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COMMENTARY
October 16, 2004
Fallujah again
As I write the U.S. Marine Corps is taking Fallujah all over again. There is a rumour they have captured "Zarqawi" -- the semi-legendary terror mastermind believed to be holed-up in Fallujah -- which I don't think is true. But in the unlikely event it does prove true I want you to know you read it here first. The new Iraqi army led the assault into Ramadi and I gather there were about equal credits in the taking of Samarra the week before: these were two of the three largest among about 30 pockets of enemy control in the "Sunni triangle". Fallujah has been the biggest problem: the queen bee in the hive. And it takes the Marines. I do know for sure that the Americans arrested Khaled al-Jumeili as he walked out of a mosque in a village just south of Fallujah yesterday. This showed they meant business. Al-Jumeili though personally untouchable had been negotiating on behalf of the curious coalition of Saddamites Afghan Arabs Palestinians Syrians and miscellaneous religious nutjobs who have been ruling Fallujah since the Marines and the Iraqi police last backed off in April. He had also been delivering sermons locally calling for the usual holy war against the infidels. Well that's one off the street. Fallujah's reputation as a source of Saudi-financed Wahabi Islamic fervour made it an occasional problem even for Saddam Hussein. His sons Uday and Qusay kept a pleasure lodge just south of the city attached to a special forces base should the town ever need quelling. This is now converted into the Marine HQ. The Saddamite strategy for ruling the area combined carrot and stick. The maulawis had a strict choice between being on Saddam's payroll and being dead. The town's reputation for violence goes back much further. As I recall from ancient history both the Romans and Persians had trouble with it (under the name Misiche later Peroz-shapur). The Sassanids took it from the Romans in 244 A.D. We should hope the present battle will be definitive in the project of building an at least nominally democratic Iraq. As ever it is almost impossible to establish who is in charge where even for the people who are there. One of the mysteries of Middle Eastern life for the visitor is the way power may be held simultaneously and sometimes even peacefully by opposing authorities. Iraqi police may be patrolling a neighbourhood that the Jihadis are also patrolling and they don't seem to notice each other. One of the problems in instilling democratic and constitutional order is overcoming this cultural mindset: the seeming indifference to the law of contradiction. Constitutional government requires a monopoly of force legitimate not only in law but in the hearts and minds of the populace. Individuals may bear arms but not factions. When you think of it our own system must seem absurdly arbitrary: for if a man can bear arms why can't a political party? But it really has worked better our way over time and the Iraqis of Fallujah will have to take it on trust. In the meantime there are multiple reports that after some months of Taliban-style daily living under the mostly-foreign Jihadis the people in Fallujah are actually welcoming the sight of a few U.S. Marines. Even the embedded foreign Arab media have been reporting local civic leaders telling Fallujah's "Arabs" to leave. (An aside. Even though Iraqis are except for the Kurds and some tiny minorities Arabs themselves they say "Arabs" to mean exclusively "foreign" or "other" Arabs and not in a nice way. I gather this preceded Saddam's rise to power but was enhanced by his own rhetorical use of the term when he described himself as e.g. "The Lion of the Arabs". His listeners would hear this with straight face not wishing to be fed into a shredding machine. But they would privately reflect he really meant "lion of" ... those unpleasantly dirty violent demented backward and unteachable "other" Arabs. I mention this to help my reader imagine a society in which "political correctness" has not yet appeared and yet national consciousness is well advanced.) While the media will continue at least until the U.S. presidential election to depict the situation in Iraq as absolutely hopeless it is worth remembering that they so depicted the situation in Afghanistan. Not even I thought the Afghan election would come off without tragedy. But it did it was a national festival and triumph a dancing on the graves of the Jihadis. All the allies had to do was kill enough of them. And that's what the allies are doing now in Fallujah. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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