A
Saudi beacon for Iraq's Sunni
militias By Brian M Downing
Iraq is less violent and more stable than
it was at the height of the insurgency, but it is
still plagued by bombings and sectarian tensions.
In recent weeks, Shi'ite militias have been
attacking United States troops - perhaps on the
direction of Iran, perhaps simply to take claim
for their departure scheduled for the end of this
year.
Sunni forces have been at work as
well, targeting Shi'ite marketplaces and security
personnel. Sunni militancy is no longer the
diffuse anti-US insurgency it was after the fall
of Baghdad, nor is it held in check any longer by
benefits that the US surge once bestowed upon it.
Over the past year or two, the Sunni
resistance has demonstrated considerable
discipline and control in attacking Shi'ite targets
and, most remarkably and
puzzlingly, in not attacking US personnel. For an
answer to this puzzle one might look next door to
Saudi Arabia.
The Sunni insurgency,
2003-2007 In the four years between the
fall of Baghdad and the success of the surge,
various groups fought the Western forces. The
Shi'ite militias were led by a handful of
indigenous leaders and supported by Iran's
Revolutionary Guard.
Leadership in the
Sunni movement, however, was less concentrated. It
was based on a confused array of former army
officers, tribal chieftains, Ba'ath party figures,
religious authorities, local power holders, and
al-Qaeda lieutenants.
The rank and file
came from former soldiers angered by the US's
demobilization of the army, Salafist faithful who
opposed the Western presence, foreign fighters
from across the Middle East, and tribal youth
seeking pay and adventure when elders lost the
revenue and patronage system that Saddam Hussein
had given them. All found a cause and steady pay.
Most fighters were undisciplined, and the
insurgency showed it. Attacks demonstrated little
knowledge of small-unit tactics and US troops
often described Sunni fighters as no more than
armed gangs. Coordination among rival Sunni groups
was limited to sharing bomb-making skills and some
supplies, though some tactical coordination
emerged.
The Sunni insurgency was funded
by Ba'ath party caches secreted about the country,
wealthy contractors who had benefited from the old
regime, and foreign sources in the Sunni Arab
world. The money of the Ba'ath party and the
contractors are thought to be long gone.
The Sunni opposition today Most
of the conditions that brought the old insurgency
are still in existence. The Sunnis endure loss of
privilege and status as the regimes they dominated
since the 1920s are gone. Salafism remains strong
and indeed it has strengthened as Sunnis turn to
austere religion to explain their defeats and
offer answers.
Perhaps most significantly,
young men from the tribes have lost the jobs that
Saddam's state and later the US surge had given
them. The Shi'ite state ended these support
systems and many young men are once again
available - or they are supported through
clandestine revenues from abroad.
Yet
Sunni militants today operate in a far more
controlled manner than in the past. They bomb
Shi'ite markets and security forces, but refrain
from the violent firefights and ambushes. The
rivalries that divided various insurgent groups
five years ago and led to rash competition for
popular support are no longer in evidence. Whereas
foreign fighters once fought openly with locals,
they cooperate today.
There are few if any
boastful manifestoes or propaganda videos from
sundry leaders. The days of former colonels,
neighborhood toughs, and foreign jihadis issuing
proclamation after proclamation are gone. There is
sufficient structure to prevent Sunni groups from
attacking US troops.
This discipline and
restraint cannot be rightly attributed to Iraqi
political leadership. Sunni leaders are largely
excluded from power. They are hounded, jailed, or
even killed by Shi'ite security forces. Tribal
elders no longer have the state or US revenue to
keep their young men in line.
Why are
al-Qaeda forces refraining from attacking US
troops? They are not known for restraint. They
despise the US intensely and generally follow the
strategy of tying US forces down across the world
so as to ruin the US financially - a goal that
might seem less than far-fetched just now. Perhaps
al-Qaeda in Iraq has come to an understanding with
a foreign power reluctant to be tied to killing US
soldiers.
