On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> 1) The Sunnis used to rule the country and dominated the upper echelons
>> of the army. They feel that if the US leaves, and it's them against the
>> Shiites, they'll win.
>
> But they're outnumbered 2 to 1, no?
3 or 4 to one in terms of population. (The usual rough and ready breakdown is Shiite 60%, Sunni 20 and Kurds 20, or Shiite 60, Sunni or Kurds 15, the other one 20%, and 20% "other" (Christian, turkomen, etc.)
But in a war, what matters is not the size of population but the size and power of the relative armies. Many Sunnis feel the very fact that they ruled this country for 80 years proves they're more powerful -- otherwise they'd have been overthrown.
Also, as I'm sure you know, many if not most Sunnis have a very distorted idea of their weight in the population. They think they are majority or at least close to it.
> And Iran might well back the Shiites.
Sure. And the entire rest of the middle east might back them. Kind of like the Iraq/Iran war redux.
> And some are attributing the bombing to AQ in Iraq - are they Sunni, or
> just freelance jihadists?
They're both, Sunni and freelance (meaning from out of the country, at least some of them). And it certainly could be them. They are thought to be responsible for the previous spectacular attacks on Shiites.
On the other hand, initial reports indicated there was wide complicity with local police (or people who passed for them), which seems beyond the Zarqawi group's means.
My explanation of the rationality of the strategy is based on treating it as an ideal type, as if you had one mind behind it. In reality, you have many competing groups with many competing goals and judgments what you get is a resultant. When the US goes and the civil war comes, those groups will be fighting each other after they get done with the Shiites, if not before. And same on the other side.
Michael