ARAB AND MUSLIM TROOPS TO IRAQ

DRAFT DRAFT


ARAB AND MUSLIM TROOPS TO IRAQ
OR
OF SHEEP DOGS AND WOLVES

Facing a dearth of U.S. troops, a bottomless pit-like-drain on the federal budget, and a populist rejection of occupation among the Iraqis, the Bush Administration has given a fair amount of deliberation to dispatching Arab and Muslim troops to Iraq.

While the Sunni Arabs are becoming a tad more open towards the United States, the young and populist Muqtadha as-Sadr is taking on the baton of armed resistance. His meteoric rise has correlated with the increasing irrelevance of Ayatollah Sistani and his “silent Hawza,” and with the diminishing relevance of Iran’s agents (SCIRI, Bader Brigade, Dawa), re-minted as America’s.

Muqtadha’s opposition to federalism–to Shia autonomy in the south and Kurdish in the north--and to the occupiers (who support federalism) has (and should) assure him and his followers an increasingly larger role in re-building a united and Arab Iraq.


ARAB/MUSLIM TROOPS: WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

Facing these bleak prospects, the Bush Administration has been studying the idea of dispatching Arab and Muslim troops to Iraq. The hope is:

–That these troops would form a buffer between the insurgents and American troops.

–That the Gulf states (especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) would finance the U.S. war in Iraq. One logical alternative–to impose a tax on oil consumption which would finance the war and reduce the transfer of wealth from the U.S. to the oil countries–is an unthinkable option for the Bush Administration.

–That the Arab and Muslim troops would take on the insurgency in the cities, allowing U.S. troops to re-locate to fortified garrisons in the countryside.


CAN (MUSLIM) TURKEY COME TO THE RESCUE?

Starting late last year and into early January of this year, U.S. officials paid numerous visits to Muslim Turkey. The Bush Administration was looking for help.

But the Turks have their limitations: In no way would they want to upset cash-and-oil-rich Russia; and Iran can teach them a lesson or two about dependence on Iranian natural gas. Consider how, in mid-to-late December of last year, in ice-cold weather, a “technical glitch” caused the flow of 24 million cubic meters of Iranian natural gas into Turkey to diminish to around 4 million. Lesson learned?

Turkey faces another difficulty in intervening on behalf of the U.S. in Iraq: The Kurds. The deposed President of Iraq had played a vital role in controlling Kurdish nationalism. No more. And Turkey shouldn’t be expected to do anything that would ease the way for that nationalism to spill into Turkey’s Kurdish population. For instance, moving against the Arab Sunni insurgency would strengthen the Kurds, not weaken them.

Still, if Arab and Muslim troops are assembled for Iraq, it wouldn’t surprise SPC if the Turks join in. Why? Contracts, for one; for another: Closer monitoring of the Kurds. And it would make for interesting times to see skirmishes between Turks and Kurds in Iraq turn into outright war.


IF NOT TURKISH TROOPS...

If Turkey proves unwilling, and limits its cooperation with Empire...which it has:

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, Deputy-Director of Operation for the U.S. Army in Iraq is said to have told Arab reporters in London recently that the proposal for dispatching Arab and Muslim troops to Iraq is actively under consideration.

We should expect stiff opposition from Muqtadha as-Sadr to these troops; we should also expect mixed feelings by the Arab Sunni resistance, but mostly opposition. And the puppet state that the U.S. has built of Iran’s agents and the Kurds would be paid handsomely to support the idea, but would nonetheless feel extreme unease about it. After all, most of these imported troops would be Sunni, and America’s agents are mostly Shia, or non-Arab Kurds.

Obvious obstacles notwithstanding, will this idea work?


OF SHEEP, SHEEP DOGS, AND WOLVES

My grandfather, the late Ibrahim Khater, had been a shepherd before he became a grower of fruit trees. He used to recount stories about sheep dogs and wolves, and remind me and himself that he couldn’t protect his sheep from wolves without the help of his sheep dogs. Here’s what I remember: For effective protection, Ibrahim made sure that he always had with him a male dog and a female dog. If he didn’t, a female wolf would lure the male away from the herd giving the other members of the wolf pack an easier meal.

The story of sheep dogs and wolves should shed light on what will happen should Muslim and Arab troops converge on Iraq. Insurgent women will infiltrate these Muslim troops. Their movements and those of the Americans will be revealed to the insurgents. You can expect Muslim soldiers to go AWOL and marry into the insurgency and join it. Their fighting effectiveness would be unquestionable as they would have a communication bridge to their former colleagues. If the insurgents can protect Arab fighters, they can certainly protect Egyptian, Pakistani, and Indonesian deserters.

Worse: The Muslim troops don’t have an incentive to protect American troops. Why should they? They listen to the word on the street and know that the U.S. has dismantled an Arab country with brute force, a defenseless country, one that didn’t really hurt the United States. That, in effect, the United States and Europe hate Muslims and want them defeated. True or not, that is what is shared on the streets of the Arab and Muslim World. And the soldiers come from that background. Read the political map. Do you have any doubt that Hamas’s electoral win in Israel-Palestine is in good part related to the American dismantling of a Arab Sunni-led state? Do you really think that the majority of Saudis–including many in non-decision-making posts–are not bitter at the American dismantling of that state? (The Saudi decision-makers had eased the invasion under the Pentagon promise to break up the Kingdom.) The majority of Syrians? Of Jordanians? Of Egyptians? That, had it not been for the Arab Sunni insurgency, American Israel-centric entrepreneurs would be herding these Arab and Muslim Uncle Toms about,like sheep?



WHAT TO DO:

SPC’s advice:

1. Start thinking about dispatching a fighting corps of U.N. troops, with international legitimacy and support. Reach an agreement with the permanent members of the Security Council on the make-up of those troops and their agenda. Re-include Russia into contracts in Iraq.

2. Tax domestic oil consumption so that any administration would have the money to finance these troops, lest the oil countries rebel against financing their mission.

(One way or another we are paying this tax; we either pay it to the oil-producing countries or to the federal government. Pick and chose. Saudi King Abdullah has completed a tour of Asian countries, in part to diversify the sources of security for his Kingdom. And both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, I suspect, are falsifying the extent of their income. Their goal: Lower U.S. expectations of huge rebates in the form of financing the Bush Administration’s mediocre foreign policies.).

3. Defuse the Syrian-Israeli tension, return the Golan, pay for its water, support a Palestinian state on all pre-1967 Arab lands, leaving not one iota of territory or water that would justify populist mobilization, and gather up all the unemployed into a national army a la Lebanon–where you know where they are, at all times.

4. Ask France to re-step on its pro-Arab foot, so you will have at least one European country that can compete with the Islamic Republic, while reining in American politicians who might seek a popular backlash against French products. If not France, then Spain.

5. And, of course, strengthen the United Nations. It’s not any more corrupt than Mr. Jack Abramoff’s U.S. Congress.