In the Red Zone

ANSAR AL-DAJJAL

About a year ago in Kirkuk, I met a young man at the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan named Pola.  A thin figure with bad teeth, a bowl haircut and small black eyes set deep in the crevice between his cheekbones and brow, Pola seemed looked much older than his 30 years.  And no wonder.  In the mid-1990s, he told me, Baath party officials exiled him to Halabja, a city still traumatized by Saddam's 1989 poison gas attack, which killed 5,000 people.  At the time Pola lived there, the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam was active in the region.  On one occasion, the pro-Baathist paramilitaries left 42 decapitated bodies in Halabja's central square; another time, they left 17 headless corpses.  Pola escaped from the cursed town and made his way to the Northern No-Fly Zone and the protection of U.S. and British warplanes.  He joined the PUK and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, helped the organization, along with American Special Forces destroy Ansar al-Islam bases.

"American freed me twice," he said, tears glistening in his age- and experience-worn eyes.  "Once from Ansar al-Islam, and once from Saddam.  In every house in Kurdistan, there is a picture of President Bush.  He and American brought us freedom."

I thought of my encounter with the Kurd today as I read Edward Wong's New York Times piece headlined "Attacks by Militant Groups Rise in Mosul."  According to Kurdish officials whom  Wong interviewed, "Islamist" groups like Ansar al-Islam and its off-shoot Ansar al-Sunnah are responsible for most of the attacks in Mosul, while activity by ex-Baathists and Saddamites (for some reason the Times calls them "nationalist insurgents") has lessened. Moreover,

though the two Ansar--meaning "supporter" or "follower"--groups have little connection to Baathist...they are forging strong ties to the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...

If true--and some American officials, writes Wong, still believe Baathists to be organizing terrorist attacks--this represents a significant, if not unexpected development.  Increasingly, we are seeing the home-grown Iraq component of the counter-liberation diminish, and the foreign jihadist element come to the fore-front.  Not only that, but, as the press has reported lately, the Sunni obstructionists are having second thoughts about maintaining their "insurgency" and seek to reach a political settlement.

The Financial Times' Charles Clover reported yesterday that the Association of Muslim Scholars--who claim to represent some 3,000 Sunni mosques--has been meeting with tribal leaders from the Sunni Triangle region in order to create a "broad-based political front,"  Clover notes that Association spokesman Sheik Omar Ragheb al-Kubaisi

stressed that his group, which opposes the U.S.-led occupation [read:  liberation] of Iraq, is not connected to the armed insurgency, but is seeking political rather than military way to force coalition troops to leave.

This makes no sense, of course, because the Sunni "armed insurgency" is creating the very need for coalition troops to remain in Iraq, but never mind.  What's important is the final graf in Clover's story:

[Kubaisi] also sought to distinguish between the "legitimate" resistance and foreign Islamist extremists led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  "We reject the path taken by Zarqawi.  He does not represent the Iraqi resistance.  He is not even Iraqi, he is Jordanian.  We reject the path he has taken, he has destroyed the reputation of the Iraqi resistance."

Is this the same "resistance" that has murdered thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, transformed Fallujah into a slaughter pen and butchered Margaret Hasan?  It's hard to imagine anyone "destroying" their reputation further, but we'll let that go, too.  The point is the daylight opening up between the Sunni Arab reactionaries and their one-time partner in mayhem, Zarqawi. 

This development was one of the most striking aspects of Michael Ware's recent story in Time, "Talking with the Enemy."  Ware reports how U.S. officials are beginning talks with the "self-described nationalist insurgency."  Or, as one middle-aged ex-Baathist tells an American military commander, "We are ready to work with you."

What do the bad guys want?  Says Ware,

the rebels have told diplomats and military officers that they support a secular democracy in Iraq but resent the prospect of a government run by exiles who fled to Iran and the West during Saddam's regime.  The insurgents also seek a guaranteed timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal...

Evidently, the Saddmites are flexible.

[T]hey would accept a U.N. peacekeeping force [hide the women and children!] as the U.S. troop presence recedes.  Insurgent representative Abu Mohammad says the nationalists [sic] would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil.  "We don't mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says...

(Remind me, what these "nationalists" are fighting for again?)

The mooshkelay in all this is Zarqawi.  As Ware notes,

[A]l-Zarqawi and his allies have silenced nationalists by threatening to kill them if they negotiate.  The Western observer close to the discussions says, "Al Zarqawi keeps pulling the process away from 'fight and negotiate to 'pure mayhem.'"

