Okay, I don’t have time to post a comprehensive entry on the subject I posted. But, reading several NYT articles has revealed to me that I’m even more ignorant than I thought I was.
It started when I was surprised to discover that Al Qaeda was a Sunni group. My reaction was something along the lines of “But Sadaam/the Baathists are Sunni, and they hate Al Qaeda, right? How does that make sense?” Then there was the “what is the _real_ difference between Sunnis and Shias? Yes, yes, different areas of Iraq, some more oil rich than others. Prevalence in population and dominance in politics, blah, blah, blah. But those are characteristics of the groups’ circumstances in Iraq. They aren’t the features that distinguish one from the other. Sunnis live in Shi’a areas and vice versa. I really don’t know the difference between the two groups in a more fundamental sense.
Then another article made the observation that neither the Iraqi identity nor the Sunni/Shi’a identity is (generally speaking) the most important grouping in Iraqis’ lives. Their families/clans are more important. And it fits what I know better than the Sunni/Shi’a distinctions as the primary allegiance. It also makes unity a much more complicated (impossible?) goal. It also puts so many things into context. Without knowing jack or shit about the most important factor in so many of their lives, the folks at home are shooting blind in their understanding of the situation. And every blind shot will undoubtedly hit some target, the question is, how big. There were people who welcomed our troops as liberators and I bet several of them still feel the same way. But that’s not to say the represent the majority, or even a significant minority of the people there. So the “greeted as liberators” thing did have a tiny kernel of truth, along with a giant, steaming heap of exaggerating bullshit.
Not that I think the soldier killers represent a majority of the population. If they did, I bet the situation would be quite different, and there’d be alot more dead bodies.
I’ve completely lost track of my point here. Oh yeah, I don’t know shit about the important parts of the situation. But neither do most of the people vehemently opining on the topic. That was my point. How constructive. Chaos is usually a very ugly beast.
One of the big problems is, Iraq, like the USA, is an invented nation rather than a natural one – people really have no common bonds of loyalty other than those which have been engendered by the State.
In the USA this was mostly voluntary, but Iraq was created by outside forces deliberately to be an opposing power to Persia/Iran. The current US administration’s great stupidity is not realising the subtle problems of Middle Eastern politics and culture, and not realising that if you apply a hammer to a fragile nation, it will shatter.
I’m not sure why you’re surprised Al Qaeda is mostly Sunni – Bin Laden is Saudi after all. As you said, denomination is something of a red herring here.
Man, I could go on for days….
But yeah, the Tribal thing one-ups the Religious Affiliation thing (Sunni, Sufi, and Shi’a Kurds all identify more as Kurds than as Sunni or Shi’a)
Also, in any society, only a small percentage of people will pick up arms and actively resist – despite the provacation. Most people are not natural warriors. That falls mostly on young males, with the occasional badass old dude or tough broad in the mix. What IS the case is that in some provinces (mostly Al-Anbar) up to 85% of the population sympathizes with the “soldier killers.” That means they will lie about who they have seen, stash their gear, give them a place to sleep, a lookout, etc… That makes an insurgency damned hard to fight in those areas.
Whereas if 85% of the population were more inclined to rat out soldier killers than support them, things would be very different in another way.
We call that place “Kurdistan”