Iraq: Plan To Arm Additional Sunni Groups Poses Risks

By Sumedha Senanayake

June 22, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- As the U.S. troop surge in Iraq moves into its fifth month and shows only slight improvement reducing insurgent attacks, the U.S. military has announced a new strategy. On June 11, "The New York Times" reported Washington is planning to arm some Sunni militant groups who said they would be willing to fight alongside coalition and Iraqi forces against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

This strategy has been employed before in Iraq with a great degree of success, but the unpredictability of arming Sunni groups that have in the past opposed the Iraqi government and even attacked U.S. forces is filled with risks.

Success In Al-Anbar

U.S. military commanders have argued that they tested the strategy of arming Sunni Arab groups in the once-restive Al-Anbar Governorate where Al-Qaeda in Iraq had a firm foothold in the region. The governorate was considered the most dangerous place in Iraq. However, Sunni tribal groups that once considered Al-Qaeda in Iraq an ally have turned on the group because of its indiscriminate killings and its imposition of an austere repressive version of Islam.

Sunni tribal leaders, given weapons and money by the Iraqi Army, recruited thousands of men to fight alongside Iraqi government forces against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The result says General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is violence in the Al-Anbar governorate has declined precipitously.

"What's taken place in Al-Anbar is almost breathtaking," Petraeus told CNN on June 8. "In the last several months, tribes that turned a blind eye to what Al-Qaeda was doing in that province are now opposing Al-Qaeda very vigorously. And the level of violence in Al-Anbar has plummeted, although there clearly is still work to be done."

The U.S. military now plans to arm other Sunni groups, primarily in the Diyala and Salah Al-Din Governorates where Washington believes Al-Qaeda has taken root, in the hopes that the same results will follow.

Undermining The Iraqi Government

While this strategy might be successful in thwarting Al-Qaeda in Iraq, it has the potential to undercut the Iraqi government and its armed forces. The tacit message that this strategy sends is that after four years U.S.-trained Iraqi forces are incapable of controlling the country.

The strategy could also undermine Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who has opposed arming Sunni groups. In a June 16 "Newsweek" interview he said the tactic might be destabilizing and the responsibility of arming any group should lay with the Iraqi government, not the United States.

"They [the U.S. military] make mistakes by arming tribes sometimes, and this is dangerous because this will create new militias," al-Maliki said. "We want to arm some tribes that want to side with us, but on the condition that we should be well aware of the tribe's background and sure that it is not connected with terror. It should be under the control of the [Iraqi] state and we should have guarantees that it will not turn into a militia."

Moreover, for years the United States has stressed that one of the main impediments to establishing security in Iraq has been the presence of illegally armed militias. Arming Sunni groups, essentially creating militias, completely undercuts the aforementioned objective and undermines the legitimacy of the Iraqi government forces.

Washington has repeatedly stated that only Iraqi government forces should be allowed to carry weapons. Therefore, this strategy endorses illegally armed groups and gives justification for the likes of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to maintain their militias.

Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Risks

There are certainly obvious benefits of arming Sunni Arab groups to combat Al-Qaeda in Iraq, as the Al-Anbar model has shown. In fact, this strategy is currently being employed in Operation Arrowhead Ripper, the offensive against Al-Qaeda in Iraq launched on June 19 in the Diyala Governorate. "The Washington Post" reported on June 21 that several Sunni groups that in the past have fought against U.S. forces -- including the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Mujahedin Army and the Islamic Army -- were now working alongside Iraqi and U.S. forces against Al-Qaeda in Iraq in Diyala.

The groups are now under an umbrella organization called the United Jihad Factions Council and have been issued special insignias to distinguish them from Al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters. Preliminary signs indicate the operation as being a success as more than 40 suspected Al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters have been killed in the first two days of the offensive.

