A crucial development in Iraq's continuing and bloody civil war has virtually ended any hope for peace. When the Sunni insurgents in Sammara
blew up the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite religious shrines, they struck a death knell for peace in Iraq, and deepened the sense that Iraq has descended into utter chaos.
There are moments that don't seem any different from countless other moments in a bloody conflict -- the stories of bleeding children and dismembered hands seem mundane to the media when they are not American soldiers. This moment, however, seems to me to be the turning point in Sunni/Shiite disagreement over the future of Iraq. There is no turning back from this.
Shiite retaliation has already begun.
Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, Army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.
A leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, said 29 Sunni mosques had been attacked nationwide. He urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation "before it spins out of control."
It's hard for us to understand what the destroying of a holy shrine really means to the Shia. There will be an enormous amount of pressure from Shiite clerics to punish the Sunnis for what they have done. And there will be an enormous amount of political pressure to exclude the Sunnis from the political process -- even more than they already have been excluded.
Thanks to this insane war, we are looking at a Shiite holy state in the mold of Iran. We might have been able to deal with that if Iraq was wholly Shiite -- but alas because of silly borders drawn up in colonial times, Iraq has three main religious/cultural groups. And one, a minority, has been shitting on the majority for a long time. Now, my friends, the tables have turned, and if you think the Shia communities are going to stand idly by while Sunni insurgents blow up their holy sites, you are nuts.
The Iraqi security forces in Samarra are powerless. U.S. forces are struggling there as well. From the NY Times:
Samarra has long been one of the most violent cities in Iraq, and American forces there have struggled to contain a virulent Sunni-led insurgency. The American military has tried various offensives, only to have insurgents regroup and carry out further strikes. The Americans have also had little success in propping up Iraqi security forces in the town.
What we are left with, folks, is a bloody civil war. These "insurgents" are not stupid. They are committed to a long-term struggle which can only leave Iraq in ruins. They know that if they put down their weapons, they will become irrelevant in the face of Shiite/Kurd political and economic domination.
I believe today marks the end of any hope for stability in Iraq. You all may disagree, I don't know. I am not the negative type -- but this strikes me as a serious moment -- one we should not ignore. This is the price you pay for destabilizing and ethnically diverse country. Thanks you George and Donald for your infinite wisdom and foresight. Get ready for decades of bloodshed.