[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: The Other Intelligence Failure

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The Other Intelligence Failure

October 10, 2004
 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 



 

Much attention was rightly paid last week to the huge
intelligence failure of the Bush team in Iraq. Saddam
Hussein had no W.M.D. But I would argue that there is
another, equally egregious intelligence failure when it
comes to Iraq - one that is still bedeviling us right now:
It is our complete ignorance about the P.M.D.'s of Iraq -
the people of mass destruction, the suicide bombers - and
the environment that nurtures them. The truth is, the
intelligence failure in Iraq was not just about the
chemicals Saddam was mixing in his basement; it was about
the emotions he was brewing in Iraqi society. 

Let's start with a simple observation: There have been some
125 suicide bomb attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq in the
last 16 months, carried out most likely by Sunni Muslims.
We need to think about this. There is some kind of
suicide-supply chain working in the Muslim world and in
Iraq that is able to draw recruits, connect them with bomb
makers and deploy them tactically against U.S. and Iraqi
targets on an almost daily basis. What is even more
unnerving about these suicide bombers is that, unlike the
Hamas crew in Israel, who produce videos of themselves,
explain their rationale and say goodbye to families,
virtually all the bombers in Iraq have blown themselves up
without even telling us their names. 

We don't really know how they are chosen, trained,
indoctrinated, armed and launched. What we know is that the
suicide bombers have killed and maimed hundreds of Iraqis,
many of them waiting to join the police or army, and in
doing so have done more to block U.S. efforts to
reconstruct Iraq than any other factor. To put it bluntly:
We are up against an enemy we do not know and cannot see -
but who is undermining the whole U.S. mission. In fairness,
this sort of network is very hard to crack, especially when
it has the support of many Sunnis, but our ignorance about
it is part of a broader lack of understanding of changes
within Iraqi society. 

When I visited Iraq after the war, what struck me most was
how utterly broken it was. The 35 years of Saddam's
misrule, including a decade of U.N. sanctions, had
decimated Iraq's physical and social infrastructure. The
young masked gunmen sawing people's heads off today came of
age in this vacuum, which was filled in by religion - some
of it injected by Saddam for his own reasons, and some of
it flowing over the borders, mainly from Saudi Arabia,
Syria and Iran. 

For the past few decades there has been "a surge of Islamic
identity, not just in Iraq, but all over the Arab world,"
said Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University expert on
Shiite Islam and author of the upcoming "Shiism and
Nationalism in the Arab World." "We definitely ignored it.
We were in denial." But Saddam recognized its potential,
Nakash said. On the Shiite side he allowed Moktada
al-Sadr's father to lead Friday prayers in hopes of soaking
up the religious energy among Shiites and directing it away
from the regime. When the elder Sadr turned it on Saddam
instead, Saddam had him killed in 1999. On the Sunni side,
Nakash added, Saddam went on a mosque-building spree, to
bolster his legitimacy, and he tolerated an infusion of
Wahhabi Islam from Saudi Arabia to counterbalance the
Shiites. By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, "Islam was a
potent force," Nakash said. "Iraq was no longer a largely
secular country, waiting to embrace America, as many of the
exiles remembered it." Does this mean all is lost in Iraq?
Not necessarily, Nakash argues. It does mean that we have
to alter our strategy and narrow our short-term
expectations. The Shiites and the Kurds, who are 80 percent
of Iraq's population, still want a democratic Iraq. That is
a foundation for hope. However, the first manifestation of
any democratic Iraq will almost certainly be strongly
influenced, if not dominated, by religious figures. We will
not go from Saddam to Jefferson without going through
Sistani - the ayatollah we can work with. You just hope
that the road will be short. 

What is required on America's part now, Nakash said, "is a
strategic decision to come to terms with the reality on the
ground" - to accept the notion that not all Muslim clerics
are alike, and actively engage the moderate Islamists as
part of the solution in Iraq. We clearly need a broad
strategy for Iraq and the Middle East that will give
Islamists a chance to prove that Islamic democracy could
not only stop the suicide bombers, but also genuinely
promote accommodation between Islam and the West. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10friedman.html?ex=1098427139&ei=1&en=ae99bc4f6f8cddd6


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