IRAQ THE MODEL

“People can never be corrupted, yet they can often be fooled, then it would appear as if they wanted what is evil"
J. J. Rousseau


Who are those who resist and to what extent do they
represent the Iraqis? And why did some people protested against Saddam’s arrest? Are they the same who resist or they are others who support them? And if Iraqi people are really not resisting then why don't they turn those criminals to the authorities?
Lots of hard questions -but too important to be ignored- were raised by the latest events. I’ll try to answer them using facts and reasoning, avoiding as much as possible the effects of my feelings towards certain ethnic or religious groups.
1st of all let us agree on some facts:
- In the northern of Iraq namely in Kurdistan in which about 19% of Iraqi people live (mostly Kurdish but also Assyrian, Turkomen and Arabs) there is no resistance at all to the Americans or the local authorities.
-the same thing applies to many Iraqi governorates such as Kut, Amara, Babylon, Nassiriya, Samawa, Kerbela, Najaf and Diwania with negligible exceptions. -This leaves us with Basra, Baghdad, Mousil, Kirkuk, Anbar, Diala and Saladdin.
As for Basra almost all of the opposition was just protesting against some local policies and decisions and it never amounted to the degree of military resistance.
In Kirkuk the people are quite in peace with the coalition and one bomb each month would rather refer to other who sneaked into the city from neighboring area.
Now lets pause a little to give you some evidence of my information before going further.
-Although I live and work in Baghdad but I also worked in Basra for about 2 months, and now Omar and Ays and Zyad will probably give you a more clear picture as they all moved to Basra to finish their training as resident dentists. Also Mohammed works in Samawa and my brother in law is from Diwania and I have visited Kirkuk and Kurdistan twice after the war, every one saw a lot of people celebrating the capture of Saddam in all these governerates with no one protesting or cheering for him.
-Also without seeing or hearing any of the latest reactions one cannot possibly expect the Kurds, after Halabcha, and the she’at, after1991, to support Saddam or protest against (humiliating) him.
And they both know that with the American protection, they can ensure a just representation and a federal state.
Let’s deal with some harder talks; Diala, witnessed some assaults against US soldiers but its been a while since we heard anything bad reported from there. This supports my former belief, that the attacks in the past were planned and carried out by some of the former senior Ba’athists and their mercenary who ran away from Baghdad or other (hostile environments) and seeing the considerable decline in the attacks after the arrests made by the coalition, seems to justify my theory.
Now I’ll start with the most complicated; Baghdad.
As every one saw the number of Baghdadies celebrating the capture and demonstrating against terrorism and Ba’athists were much more than those protesting against the coalition, and the only areas were people made a violent demonstration against Saddam’s capture was Al-A’miriyah and A’adamia (the only stronghold remaining fore Baptists in Baghdad and the one were Saddam was seen for the last time before being captured). Here comes 2 questions: are you saying that the IP and the USA army don not control all Baghdad ?and why the good people in this district don’t report the Ba’athists?
The answer will come with trying to solve the puzzle of the most resistant governorates Saladdin, Anbar and Mousil.
It appears that these areas support Saddam or at least they are against USA and one might jump hastily to the conclusion that since all these areas share one common factor (the vast majority there areArab sunni) then the Arab sunni are either very evil like Saddam or, they want their (privileges) back.
But both assumptions are far from being true.
I (and I think most of you agree with me) have always believe in that a whole ethnic or religious group can not be all bad. On the contrary the majority of these people are good people and hate Saddam and will not resist the Americans (though not necessary like them) except maybe Al-Uja the small village who really enjoyed privileges and yet lot of them don’t like saddam.
Yes the majority of resistance is Arab sunni, but not the majority of Arab sunni resist. How could those minority control or at least silence the majority and with the presence of 100 thousand Iraqi IP and the strongest army on earth in the same area!!?
It seems very difficult to answer this question, but try to imagine a neighborhood inhabited by several thousands people, that are related to each other by religion, marriages, and familial bonds and there is a small gang (intermingled with these people) of not more than, say 20 professional criminals, each of whom could kill a child without feeling the slightest remorse. And there are a government, a police and army forces that are stronger than this gang beyond comparison. Yet this gang terrorizes the people, blackmails them, bribes the cops and threat any one who dare to report or testify against them with nothing less than death to his whole family.
Another factor that is not present in other communities is the local traditions of Arab tribes which consider turning any man no matter what he did to the authorities as an act that brings dishonor to the one ho does it, especially if that man seeks refugee from the (sheik) and especially if he was a member of that tribe. In such conditions they would probably host him for 3 days and then ask him to leave the area, at best.
But I’m sure you have heard that there were a lot of arrests made with the supports of the local people who took that real risk and this fact was stated by the coalition authorities. And put in mind that sometimes the coalition doesn’t mention the support from the locals to protect their lives.
I hop I was able to provide you with some information that may help you make a correct judgment about the so called resistance and to understand the difficulties and the risks Iraqis are putting themselves through, when helping the coalition.