WHAT IS TO BE DONE - PART I

Hi,

I would like to thank all my friends for the kind words of encouragement and support on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of this site. It is mainly this encouragement and support which give me the ammunition and energy to continue writing.

But as I told you: let’s get down to business.

The “negotiating” team from Falujah has written a letter to the government stating the terms and conditions for solving the crisis from their point of view. It is an arrogant letter demanding more or less surrender and reinstatement of the apparatus of the Saddam regime under thinly disguised pretexts and carefully crafted sentences. These conditions were described by Kassem Dawood the minister of Security affairs as “laughable”. It is noteworthy that this minister himself is a Sunni.

It is important to tell you that apart from the Saddamists, their religious extremist allies do not properly belong to any established Sunni sect. So it is a common mistake, even by many ill-informed Iraqis and Moslems, to imagine that the branch of Salafi Wahabists who advocate and practice violence, are Sunnis. In fact they are against all established denominations of the Islamic religion. The origin of this creed is a small breakaway fringe group that migrated to the Arabian Peninsula long time ago and remained a small obscure sect until the advent of “Muhammad Abdul Wahab”(and hence Wahabism), and his puritanical preaching, in what is now called Saudi Arabia, more than two centuries ago. The founders of the present Saudi dynasty used this movement first to expand their power and eventually gain political control of the Arabian Peninsula. Later on the Saudis themselves clashed with the movement and brutally suppressed the so called "Ikhwan" rebellion in the 19th century. Nevertheless Wahabism remains the official creed of the present regime in S.A. and some other Sheikdoms and small states in the Peninsula. This is not to say however, that all Wahabists are terrorists and extremists. Mostly it is just another of these religious sects and people tend to inherit these labels from their ancestors. The rise of the current dangerous terrorism in its present form, in the name of Islam, is quite a recent phenomenon, and as I have said in a previous post, has a lot to do with the cold war and its aftermath; and can be precisely traced to the events in Afghanistan and Iran in the seventies and eighties of the last century.

Well, the above is just some background information for my friends to help them better understand the “terrain” of the looming battle so to speak. The point that I am really trying to make is that these fringe groups see in Iraq today a golden opportunity to hijack the general Sunni population and convert them to their ways, something which they have always dreamt of and which is deeply imbedded in their historical subconscious, considering that it was exactly this Iraq that was the center of theological speculation and conflicts in the heyday of Islamic culture and civilization; and the place from which they had to escape in ignominious flight way back in the middle ages. And again I remind you of that famous “Zarqawi” letter; a document which I can never forget, that really sheds light on all the events that have taken place ever since these groups started their activity after the liberation; and a document that really merits careful study and analysis by specialists both historical and military strategists. Sadly, the macabre plot laid out in that fateful letter is being implemented to the letter, and successfully too, as we have to admit with heavy heart.

This preamble is just an introduction to a series of posts which I hope to write successively as time permits to assist in exploring the battlefield as it were, and perhaps assist in “thinking” about the right strategy to deal with the present alarming situation. For this is a battle which neither we nor you can afford to lose, or to allow dragging for too long without decisive conclusion.

But before I end this post I must make one urgent warning. It would be one of those serious mistakes, in my opinion, to rush into battle in Fallujah without protecting and thoroughly securing the rear in Baghdad and surrounding area.

Salaam