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There's a Civil War in Iraq Edward I. Koch A civil war is now taking place in Iraq. The Bush administration is desperately but foolishly trying to convince the American public that what they see is not happening. The official line enunciated by the President, is that the Iraqis decided not to go to civil war. His statement, "The Iraqi people made their choice. They looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw."
But who would know better than Ayad Allawi, the moderate former Iraqi prime minister who the U.S. had hoped would succeed himself, primarily because he is secular in outlook rather than a representative of religious orthodoxy which is the stance of the Shiite majority who selected Ibrahim al-Jaafari as their candidate for prime minister? Allawi is quoted in The Times on March 19 as saying, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
The U.S. cannot remain alone in Iraq without allies - NATO and regional - joining with us with boots on the ground, bearing the continuing casualties as we defend Sunnis from Shiite attack, torture and beheading in the Middle East version of ethnic cleansing, and repel Sunni terrorists engaged in bombing attacks against American military forces and Shiite civilians.
It has been almost three years since hostilities were declared ended by President Bush on May 2, 2003. I had wondered why it was that Shiites had not taken counter-offensive action to the near daily attacks upon them by the Sunnis in their marketplaces, police stations, army bases and mosques. We were told by the media and the representatives of the U.S. government that the most respected Shiite Ayatollah Sistani was cautioning Shiites not to respond with violence.
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Apparently, the counsel of moderation was worn down by Sunni attacks. This Sunday, The New York Times provided an in-depth article citing chapter and verse of Shiite retaliation against Sunnis. Following are some observations of Times' reporters:
"It's true that American soldiers are still dying, but the focus of the bloodshed has changed. The day after that mob scene in Sadr City, bodies started showing up, first a couple and then dozens. By conservative counts, nearly 200 civilian men have been executed in the past two weeks and dumped on Baghdad's streets. Many have been hogtied. Some have had acid splashed on their faces. Others have been found without toes, fingers, eyes."
"Mr. [Mohannad] Azawi's {owner of a pet shop in southern Baghdad] body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot. In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said."
"Mr. [Mahmoud] Othman [a Kurdish member of Parliament] said there were atrocities on each side. "But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists…When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government."
"Haidar al-Ibadi, Mr. Jaafari's spokesman, acknowledged that ‘some of the police forces have been infiltrated.' But he said ‘outsiders,' rather than Iraqis, were to blame. Now many Sunnis, who used to be the most anti-American community in Iraq, are asking for American help. ‘If the Americans leave, we are finished,' said Hassan al-Azawi, whose bother was taken from the pet shop."
"The day of the shrine attack, Shiite mobs began rampaging through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and slaughtering Sunni residents. Some Sunnis struck back and killed Shiites. The mayhem claimed hundreds of lives and exposed tensions that until then had been bubbling just beneath the surface."
When the same kind of atrocities occurred in Spain during the days of Franco and the Spanish Republic (1936-39), were they perceived as anything but a civil war?
If it is a civil war and we seek to protect both sides from the onslaught of the other, we become the enemy of both. What is even more troublesome is that the Shiites are allies of Iran which has been designated by our national policy as the major threat to us in that part of the world. Were the Sunnis not aligned with Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Party before Hussein was toppled, they would be our allies in that they are far more secular than the Shiites.
Unless our regional allies - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and the other Gulf states - and our NATO allies join us with boots on the ground in Iraq and provide their fair share of the costs of war (we have now authorized or spent $470 billion in this ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan), we have no alternative but to withdraw our troops from Iraq.
The war of civilizations will go on for decades. The Islamic fanatics want to kill us. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi summed it up even more directly than Adolf Hitler did in Mein Kampf. Zarqawi, the number one deputy to Osama bin Laden, has stated, "Killing the infidels is our religion, slaughtering them is our religion, until they convert to Islam or pay us tribute."
Take him at his word. These are the same people who are killing one another (Muslim against Muslim) because they continue to battle over who should have been the successor to the Prophet Mohammad following his death 1400 years ago.
As The Times describes it, "Shiites split off from Sunnis after the Prophet Muhammad died in the seventh century. That created a crisis over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. One group of Muslims chose Muhammad's friend, Abu Bakr. They would become the Sunnis, a vast majority of the world's Muslims. A smaller group believed the rightful successor was Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and cousin. They would become the Shiites, who today are concentrated in India, Pakistan and Persian Gulf countries."
Based on the information provided by the CIA, President bush was right to launch the war against Iraq. However, based on what has taken place - the desertion by our allies - and what become known since, that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, we would be right in getting out.
Let's cut our losses, gird our loins and prepare for the ongoing war against international terrorism. The danger is that some countries in the European Union may have already lost the will to continue the fight, most conspicuously, Spain.
The fanaticism of the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and its government is being demonstrated in the efforts to execute Abdul Rahman for converting to Christianity 16 years ago. The media reports that he will probably be released as a "madman" because of all the pressure being exerted by many Western countries. That is not enough.
We must demand the law be changed and freedom of religion enshrined. Otherwise, we should tell President Karzai that we cannot continue to send our young men and women, the vast majority of whom are Christian, into combat to protect Karzai's government from the Taliban.
Edward I. Koch, author, lawyer and talk radio host, was a member of the U.S. Congress and, for 12 years, the 105th mayor of New York City.
Editor's note:
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