Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[TheCurmudgeon]

In my 18 months of dueling against them on the intel side and talking with the Sunni insurgents individually for literally hours and having to really learn their thinking and the reasons behind the why just to talk with them---one thing that stuck me while we in the rest west assume they are aggressive, brutal, and "crazies" if one takes the time to fully understand their logic built on the Koran and how it affects their daily lives and their outlook on politics they are not so "crazy". But one has to put one's preconceptions, biases, religion behind one's self---but working within a system that does not allow for private opinions since I have left that world --the world actually makes sense.

The ISIS and the other major Sunni insurgent groups do not really want to takeover Iraq---they understand the numerical differences since Saddams fall--what they want is a piece of Iraq that they can rule as their Sunni piece and they wanted a part of the oil revenue sharing as well as power sharing. They learned from their 2005 refusal to vote and in 2010 came out in strength and supported a secular Shia who won and we the West refused to push Malaki out the door---our mistake not the Sunni's.

The Sunni's via their Awakening ---not our Awakening took on AQI and pushed them out and what did they get? Nothing for their efforts.

What you see now is a unified to a large degree Sunni's across the board who are revolting against the Shia Malaki. and against the US who they view as actually supporting Malaki and not following through on their promises.

Now comes the hard part--if in an attempt to rein in ISIS the Shia via Iran will be attacking other Sunni groups along the way and with the memories of ethnic cleansing of 2006-2008 in the back of their minds--this reinforces then the Sunni and then watch how the sidelines of the KSA, Jordan, the Gulf Sunni states get involved---there is a certain automatism then in gear.

The core question is this what ISIS wants as they inherited Zarqawi's ideas and he was pushing for a Holy War? Or do they really believe they only want a Caliphate that is the Sunni triangle and the Sunni areas in Syria---are they content with that---am not so sure.

On top of this the Kurds are attempting to finally get the additional territory they were pushed back from in 2011 in the current turmoil.

I understand the collectivist mindset and the way they think. And to be honest, the religious bent is really not that different from the Right Wing Religious groups here in the states. Their religious beliefs are guiding principles in their lives and they feel that they should be the foundation of all law. It is not really that hard to understand, groups like ISIS just taken to the extreme.

From what I can tell ISIS is a group that takes orders from no country. They have managed to provide their own funding through various criminal enterprises, so they are beholden to no one. While it is too early to tell, it would seem that their aims are limited to the Sunni sections of Syria and Iraq. They do not want a holy war, they want their own State. The question is can they really make it work? It is one thing to let slip the dogs of war, particularly a war built on so deep and personal a belief system as religion. It is another to rein those dogs in.

I don't think we should get on the side of Maliki. I personnaly believe that we should find a moderate Sunni and back him. Then once we have routed ISIS, let him keep the territory as a seperate state. Let the Kurds have their state. Let the Shiite have theirs. Disolve Iraq. I don't see any other way to keep these groups from doing this again in a year. From what I can tell they have been doing this since Iraq's inception as a nation.

I keep thinking that we learned the wrong lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union: Let me offer a short alternative history. It is 1989 and the Soviet Union stands on the verge of collapse. In fear of the chaos and devastation the internal collapse of a nuclear power might yield, the United Nations with Yeltzin’s consent puts together a Peacekeeping force to help stabilize the situation. The mandate includes installing a democratic state while maintaining the Soviet Union’s territorial integrity. Initially things go well but over time it becomes clear that power sharing is problematic. Elections yield a Russian President that Georgians and Ukrainians don’t trust. The voices of moderates are drowned out by sectarian ultranationalists who begin terrorist campaigns to break away from central control. And while the peacekeepers do their best to keep order, and the politicians argue that they key is democratic reforms and greater power sharing, the country falls into the exact chaos the peacekeepers were sent to forestall. Sound impossible? I would turn your attention to the former Yugoslavia. The real history is much more pleasant. The Soviet Union peacefully dissolved into fifteen separate states along traditional ethnic and historic lines. But it might have been different if we foolishly tried to hold together a country that did not view itself as a single sovereign territory. I think that is the foolish mistake we are making in Iraq.