THE LEBANON SOLUTION?:

Job One: Solve The Sunni Problem (Fareed Zakaria, Nov. 24, 2003, NEWSWEEK)

For months before the war, the United States (intentionally or unintentionally) signaled its support for the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq. It made clear it was comfortable with the fact that a democratic Iraq was likely to be a Shiite Iraq (the Shiites make up 60 percent of the country). It cozied up to exiles, almost all of whom are Shiites. It assured the Kurds that they would retain the autonomy that they had developed under the umbrella of American and British air power.

All these are perfectly understandable, honorable and intelligent goals. (One certainly would not want a Shiite problem in Iraq!) But the effect has been to make the Sunnis of Iraq believe that they will be the victims of the new order. When the Sunnis hear the phrase “Iraqi democracy,” they probably think “tyranny of the Shiites.”

The Sunnis have good reason to be worried. They know a thing or two about tyranny, having ruled Iraq for all of its modern existence. (And before that, they were the favored sons under two colonial administrations: the British and the Ottomans.) But they are also a key to stability, a powerful and well-connected element in Iraqi society that for centuries has produced the majority of politicians, generals, merchants, professors and doctors. They can help—and they can certainly spoil—the chances of building a new Iraq.

Beyond effective counter-insurgency operations, the United States will have to develop a political strategy to bring Sunni leaders—tribal, religious and political—into the new order. This might involve political promises, bribes, spending projects in Sunni areas and some symbolic gestures, such as appointing a figurehead Sunni president (to balance the real head of government, a Shiite prime minister). The military historian John Keegan noted last Saturday in The Daily Telegraph that the British have done better in their sector than the Americans because, in part, they have accommodated themselves to Iraqi society rather than trying to reconstruct it along ideological lines. Washington will have to strike a balance because, rightly, it wants to change Iraq, not accommodate itself to it. But first it must end the war. And to do that, it must solve its Sunni Problem.

Which begs the question: what if the historic dominance of the Sunni, and their resulting view of the roles of Islam and the State, is the problem in a way that Shi'ism is decidely not?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2003 12:12 PM