Well, well.  The Saddamites signed their Faustian pact with Ansar al-Shaitan and now they're confronting the bill.  Two years of murder, for what?  Despite what reporters write, their "nationalist" uprising was always a chimera, an illusion to stroke their humiliated egos.  Now that they seek a role in the maturer game of nation-building (the real nationalist cause) the demons they conjured--the Ansars and Zarqawis and Al Qaedas--will not let them rest.  Too late the Sunni "insurgents" are awakening to the truth:  they tried to pitch liberated Iraqi into Hell; instead, they only succeeded in plunging into the abyss themselves.

AL-MUNAFIQEEN

That's Arabic for "hypocrites"--a serious charge in the early days of Islam when people would claim conversion to the faith, only to attempt to subvert the fledgling religion from the "inside."  Today, however, we see a different form of hypocrisy among the Association of Muslim Scholars.  According to Neil MacDonald in today's Financial Times, the Association issued a fatwa urging Sunnis to vote.  Not in the nationwide elections, mind you, but in provincial contests in Kirkuk province.  Or, as MacDonald quotes Mohammad Khalil, a Sunni Arab running for governor,

the Association of Muslim Scholars originally prohibited Sunnis from voting but...voting is now accepted as legitimate just for the provincial council of Kirkuk.

Why just in Kirkuk?  Oil, baby.  Kirkuk province is home to the Baba Gurgur oil fields, one of the richest in Iraq.  With all that money at stake, the Sunni Arabs don't want to be left begging for crumbs when the province's Kurds and Turkomen divvy up the petro-pie. 

So.  Apparently, Sunni Arabs consider elections objectionable under American "occupation" (for more on the Sunnis, see below)--unless you're talking about elections taking place in oil-rich provinces, when suddenly it become every Sunnis'  duty to vote.  Guess the left was right after all:  Iraqi democracy is a sham to secure oil profits.  Just ask the Association of Muslim Scholars. 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Certainly because we withdrew from the elections, that doesn't mean we won't be part of the drafting of the constitution.  The elections are one matter:  the constitution is another...All the Sunnis must take part in drafting the constitution.

-- Sheik Ibrahim al-Adhami, senior member of the Muslim Scholars Association

(Edward Wong, New York Times)

And there you have it, coming on the heels of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's declaration of "fierce war" against democracy:  the beginnings of an open split between the leaders of the Iraqi paramilitaries and the foreign jihadists.  The first have suddenly awoke to the fact that the Shia-Kurdish Democracy Train is indeed leaving the station and that Sunnis will have to get on board at a later stop; the second want to destroy the engine, tracks and passengers just as surely as their allies slaughtered hundreds in the stations of Madrid.  Both wings of Islamofascism realize they face a more potent threat than even the U.S. military:  a democratic constitution.  And one side is buckling.

Wong reports that this talk of participating in the political process does not emanate from leaders of the "Sunni-dominated insurgency," but rather

powerful clerics [who] have considerable influence with the guerrillas and could act as a bridge between the new government...and the insurgency.

Fine.  Good.  But let us not forget what these "powerful clerics" and their "insurgent" allies have wreaked upon the people of Iraq and our soldiers.  And let us note what their ridiculous distinction between "elections" and "constitutions" reveals:  the political and moral bankruptcy of the so-called "resistance."  And let us brand them, the "guerrillas" and all who support them either by deeds or words as history surely will:  despicable.

Would the Viet Cong have so readily abandoned their struggle and leaped into constitutional talks with the Saigon regime?  Would the FLN have stopped fighting the French colonialists and entered into a power-sharing agreement?  Never--because their objectives were fundamentally at odds with their enemies'.  But what do the Sunni "insurgents" stand for?  What is their economic policy, their education plan, their vision for the future?  What do they propose to replace the American-led liberation of their country?  I was in Ramadi, Falluja, Tikrit; I asked people these questions.  Their answer?  "Saddam."

By this time, Saddam was in custody, awaiting the war crimes tribunal that will most condemn him to death.  The inhabitants of the Sunni Triangle knew this full well:  for them "Saddam" was not a man, but a symbol of the patronage machine that rewarded their families, tribes and clans with jobs, money, prestige--even irrigation water from the Euphrates River.  "Saddam" represented their tribal supremacy over the Shia and Kurds--populations imprisoned, beaten, executed and when that wasn't enough, gassed into submission. "Saddam" embodied their own pride and self-esteem--lost, obliterated, stripped away in a pitifully few number of weeks by the American military machine.  How would these suddenly-diminished Sunni Arabs regain the honor, the patriarchal "face" they deem necessary to act in the world?  By killing those who shamed them:  Americans, and their Iraqi allies.

