Gleaned from an excellent, succinct, and even-handed thumbnail sketch of General Petreus, his upcoming report, and the Democrats’ expected appeasement from a Sunday Observer article:
By last July, according to US officials, Shia fighters accounted for 73 per cent of attacks on coalition forces.
Pair this statement with Reza Aslan’s and Juan Cole’s assertions that al-Qaeda in Iraq comprise 7-10% of total insurgents and repots that the total number of AQI members do not exceed 5,000.
Nice. So these are the ‘folks’ that are supposed to follow us home? This is what the Republican base is afraid of? Pathetic.
Is it asking too much for the media to note this for readers/viewers when regurgitating administration al-Qaeda in Iraq propaganda? Is there any hope of ending the al-Qaeda in Iraq myth?
Your title says the insurgency is 73% Sunni but your blockquote as well as the article says its Shiite.
The article argues that there's a lot more violence between rival Shiite factions at this point.
Interesting point here:
Perhaps the Editors would be so kind as to delete my original comment. (I want to help tblade not make tblade look bad!)
I appreciate the proof read.
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Interesting the estimates of who makes up what percentage of the surge and the number of al-Qaeda in Iraq are not easy to find via internet search. I erroneously transposed Sunni for Shia because I spent a half hour trying to find estimates of how many Sunnis are thought to be involved with the insurgency.
Last time I tried to do that back in January, I found it was difficult too. There were numerous little Sunni groups, some religious, some Baathist, with shifting alliances. None of this is particularly public. There's the further complication of how tribal Iraqi society is, and tribal lines can even cut across the Sunni-Shiite divide.
The key thing to take home, though, is that arming Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province weakens the central government. It might be great for slowing down JTJ (Al Qaeda in Iraq) but it doesn't make of Iraq a single country.
Atrios made the very interesting poiint recently that the Belgians have trouble keeping the Francophones and the Flemish in one country. The Czechs and the Slovaks split apart amicably. Yugoslavia less amicably. The Basques aren't the only separatists in Spain. Given those other histories of countries with divisions by religion, language, or culture, the Iraq experiment seems very fragile indeed. Arming both sides whether intentionally as with the tribes in Anbar or indirectly as with the huge level of corruption that is now being reported might win plaudits from gun nuts (Hi, Asa!) but it is not going to make of Iraq a coherent country.
…former BMG user “center aisle” a/k/a former RMG user “Ted Kennedy’s Liver”; both accounts were deleted or banned from both sites. Who knows?
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“Center aisle/TKL” was perhaps the most useless commentator on the entire internet and he possessed a Larry Craig/Ted Haggard level of hatred for gay people.
If there was one topic of my undergrad and think-tank academic work, it was multinational states. I did a fair bit of research in Quebec, and also spent a couple weeks in Belgium, speaking with Flemish, Walloon, and Bruxellois leaders, as well as Lega Nord types in the EU Parliament. Boiled down ridiculously, I came to the conclusion that there are three ways to keep multinational states in one piece:
Money: At the end of the day, separation for Quebec, Catalonia, Flanders, Basque country, Scotland, “Padania” aka Northern Italy, and other such places is the upset it would cause to the network of mechanisms that support the Western economy. Though federalists often exaggerate the consequence, there's no doubt that a massive change truly upsets the balance. Given that all those places have a comfortable standard of living (in three of them, it's higher than the remainder of the state), it eases the urgency felt elsewhere, as in the Czech Republic or Slovenia.
Force: Of course, the various nations of Czechoslavakia and Yugoslavia, as well as the USSR and pre-division Pakistan were kept together by force. Catalan nationalists were a common target for Franco, and the political party espousing Basque separatism is harrassed regularly in Spain (granted, as with Sinn Fein, it has ties to terrorist groups. But those ties are exaggerated in both cases).
Invalidating the concept of a “state”: Somalia, Indonesia, and Georgia are three obvious examples where there is no real “state”. There's a government of largely men holed up in a “government office” somewhere that sends their friends to embassies abroad, but this cabal doesn't control the country, and doesn't have the werewithal to take control or win allegiance.