However, the strategy is fraught with risks and the short-term gains that may come with vanquishing Al-Qaeda in Iraq may in time be overshadowed by rising ethnic and sectarian tensions among the Shi'a, Sunnis, and Kurds. In Al-Anbar Governorate, the population is exclusively Sunni, so the issues of sectarianism inherent in arming Sunni groups were largely absent. The intense dissatisfaction and animosity the Sunni tribes felt toward Al-Qaeda in the region was easily co-opted by the United States and a partnership of convenience resulted without significant risk of blowback.

However, Diyala Governorate -- with its sizable Shi'ite and Kurdish populations -- presents an altogether different set of issues. Armed Sunni groups may be perceived as a threat by the Shi'a and Kurds, who may in turn acquire arms of their own, increasing the likelihood of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.

Moreover, if Al-Qaeda in Iraq is removed from the theater, how will the Sunnis then be disarmed? It is highly unlikely these groups will voluntarily lay down their weapons. Indeed, with Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the way, the Sunni groups may realize that their relationship of convenience with the coalition has run its course and resume their battle of liberation against the U.S.-led "occupation," only perhaps this time with better arms and tactics.

Finally, given the spiraling sectarian violence, providing arms to Sunni Arab groups that have in the past viewed the Iraqi government as illegitimate could be seen as a step toward an all-out civil war that could ultimately lead to the partitioning of the nation. While the Sunni groups may have changed their position and turned on Al-Qaeda in Iraq, they have steadfastly maintained their opposition to the Iraqi government and the presence of foreign troops in the country.

Mahmud Uthman, a Kurdish legislator, warned of this in an interview with "The Washington Post" on June 18. "They [Sunnis] take arms, they take money, and in the future they will be a problem," he said. "Politically, they are still against the Americans and the Iraqi government."

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © 2007 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

June 22, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
When Preaching Flops

By DAVID BROOKS
A little while ago, a national study authorized by Congress found that abstinence education programs don’t work. That gave liberals a chance to feel superior because it turns out that preaching traditional morality to students doesn’t change behavior.

But in this realm, nobody has the right to feel smug. American schools are awash in moral instruction — on sex, multiculturalism, environmental awareness and so on — and basically none of it works. Sex ed doesn’t change behavior. Birth control education doesn’t produce measurable results. The fact is, schools are ineffectual when it comes to values education. You can put an adult in front of a classroom or an assembly, and that adult can emit words, but don’t expect much impact.

That’s because all this is based on a false model of human nature. It’s based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide properly when temptation arises. If you pour them full of information about the consequences of risky behavior, they will decide to exercise prudence and forswear unwise decisions.

That’s the way we’d like to think we are, but that’s not the way we really are, and it’s certainly not the way teenagers are. There is no central executive zone in the brain where all information is gathered and decisions are made. There is no little homunculus up there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed. In fact, the mind is a series of parallel processes and loops, bidding for urgency.

We’re not primarily deciders. We’re primarily perceivers. The body receives huge amounts of information from the world, and what we primarily do is turn that data into a series of generalizations, stereotypes and theories that we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we’ve perceived a situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we carry in our memory, we’ve pretty much rigged how we’re going to react, even though we haven’t consciously sat down to make a decision.

Construing is deciding.

A boy who grew up in a home where he was emotionally rejected is going to perceive his girlfriend differently than one who grew up in a happier home, even though he might not be able to tell you why or how. Women who grow up in fatherless homes menstruate at an earlier age than those who don’t, and surely perceive their love affairs differently as well.

Women who live in neighborhoods with a shortage of men wear more revealing clothing and are in general more promiscuous than women in other neighborhoods. They probably are not conscious of how their behavior has changed, but they’ve accurately construed their situation (tougher competition for mates) and altered their behavior accordingly.

When a teenage couple is in the backseat of a car about to have sex or not, or unprotected sex or not, they are not autonomous creatures making decisions based on classroom maxims or health risk reports. Their behavior is shaped by the subconscious landscapes of reality that have been implanted since birth.

