The Myth of the Sunni Diehard

By Patrick Devenny

The term “die-hard” entered overall American military and government parlance soon after the fall of Baghdad.  Used widely to describe Sunni insurgents who began attacking American troops using guerilla-type tactics, American officials such as Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld made frequent use of the term.[1]   It was a useful designation for American policy makers, who sought to create a clear delineation between allied forces and insurgents using a term which carries with it connotations of fanaticism and irrationality.

It is because of these connotations that the term has been misused and is particularly inaccurate in describing the segment of the insurgency which operates in Sunni-populated areas of Iraq.  To Americans and many other observers, Sunni insurgents do seem uniquely irrational.  Tens of thousands of western troops are stationed around their urban centers, while their former subservient populations – Shi’a in the south and Kurds in the north – enjoy and consolidate the political power their demographic weight entitles.  The vision of an Iraq again dominated by the Sunni population – which stands at 20% of Iraq’s total – seems ludicrous to any educated observer of Iraq. 

While Sunni insurgents can be expected to understand that their national primacy is a thing of the past, they also presumably fight for a self-determined future, outside of the American engineered political system they view as hopelessly weighed against them.  This is not the fight of a die-hard, it is the wholly rational fight of a relatively small insurgency which sees warfare as the only way their communal rights can be respected.  With little faith in the kindness of their erstwhile servile ethnicities, these insurgent groups can easily tap into the anxieties of the greater Sunni polity.  Those Sunnis less inclined to believe the lofty promises of Sh’ite and Kurdish politicians will – and have – come to see war as their only recourse for maintaining at least their own indigenous order, while setting the stage for its possible expansion at a later date.  Considering the rising amount of civil violence targeting Sunnis, their fears are not without some merit.[2]

To better understand the durability of this population bound by mistrust, a historical precedent is needed.  One uniquely prescient and immediately available example is their reaction to the duel uprisings which buffeted Iraq soon after the regime’s defeat in Kuwait.

1991: Insurmountable Odds

Pro-Baathist Sunnis in Iraq currently find themselves in a desperate situation; they have been militarily ejected from power and face the hostility of 80 percent of the population, not to mention a sophisticated and well-trained occupation army.  This is not the first time, however, that the community has faced odds that most thought untenable. 

In late February 1991, a series of uprisings broke out across Iraq.  In the north, large groups of Kurdish rebels stormed vital cities such as Mosul and Kirkuk, participating in pitched battles with Saddam’s forces.  In the south, Shiite rebels controlled major cities such as Karbala, Najaf, and Basra.  On top of this, a significant segment of the Iraqi armed forces had been devastated in the confrontation with coalition forces that had ended only a month before.  While few thought the rebellion – lacking leadership and coordination – could successively overthrow the entire regime, many observers expected disaffected elements in the Iraqi leadership to oust their discredited leader in a palace coup.[3]

Obviously, such a coup never came to pass.  The Baathist leadership, while undoubtedly disappointed in the foolish strategic decisions made by Hussein, understood that his regime was an effective bulwark against their greatest fear; the loss of their privileged position in Iraq and the rise of Shi’a and Kurdish influence.  To counter this, they were apparently willing to overlook Saddam’s own deficiencies and momentary weakness.  It was this fear rather than a love of Hussein or even appreciation for his materialistic largesse that girded the apparatus together.  As noted expert Amatzia Baram noted, many in the Baathist oriented insurgency do not favor Saddam, but appreciate the unifying figure he represented in the Sunni community.[4]

This same fear has been heightened dramatically in regard to the current situation.  While the unification figure of Hussein is now absent, the fear of the Sunnis concerning the future of their community remains, as does their determination to reverse this trend.  Such an effort is hardly nihilistic, as some in the U.S. chain of command would have us believe.

Besides the bitterness inherent in losing their privileges, many Sunni insurgents feel that they are naturally superior to the Shi’a over whom they ruled for decades.  Considering the hierarchy was always in their hands under Hussein, this belief has been bolstered and reinforced for decades.  This habitual hatred and disregard creates an ideology of cultural division and mistrust, leading to a palpable disregard for Shi’a leadership abilities in any new government.  As the so-called rightful rulers of Iraq, many Sunni’s are loath to join any government where they would be comparatively powerless, instead joining a rebellion which does have a favorable political interest, namely the defense of the Sunni community.[5]  

Recommendations

All politics is local

Relying on your enemy’s ability to see long-term benefits has never been an effective way to counter an insurgency.  The Sunni insurgency’s advantage lies in the fact that they address problems the Sunni community faces now, such as fear of Shi’a militias and hatred of Americans.  The coalition addresses somewhat amorphous national concerns they may have in the future.  The latter is simply an unsustainable position.