The third is Iraq's current condition. I can't see money flowing into it in large enough quantites to matter anytime soon, and there surely is no force able to control the whole country. Right now, Maliki doesn't control Anbar, is losing Basra, and the Kurdish lands are as independent from Baghdad as is Iran. If we're not going to admit that Iraq is a failed state, our best hope is that three-way federalism, covered with a patronage machine that pretends that it's a federal government.
On the one hand the idea that the terrorists could “follow us home” is rather absurd to begin with but also contradicts a key sign of “progress in Iraq”.
The fact that AQ in Iraq exists and is a big threat to progress in Iraq was one of the main rationales behind the surge, one of the main talking points 08 GOP candidates use to defend Bush's Iraq Policy, and even a key reason to keep some troops in Iraq according to some of the Democratic candidates.
Yet this assertion that AQ in Iraq is a big threat worthy of a continued big mission in Iraq contradicts what Bill Kristol and other right wing pundits are saying, which is that the Sunni and Shia militias are actively fighting AQ in Iraq and that this is one of the signs that we are making progress in Iraq.
So what is it GOPers are the Iraqis containing this threat for us and making progress towards a more immediate exit viable or is this threat the BIG reason to keep us there indefinitely?
To answer my rhetorical question I think its fairly obvious that the Iraqis are in fact starting to contain the terrorists themselves and we dont need American troops to fight AQ, thats an easy soundbite to sell an unpopular and unnecessary occupation to the American people, and in fact the flawed concept of fighting AQ in Iraq sold us on the war in the first place. Its time to end it. The real debate should be should American troops continue to referee a civil war, and even as a liberal I would say there is a very viable set of arguments in favor of keeping US troops for that purpose, but the right refuses to make it and instead favors for short term cheap soundbites with longterm consequences.
Interesting comment, by the way.
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The observation relates to your “money” section. It strikes me that the difficulty, such as it is, relates not so much to the particular currency that is involved, but the mechanisms by which money representing the currency is moved. Certainly within the Euro-zone, that should be no problem. Quebec, if it decided to separate from the rest Canada (won’t happen) could still use the Canadian dollar and the Canadian banking system for money transfers. Illustration, Monaco uses the French franc, and I suspect that Liechtenstein uses the Swiss franc. Currency conversion is easy merely with the press of a button; we withdraw money when we are here in Germany from our American bank account quite easily, and the US isn’t even part of the Euro-zone.
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I’m not sure what you meant regarding Slovenia (did you mean Slovakia?), but the Czech portion of Czechoslovakia basically got tired of the Slovaks’ obstreperousness in the country’s parliament and told them to go away. And they did. But that was the reason for the separation of the two sections of the country. The divorce actually seems to have benefitted both portions of the former country.
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Regarding the Northern League in Italy, the only thing that has given them any traction is that they believe that wealth is being moved from the north to the south and wasted. They are largely correct, but the north is wealthy enough that, to most people, it probably doesn’t matter all that much.
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One little story. We used to go to a little hostelry in South Tirol, a German-speaking section of Italy around Bozen/Bolzano. They wanted to be paid in cash. Das Financamt braucht nicht zu wissen–the finance ministry doesn’t need to know how much they were getting. BUT, the proprietor complained that they were taxed on the number of tables and chairs in their dining room. The taxman is going to get his money somehow.
Considering that in 1995, 49.4% of votes in Quebec were for sovereignty, it's not as easy to dismiss as you may be implying. That said, the PQ ha ssaid since the 1980s that it would use the Canadian dollar. As you mention though, that includes a loss of control of monetary policy…an odd thing to accept for a newly sovereign state. IN terms of the money thing, perhaps I should have been more specific. A comfortable lifestyle makes it easier to dismiss cultural “insults”, freely available money allows a government and private sector to create engines to preserve the culture — a library system, native language media, etc. And the economy is just more complicated. If Quebec were to become independent, how would they deal with banking (Canada has just 7 banks, and 2 are headquartered in Quebec) or insurance?