Did they grow up in homes where they felt emotionally secure? Do they often feel socially excluded? Did they grow up in a neighborhood where promiscuity is considered repulsive? Did they grow up in a sex-drenched environment or an environment in which children are buffered from it? (According to a New Zealand study, firstborns are twice as likely to be virgins at 21 than later-born children.)

In other words, the teenagers in that car won’t really be alone. They’ll be in there with a whole web of attitudes from friends, family and the world at large. Some teenagers will derive from those shared patterns a sense of subconscious no-go zones. They’ll regard activities in that no-go zone the way vegetarians regard meat — as a taboo, beyond immediate possibility.

Deciding is conscious and individual, but perceiving is subconscious and communal. The teen sex programs that actually work don’t focus on the sex. They focus on the environment teens live in. They work on the substratum of perceptions students use to orient themselves in the world. They don’t try to lay down universal rules, but apply the particular codes that have power in distinct communities. They understand that changing behavior changes attitudes, not the other way around.

They understand that whether it’s in middle school or the Middle East, getting human nature right is really important. We’re perceivers first, not deciders.

Was Gorbachev a Closet Christian?
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
June 21, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Despite his publicly professed atheism, Mikhail Gorbachev displayed signs of religious belief, and President Ronald Reagan often wondered whether the Soviet Union's last leader was a "closet Christian," a political scientist said Wednesday.

"I think he believes," the 40th president had said to at least one close aide, Paul Kengor of Grove City College told Cybercast News Service in an interview.

While Gorbachev clearly resisted the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, he did nevertheless acquiesce to those developments taking place peacefully, Kengor observed.

He said it was difficult to determine with any degree of certainty whether Gorbachev had done so as a result of hidden Christian convictions, or because he simply saw and accepted the inevitable.

Kengor Wednesday delivered a speech in Washington, D.C., on the significance of Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech, delivered in divided Berlin 20 years ago this month.

For Reagan's part, Kengor said, the late president's "total revulsion of communism" could best be understood in the context of his own strong Christian convictions.

He said Reagan's religious convictions often drove him to denounce the Soviet Union in stark moral terms - such as the use of the term "evil empire" during his 1983 speech to evangelicals in Orlando, Florida.

Reagan's suspicion about his Soviet counterpart's beliefs is shared by his son, Michael Reagan, now a radio talk show host.

He told Cybercast News Service that Gorbachev had a grandmother who was Christian, and that Gorbachev's parents had religious (Orthodox) icons in their homes, hidden behind pictures of Stalin and Lenin.

Michael Reagan said that in his own conversations with Gorbachev, he learned that the Russian's wife, Raisa -- who died in 1999 -- also had religious parents who had been killed by the Gestapo during World War II for having religious icons in their home.

John O'Sullivan, a former advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the author of a new book on the Cold War alliance between Thatcher, Reagan and Pope John Paul II is less convinced on the issue of Gorbachev's faith.

He writes that Gorbachev's reference to God during in opening remarks during the 1985 U.S.-Soviet summit in Geneva "deeply impressed Reagan," and that over time the American president came to view the Soviet leader as believer.

"Reagan was almost certainly mistaken here," O'Sullivan wrote. "Gorbachev's remark was either a throwaway colloquial expression, or more likely, a calculated attempt to appeal to what the Soviets knew was a strong religious strand in Reagan's psychology."

Also see:

America Is Not 'Sicko,' Filmmaker to Tell Lawmakers
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
June 21, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - A young filmmaker is heading to Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss his views of the country's health care system. But it's not Michael Moore, and the message, in contrast to that promoted by the liberal activist, is that the U.S. is not "sicko."

In his new documentary, SiCKO, "Moore is promoting the myth that government-run health care is a magic bullet," newcomer Stuart Browning told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday.

"But the facts just don't support his claims," he said. "People need to have a rounded understanding of the issues. Only then can we hope to have a meaningful debate about what kinds of reforms will actually work."

