave-holding aristocracy resisted fiercely. Largely by terrorizing blacks, they regained power as soon as Northern troops departed. White supremacists in the South bombed black churches. Sunni supremacists in Iraq bomb Shiite mosques.

It's possible that most Sunnis do not support the insurgents. They might be willing to accept their loss of dominance and try living peaceably under Shiite-Kurdish rule, but their willingness apparently doesn't extend to stopping the insurgents from freely moving among them to plant their bombs. The insurgents wantonly kill Shiites, Kurds, Americans and Sunnis whom they view as collaborators. It's hard for those of us 6,600 miles away, and with no particular expertise on the Middle East, to feel comfortable suggesting what should be done. My first instinct was that the most sensible course would be to divide Iraq into three countries - one Kurdish, one Sunni, one Shiite. Iraq, being artificially created after World War I, was never a real country anyway.

But the Big Thinkers in Washington cite geopolitical reasons - some of them involving oil - why Iraq must be kept intact. So America stays the course, trying to quell a religious/ethnic civil war in a faraway land. What are the odds of success anytime soon? The Big Thinkers in Washington won't even hazard a guess. They won't even give an inkling of what conditions would have to be met before American troops can come home. Perhaps they don't know themselves. Sometimes it turns out the Big Thinkers aren't any smarter than the rest of us. One of these days, we ordinary Americans out here in the hinterlands are going to have to stop letting them do all our thinking for us.
***