Page 3 of 3 THE ROVING
EYE US staying the course for Big Oil
in Iraq By Pepe Escobar
legitimate resistance force (with
preconditions: in a recent sermon in Kufa, Muqtada
stressed that Sunnis must not kill Shi'ites, must
not join al-Qaeda, and must rebuild the Askariyah
Shrine in Samarra).
Muqtada strikes
back The crucial development in the next
few weeks is Muqtada's fine-tuning of a stunning
Shi'ite counterpunch to demolish once and for
all
the US-created pro-sectarian strategy: a
nationalist, pan-Islamist, anti-occupation
coalition of the Sadrists and the neo-Ba'athists,
plus any other religious or secular
anti-occupation group.
Transcending the
Sunni/Shi'ite divide, this would preempt any
threat of all-out civil war - not to mention
decide the fierce Shi'ite family feud between
Hakim and Muqtada in the Sadrists' favor. No
wonder US Senator John McCain wants to "take out"
Muqtada as much as the Pentagon does.
Already virtually ruled out by Bush, US
dialogue with Iran on Iraq - were it to happen -
would also imply some hard truths. Tehran might
have some sway in forcing the SCIRI to dissolve
the Badr Organization. But it would ask in return
for a complete US withdrawal - sprawling military
bases included. There's no guarantee Iran would
deliver: the SCIRI is not a puppet party. On top
of it, Iran would be helpless against the
Sadrists. Once again: Muqtada is above all an
Iraqi nationalist.
So the conclusion is
grim: militia hell will continue - no matter what
the US tries in desperation - because the Sunni
Arab guerrillas will only disarm when the
occupation is over, and when the Shi'ite militias
also disarm; and the Shi'ite militias will only
disarm when the Sunni Arab guerrilla war is
finished. Not likely, on both counts.
No
wonder Saudi King Abdullah is concerned, warning
that Iraq is a "tinderbox". The new Greater Middle
East hot war is already on. Baghdad is its
horrific microcosm - public executions, non-stop
ethnic cleansing, the Tigris as the Sunni/Shi'ite
border with Shi'ite district Kadhimiya and Sunni
district Adhamiya as ghettos under siege on the
"wrong" sides of the river. Maliki is as
irrelevant as Bush - who at least has his own
militia, the US Army, just one more militia in
militia hell or, as Hunter Thompson would put it,
"just another freak in a freak kingdom".
The neo-conservative hallucination of a
puppet Iraqi regime as the centerpiece of a
US-driven Greater Middle East - loads of cheap
oil, Israel-friendly, anti-Iran - may have been
derailed by a Mesopotamian sandstorm. But even
with the defeat of the occupation, the US - or
"the snake", as Muqtada defines it - still is not
going anywhere. The "snake" will redeploy. Sunni
Arab US ally/client regimes fear that a US
withdrawal would lead to a whole new regional ball
game tilting toward pro-Iran or pro-al-Qaeda
regimes.
Not even a long-drawn civil war -
Arabs killing one another - may save Bush and
Cheney. And Iraq won't succumb to "divide and
rule" and break up - because its identity as the
eastern flank of the Arab nation is a geopolitical
fact. So the real tragedy is how much longer
millions of Iraqis caught in the crossfire will be
paying with their own blood for the United States'
cataclysmic folly.
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