Browning has produced and posted on his FreeMarketCure.com website short films covering various aspects of the nation's health care system. He will take part in a discussion at the U.S. Senate's Rayburn Building Thursday, hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute.

Apart from showing one of his films, Browning said he will join Cato director of health policy studies Michael Cannon and American Prospect writing fellow Ezra Klein to "debunk some of the demonstrably inaccurate claims Michael Moore makes in his new film."

Among the subjects in his videos is Shirley Healey, a resident of British Columbia who was scheduled for "urgent" surgery on a blocked artery in her home country -- in four months' time. Another is Lindsay McCreith, an Ontario man who was offered a "critical" MRI on his cancerous brain tumor -- again, with a four month delay.

The two gravely ill patients instead came to the United States where they received life-saving treatment within days, Browning said. He said the Canadian government's control of health services and the fact that private health insurance in Canada is illegal have resulted in long waiting lists for critical care.

"As our national debate about health care heats up, it's crucial to distinguish between facts and spin," Browning said. "Canada is facing a health-care crisis -- but you won't hear about that from those who argue that America should resolve its health care woes by modeling itself after the Canadian and Cuban systems."

Browning said he began making short films and launched his website "as a response to the push for single-payer health care, because I am an American concerned about personal liberties and medical freedom. It's that simple."

As Cybercast News Service reported earlier, Moore's SiCKO is opening on Friday, a week ahead of schedule.

Deann McEwen from Cyprus, Calif., a registered nurse for 33 years, told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday that Moore's film, which she has seen twice, "validates what registered nurses see every day of the year in their practice of how the administrative bureaucracy of insurance denies health care."

The current system is cumbersome "and really 'sicko' in our point of view because patients are not getting the care that they deserve," added McEwen, one of the organizers of a campaign built around the movie release, called Scrubs for SiCKO.

"Scrubs for SiCKO," a advocacy campaign that has participating doctors and nurses distributing information to moviegoers, is pushing for "single-payer health care, guaranteeing comprehensive, quality health care with an expanded and improved Medicare for all."

McEwen said she had not seen Browning's videos but dismissed his premise of market-based reforms, saying they "have never been shown to work. The market exists to make a profit, and the way they make a profit is by denying care."

"In our country, the problem is that 47 million people are rationed out of the system altogether," McEwen declared. "They have absolutely no access."

But Browning said both Moore and McEwen are wrong about the 47 million figure. He called it "a hugely politically inflated number that is nowhere close to reality."

Citing U.S. Census Bureau statistics, Browning said that "17 million of the uninsured reside in households with more than $50,000 in annual income. Of that total, nine million live in households having more than $75,000 in annual income.

"An additional 14 million people are included in that count who are eligible for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program," he added. Those people, he said, are effectively insured, "but they haven't bothered to sign up."

"Throw in six million Americans who are uninsured only for part of the year until they find another job, 12 million illegal immigrants who don't buy health insurance but are included in that number, and finally, 18 million American between 18 and 34 years of age -- many of whom can afford health insurance but spend four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they do on health care costs," he said.

Browning expects Moore's movie to do well in theaters "because a lot of people in the press have given him rave reviews."

Charging that the liberal filmmaker and his supporters are in effect calling for government control of a huge portion of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, Browning said "they can't point to a single place in the world where it has worked -- but they believe that socialized health care somehow will work here."

"It's socialism they're pushing for," he added.

A 'Broken People' in Booming India
Low-Caste Dalits Still Face Prejudice, Grinding Poverty
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 21, 2007; A01

DALLIPUR, India -- The hip young Indians working inside this country's multinational call centers have one thing in common: Almost all hail from India's upper and middle castes, elites in this highly stratified society.

India may be booming, but not for those who occupy the lowest rung of society here. The Dalits, once known as untouchables, continue to live in grinding poverty and suffer discrimination in education, jobs and health care. For them, status and often occupation are still predetermined in the womb.