No, no, apologists for the Islamofascists protest:  the Sunnis fight to free themselves from foreign "occupation!"  Really?  Think for a moment what would happen if America were to do as the Sunnis claim they wish:  withdraw from Iraq.  Into the vacuum would pour Shia and Kurdish militias, eager to avenge decades of oppression and the death of hundreds of thousands of their kinsmen--and the continuing violence the Sunni "insurgents" inflict upon their people  Shia and Kurdish memories are long and they are drenched in blood.  The Sunni's make up 20 percent of the population.  Who would win? 

This fundamental fact is missed by all who blame the U.S. for the "insurgent" violence:  the Americans stand between the Sunnis and the militias of those whom they oppressed for decades.  Or, to put it another--bleaker--way:  it is the American presence that protects the Sunnis, even as it allows them to attack and kill our troops.  This is tribal warfare at its most tragic, most pointless, most nihilistic.  The Sunni leadership brought it on and they have maintained it for no rational or legitimate purpose.  And now, when the end is apparent and the futility of the cause is upon them--they want a place at the constitutional table.

And they will get one.  They should get one. The majority of Sunni Arabs may not love America or even support the newly-elected government, but they do not wish to condemn themselves to a Palestinian-like hell of perpetual violence.  They want peace, they want democracy.  They want a united Iraq.  And their "leaders" are listening.   

But will these Sunni clerics and tribal sheiks ever be held accountable for their obscene and criminal "insurgency?" Probably not.  For all their suffering--perhaps because of their suffering--the Iraqis have a kind of tragic maturity.  Rivers of blood have flown too deep and wide in their land; they know that more death, more excuses for revenge, will not move them to a better, safer place.

But we, who do live in a better, safer place, should not forget, either.  I'm thinking here of the Michael Moores and Ted Ralls of our society--those who profess to care so much about our troops, yet do their best to legitimize the nihilistic gunmen who seek to murder them.  Let us remember those who supported--and continue to support--the fascists as they went about torturing, murdering, lynching people like Margaret Hassan, Hadi Saleh and thousands of other innocents.  Let us remember those who did nothing as a nation trying to build a democracy bore assaults that are equivalent to a 9-11 attack per week.  And let us ask them on the eve of elections in Iraq:  if you do not support democracy here, now--when and where will you support it?

WHEN SUNNIS GET BLUE

Whistlin' Dixie

Like most newspapers, the New York Times'  editorials embody the "something must be done" school of analysis.  That is, they urge immediate action on some issue, in an Olympian tone that suggests the tragedy certain to befall if their views are ignored.  By the same token, these 10-point equivalents of an ancient Greek chorus rarely posit constructive advice, offering instead conventionalities and impractical prescriptions that only the dimmest politican has not already considered and either rejected or employed. 

Case in point is yesterday's lead editorial "Grim Realities in Iraq."  Its basic point to the Bush Administration was Don't alienate the Sunnis or you will put the elections at risk.  Now, given that young Sunni men are executing election workers in downtown Baghdad, this is pretty obvious stuff, hardly along the lines of say, advising the White House to drape Laura Bush in hejab in order to win Muslim hearts and minds.  (That day may not be far off, however.)  "There may be time for Washington to try to salvage the election," the Gray Lady rumbles, "but that would require paying much more serious attention to legitimate Sunni grievances and showing an openness to postponing the election for several months."

With voting set five weeks from now, even 43rd Street knows the election train has left the station, with the once-oppressed Kurds and Shia at the throttle.  What's most interesting is the editorials' advice for Bush to attend to "legitimate Sunni grievances."  These, argues the Times, originate in the dismissal of the old Sunni-dominated army, the exclusion of "former" Baathists from government posts and the dearth of "Sunni nationalist politicians" in the interim government.  Lastly, of course, there is the damage the American "counter-insurgency" operations have wreaked on "densely populated towns like Falluja."

