Iraq

Today the New York Times reports the beginning of a middle class exodus from Iraq.  Sectarian violence, they say, is driving them out. 

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 — Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.

But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

But while today's Times paints a picture of hopelessness (as did yesterday's Times, and the day before), Amir Taheri has a different story.  In the June issue of Commentary Magazine he points out that a huge number of Iraqis have returned to Iraq.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina.

But the rising political violence that is reported to be driving out the middle class is not driving everyone out.  Today the Washington Post reports that Iraqi leaders are taking steps to end the violence. In an article with the headline Iraqi Leader Acts To Defuse Shiite Rivalry in Basra the Post reports, 

BAGHDAD, May 18 -- President Jalal Talabani convened an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the southern port of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the heart of a growing, lethal power struggle among some of the Shiite Muslim religious parties that lead Iraq's governing coalition...

Talabani assigned Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a member of the Supreme Council, to a task force on the Basra crisis. On Thursday, Abdul Mahdi invoked "the responsibility of the political powers to calm down the situation." In a news conference with his fellow vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and Talabani, Abdul Mahdi urged leaders in Basra "not to be diverted by political and party interests when handling the issues of the city."

In each phase of the battle for Iraq, those seeking to gain political control throught the use of terror have been defeated.  More and more Iraqis are coming to accept that there is a political process in place -- a political process by which they will decide the direction of Iraq.  Amer Taheri:

The Baathist remnant and its jihadist allies resemble a gambler who wins a heap of chips at a roulette table only to discover that he cannot exchange them for real money at the front desk. The enemies of the new Iraq have succeeded in ruining the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, but over the past three years they have advanced their overarching goals, such as they are, very little. Instead, they have been militarily contained and politically defeated again and again, and the beneficiary has been Iraqi democracy...

Is Iraq a quagmire, a disaster, a failure? Certainly not; none of the above. Of all the adjectives used by skeptics and critics to describe todays Iraq, the only one that has a ring of truth is messy. Yes, the situation in Iraq today is messy. Births always are. Since when is that a reason to declare a baby unworthy of life?

As Mr. Taheri tells us, the situation in Iraq is critical but nowhere near hopeless.  Through each phase of the battle for Iraq it becomes more evident that the fight is against a criminal element rather than a political faction.  But then I suppose it's safe to say the political faction that controlled Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a criminal element.

Update:  Iraq the Model confirms the New York Times.

On the other hand many of my friends, relatives or the people I know have either left Iraq or are planning to do so, actually instant messaging and emails have long ago become the only way I stay in touch with my friends.

"I'm going to take my family to Syria next month and will be staying there for a year or two until things calm down" or "I've been granted admission to a university in the UK" or "my uncle found a job for me in Egypt and I'm leaving next week"…

These are examples of what I get to hear from people I know and it's getting more and more frequent lately.

Not all people have the resources or the urgent need to leave Iraq; so they chose to be refugees inside Iraq; I have friends who left Baghdad and went to Najaf or Kurdistan seeking the nearest place where safety can be found.

Comments

[Dan]

The Sunni terror gangs are looking for people to shake down to continue to finance their mayhem, so who do they look to first, just like the Black Hand, just like the Mafia, they look amongst THEIR OWN. And that means Sunnis with money, or businesses.

Don't necessarily take this as an indication that these people are fleeing the Shiites. Though that might be a factor.

The situation isn't by any means hopeless. The departure of these people, the departure of their money, FURTHER isolates the terror gangs WITHIN THE SUNNI communities, WHO ARE ALREADY having problems with their Sunni coreligionists.

THE new government has promised a massive crackdown on the killers. THIS IS GOOD.

It mirrors developements we saw decades ago in El Salvador. In El Salvador, there were groups known as the "Death Squads." They had a leader, his name was D'Aubisson, {something like that, the name and spelling is vague}. WHEN THE VIOLENCE became too much for the Salavadorans to take any more, in their next Presidential election, they chose D'Aubisson, the KNOWN leader of the "Death Squads." It was the turning point. His election, and the draconian measures he initiated against the Marxist/Socialist killers and terrorists, effectively ended the Salvadoran problem.

WE WANT TO SEE THE SAME thing happen in Iraq. WE WANT THE PEOPLE to demand action against the killers.

There is a reason that no elected government has ever been toppled by terrorists, and that's because the people DEMAND action from their ELECTED leaders, who thus have a mandate to get tough, and get brutal too.

These killer gangs in iraq are going to have a real rough time, real soon.