Shias could give the West a new axis to grind

The Australian:

August 02, 2005

ONE of the meanings of insurgent has to do with a rising of the sea, describing a rushing in of its waters. Hence the application of insurgency to some political uprisings: the implication of troubles coming from elsewhere, from outside. Thus, the term suits Washington when spin-doctoring what ails Iraq. The insurgency line allows the mounting conflict to be characterised as the work of aliens: Syrians, Iranians and the boys from Bin Laden Inc.

But like almost everything George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard have told us about Iraq, this is disinformation. As with Saddam Hussein's active nuclear and biological weapons programs and the strong operational links between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden, it's simply wrong. Yes, Baghdad is now a nexus, a theme park for ideologues and zealots, a few of whom hail from Tehran or Damascus. But the Iranians are there as diplomats, not terrorists. Instead of bombing bridges, they're building them.

With the old enemies rapidly becoming friends, the rapprochement is likely to lead to the ultimate disaster for US policy, an Iraq allied with and echoing the Islamist enthusiasms of the mullahs' Iran. And it's happening because of the nature of the insurgency, which is, first and foremost, a civil war.

Although largely secular, Saddam's Baathist regime delivered power, prestige and political preferment to the Sunnis. Though Baghdad became a Sunni stronghold, they remained a minority. Like the Kurds, Sunnis represent only 20 per cent of the Iraqi population, with Shias providing the bulk of the 60 per cent. Embittered by decades of Saddam and Sunni bullying, the Shias are determined to run Baghdad and the nation, and the insurgency is overwhelmingly a desperate effort by the Sunnis to prevent it.

This was something the blundering Americans should have anticipated. They now seek to fix the mess, or at least to camouflage it, with the window-dressing of a constitution that hasn't a snowball's chance of surviving if and when the occupation ends. Not with the Sunni minority determined to protect itself. Not with the overwhelming Shia majority seeking ongoing dominance as well as the sort of Islamic state that will delight Tehran while giving Washington nightmares.

The Sunnis are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned but will continue to wreak havoc. They confront the combined forces of the US and the Iraqi military, the latter a shambolic combination of Kurdish soldiers, Saddam's leftovers and new, principally Shia, recruits. (As with the Kurds, the Shias don't want Sunnis in the new army or security agencies.) Not a healthy situation when you're trying to build a nation. Or even for the sort of federation the Kurds would prefer, the better to protect their hard-won autonomy.

Just as the Indonesian military supported the militias killing and burning in East Timor, the Sunni Arabs in the Iraqi army are known to be helping the insurgents with weapons and warning of planned counterattacks. That's why ministers in the national government prefer Shia militias for protection. The Kurdish politicians are particularly cautious, declining to confide their movements to the Iraqi military and relying on their own people.

The Sunni insurgency is there to stay and the boys won't be home for Christmas this year. Or for any Christmas in the foreseeable future, until the US grows weary of the cost in lives and dollars, and of declining domestic support, with its ominous electoral implications. Then there's the number of young terrorists learning their trade in Iraq's cities. This wasn't happening under Saddam; despite Bush's wild accusations, he wasn't encouraging local terrorists to hit the US. But in the new Baghdad? It's a dead cert.

In the 1960s, the world learned of Washington's domino theory MarkI. It held that if South Vietnam fell to the reds, nation after nation in Southeast Asia would topple. That didn't happen. Nor will Washington's new domino theory live up to expectations. That's the one that holds a democratic Iraq will inspire its neighbours to oust tyrannies and replace Saddam-style republican guards with Dubya-style Republican parties.

Thanks to Iraq's Shia majority and the deepening friendship with Iran, the plans of Baghdad's religious parties to create a Shia nation seem likely to succeed. This is the worst-case scenario for the Bush administration: another Shia theocracy in the region, leading to a new axis of evil. An axis of Iraq and Iran. With a nuclear axe. If the invasion of Iraq has been as great a success as Bush, Blair and Howard keep insisting, you'd hate to see a failure.

The invasion has been a fiasco, a combination of hubris and wilful ignorance of regional history and religious demography has turned Iraq's desert sands into quicksands that, in due course, will prove as deadly to US ambitions as the mud of Vietnam.

No, the Sunnis can't win in Iraq. But neither can the US