Saturday, February 18, 2006
Interpreting social change in Iraq
Sabrina Tavernise of the NYT shows that Sunni-Shiite intermarriage in Baghdad has fallen from 3-5% in 2002 to virtually 0% today, as sectarian rancor has increased and broken up past such marriages.
This is certainly true, but it begs a question: why has sectarian rancor increased? The answer is that Sunnis no longer have an inside lock on the levers of power and have been displaced by Shiites, whom many Sunnis consider rubes on a good day and subhuman apostates after a rousing Friday sermon. Consider this bit:
For hard-line Sunnis, Shiite power is a bitter pill. A recent conversation in a Baghdad gas station line illustrates the attitude.
"Those Shiites were servants," one man told another, watching angrily as a third maneuvered in front, according to Ilham al-Jazaari, who was waiting nearby and overheard the exchange. "They wiped our shoes. Now they are going in front of us."
There are the extreme cases. Reports have surfaced of hard-line tribes, particularly in the heavily Sunni areas of central and western Iraq, refusing to allow tribal members to marry Shiites. One mixed couple even had a series of threatening telephone calls demanding that they divorce or be killed.
But most cases are subtler. Maisoon Muhammad, a counselor at the Center for Psychological Health in Iraq, said one of her patients, a Sunni woman, recently received a marriage proposal from a Shiite. One of the woman's aunts urged her to accept, but another forbade the union, saying she would refuse to greet a man she knew to be Shiite.
Looked at this way, the sectarian strains in Iraq are positive evidence that the country is becoming more just, at least in the sense that power and status are no longer allocated by force to the advantage of a small minority. It should not surprise us that displaced Sunnis are deeply resentful. Nor should we care, except perhaps on purely utilitarian grounds.
When was the last time this happened? In South Africa, at the end of aparthied, when the blacks of that country fully developed their political rights and established the basis on which they would progress economically. I don't recall the Western left losing a lot of sleep over the social circumstances of South African whites as the security situation declined and their economic, social and political power eroded.
Looking at Tavernise's article from that perspective, one might write an accurate one-sentence summary quite differently than Juan Cole: "Sabrina Tavernise of the NYT shows that Sunni resentment over the loss of power and status in newly democratic Iraq and the hostility of Shiites to the Sunni insurgency has all but eliminated Sunni-Shiite intermarriage in Baghdad and broken up some existing mixed marriages."
4 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Sat Feb 18, 12:26:00 PM:
A relevant comparison may be the American South circa 1970.
By Shochu John, at
Sat Feb 18, 02:46:00 PM:
"Looked at this way, the sectarian strains in Iraq are positive evidence that the country is becoming more just, at least in the sense that power and status are no longer allocated by force to the advantage of a small minority." True. Now power and status are allocated by force to the advantage of a majority to the clear detriment of a significant minority, which is an improvement insofar as more people benefit from the new order than did from the old. I disagree with your statement that Sunni gripes about the situation in Iraq are without merit. Would you want to be ruled by black-turbaned Iranian-backed religious fundamentalists? I certainly would not. This is not to justify violence or a belief in their inherent right to rule Iraq on the part of the Sunnis, but it's a far cry from stating that the have no legitimate reason to complain simply because they were outvoted. Democratic rule alone is not sufficient to produce fair and just outcomes. The nation itself has to make sense. If some higher power were to come and make California part of Indonesia, the Californians would be subject to the rule of 241 million Indonesians with vastly different views than their own. Would anybody make the case that this outcome is just simply because it is democratic? Iraq makes only marginally more sense than Indonesifornia. It was a civil war waiting to happen the moment it was created. None of Iraq's previous governments actually gave a whit what the people thought, and so there was nothing to fight about. Absent such a strongman, the ethnic and sectarian conflict results from a struggle for power, and this story just illustrates another symptom of that.
By Papa Ray, at
Sun Feb 19, 08:24:00 PM:
Iran will be a big factor in determining if there is a civil war, after most of the US troops leave, and the aid from the US and other countries starts drying up.
At the moment they are content with subverting the southern part of Iraq (where most of the oil is)and making the Brits stay in garrison. They know the Brits have no staying power and will be gone soon.
It remains to be seen if the U.S. will send any troops to replace them.
Mr. Shochu is correct in his comparisons. There is a big difference in the two tribes not only in "religion" but in customs.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By sexy, at
Sun Nov 09, 11:19:00 PM:
情趣用品,情趣用品,情趣用品,情趣用品,情趣,情趣,情趣,情趣,按摩棒,G點,跳蛋,跳蛋,充氣娃娃,角色扮演,SM,潤滑液,威而柔,精油,自慰套,自慰,免費A片,AV女優,美女視訊,情色交友,免費AV,色情網站,辣妹視訊,美女交友,色情影片,成人影片,成人網站,A片,H漫,18成人,成人圖片,成人漫畫,情色網,日本A片,免費A片下載,性愛,A片,色情,成人,做愛,色情A片,A片下載,色情遊戲,色情影片,色情聊天室,免費成人影片,免費視訊,免費視訊聊天,免費視訊聊天室,一葉情貼圖片區,情色,情色視訊,情色電影,視訊交友,視訊聊天,視訊聊天室,情境坊歡愉用品,情趣用品,情人節禮物,情惑用品性易購