This analysis chills me. To understand the implications of the Times' position, imagine this editorial appearing during the Reconstruction of the post-bellum South.  Matters aren't going well:  confusion and uncertainty reigns; democracy seems hanging by a slender thread; masked "guerillas"--the Ku Klux Klan--are terrorizing the population in hopes of re-establishing the fallen Confederacy. What's the advice of the Times, and others with similar views?  Pay more attention to the "grievances" of deposed plantation owners, slave-traders and ex-Southern officers.  Put more pro-slavery leaders in the state legislatures.  Make amends somehow for the damage done to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Nashville.  And, most important, consider telling the millions of blacks that we wish to delay the process of your emancipation so as not to alienate the people who once kept you in bondage.  (The fact that last turn of events actually did occur only highlights the wrongheadness of the editorial.)

Lincoln urged the North to be "magnaminous in victory"--and for the Kurd-Shia-American alliance to grind the Sunni into the mud of defeat is indeed a prescription for catastrophe.  Like most Southerners, who did not own slaves, most Sunnis were not Shia-and-Kurd oppressing Baathists, and the vast majority today wish to see a terrorist-free democracy take hold in the country. 

But delaying elections in order to placate Sunni grievances is another road to disaster, one that also risks creating incentives for the Sunnis to remain a perpetually alienated minority in western Iraq.  Besides, as I noted in the excerpts of ITRZ which recently appeared on the National Review Online, the root of their "grievances" lay beyond the reach of political remedies, involving factors such as tribal honor, abhorrence of shame and an adolescent resentment that seeks to insure the destruction of Iraq itself, rather than see it emerge from Sunni/Baathist domination. 

Recently, Jawad Hashim, a former advisor to Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, told me he remembered the dictator telling him, "If my regime goes down, I will make sure that not a stone of Iraq remains after me."  This mindset is shared by his "guerrilla" followers, the radical imams and drugged-up assassins promulgating their ideology of death.  No appeasement, no addressing "legitimate grievances" beyond the scope of upcoming elections, no placating the resentment of the Sunni terrorists will stop their violence.  At most, it will only delay the arrival of emancipation and justice for all Iraqis.

Allawi to Introduce Myself

With this in mind, it's interesting to watch interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's campaign strategy.  In a recent op-ed, the invaluable Amir Taheri argues that Iraqi attitudes toward Iran have divided the country's political elite into two camps.  One, dominated by the Shia, is attempting to walk a fine line between Tehran and Washington, realizing that once U.S. attention toward Iraq wanes, Iran will exert the greatest effect on Iraqi interests.  Advocates of the other camp see

Iran as Iraq's strategic enemy and hope to counter it with a discourse of pan-Arab nationalism. They deem the United States a tactical ally in helping Iraq rebuild a state, an army and a security service, leaving in place not a democracy but a "lite" version of Arab authoritarian rule.

Allawi falls into this group.  Recenlty, he announced that in November he'd held "a lot of" meetings in Jordan with leaders of the paramilitary gunmen seeking to topple his government.  He'd also held sit-downs with tribal leaders and other Sunni panjandrums in hopes of coaxing their votes for his slate.  He evidently aims to appeal to the Sunnis yearning for a "Saddam-lite" (indeed, many times in the Sunni Triangle, people told me they'd like to see a "new Saddam, only more democratic").  As the New York Times' John Burns noted on December 21, Allawi seeks

to portray himself as an indispensable strong man and a secular antidote to the influence of religious parties...

Allawi is further arguing that

as a former member of the governing Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, he [is] best equppied to defeat the insurgency and to entice its members to work for democracy in Iraq.

In his Jordan meetings with "insurgent" leaders, Burns continues, Allawi

had spoken to them as a former Baathist and a conspirator in the 1968 coup that brought the party, and eventually Mr. Hussein to power.

Indeed, to cement his nationalistic credientials, the Financial Times notes, Allawi has repeated criticisms of the U.S. for driving out "low-ranking" Baathists from power and for disbanding the Sunni-led army.  Lest we suspect the Primine Minister of crypto-fascist leanings, he evidently told reporter Burns that "Baathism is dead, it's finished, it's something like the ex-Soviet bloc."

Interestingly, Allawi is Shia, but he's part of a joint Shia-Sunni slate of candidates that might pose the most serious opposition to the Shia's United Iraqi Alliance slate.  Turning up the heat on Shia candidates, Sunni leaders have suggested that the recent blasts in Najaf and Karbala were carried out by Iranian agents who are using the Shia religious leaders as stalking horses for their own ambitions in Iraq.  (However, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, revealed on Iranian TV that the bombings were actually the work of the U.S. and Israel as a "plot aimed at distracting Iraqis so they miss the election.)

