Lost in the shuffle in recent weeks, between Americans watching their economy take a nosedive and watching the debates in one of the most pivotal presidential elections in memory, was the news from Iraq - a country that, contrary to repeated statements by government officials in Washington, has neither turned the corner nor is it on its way any time real soon to overcoming its myriad sectarian, social and political problems.
Never mind that Shiite religious parties, whose members, alas, consider themselves Shiites first and Iraqis second, control the country's central government, and that the army is a Shiite-dominated institution built around the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC).
And never mind that the Shiite-Kurdish alliance has long since fractured, as demonstrated by the military confrontations that took place between the two sides after the Iraqi army entered the Kurdish-administered town of Khanaqin last month. Consider instead the fate of the Awakening movement, a strong military force in its own right, comprising roughly 100,000 Sunni men that since its formation in 2007 has been trained, backed and financed by Americans.
On October 1, officials of Iraq's Shiite-led government assumed authority over the group, known alternately as the "Sons of Iraq".
"They will kill us," Ernesto Londono, the Washington Post correspondent, quoted one concerned militiaman based in Baghdad as saying. "They will kill us all, one by one." The warning is not hyperbolic.
Londono added: "Across Baghdad, leaders of the group speak about the transition in similarly apocalyptic terms. Some have left Baghdad, saying they fear that the Iraqi government will conduct mass arrests after the handover. Others are obtaining passports and say they will flee to Syria."
The Awakening Movement, its clumsy name notwithstanding, is the direct outcome of the excesses of Al Qaida in Iraq and other like-minded Islamist groups, whose militias in the Sunni Traiangle had gone on a rampage of brutalities against local shaikhs, notables and tribal leaders when these had ran afoul of their dictates.
When folks there were driven to form their own militias, with American support, it didn't take them long to turn the tables on the Islamist insurgents, crippling their ability to stage those spectacular, not to mention horrendous, attacks they had become notorious for.
Al Qaida and other fundamentalist rebels, it seems, had shown themselves not to be astute students of guerrilla war by ignoring one cardinal fact: You alienate the people among whom you're supposed to operate like "fish in the water", and whose support is crucial for your survival, and you are lost.
What has not gone down well with the Shiite-dominate government in Baghdad, however, is the idea of a Sunni-commanded militia force whose members, according to US plans, will sooner or later be integrated into the Iraqi army and police. To the sectarian-minded government, ultimately integrating 100,000 Sunnis is not only anathema but unacceptable.
Almost a year ago, for example, as Peter Galbraith, an expert on Iraq, reported in the New York Review of Books this month, General Huggins, whose men trained Iraqi police in the Sunni belt south of Baghdad, submitted the names of 3,000 recruits to the government for integration into the security forces. Of those recruits, 2,600 were from the Awakening, and 400 were Shiites. "Four hundred were accepted," Galbraith wrote. "All were Shiites". The brazenness of it all is breathtaking.
The punchline here is that Iraq remains a basket case of social contradictions, sectarian animosity and ethic divides, and that stability may continue to elude its people for decades to come. The US occupation of that ancient land ended not "introducing" it to democracy (as some of us had earlier predicted) but unleashed in it a parochial ferocity into which Iraqis found it easy to degenerate.
Reconciliation
On October 1, as if to belie the much touted steps to reconciliation that General Ray Odierno, the new US commander in Iraq, spoke of as he assumed office that day, a suicide bomber struck at Shiite worshippers as they streamed out of morning prayer at a mosque in Baghdad, killing close to 20 people and injuring more than 50, and gunmen outside the town of Baqubah opened fire on a minibus, killing six members of a Sunni family, including children ages 5 and 6.
And it all happened during the holy month of Ramadan.
This is a communal conflict that is not only fierce, but archaic and primitive, where Iraqis readily, and almost daily, tear at each others' throats, motivated more by jejune rivalries than by Iraqi patriotism, Islamic fraternity and Arab solidarity.
And, yes, a new military commander, who hails from the US, assumed office on October 1, whose job will be to pacify the country and reconcile its people. But passing largely unnoticed here is how sad it is (sad, as in pathetic) that at this late date in the post-colonial world, we still speak of a major Arab country having its destiny determined by a foreign overlord. What a statement to be making about how Arabs, most Arabs at any rate, have failed all these years to meet the challenges of modernity.
Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including 'The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile'. He lives in Washington D.C.
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