NO WONDER THEY POLLED 20%:

A new Sunni strategy in Iraq: After failing to defeat Iraq's charter, Sunni Arab parties merge - with an anti-US agenda. (Jill Carroll, 10/27/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

The engine that drives Iraq's insurgency, this country's politically marginalized Sunni Arab minority, is getting ready for a fight - but this time it's at the ballot box.

Energized by the adoption of a new constitution, which passed over Sunni objections, key Sunni political parties said this week that they are forming a coalition to ensure they have a voice in Iraq's new parliament, to be elected in December.

This vigorous new effort to participate is a complete reversal from the Sunni position last year that voters should boycott polls to select the transitional national assembly. But if the coalition has decided to join in a process it once rejected, it is also beginning to articulate a Sunni political agenda that is Islamist, vehemently anti-American, opposed to foreign troops, and discreetly pro-insurgency.

Even as incompetent as they've been, this is mind-bogglingly stupid. We're leaving whether they want us to or not and when we do, blithely ignoring them the whole time, what do they have left? just their support for the guys who are killing the Shi'ites who we're leaving in charge?

MORE:
The New Sunni Jihad: 'A Time for Politics': Tour With Iraqi Reveals Tactic Change (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 10/27/05, The Washington Post)

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only seen Sunnis marginalized while Iraqi's Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb's entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives. [...]

This article is based on five days of travel and interviews with Abu Theeb and his associates before and after the referendum. The reporter was allowed such access on the condition that the guerrilla commander's real name and the name of his village would not be disclosed.

It was not possible to confirm directly how many Sunnis share his views on the political process. But Iraqi and U.S. analysts in Baghdad express hope that such a shift in outlook will eventually lead large numbers of radical Sunnis to abandon their weapons permanently and take part in the political process.

For men such as Abu Theeb, who said he shaved his bushy beard, a sign of an Islamic holy fighter, to pass more easily into and out of Baghdad, taking part in politics is a step taken only reluctantly.

"Politics for us is like filthy, dead meat," he said, referring to pork, which is eschewed by observant Muslims. "We are not allowed to eat it, but if you are crossing through a desert and your life depends on it, God says it's okay." Even if politics gets him a result he likes, he said, he'll continue war against the Americans, because he views them as occupiers.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 26, 2005 6:15 PM