Whatever Allawi's strategy might be, Iraq owes this man a huge debt of gratitude for remaining at the helm of the country during this period of instability and violence.  Personally, I favor the United Iraqi Alliance, because of my interactions with the Shia in Iraq, but also because their victory will bring the kind of justice that America denied blacks after the Civil War.  It's fascinating to note that in their comments--which parallel in many ways those of Allawi and his "nationalist" camp--the brahmins of the New York Times apparently do not agree.

WHAT DO THE SUNNIS WANT?

Faced with overwhelming and increasingly sophisticated American military power and--perhaps most important--a unified Shia political slate, Sunni intransigence toward Iraq's elections continues to weaken.  According to the AP's Mariam Fam, the Iraqi Islamic Party --the Sunnis' premier political organization (which, as you'll recall, withdrew from the government last month in protest over the re-liberation of Falluja) has "quietly" submitted a list of 275 candidates.  Leaders told Fam that they wanted to "reserve the right to vote if the election is not postponed."  Translated:  the U.S., Shias and Kurds have called their bluff to sit out the January vote--a fact that is beginning to dawn upon the mutinous mullahs and sheiks of the Sunni Triangle. 

Most of them, at any rate.  The Association of Muslim Scholars--which claims to represent three thousand mosques and advocates resistance to the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq--supports delaying elections, in large part, they claim, because of the security situation.  And indeed, like hooded Klansmen stalking the post-bellum south, masked paramilitaries continue their terrorist activities, murdering police officers, National Guardsmen, government workers and other members of the true Iraqi resistance.  Their insistence on holding the country hostage to vague, unrealizable or--given the Sunnis' chance of success in an actual civil war--suicidal demands has puzzled observers.  Why won't their leaders come to the negotiating table?  What do the Sunnis want?

In his December 6 dispatch, the New York Times' John Burns provides a clue.  Describing the Marines' recent operations south of Baghdad, he notes that the targets are "two tribal families, the Janabis and the Kargoulis."   Burns writes,

Under Mr. [sic] Hussein, the Janabi and the Kargoulis were richly rewarded.  Their area was the base for Republican Guard units, munitions factories, weapons research establishments and battlefield testing grounds, as well as a host of new industrial plants and depots.

After "Mr." Hussein's downfall and the consequent loss of Baathist largess, Burns notes, "the Janabis and Kargoulis families became stalwarts of the resistance."  Are we surprised?

Out of this union of two families--or rather, tribes--emerged a leader, Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, believed today to direct the paramilitary forces in central Iraq.  He enjoys a large power base:  estimates of the Janabi's tribal habitation range from 400,000 to one million people.  The tribe's legitimate business include construction, textile and food processing companies.  Among their illegitimate businesses number weapons dealing, black market currency exchange, extortion, carjacking and the kidnapping of foreigners for eventual sale to foreign jihadists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--who, many say, is responsible for raising the tribe, and its chieftain, to prominence. 

With so much lucre at stake, no wonder the Sunnis have taken up arms.  No wonder, too, that they dread the prospect of a central--and reasonably honest--government wresting control of their black market enterprises.  As I've argued before, beneath its rhetoric of nationalism and jihad, the fascist counter-revolution in Iraq is steeped in an archaic, irrational and self-defeating resentment against America--the only force on earth that could destroy the Sunnis' tribal system of patronage and bring its criminal enforcers to justice.  What do these Sunni leaders want?  What all gangsters desire:  money, power, a firm grip over a terrified population and the murder of every honest cop who stands in their way.

UPDATE:  According to the AP, two additional Sunni parties are fielding slates of candidates:  the Constitutional Monarchy Movement and the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity.  The first group, as its name implies, seeks the restoration of Iraq's monarchy.  The second, comprised of numerous anti-Saddam militias, has had close links with the U.S. and has in the past provided manpower to guard oil pipelines in northern Iraq.

A GRAND U.S. STRATEGY?

In the darkest days of the war so far, U.S. Marines last April poised for a final assault on the Sunni-insurgent held city of Falluja; meanwhile, 120 miles to the south, other Marines faced a Shia uprising in Najaf.  Rallying to the cause of Falluja, Sunnis and Shias joined forces to ferry supplies from Baghdad to the City of Mosques.  Faced with the nightmare of a country-wide uprising, the Bush Administration halted the attack on Falluja in late April, turning over "control"  to one of Saddam's former generals.  Insurgents soon recaptured the city, transforming it into a base of operations.  And though Marines eventually retook the ancient smuggler's den this fall--at the cost of 130 soldiers and unknown numbers of Iraqi civilians--the April pullback is widely seen as a defeat for the American "occupier" and a moral-boosting victory for the Iraqi "resistance."

