Sunnis caught in a vise

The Associated Press reported this morning on the effort of Iraq's constitutional drafting committee:

BAGHDAD, Iraq: Sunni Arab members of a committee drafting Iraq's new
constitution ended their boycott Monday, six days after jeopardizing the
credibility of the nascent political process by walking out in protest over the
assassinations of two fellow Sunni constitution framers.

Their decision to return eased the threat that the country's new
constitution would be a product of only two of three major Iraqi ethnic and
religious groups. Leaving out the Sunni Arabs, who form the core of the
insurgency, would dim hopes for a political exit from the incessant violence
gripping the country.

[...]

Sunni Arab participation in the drafting of the constitution is considered
essential in order to win the influential minority's approval for the charter.
The draft must be approved by parliament by Aug. 15 and submitted to the voters
in an October referendum. If voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject
the charter by a two-thirds majority, the constitution will be defeated.

The Sunnis said they were suspending participation in the committee to
protest Tuesday's assassination of Sunni committee member Mijbil Issa and
adviser Dhamim Hussein al-Obeidi.

Iraq's Sunni minority is caught in a highly unpleasant vise, a device that is squeezing tighter every day. One clamp on the vise is the 85% Shi'ite-Kurdish majority, whom the Americans are arming and training, and who are losing their patience with the daily mass-murder of their civilian population by the small but ruthless bands of Sunni jihadists. The other clamp on the vise is the remaining Baathist fanatics and foreign Sunni jihadists that seek to assassinate any Sunni politician that contemplates making a deal with the Shi'ite-Kurdish majority.

The foreign jihadists wish to create chaos; in that environment, they can establish a sanctuary from which they can stabilize their position and then expand it. The Baathists want to prevent the new constitution from gaining legitimacy; if they can intimidate the Sunni population and its leaders from participating in the political process they, and their allies in the Arab world and media, and in the Western media, can label any Iraqi government that would be formed without Sunni participation as illegitimate and a U.S. imperialist construct.

The Sunnis that are playing along with the negotiations over the new constitution seem to be tepid, reluctant participants. The Shi'ites and the Kurds, for their part, appear to consider the Sunni committee members an annoyance. This snippet, issued yesterday by the Voice of America, gives a little flavor about the level of collegiality on the drafting committee:

The eight secular members of Mr. Allawi's Iraqi List party, who are on the
committee drafting the constitution, say they are angry over the way the
drafting committee handled last week's decision by Sunni members to suspend
their membership on the panel. The committee is dominated by Shi'ite Muslims and
Kurds.

The secular members charge that the committee has done little to
encourage the Sunnis to end their boycott. The members also joined Sunnis in
criticizing the head of the committee, Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Houman al-Hammoudi,
for announcing that a draft charter would be ready within days.

The spokesman for Mr. Allawi's group, Adnan al-Janabi, told The
Associated Press that no one in his group has any idea what the draft charter
contains, nor who is writing it. Mr. Janabi says, given the circumstances, the
secular bloc is having second thoughts about continuing its participation on the
committee.

So far Mr. Allawi's boycott threat has come to nothing. No doubt the Americans have twisted Shi'ite and Kurdish arms behind the scenes in order to get them to invite the Sunnis, who boycotted the January elections, to show up with a delegation.

If the Iraqi delegates, Sunni and non-Sunni, believe the constitutional negotiation is just a form of Kabuki theater, that must mean that they all agree that sectarian civil war is inevitable. That remains to be seen. What is certain is that the Baathist fanatics and foreign jihadists won't care one whit about a new Iraqi constitution or a successful general election for a permanent Iraqi government in December. They will continue their reign of terror and will have to be hunted down and killed. The question is whether the bulk of the Sunni population will participate in this man-hunt or whether it will side with the Baathist and foreign jihadists.

The Sunni areas of the Iraq are suffering most from the current violence. Strategypage estimates that death rates are ten times higher in some of the worst-hit Sunni areas compared to the Shi'ite and Kurdish areas of Iraq. Economic development and standards of living likewise are likely also falling behind. Sunnis that had to live, however briefly, in a jihadist sanctuary, such as Fallujah, Qaim, or Tal Afar, did not report favorably on the experience. Thus, there is a strong incentive for reasonable Sunnis, surely, the larger portion of the Sunni population, to put the insurgency behind them, enter the political process, and participate in the final Baathist and jihadist man-hunt.

On the other hand, the Baathists and jihadists lurk in their neighborhoods and are quite eager to assassinate Sunni collaborators. Plus, a few Sunnis may hold out the hope that the Americans will fold and that Shi'ites and Kurds are too weak to hold power; in this case, they should hold out, hoping that they will be back in power soon.

It all comes down to which violence the Sunnis fear more, the American-Shi'ite-Kurdish variety or the Baathist-jihadist variety. The Baathists and jihadists have shown what violence they are capable of. But the Shi'ites have begun to show their teeth, if reports of death squads or vigilante police are to be believed. Such violence is regrettable, but likely necessary to convince the larger Sunni population that they should have more to fear from not joining the Baathist-jihadist man-hunt than otherwise. A full-blown sectarian civil war in Iraq would be bad for all, but it would be positively lethal for the Sunni position in Iraq. At the limit, they would be ethnically cleansed from the country.

What does this mean for American strategy in Iraq? As we have stated before, a sectarian civil war would be a failure for the Administration's plan to showcase the new Iraq as a model for what the Islamic world could be. But in either scenario, most of the U.S. army in Iraq should be able to come home in 2006. If the Sunnis join the man-hunt, wrapping up the insurgency will be quick and easy. If the Sunnis decide to fight it out with the overwhelming Shi'ite-Kurdish majority, the U.S. army will not stand in the middle as a referee. The vast majority of the U.S. conventional maneuver units would return home; as it did in El Salvador (only on a larger scale) the U.S. would leave a training and advisory establishment behind to assist the Shi'ite and Kurdish army/militias in what would be an brutal war against the Sunni population. It would be ugly to watch and bad for America's reputation, but few could say, in this scenario, that the Sunnis had not brought it on themselves.