Iraqi Extremism not Democracy?

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Registered: 04-16-2003
Iraqi Extremism not Democracy?
3
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 5:22pm
Two articles in todays papers caught my attention: one from Knight Ridder that indicates that extremists my be preparing to take control of Iraq; the second from the Pacific News says that the Neo-cons may be changing, that this may not be such a bad thing. Do any here have an opinon?

Extremism sweeping Iraq among Sunni, Shiite Muslims alike

By Hannah Allam

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Instead of becoming a Middle Eastern model of pro-Western democracy, as the Bush administration had hoped, Iraq is being swept by Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremism.

High unemployment, little visible progress toward rebuilding the country and dissatisfaction with leaders appointed by foreigners are herding thousands of disenchanted Iraqis into the hands of hard-liners, according to political parties, Islamic scholars and social scientists.

The city of Fallujah, for example, once a cornerstone of Saddam Hussein's secular rule, has become a seething no-man's land of Islamic militancy where women must be veiled, alcohol sellers are flogged and an American passport is a death sentence.

Since U.S. Marines pulled out in May after a month-long siege, a mix of homegrown guerrillas and foreign holy warriors have taken over Fallujah, now nicknamed "Little Saudi Arabia" for its extremist brand of Sunni Islam.

"You go there and see the mujahedeen at the checkpoints," said a co-worker of three Lebanese men who were taken hostage, then murdered, in Fallujah last week. "Where are the Marines? Where is the Iraqi army?"

The three were hog-tied and beaten with steel pipes. Then one man was shot several times in the face, another was disemboweled and the third was hacked to pieces, said surviving hostages and other workers at their Lebanese-owned contracting firm.

The kidnappers made no ransom demand. They simply dumped the three mutilated corpses in an industrial area as a statement about who's running Fallujah.

Sunni militants such as those in Fallujah, who seek to impose Saudi or Taliban-style Islamic puritanism, pose one threat to the new, secular interim Iraqi government that takes charge July 1. Radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and other Shiite extremists, with fertile recruiting ground in Iraq's volatile Shiite majority, pose another, calling for an armed struggle to create an Iranian-style theocracy.

The conflict between the two, now 1,324 years old and going strong, could plunge the country into civil war and anarchy.

"Iraq is now the crossroads for the two most rigid extremist groups in the Islamic world," said Sadoun al Dulami, the head of the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. "They think they hold all the truth. We left one brutal regime and now we are preparing ourselves for an even bloodier one."

Even parts of cosmopolitan Baghdad are slipping into the hands of militant Islamists, who, for example, forced a Christian social club to close its pool because "some extremist will throw a grenade at women in swimsuits," said Rita Jamal, 19, a club member.

A masked jihadi (holy warrior) flashing the victory sign is spray-painted across campus at Baghdad University, where seniors graduating this month only half-jokingly call themselves the "Terrorism Class of 2004."

Bearded men armed with long sticks sometimes stand outside the campus and strike college women who don't cover their hair or don't wear loose-fitting clothes, students said. Newly minted radicals have stopped saying hello to moderate classmates, and militant young women sometimes smear the lipstick off the faces of their former friends.

"Their minds are owned by the extremists now," said Safa Hussein, 21, a senior at the university. "In Baghdad, we used to have a special kind of open environment, but the Islamic waves are rolling in and the clerics are coming out of the woodwork. If they have their way, we'll be living in Iran or Saudi soon."

The mosque is the only remaining occupation-free zone for millions of Iraqis who are fed up with empty promises from the coalition. And the messages from powerful imams have nothing to do with helping the United States build a free and democratic Iraq.

"These people were not invited to contribute to the political agenda, not invited to the Governing Council and were ignored until now, when they want to say, `We're here,'" said Waleed al Hilli, a spokesman for the conservative Shiite Dawa Party. "If you're not eating and you don't have a job, you can't think properly, and anyone can attract you to do anything."

While their political and theological battles date to the year 680, Sunni and Shiite extremists are united, at least for now, by a common desire to drive the United States and its allies out of Iraq.

There are reports of Sunni fighters in Fallujah supplying Shiite guerrillas in Najaf, and the leading militant Sunni newspaper this week heralded al Sadr on the front page. Al Sadr, meanwhile, has praised fighters in Fallujah for driving out U.S. troops and bringing back a "pure" Islam.

Exporting the Fallujah model is a key aim of Hareth Athari, a leading Sunni militant with headquarters at one of Baghdad's most magnificent mosques. He said he condemned the killings of the three Arab businessmen, but quickly added that he doubted they were killed "without a reason."

"Fallujah is still safe and better than any other town in Iraq," Athari said. "Maybe, now and then, there are some events like that, but all good-willed people are safe in Fallujah. The ones with bad intentions should stay out."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8921733.htm

Neocons Rethink Strategy Against Islamic Radicalism

News Analysis, Paolo Pontoniere,

Pacific News Service, Jun 14, 2004

Editor's Note: Analysts wonder if the June 30 turnover of power in Iraq is just a prelude to an eventual seizure of power by Islamic radicals. Now, chastened neoconservative proponents of the invasion say that might not be so bad.

