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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJuan Cole: 7 Myths About the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq
Last edited Fri Jun 20, 2014, 08:43 AM - Edit history (1)
http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/myths-radical-advance.html7 Myths about the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq
By Juan Cole | Jun. 16, 2014 |
Already in the past week and a half, many assertions are becoming commonplace in the inside-the-Beltway echo chamber about Iraqs current crisis that are poorly grounded in knowledge of the country. Here are some sudden truisms that should be rethought.
1. The Sunni radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are popular. They are not. Opinion polling shows that most Iraqi Sunnis are secular-minded. The ISIS is brutal and fundamentalist. Where the Sunnis have rallied to it, it is because of severe discontents with their situation after the fall of the Baath Party in 2003 with the American invasion. The appearance of video showing ISIS massacring police (most of them Sunnis) in Tikrit will severely detract from such popularity as they enjoyed.
- snip -
3. Iraqi troops were afraid to fight the radical Sunni guerrillas and so ran away. While the troops did abandon their positions in Mosul and other towns, it isnt clear why. There are reports that they were ordered to fall back. More important, if this was a popular uprising, then a few thousand troops were facing hundreds of thousands of angry urbanites and were in danger of being overwhelmed. In Afghanistans Mazar-i Sharif in 1997 when the Pashtun Taliban took this largely Tajik and Uzbek city, the local populace abided it af few days and then rose up and killed 8,000 Taliban, expelling them from the city. (A year later they returned and bloodily reasserted themselves). Troops cannot always assert themselves against the biopower of urban masses.
4. The Sunni radicals are poised to move on Baghdad. While ISIS as a guerrilla group could infiltrate parts of Baghdad and cause trouble, they would face severe difficulty in taking it. Baghdad was roughly 45% Sunni and 55% Shiite in 2003 when Bush invaded. But in the Civil War of 2006-7, the American military disarmed the Sunni groups first, giving Shiite militias a huge advantage. The latter used it to ethnically cleanse the capital of its Sunnis. The usually Sunni districts of the west of the city were depopulated. The mixed districts of the center became almost all Shiite. There simply isnt much of a Sunni power base left in Baghdad and so that kind of take-over by acclaim would be very difficult to achieve in the capital. As Joshua Landis puts it, ISIS has picked a fight it cannot win.
5. The US should intervene with air power against ISIS. The Sunni radicals are not a conventional army. There are no lines for the US to bomb, few convoys or other obvious targets. To the extent that their advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. The Sunnis already have resentments about the Bush administration backing for the Shiite parties after 2003, which produced purges of Sunnis from their jobs and massive unemployment in Sunni areas. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US. ISIS is a bad actor, but it so far hasnt behaved like an international terrorist group; it has been oriented to achieving strategic and tactical victories in Syria against the Baath government and the Shiite Alawis, and in Iraq against the Shiite Dawa Party government. But it could easily morph into an anti-American international terrorist network. The US should avoid actions that would push it in that direction. So far the Baath regime in Syria is winning against the Sunni radicals.
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Juan Cole: 7 Myths About the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq (Original Post)
Hissyspit
Jun 2014
OP
Gore1FL
(21,098 posts)1. Everytime I hear about the 1,000 guerrillas vs 30,000 soldiers..."
...I have to wonder who those same people framed the BLM withdraw from the Bundy Ranch.
bullwinkle428
(20,628 posts)2. K&R for some incredibly important stuff that needs to be read.