While some Indians had been hopeful that urbanization and growth would crumble ideas about caste, observers say tradition and prejudice have ultimately prevailed.

"There's talk of a modern India. But the truth is India can't truly move ahead with caste in place," said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer and expert on India's caste system. "In all ways, it's worse than the Jim Crow laws were in the American South because it's completely sanctioned by religion. Despite so many reforms, the idea of untouchability is still very much a part of Indian life."

As India's economy surges, one of the country's most serious and stubborn challenges is how to combat entrenched caste prejudice. Dalits, along with other "backward" castes, make up the majority of India's 1.1 billion people, and social scientists here worry that these groups are being left behind.

The contrast between the gleaming call centers of rising India and the abject poverty that is the reality for many Dalits is all too obvious here in Dallipur, an impoverished village on the outskirts of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh state.

Without electricity, paved roads or running water, the hamlet is home to landless Mushars, the lowest social stratum of Dalits, who work as shoeshiners, trash pickers, toilet cleaners and street sweepers. Those occupations are still regarded in much of India as "polluted" and not deserving of respect.

Here amid the straw and mud villages, two children died of starvation last year -- not for lack of food in the area, but as a result of prejudice.

Chandrika, a 24-year-old Dalit mother, recalled carrying her crying 2-year-old son and her weak 20-month-old daughter to a nearby health center. There, she pleaded for a card that would entitle her malnourished children to free milk.

But before the nurses could examine her children, she was mocked and shooed away by doctors, who told the young mother to go beg in the market.

"They said again and again, 'We don't want to see you Dalits here bothering us,' " said Chandrika, a thin, dark-skinned woman who wept as she recounted how her children died. "My milk had dried up from stress. There was no work for me. There was no one to hear my plight."

Local government leaders who came to investigate her children's deaths insisted that the shy mother and her fellow villagers build a raised concrete stage -- Dalits could be addressed by upper castes only from a higher platform, Chandrika and other villagers were told. The three-foot-tall dais remains here in Dallipur today, the only outcome of the investigation.

An Inherited Burden
By virtue of birth, some castes inherit wealth; the Dalits inherit debt.

Caste often determines Indians' spouses, friends, residence and, most important, occupation -- part of a Hindu belief that people inherit their stations in life based on the sins and good deeds of past lives.

Some Indians believe that the spread of capitalism in urban areas has in some ways dissolved caste by creating new occupations and eliminating obsolete ones. For instance, with the growing use of flush toilets in Indian cities, the disposal of human waste, once a job for Dalits, is now done with a simple pull of a lever.

In booming evening bazaars in Mumbai and New Delhi, lower castes sell cellphones, leather tennis shoes and grooming kits from small shops and curbside pushcarts alongside higher castes, with everyone "in a capitalist rush to make money," said Prasad, the writer. "A lower-caste businessman may even enjoy an evening cigarette with a higher caste, completely taboo even 50 years ago."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently compared India's caste system to apartheid in South Africa, calling it not just prejudice but "a blot on humanity."

Critics say that such statements are simply meant to garner votes from lower castes and that any gains made by Dalits have been marginal.

"India is not a true democracy," said Anup Srivastava, a researcher with the People's Vigilance Commission on Human Rights in Varanasi who is investigating complaints filed by Dalits about discrimination among neighbors, in schools, at hospitals and at work. "The country is independent. But the people aren't. How can there be a democracy when there are still people known as untouchables who face daily discrimination?"

Experts say more and more Hindus are rejecting their religion because it sanctions caste. Last month in Mumbai, thousands of Dalits converted to Buddhism, which in posters and newspaper ads describes itself as a "caste-free faith."