I did mean Slovenia. Slovenes had long ago realized that as the most wealthy and “European” (read, Westernized) part of Yugoslavia, they had the best chance to get out. And that they did as soon as possible, and were among the first former Yugoslav republics to win admission to NATO and the EU.
As does the Flemish independentiste movement, the Northern League get its tractions from outrages about having money drained away. While they probably will not win full control of the regional government, they were the second largest party in Silvio Berlusconi's coalition, so cannot be dismissed easily. Though their platform no longer calls for independence for “Padania”, party leaders still hold that as an eventual goal.
Given the “supra-national” construct that is the EU, it is unclear that the here-to-fore nation states in Europe are that important. Basque separatism? Who cares? Andora? Who cares? Et al. They would probably all be allowed into the EU.
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I know little about the history of Slovenia, but it is obvious that they were the closest to the Austro-Hungarian empire when “Yugoslavia” was another of those made up countries that was made up in the wake of WWI (no typo).
Thus far, the existence of the EU and NAFTA seem to have stoked sub-state nationalism. With these supra-national devices in place, it has become easier to claim that independence won't lead to disruption. “Oh, we'll just join EU/NAFTA and everything will go on as before” say the Scots and Quebecois, and the organization hesitates to contradict them. At this point, Western sub-state nationalists mainly want to speak their own language with abandon, have their own flag and anthem, and compete separately in international events, none of which is impacte dupon by the EU.
I know I sort of started it, but your comments about sub-state nationalism have been really interesting. There might be an interesting post from you comparing European examples with Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. If you have more to say on this score, please click that “Write a New Post” button.
…there is an organization in Iraq calling itself “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” but also it appears that there is no evidence that it is linked to bin Ladin’s al-Qaeda.
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Perhaps bin Ladin should have trademarked the name so that there would be no confusion. I don’t know where he would have registered the trademark, though.
I know the evidence shows no link. You know this. It’s analogous to me forming a softball team and naming it “The Red Sox in Dorchester”.
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However, the myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq is so intrenched in America, especially in conservative circles, that it seems to me the myth of AQI’s inflated numbers and the myth of AQI’s connection with real al-Qaeda best be at attacked as two separate issues.
The EU and NAFTA appear to be quite different. The EU provides not only for the free movement of goods, but also for a free movement of labor. NAFTA certainly does not provide for the latter, and it only nominally provides for the former.
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Therein lies a considerable difference. Recall when GWBush slapped tariffs on Canadian imports of steel and timber? (Those are the two that I recall, and I was not paying attention during the Clinton administration.) Free movement of goods means no tariffs. Free movement of labor means just that. NAFTA apparently does not provide for either.
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An observation
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At this point, Western sub-state nationalists mainly want to speak their own language with abandon,
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I’m not sure what you mean by this, but in my experience here in the heart of Germany, most people at a professional level speak Esperanto–I mean Amerikanisch (that’s how it’s spelled in the translated books)–with abandon. Aber Zuhause sprechen sie Deutsch. 20 years ago, I was at an interview with a Frenchman working in Germany. He spoke not only French, but also German and Amerikanisch. I don’t do French, but then I could make do with German.
Clearly, there are differences within the EU and the NATO, and within the EU on issues such as Euro Zone and Schengen. However, the importance of these structures when looking at sub-state nationalism is that nationalists expect to remain in those groups. Voters on the fence on questions of nationalism are very sensitive to concerns of disruption in the event of a changeover. That disruption is assumedly minimized if the network of international organizations to which the polity does and will continue to belong are far-reaching.
On your comment on language, you're confusing language as utility with language as identity. In the West, language has replaced religion as the primary identity marker for nations. The contentious issues in any sub-state federal unit dominated by a minority are often use of language in the public sphere, and education. This is the case in Belgium (which actually has legislatures based on non-territorial language communities), Scotland, Quebec, and Catalonia.