The United States, then, is left with little recourse but to compete with Iraqi insurgents in providing security for Sunnis.  This may strike many as impossible, considering the hostility American troops face in Sunni areas around the country, but it must be attempted.  Sunnis regularly witness (or hear stories/rumors) of Shi’ite police and paramilitaries – all “trained” by Americans – who target Sunni civilians.  These extrajudicial executions are often carried out with the knowledge or approval of the larger Shi’ite militant groups such as the Mahdi army and the Badr militia.[6]  The price of overlooking Shi’ite violence may be soluble in the short-term – the avoidance of an open conflict with the forces of major Shi’a groups – but will prove disastrous in the long term. 

Were the killing to continue at the current rate, we will soon be faced with a growing population of Iraqis who see no benefits – especially in the realm of personal security – in siding with an outside force.  Rather, they will side with an armed group that comes from their own local communities and is required, due to its need for a recruiting base, to address their specific security concerns.  This rise of ethnic identification as a guarantor of security represents the virtual blueprint for a future civil war.

Deny political favor for Sunnis

In most recent discussions about raising the profile of Sunnis in the Iraqi government, the justification of “quelling the Sunni insurgency” is invariably sited.  The interim government and the coalition authority have regularly made the goal of including Sunnis in the government the centerpiece of their efforts, changing the constitution and appointing Sunnis to positions others had to be elected to.

This effort is an egregious mistake.  The Sunnis have won this favor directly as a result of the ferocity of their resistance.  While Sunni insurgents may disregard the importance of the interim government, they have undoubtedly recognized the fact that their struggle has brought increased concessions to the Sunni community as a whole.  This serves as encouragement to them and to regular Sunnis, who now see that fighting is just as effective – if not more so – as voting.  While some Sunni groups have recently advocated voting, this is mostly aimed at defeating efforts their leadership views as anti-Sunni.  It is simply a democratic version of the insurgency.

The concession campaign has also tied coalition hands in engaging the Sunni insurgents, so as to avoid another Falluja-type mass assault.[7]  In summation, the insurgency has protected the Sunni community from more coalition offensives, while also bolstering their position in a government many view as illegitimate in the first place.  To counter this, the coalition should directly tie increased benefits with increased voting, refusing to deliver on the former without more of the latter.  The security risks of protecting voters are minute compared to fighting an emboldened rebellion which witnesses political progress as a result of their methods. While this momentary exclusion may inflame the security situation, it must be made clear to the Sunni community that power cannot be gained through violence, as it has in the past.

Conclusion

As noted strategic expert Andrew Krepinevich suggested in his recent study of the Iraqi insurgency, “should counterinsurgent forces instead focus their principal efforts on destroying insurgent forces, as is more typical of conventional warfare, and accord population security a lower priority, they will play into the insurgents’ hands.”[8]  This is no where more evident than in Iraq.  Not only does large-scale military operations against Sunni insurgents heighten the level of friction between Sunnis and American forces, but also decreases their level of communal security against encroachments from other Iraqi ethnic groups.

If our understanding of our enemy’s goals is limited to words such as “die-hard,” the United States has little hope of effectively countering their tactics, both on the battlefield and in the arena of effective society administration.  The Sunni insurgents are hardly just “men who know they will have no role in the future building of a new Iraq,” as General John Abizaid once suggested, but a quasi-political force which understands that their base of operations, i.e. the Sunni community at large, seeks immediate safety and security above all else.  To our discredit, the Sunni insurgency has done a better job delivering on this point, irregardless of the brutality level they have used to achieve it. 

As a result, the insurgency can be expected to continue their struggle, no matter how desperate or wasteful it currently seems in Western eyes.  As we have witnessed, the Sunni/Baathist infrastructure has withstood system shocks before, only to rise again through violence and cohesion.  Thus, their ideology is not that of a “die-hard,” but one of a veteran political force which holds a radically different view of an “inevitable future” in Iraq – one of violence and civil conflict – than our constitutional and democratic view.  Only when our national leaders understand their latent strategy can we ever hope to effectively counter it. 

Patrick Devenny is the Henry M. Jackson National Security Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C., specializing in terrorism and Middle Eastern governments.  He has been published by the Royal United Services Institute of Great Britain and in the Washington Times on subjects related to military modernization and international politics.  He is currently a M.A. candidate at the School of International Service at American University in Washington D.C.