Regardless of the success or failure of the transfer of power to an indigenous transitional government in Iraq, neoconservative foreign policy wonks are desperately searching for an exit strategy.

The most hawkish proponents of invading Iraq to spread democracy in the region, the neoconservatives appear to be entertaining the notion that the United States might have to live with Islamic extremists rising to power in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, and that this may not be a losing proposition for the West in the long run.

The neoconservatives’ conundrum in Iraq emerges very clearly in the recent writings of Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Ajami seems to have lost all the hope that Iraq would become a new beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Admitting he failed to foresee that radical religious beliefs, not democratic ideals, would fill the void left by the fall of Saddam, Ajami writes that even if Iraq survives the current spiral of violence, “The Dream is dead.” Writing recently in The New York Times, Ajami declares, “Lets face it: Iraq is not going to be America’s showcase in the Arab-Muslim world.”

Ajami’s belief is shared by others in Republican policy circles, who see the likelihood of the victory of Islamic extremism in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated in May on “Meet the Press” that the United States is prepared to accept a theocracy in Iraq. What seems to be emerging among neocons and Republican activists is a consensus that, rather than looking at the downside, the United States should concentrate on a strategy for defeating the extremists in the long run. To that end, many believe that a good lesson can be drawn from the Cold War.

Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of “Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle-East Affiliates and the Next Generation of Terrorists,” believes that treating Osama and his cohort as if they were Bolsheviks or Stalinists may pay off in the long term if the United States adopts the same strategy of political isolation and economic strangulation it used against the Soviet Union. Many historians agree that the Cold War against the USSR was won by the persistent and prolonged economic stress that the arms race inflicted on the Soviets.

Pushed to the limits of their financial capability by the need to keep up with the ever-expanding U.S. military efforts, the Soviets found themselves bankrupt and unable to fulfill the Russian Revolution’s promise of a better life for its citizens. Cordoned off in its own spheres of influence and unable to invest its surplus into upgrading its industrial system and social infrastructures, the Soviets became vulnerable to Western political and cultural power.

This Cold War lesson isn’t lost on Daniel Pipes, a member of the United States Institute for Peace and author of “Militant Islam Reaches America.” Pipes sees many parallels between the fight with Islamic insurgents and the fight against the Soviet Union. As with the USSR, Pipes believes that the West must conquer the hearts and minds of Islamic youth by waging a war of ideas against radicalism. “There were millions of communists in the Soviet Union, but how many really followed the party directives? Ten, 15 percent, no more than that. The same happens today with the billion more Muslims living around the world,” said Pipes in an interview with Italy’s newsweekly L’Espresso. He says that at this stage, waging only war is counterproductive. To win against Osama bin Laden, the United States must operate on the assumption that bin Laden is the inspiration for the rise of a variant of neo-communism or neo-fascism among Muslim believers, especially in the Middle East.

Europeans living on the borders of the Soviet Bloc experienced firsthand the impact of the war of ideas, culture and tastes on communist youths. With suitcases full of Levi’s jeans, Ray-Ban sunglasses and silk stockings, Western Europeans sought out scores of well-disposed Soviet, Eastern European or East German citizens, who either gave money or sexual favors in exchange for the goods the Westerners brought. The Communist Party’s hope for a luminous future -- Soviet youths -- retreated from its reach. Soviet kids ended up aspiring to be more like their Western contemporaries than Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin.

The burgeoning problem of Islamic terrorism around the world may give the United States an additional reason to live with the establishment of radical Muslim states in the Middle East. With states to run, Islamic radicals may be forced to adopt a healthy dose of real-politik. For one, the need to operate under the constraints of international diplomacy and the demands of market economics could rein in the radicals’ more destructive impulses. Even sleeper cells could transform into mere intelligence-gathering organisms rather than terrorist tools. Once in charge of a territory and state, Islamic radicals will be more likely than not to sell oil to the West. After all, people can’t eat oil, even if it’s s a strategic weapon.

The events following the June 30 turnover to a transition government in Iraq will show if this neoconservative scenario is realistic, or just a face-saving rationale for accepting the defeat of their “democratic” domino theory in the Middle East.

PNS contributor Paolo Pontoniere (pmpurpont@aol.com) is the U.S. correspondent for Focus, Italy's leading monthly magazine.

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e2d60c91d8488acfbb2bd5d798421943

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 6:19pm
Very sobering but not surprising.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 6:51pm
<>

I also doubted it would work, although I hoped it would. If the Shias and Sunnis insist on an Islamic state what will happen to the Kurds.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 7:27pm

If the Shias and Sunnis insist on an Islamic state what will happen to the Kurds.


I don't know...but nothing good I'm willing to bet.