[lbo-talk] LAT: How sectarian logic leads to mass irrationality

[Michael Pollak]

[Sectarian civil war isn't nihilism.  It's a mass prisoner's dilemma gone 
mad.]

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-militias28nov28,0,4297101,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

    November 28, 2006
    Los Angeles Times

    Rising violence swells ranks of Iraq's militias

    Men with no previous affiliation are taking up arms, citing distrust
    of the security forces for the rush to self-defense.

   By Solomon Moore, Staff Writer

    BAGHDAD -- Retaliatory attacks sparked by last week's massive bomb
    assault on a Shiite neighborhood here are driving more Iraqis into the
    ranks of sectarian militias amid rising distrust of government
    security forces, newly recruited gunmen and residents said Monday.

    Besieged Iraqis, many with no previous affiliation with established
    militias, are taking up arms, barricading their communities and
    joining new Shiite Muslim militia cells or increasingly militant Sunni
    Arab neighborhood-watch groups.

    "We have zero trust in the Iraqi army and minus-zero trust in the
    police," said Ahmed Suheil Juburi, 33, a Sunni Arab who has thrown in
    his lot with a group of former military officers in Saddam Hussein's
    Baathist regime patrolling the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora.

    Thousands of unsanctioned fighters have been on high alert since the
    car bombings Thursday in Sadr City, a poor Baghdad neighborhood that
    is home to the Al Mahdi militia, a Shiite force loyal to anti-U.S.
    cleric Muqtada Sadr.

    Since the attack, which killed at least 215 people, Sadr's fighters
    have struck back at Sunni neighborhoods with mortar shells, rockets
    and machine-gun raids from fast-moving SUVs. Sunni Arab fighters have
    retaliated in kind.

    The bombings and subsequent attacks have killed 524 people, including
    181 whose bodies were left in Baghdad's streets, and injured 653 since
    Thursday, according to government tallies obtained by The Times.

    The mounting carnage is another sign that Iraq's civil war is gaining
    momentum faster than either the U.S. or Iraqi governments can respond.
    In Baghdad, mortar shells have continued to pummel neighborhoods, and
    bands of men drive people out of their homes at gunpoint. Authorities
    find corpses in trash heaps and side streets on a daily basis; at
    least 44 were found Monday.

    Residents are blocking roads with blasted cars and tree trunks. Guns
    and ammunition are being passed out in mosques and homes. Throughout
    Baghdad, men end their workdays by taking up positions on rooftops and
    minarets.

    Fighters on both sides of Iraq's sectarian conflict say that the
    recent growth of militias stems from deep distrust of the intent and
    capability of the nation's security forces, whose reputation has been
    crippled by corruption and sectarian infiltration.

    Sunnis have long complained that Shiite militias dominate the police
    force, and that members have committed thousands of death-squad
    slayings. Shiites say that the Iraqi army, with its many Sunni Arabs,
    has failed to guard their communities from attacks such as the series
    of car bombs Thursday.

    Salam Saedi, 29, a cleaner at a downtown Baghdad hotel, said he signed
    up with Sadr's militia the day after the Sadr City bombings.

    "I was not a part of the public committees or the Mahdi army, but
    after the attacks I saw the people who were killed and my feelings
    changed," Saedi said. "So I contacted some friends and I went and I
    signed up with the Mahdi army. They gave me an AK-47."

    In the wake of the Sadr City bombings, members say, the Al Mahdi army
    has boosted the ranks of its "popular committees," a recently formed
    armed wing.

    Each block of 1,500 homes in the neighborhood is guarded by 50 to 100
    men, members said.

    Across town in Dora, a mostly Sunni area, Juburi said he kept "several
    AK-47s, a BKC [high-caliber machine gun] and even a grenade launcher
    in my orchard."

    He said his neighbors reactivated a group of retired Baathist officers
    that formed in February during similar sectarian reprisals that
    followed the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. The
    bombing and its bloody aftermath are widely viewed as the turning
    point that pushed Iraq into civil war.

    "Right now, there are anywhere between 400 and 500 organized fighters
    in my area doing patrols and setting up checkpoints for defensive
    measures in the event that we are attacked by militias," he said.
    Juburi said the total force in Dora comprised 2,000 to 2,500 men
    organized in companies of 50 fighters each.

    The continued growth and proliferation of paramilitary forces in Iraq
    threatens to hamper U.S. plans for withdrawal.

    Complicating any solution are the ties between many of Iraq's
    paramilitary forces and leading political parties.

    The Sadr movement, for example, has 30 seats in government -- possibly
    enough to topple Prime Minister Nouri Maliki should they withdraw in
    protest.

    Adnan Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni Arab legislator, also has a
    paramilitary squad deployed throughout west Baghdad, where members
    clashed with Shiites over the weekend.

    This month, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told a U.S. Senate Armed
    Services Committee that his field agents believed Iraq's sectarian
    forces were "descending into smaller and smaller groups fighting over
    smaller and smaller issues and over smaller and smaller pieces of
    territory."

    Firas Kabi, 27, whose wholesale goods shop stands near Sadr City,
    thought of himself as a lone wolf until Thursday's attack. Now he mans
    an Al Mahdi army checkpoint.

    "My feelings have changed. Before I was living my life and I didn't
    care to be part of any group," he said. "But now I feel I am part of
    this community that was being attacked and oppressed. I wanted to be a
    martyr with the people who lost their lives and went to heaven."

    Although many fighters interviewed Monday emphasized the defensive
    purposes of paramilitary groups, some acknowledged taking part in
    retaliatory attacks against other sects. Some Sunni groups suggested
    that they were in contact with more militant organizations -- a
    worrisome development for the U.S. military, which faces a stubborn
    insurgency.

    Juburi, the Sunni fighter, said that since the Sadr City attack a band
    of Al Mahdi army fighters had kicked several Sunni Arabs out of their
    homes. The refugees sought help from Juburi's community security
    force, which kicked Shiites out and gave the refugees their homes, he
    said.

    Omar Mohammed Hussein Dulaimi, 29, said that his Sunni Arab district
    in west Baghdad formed a neighborhood watch three months ago and
    fought with Al Mahdi militiamen Friday.

    "We close the roads with tree trunks and stay on our roofs with guns,"
    Dulaimi said. "We contact each other with cellphones to check the
    situation."

    Dulaimi said that the security force in his 100-man cell, including
    former Baathist military and intelligence officials, guarded 500
    homes.

    "The mujahedin are helping us," Dulaimi said, referring to Sunni Arab
    insurgents. "Today two cars with gunmen came from Abu Ghraib to help
    us defend our mosques and our area from militia attacks. They even
    brought white sheets to cover their bodies in case they are martyred.
    They also brought heavy machine guns."

    Another member of the Sunni force, Ziad Raad Ani, 32, described how
    Shiite gunmen and police attempted to attack their neighborhood
    Friday.

    "They came in government-issued SUVs and pickup trucks and starting
    shooting with all kinds of weapons," Ani said.

    Ani said the two sides fought for two hours that day. Witnesses said
    Iraqi soldiers and policemen watched but did not interfere.

    moore1 at latimes.com

    Times staff writers Said Rifai, Saad Khalaf, Saif Rasheed and Suhail
    Ahmad, and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this
    report.
    Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times