OxBlog

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

# Posted 6:25 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ANOTHER SUCCESS STORY: This WaPo front-pager ties together two important points I've made about postwar Iraq. The first is that American soldiers are more dependable than American diplomats when its comes to putting American values into practice. The second is that we should expect far more violent resistance to the occupation from Sunni Ba'athists than from Shi'ite opponents of Saddam.

According to the WaPo, the exemplary behavior Lt. Col. Michael Belcher has won him the respect of the people of Karbala. The WaPo reports that
In gestures large and small -- from reopening an amusement park with free admission to restoring electricity to twice its prewar level, from stopping looting with a rapidly reconstituted police force, to a conscious effort to respect religious sensitivities -- Karbala seems to have avoided the bitterness and disenchantment that has enveloped Baghdad and other cities.
This story belongs to a genre that is becoming increasingly familar: pragmatic US officer wins over suspicious locals. It's already happened in Mosul and Kirkuk.

What's different about Karbala is that it's in the south and that it is predominantly Shi'ite.
Unlike towns in restive regions north and west of Baghdad, U.S. troops in Karbala have yet to come under fire. They have entered fewer than 10 houses here to search for weapons. They patrol without flak jackets in an effort to make their presence less formidable.
I'd say that's a pretty good indication of the fact that Sunni, and not Shi'ite resistance is the real challenge facing the US.

That said, one shouldn't become complacent. (Although it is still OK to laugh when the NYT runs a headline like "G.I.'s in Iraqi City Are Stalked by Faceless Enemies at Night".)

American soldiers will continue to lose their lives in Iraq. They will fall prey to maddening and unpreventable guerrilla attacks rather than dying heroically during a lightning strike on Baghdad. But that is the inglorious nature of democracy promotion in Iraq. We have no choice.
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