When I lived in Flemish Belgium, for instance, this came readily apparent. I speak English and French, but not Dutch. I noticed that adults 40 and over preferred to speak French, as it was a language we both strongly held. However, those under 40 would prefer to use their poorer English than their French. A great part of this, I suspect, is that speaking English represents a rejection of the former regime, wherein Flanders was dominated politically and financially by French-speaking Walloon. We couldn't speak in Dutch, but these newly liberated Flemish weren't going to speak the language of the Walloons, even if they could.
Regarding language, I would almost be willing to bet that it is less of an issue than you suggest. There is the public use of language, and the private (at home–Zuhause, as the Germans would say) use of language.
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Another of my little stories. When we were stuck on a train in southern France 20 years ago, we heard a bunch of kids speaking Amerikanisch (and, if you will allow me, I will continue to use that term) among themselves very well. But they had a little lilt to their accent. Since we were curious about the accent, we asked where they were from. All from Denmark. But even though they were all Danish, they were all using Amerikanisch.
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I understand your issue about language and have posted on it before. It is interesting that there was recently here in Germany floated a proposal that would require French to be learned in public schools close to the French border. I doubt quite frankly that that would be needed to be a requirement: I suspect that some portion of the populace in the affected areas would already know at least some French. At least some French people in Strassbourg certainly are fluent in German.
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I know little about Belgium, other than the fact that it is zwei-sprachig (a bit of French and a bit of what is really Friesdeutsch).
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Regarding
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We couldn’t speak in Dutch, but these newly liberated Flemish weren’t going to speak the language of the Walloons, even if they could.
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Another little story. They will speak it to you if they have too, even if they have to do hand gestures. A number of years ago, we were in Cannes. We went to a restaurant, and asked for a table for dinner. The proprietor obviously knew what we were asking for, but he refused to respond to us in Amerikanisch. Mange? It was hilarious, but, when in Rom… He knew what we wanted, and we figured out what he meant.
For the Danish kids, they were probably speaking for the practice. I speak exclusively in French with the foreign language staff of my school at this point — the practice is good for both sides: they can correct by technical mistakes, and I help tune their ears to a real accent. I remember one immersion program, where we could barely practice French in public due to young locals who approached us eager to practice their English.
As for the role of language in nationalism, track any platforms from a nationalist government to see how they're highlighted. PQ leader Pauline Marios just re-affirmed her favor of a tough linguistic policy. From the 2007 manifesto of the victorious SNP:
“An SNP government will focus on increasing the place of Gaelic in education, improving the status of the language throughout Scotland and supporting Gaelic speaking communities.
To stabilise the language we will set a target of ensuring that by the 2021 census, theproportion of Gaelic speakers is back up to 2001 levels at the very least. We will also set a target to expand the number of children in Gaelic medium education within our first term.
We will promote an increased awareness of Scots and its literature. This will includeintroducing a question on Scots in the census and ensuring that European obligations todevelop the language are honoured. We will actively encourage the use of Scots in education, broadcasting and the arts.”
Regarding the Euro-zone, it appears that, for example, Wechselkurs (what is that? exchange rate?) of the British pound vs. the US$ pretty much follows that of the Euro. The British central bank hasn’t adopted the Euro, but it appears that the rest of the world has for European currencies, whether or not the issuing countries are part of the Euro-zone.
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I have a number of problems with Britain’s Politik, including the fact that they cannot decide whether they want to be part of Europe or a lapdog to the American government. That is a serious problem that the Brits will have to deal with–whether they want to be a full-fledged player in Europe or a junior member to an American alliance. They obviously haven’t decided what they want–although maybe they did and have refused to tell us. BTW, we have been coming to Europe for over 20 years and have never been interested in going to Gross Britannien, but not for that reason.
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Regarding the Schwengenzone, it actually has made transportation between countries a bit more convenient. Prior to Schwengen, when we would go to Suedtirol from Munich, we would have to stop and show passports at not only the Austrian border, but also at the Italian border (and back again). If you were traveling during the Schulferian (school vacation times), the back-ups (Staus) on the roads could be horrendous. Even now, when we are here in Munich, we regularly listen to Munich radio, and they report Stau, Stau, Stau everywhere.