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Iran Press: Editorial Urges Shi'I-Sunni Unity in Iraq

Posted on: Sunday, 26 February 2006, 12:00 CST

Text of editorial by Farzaneh Rusta'i: "Questions on the Samarra explosion", published by the Iranian newspaper Sharq website on 25 February

Iraqi society has so far witnessed countless crimes. Shi'i or Sunni youngsters have been shot in groups of 40 or 50 without any clues on the identity of the perpetrators of the attacks. Many people have lost some relative or close acquaintance to suicide attacks attributed to Al-Qa'idah or Al-Zarqawi's group, and even in the best conditions, we must still expect to hear harrowing news from Iraq. The social and political composition of Iraq is such that it is extraordinarily important to maintain a security balance between Shi'is and Sunnis. Upsetting that fragile balance will provoke fundamental changes in other political and security equations in Iraq.

The criminal act that took place in Samarra last Wednesday can trigger new and near-unprecedented events in Iraq. Just days after the security department in Samarra was transferred from formerly Sunni authorities to Iraq's interior ministry, a small group dressed in Iraqi military uniforms entered the security room at the Shi'i shrines, arrested the guards and proceeded to place bombs at sensitive points in the mausoleum. The engineering of the bombing, and identification of sensitive points where explosions would lead to the collapse of a resistant structure such as the dome, indicate that this was no simple terrorist operation. Likewise one needed more than simple explosives to blow up and damage a resistant structure that included steel rods in its construction. The perpetrators had made precise technical calculations, and used explosives to which isolated rebels or intermediary groups connected with Zarqawi could not have had access. So one may perhaps conclude that the message of the authors of the explosion is either that they are targeting the vertebral column of Iraq's social balance, or in the most optimistic scenario, that this is the work of some paramilitary group that managed to somehow bring its plan to fruition.

Fortunately the clear public responses of Shi'i sources of emulation and Sunni leaders managed to a great extent to control the initial shocks deriving from this insult to the people's sanctities as well as reactions leading to the destruction of Sunni mosques, and allowed in time a restoration of a relative calm in Shi'i-Sunni relations. The most important matter in this regard however is the presence of a will or a collective will to upset the entire order and discipline of Iraqi society. Iraq shows today a repetition of the Lebanese model in the 1970s, when various armed political groups had established networks of connections and acted for ideological or nationalist motivations, with the help of the security networks of important regional states with a presence in that country. Iraq's circumstances may in significant ways be similar to those of Lebanon three decades ago, but the difference is the presence of foreign forces in Iraq trying more than any other group to reorganize Iraq's social and political conditions, and to avoid the creation of a totally anarchic situation.

Another similarity with Lebanon three decades ago is the process of discreet interactions between the security and intelligence sections of military groups and the intelligence branches of regional states. To avoid simplistic observations on what is going on in Iraq, one might comment on certain potentially helpful factors that receive less attention in the media. For some time now, there have been negotiations between American forces and groups that seem to represent the bombers or those guiding suicide attacks. No official source has revealed anything yet on the mechanics or the contents of these negotiations. Certain sources have named these groups silent organizations leaving no trace or index anywhere. The Samarra bombing may represent a crisis in the relations of these groups and the Americans. If that were at all possible or likely, the ability to incite the emotions and sentiments of Shi'is, and then those of the Sunnis, is a capability over which one can easily negotiate in Iraq and with which one can extract concessions from the Americans. The ability to upset the social balance, with its grave security and political consequences, is one other countries involved in Iraq may have or may wish to access, to demand concessions from the Americans.

The Americans have opened several fronts in Iraq, and this has given fighting parties the opportunity to negotiate or consult with the Americans, even at the cost of the lives of innocent Iraqis or many of the values considered sacred in Iraq. The Arab governments that cannot tolerate a Shi'i prime minister and a Shi'i majority in parliament constitute an example of the regional interaction that has provoked a stagnant and complicated situation for the Americans in spite of their immense military capabilities.

In spite of the fact that Iraqis are now used to seeing the deaths of loved ones as a daily reality, there is one factor that can change Iraq\s predicament, and pave the way for life and prosperity, rather than death and poverty, to play a role. Iraqi society is presently seeing a fundamental change in its basic rights, and a legal government and parliament derived from the popular vote are in power. The abilities of this government and parliament, and its interaction with intermittent, and mostly security-related crises, have a fundamental role in the control of security crises. If the government of Ibrahim al-Ja'fari manages to work better with Sunni groups and form a relative unity in Iraq, Iraq will no longer be threatened with civil war. A Shi'i mausoleum or Sunni place of worship may once more be attacked or desecrated, or a Shi'i or Sunni leader attacked, but the conduct of a government whose aim is to rebuild a united Iraq will in the first instance block the influence of outside currents. These are the currents trying to provoke Shi'i and Sunni discord in other to settle their own regional accounts.

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East

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