Meanwhile, the Dalits have made political gains. Last month, a Dalit woman, Mayawati Kumari, was elected to the top post in Uttar Pradesh in a landslide victory in which she was able to garner support across castes, including from high-caste Brahmins. Her election was as significant to the Dalits as John F. Kennedy's presidency was to America's Irish Catholics, many caste experts here say.

The resistance to dissolving caste comes from a deep-rooted fear among the elite that economic power will be taken from them and given to the poor. To the extent that caste creates informal labor unions, the rejection of caste would effectively destroy those unions in a country where people far outnumber jobs.

For nearly 60 years, affirmative action programs have offered limited help to Dalits and other low castes. Those programs have long been highly controversial, and tainted by politics.

In what has been dubbed "the race to the bottom," a powerful group of shepherds in Rajasthan state demanded this month to be "socially downgraded" so they could be entitled to government and education programs. The shepherds, known as the Gujjars, blocked roads and train routes and burned down businesses. Indian army troops and police clashed with the Gujjars, leaving 23 people dead before the government promised to consider their demands.

The Gujjars, like the Dalits and other backward classes, were fighting for a stake in India's economic boom, some experts said.

Experts also say that American-style materialism and even the hiring practices of American and multinational companies are actually hardening class, color and caste distinctions.

"International corporations running call centers and IT operations in this country don't realize India's complex caste system is really a form of racism," said S. Anand, who runs the independent Navayana Publishing house, which focuses on books about caste. "How will the big global companies deal with caste with so many Dalits not even able to go to school?"

Young, higher-caste urban professionals, who have better access to good schools than their lower-caste compatriots, are being hired by the IT and call center operations, say Indian caste analysts.

"Multinationals are not here to push social reform," Anand said in his Delhi home, amid shelves stacked with books by B.R. Ambedkar, a Buddhist and India's icon of the anti-caste movement. "They're here to make money."

The other problem is that India's elite do not fight oppression or push for working-class egalitarian ideas.

"There's not even the pretension to fight caste. It's not trendy or a Bollywood star's cause celebre to say you care about the working-man untouchable," Anand said. "In fact, people are still willing to kill themselves to retain their supremacy. The society has been so structured for so long. It's seen as the ultimate threat of their livelihoods and Indian identity."

A Life's Work Lost
Everyday vocabulary reinforces caste. In casual conversations, Indians frequently dismiss certain professions as "backward," and people inquire about the professions of one another's fathers. Dalits themselves protested the use of the term "untouchable," preferring Dalit, which means "broken people."

In Dalit villages, many like Chandrika, the mother who lost her two children, say that they are provided little dignity and that they're persecuted daily by other low castes seen as being just above them.

Last month, Bechan, a thin Dalit with long, wavy hair and bloodshot eyes, went fishing in a village pond, only to return to find his home destroyed.

His two huts were burned to the ground, turning his wheat, vegetables and entire savings for his daughter's wedding into a pile of smoldering ash. The pond allegedly belonged to the Patel caste, and Bechan had trespassed.

"They told me I couldn't take any big fish out of the water," he said, his voice quavering and his eyes beginning to water. "They surrounded me from all sides and beat me. When I hobbled home, my life's work was on fire. Even my daughter's dowry was burnt."

Bechan, 45, is now living under a tree, with oily shirts stretched out over the branches to shade him from the 120-degree heat. He filed police reports. His daughter's wedding was called off.

Convening a group of Patel women to tell their side of the events, Hirvavatt Devi, 45, shook her head and said the Dalits "burned down their own huts to get money from the government. You see they're not smart people. To be very frank, they're very dirty."

Some here hope that Kumari, the Dalit leader elected chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, will take up their cause and hundreds like it. Meanwhile, tempers are rising as fast as the gray smoke that still fumes here.

"They abuse us as they always do," cried out Rajender, a 40-year-old Dalit trash collector, tossing up his hands. "We hear India is booming. But India is becoming powerful with our blood and our labor. And we still cannot fish here or touch this land or that. We still live half lives."