What lies beneath - Army Community - Army Discussions - Army Times

What lies beneath

Reports from Iraq are showing that the war-torn country might finally be on the road to some mix of local and national reconciliation. The recent reduction in violence suggests this might be the case and Iraq’s bleeding may have been stopped.

Yet deals cut with our former Sunni-insurgent enemies to stop fighting us and become our allies against al-Qaida, along with the hope of compromise between the different factions in Iraq and the Iraqi government, may be taking our eyes off the fundamental issue that has yet to be resolved: Who will hold absolute power in Iraq, Shiites or Sunnis?

One observer in Iraq noted that the Shiites and Sunnis still have not recognized the need to share power and acknowledge that one group cannot dominate over the other. How this fundamental conflict is resolved, through compromise or civil war, is still anything but clear.

A long-standing conflict in America could not be resolved despite a series of compromises; it took the American Civil War to do that. In the 19th century, at least three major compromises sought to resolve the foremost issue of the day — slavery — and specifically what to do about it in the western territories. Many Americans thought that each compromise over slavery had allowed them to turn the corner and remove slavery as a hot-button political issue.

Congress in 1820 established a line along the southern edge of Missouri to mark where slavery could go in the newly acquired land from the Louisiana Purchase. When the aging Thomas Jefferson heard of the Missouri Compromise, he referred to it ominously as a “fire bell in the night.” He understood it would do nothing but delay the final reckoning of the issue of slavery. A compromise that placed a line on a map separating the slave-holding South from the free North would only inflame, not soothe, the raw passions and hatred building in America over slavery.

The same American political leaders who pulled together the first compromise came up with another 30 years later. The War with Mexicoled to newly acquired territories in which slavery was again a question. The Compromise of 1850 divided the new territory, making some of the area open to slavery and some of it closed. It did not resolve the fundamental issue of slavery itself.

Neither did a smart politician from Illinois named Stephen Douglas four years later, when he sought to organize the Nebraska and Kansas territories so that a transcontinental railroad could be built. The third compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, essentially did away with the previous line that had kept the Kansas territory off limits to slavery. The territories of Kansas and Nebraska would be open to slavery if the white settlers in those areas wanted it. Douglas thought his compromise would soften the sectional rift between the North and South over slavery and that the economic development and westward expansion to California would ease tensions between both sides.

But it actually hardened both sides’ stances on slavery and inflamed tensions instead of easing them. Those for and against slavery fought a mini-civil war over whether slavery should exist in Kansas. For about two years, between 1856 and 1858, Kansas bled in a civil war that was a harbinger of what was soon to come: the American Civil War.

Today in west Baghdad, there is a district that brings to mind the Kansas conflict of the 1850s.

The Baghdad district of Sadiyah bleeds like Kansas did. Since it is a mixed area that holds both sects, Shia and Sunni fight over control of Sadiyah similar to the way Americans in the 1850s fought for control over Kansas.

Obviously there are huge differences in time and historical context between the two. But a troubling similarity is that in Bleeding Sadiyah — like Bleeding Kansas before it — the underlying cause that fuels this mini-civil war has yet to be resolved. In America in the 1850s, it was slavery; in Iraq today, it is who will hold ultimate political power, Shiites or Sunnis.

Despite the three compromises, only a horribly destructive civil war could settle the issues that separated North and South.

Iraq is likely to share a similar fate. Iraq is not yet out of its civil war, despite the reduced levels of violence of the past few months, because the underlying issue remains unresolved.

The final reckoning over who will hold absolute power between the Sunnis and Shiites may yet be determined through fighting.

A senior American military officer recently noted that “Sunnis need to realize they’ve lost and the [Shiites] need to realize they have won.”

Recent compromises and deals and lowered levels of violence in Iraq give the appearance that the Iraq civil war is over, with compromise and reconciliation to follow.

But history coaches us to be wary of such assessments when fundamental issues have yet to be resolved.

———

The author is an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel. He commanded an armored reconnaissance squadron in the 4th Infantry Division in west Baghdad in 2006.