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I was asked on the radio yesterday whether Iraq’s sectarian wars are really over. With all the usual caveats, I replied that I think they are. Here’s a good example of why.
Maliki arrests a prominent Awakening leader named Adil Mashhadani. There was a gun battle in Baghdad. Now Mashhadani has been sentenced to death. And this is one of the reactions:
Other Awakening leaders had mixed reactions to Mr. Mashhadani’s sentencing. “Nobody is above the law,” said Nabil Ahmed, an Awakening leader in the Adhamiya neighborhood.
You simply would not have heard that in 2006 or 2007.
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But how prevalent is that view? Remember, the NYT also quotes people who think his arrest is symptomatic of the government’s anti-Shi’ite bias.
Iraq’s sectarian violence was a cycle. Enough instigators — the al-Mashhadani arrest, the massacre in Abu Ghraib — and Sunnis will start reprisal attacks, and then you’re in danger of reigniting the whole conflict.
It doesn’t take a majority to restart sectarian violence — just an angry minority. And “sectarian warfare” doesn’t even have to be an explicit goal; it can be a consequence of the fighting.
The meaning changes if Nabil Ahmed is a rival Awakening leader (for whatever reason), or if he’s merely an Awakening leader who doesn’t want to follow in Mashhadani’s footsteps.
On a broader level, though, I would agree that Iraq’s sectarian war is over, even if sectarian tensions remain. The war is over because the Shiites won.
It’s at least possible that THAT sectarian war is over.
The situation around Kurdish autonomy and Kirkuk in particular is unsustainable, however. I cannot see a path to a solution there that doesn’t lead to large-scale violence…
mikey
Well that’s good then. I really hope they sort themselves out well enough to avoid violence once the US leaves. Surely they are sick of it by now.
You can’t declare a war that has gone on for a thousand years over after just a year or two of reduced hostilities. Get back to me in 2109…and by the way are Americans STILL in Iraq? What the hell are we doing there these days?
Was it over when the germans bombed pearl harbor?