Iraq situation

In a recently published book Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, Richard H. Schultz and Andrew J. Dew, both professors at the Boston University, seem to argue for this. They argue that some societies are more warlike than others and they fight for such values as family honour and religious fervour and their tribal and sectarian loyalties supersede their national loyalties. This explains why during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein brutalised Iraq's Shiite majority whom he suspected to be sympathetic to Shiite Iran. This also explains why many Iraqi Shiite leaders sought refuge in Iran at a time when Iraq was fighting a war against Iran. This also explains why instead of fighting jointly against the American occupation, the Sunnis and Shiites are slaughtering each other, destroying each other's mosques and killing each other's clerics.

The authors argue that America cannot bring any semblance of democracy in such a tribal society and so-called humanitarian intervention to oust a local tyrant will inevitably fail. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, whose Sunni followers terrorised the Shiites who are the majority. The mass killing of the Shiites and gassing of non-Arab Sunni Kurds are well known. But the Shiites proved to be no better. Once the Sunnis were ousted from power by the American-led coalition forces, they are killing the Sunnis. The Shiite militias are now kidnapping, torturing and murdering the Sunnis in the same way once dominant Sunnis oppressed the Shiites.

This is why the Shia-Sunni conflict is a bloody mess and the Americans are clearly incapable of cleaning it. Only the American forces are caught in the crossfire and killed in large numbers.

Iraq's oil resources are not nearly enough to justify American casualties. Majority of Americans also want a quick and complete withdrawal of American troops and it may not be long before the Americans leave Iraq to its misery. But then the question comes to mind: Will the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias remain confined to Iraq and not engulf the region in a broader Shia-Sunni war involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and even Turkey? No one is in a position to answer this question.