Saudi influence All
roads in the Gulf region lead to Riyadh. With the
rising Shi'ite fortunes of late, Saudi Arabia is
repaving and expanding those roads, especially the
financial and intelligence ones running into
Iraq's Sunni triangle. The Saudis are enlisting
co-religionists - former soldiers, Salafists, and
tribal elders of the old insurgency - to serve in
their sacred cause of containing Shi'ism and Iran.
Saudi involvement in Iraq is deep and
longstanding, dating back at least to supporting
Saddam's war with Iran (1980-1988). Later, at the
height of the insurgency, US intelligence detected
money coming in from Sunni states in the region,
though it wasn't clear if the money came from
governments or prosperous individuals.
The
Saudi government played an important role in
easing the insurgency and sectarian violence that
threatened to spread into other countries and
expand Iranian power. Saudi diplomacy and money
pressed the Dulayim tribes, a highly militarized
confederation that straddles the Iraqi-Saudi
border and predominates in Anbar province - the
center of the insurgency. Saudi efforts, largely
overshadowed by parallel US ones, greatly reduced
the fighting.
The Sunnis of Iraq now play
an important role in Riyadh's policy of containing
Iran - a policy given more urgency by the
perception - almost certainly erroneous - that
Tehran has been encouraging uprisings by
disaffected Shi'ites in Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Gulf.
The
Saudis support the Kurds of northwestern Iran, the
Arabs of Khuzestan in western Iran, and the
Balochi in the southeast. Saudi Arabia is
encouraging opposition among other non-Persian
tribes with long histories of opposing Tehran
whether a shah or mullah is in power. In
Afghanistan, the Saudis are also enlisting Pashtun
tribes to counter Iranian influence in the north
and west. Iraq is but one front.
The Sunni
campaign may seek to establish an autonomous
region in Iraq for the increasingly marginalized
Sunni Arabs. Perhaps a fully separate state is in
mind, one that will serve as a buffer between
Shi'ite states and Sunni ones. Such a country
could rely on financial support from Sunni
petro-states for quite some time, though Anbar
province is thought to hold impressive hydrocarbon
resources.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq? The position of al-Qaeda in all this is
puzzling. The dogged enemy of both the United
States and Saudi Arabia is thought to be operating
in substantial numbers in Iraq, yet it refrains
from attacking the former and accepts the latter.
Clearly, this is a different al-Qaeda than the one
the world has come to know over the last ten years
- so much so that it might be better seen as a
different entity altogether.
The
implication is that Saudi Arabia and the foreign
fighters inside Iraq have established common
ground and that these foreign fighters have been
diverted from an anti-Western cause to an
anti-Shi'ite one - at least temporarily, one must
add. This might initially seem good news to many
in the West, but it augurs poorly for stability in
the Gulf as it implies protracted and well-funded
irregular warfare in Iraq and with Iran.
The mechanics of such an arrangement are
not hard to define. Saudi security forces have for
years maintained ties with fellow countrymen who
served in the ranks of the anti-Soviet mujahideen.
Some of them joined or knew members in Osama bin
Laden's veteran league, which of course became
al-Qaeda. Wahhabi clerics, through their
interrelated preaching and recruiting, have been
important parts of jihadi networks since the
Afghan war emerged in 1980.
Further, Saudi
security forces were able to infiltrate and defeat
al-Qaeda-Arabian Peninsula when it turned on the
House of Saud following the September 11, 2001
attacks. Many of those fighters were captured or
turned themselves in and have since provided
useful intelligence.
If indeed the Saudis
have converted a guerrilla force inside Iraq into
a partner against Shi'ite power, they would do
well to remain on guard. Working with zealous
fighters has proven problematic over the years as
the Arab mujahideen have turned against Pashtun
mujahideen, the United States, the Afghan north,
and now increasingly Pakistan. And of course they
have in the past turned against the House of Saud
as well.
Brian M Downing is the
author of The Military Revolution and
Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and
Social Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com
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