Thus the conventional wisdom regarding Falluja.  But is it true?

Consider:  four months later, as U.S. troops encircle Najaf and tighten their grip around rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi militiamen, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suddenly returns from London, where he was undergoing treatment for a heart condition; the following day, the 74 year-old leads a march of 10,000 people to end the fighting in the holy city.  During Sadr's similar insurrection in April, Sistani seemed to stay on the sidelines, content to see the U.S. and the chipmunk-cheeked cleric bloody themselves in inconclusive fighting.  Now, however, the Shia's spiritual leader throws the weight of his prestige against Sadr, forcing the rebel to stand down.  Why?  What happened?

The answer may actually be the operational-level manifestation of a larger geopolitical strategy the U.S. is using in its current efforts to democratize the Middle East:  play the Sunnis and Shia off against each other, with a subtle, but noticeable, tilt toward the Party of Ali.

In many ways, the roots of the War on Terror lie in a civil war within dar-al-Islam between an increasingly Wahhabi-dominated ummah and a Shia minority whom many hardline Salafists consider heretical (indeed, according to literature subsidized by Our Friends the Saudis, Shiism is actually a cult initiated by a Jew named Abdullah Saba to undermine Islam).  Certainly, as Stephen Schwartz posits in his book The Two Faces of Islam, Osama bin Laden's bid to become the head Islamofascist was, in large part, an attempt to steal the honor from the Shia heirs of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.  With an eye toward the Biblical admonishment that a house divided against itself cannot stand, the U.S. may be exploiting this sectarian rift to insure that the House of Islam--or at least its most virulent aspects--cannot stand against the tide of democracy.

In Iraq, as we know, the animosity between the Sunnis and Shia can run hot and deep.  Ever since the U.S. became embroiled in the Sunni Triangle, the Shia Hawza has watched with satisfaction as we hunt down and eliminate the Sunni gunmen and bases of operations--essentially, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, fighting their side of the Iraqi civil war for them.  But last April, the U.S. suddenly hesitated to land the killer punch.

To the Shia, this must have brought back memories of their disastrous 1920 uprising against the British, which led to an alliance between the U.K. and the Sunnis, condemning them  to 80 years of powerlessness and eventual persecution under Saddam.  Fears that the U.S. might cut a similar deal with the Sunnis may have prompted Sistani's deus ex machina-like descent from his hospital bed to deal, once and for all, with the violent aspirations of Sadr.  Then, in Act Three, the Marines return to Falluja this fall, this time finishng the job.

Tacking back and forth between the Sunni and Shia like this, the U.S.--which, despite what people might think, is neither helpless nor hapless when dealing with refractory religious groups--has managed to keep Iraq from splintering into sectarian pieces in the run-up to elections.

We can perhaps detect this strategy throughout the larger Middle East.  In a recent interview with Washington Post reporters, Jordan's King Abdullah expressed fears of a Shia "crescent," extending from Iran and Iraq into Lebanon--where Shiism is the largest of the country's numerous religious sects--and Syria, where the Allawi (an offshoot of Shiism) hold political power.  Abdullah, a Sunni monarch--hence a man with reason to fear both democracy and Shiism--told the WaPo

If Iraq goes Islamic republic, then, yes, we've opened ourselves to a whole set of new problems that will not be limited to the borders of Iraq...Even Saudi Arabia is not immune from this.  It would be a major problem.

Our hearts bleed.  A look at a map shows the possibility of Shia-dominated areas soon ringing OFTS, reminiscent of the way the U.S. surrounded the Soviet Union with bases, missiles and client states.  Note as well that the Saudis 200,000 or so Shia reside in the oil-rich areas of the desert kingdom.

As the U.S. surrounds Iran with bases in its client states of Afghanistan and Iraq, it also seems to be laying the foundation for a Shia encirclement of Saudi Arabia.  The key, of course, is Iran.  As long as the mullahs retain control of the country, and continue to spread mischief in Iraq and surrounding areas, we will not soon see a pro-American "green belt" of Shiism encircling the font of Wahhabi evil.  But the Iranian people are perhaps the most disposed toward the U.S. in the Middle East. Once the mullahs fall--as they will before long--we could witness democracy, or something close to it, sweep through the heart of the Muslim world, fulfilling the long-deferred dreams of the Shia faithful.