The Myth of the Surge - Nir Rosen

[Granite_State]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...h_of_the_surge

Interesting article, but I found this curious:

"Before the war, it was just one party," Arkan tells me. "Now we have 100,000 parties. I have Sunni officer friends, but nobody lets them get back into service. First they take money, then they ask if you are Sunni or Shiite. If you are Shiite, good." He dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says. The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite.

The army, sure, but the Baath Party was majority Shiite? And didn't the suppression of the Shiite revolt in 1991 have just a bit of an impact on sectarian relations in Iraq?

[SWJED]

... but here goes. I was part of a e-mail group of 3-4 people that Nir corresponded with prior to his departure for Iraq - supposedly to help prepare him for his trip.

Bottom-line - I got an uncomfortable feeling from those exchanges (and from visiting his web page with previous works) that he had an agenda and would find a story in Iraq that supported the same.

I thought his article relied heavily on "select sources".

[Ken White]

is, IMO, due to many 'predictions' about it written in the 2002-03 time frame by many so-called 'Middle East Experts" and academics like Juan Cole (who had / has an agenda).

Historically and typically, there was no significant divide in Iraq, yet there were and are people on both sides of that schism in Iraq and the ME who read and prowl the internet and who quickly seized on what was appearing regularly in the generally ignorant western media as a 'divide' and 'thirst for revenge' as a ready made rationale for pursuit of their own agendas.

Said prognosticators and the media thus through essential ignorance, I strongly believe, produced a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rosen certainly has an agenda. As does the New America foundation...

Best ignored, I think.

[SteveMetz]

When my colleagues and I interviewed EPWs at Camp Bucca in April 2003, we couldn't get anyone to tell us whether they were Shia or Sunni. Of course, the reason was that Shia had learned to downplay sectarianism as a survival mechanism. Plus, Iraqis knew who was what so there was no need to even say it.

No doubt American actions exacerbated sectarian tensions. The notion that we somehow created it is ridiculous.

[Tom Odom]

When my colleagues and I interviewed EPWs at Camp Bucca in April 2003, we couldn't get anyone to tell us whether they were Shia or Sunni. Of course, the reason was that Shia had learned to downplay sectarianism as a survival mechanism. Plus, Iraqis knew who was what so there was no need to even say it.

True and the Iraqi Army was structured accordingly in 1990 and 1991. Regime survival units were Sunni. Army cannon fodder units were mainly Shia.

My own instructors at DLI were Iraqi and they were still sensitive on this issue. Notably my main instructor was female Christian married to a Sunni who had high Baath connections. The other Iraqis who were Shia avoided him; all of the other Christians shunned her. They still do after 28 years.

Inside the Muslim community, the Sunni-Shia bubbled up from time to time.
You have to remember, however, that the Iran-Iraq War was raging at the time so the Arab versus Persian nationalism also served to dampen discord. No one wanted to make waves in any way that could possbly affect their longevity in the States because no one wanted to go home.

Best

Tom

[DGreen]

Another consideration is that if you take Robert Kaplan's argument in The Coming Anarchy that when democracy is introduced to a society with significant ethnic/racial/religious tensions there is the possibility that entrepreneurial politicians, seeking votes and other support, have an incentive to foment differences and to exaggerate problems between groups as a way of gaining office.