Iraqi Sunnis Battle To Defend Shiites

WaPo reports Tribes Defy an Attempt by Zarqawi To Drive Residents From Western City - Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers. Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said. The leaders of four of Iraq's Sunni tribes had rallied their fighters in response to warnings posted in mosques by followers of Zarqawi. The postings ordered Ramadi's roughly 3,000 Shiites to leave the city of more than 200,000 in the area called the Sunni Triangle. The order to leave within 48 hours came in retaliation for alleged expulsions by Shiite militias of Sunnis living in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq.

"We have had enough of his nonsense," said Sheik Ahmad Khanjar, leader of the Albu Ali clan, referring to Zarqawi. "We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis, regardless of their sect -- whether Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds.''

Good for Sheik Ahmad Kanjar. It is time that Iraqis stood up to Zarqawi, and either battle him themselves, or turn him and his followers in to the Iraqi government and/or the American forces.

Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders and armed followers of Zarqawi have clashed before in the far west, and Sunnis and Shiites in western cities have sympathized with one another over what they have said are attempts by foreign fighters to spark open sectarian conflict. But Saturday's clash in Ramadi was one of the first times Sunni Arabs have been known to take up arms against insurgents specifically in defense of Shiites.

Juan Cole blogged Sunni tribal leaders and the remnants of the Baath Party (Jaish Muhammad or Muhammad's Army) in Ramadi have decided to protect the city's small Shiite minority from a planned pogrom by the Sunni Salafis allied with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I suspect the issue of protecting the Shiites has crystalized a power dispute in the city between the Salafis and the old tribal/Baath elite. I would not put a lot of hope in the split becoming permanent, since both groups would still cooperate against US troops. I wonder if the rumors of the shelling of a mosque reported by al-Zaman yesterday are Salafi propaganda to cover the fact that Sunnis are fighting each other?

Cori Dauber blogged

Every time a bombing or attack is aimed primarily at the Shia population in Iraq (which has been a lot of times) it seems the press has been ready to warn that the country is, as a result, on the brink of a sectarian civil war, despite the fact that they've been issuing the exact same warning since 2003. Rarely if ever are these attacks taken as a cue to suggest that the Shia are more committed to a new Iraq than to short term retaliations.

By the same token they continue to suggest that the "insurgency" (since they rarely if ever point out that there is more than a single enemy) has popular support, never questioning whether groups whose primary tactic involves blowing up random groups of civilians, including children, (not to mention attempting to intimidate the population into alien lifestyles) might have squandered whatever good will it might have once had.

So it's a rarity to see this story about Sunnis in Ramadi taking up arms to protect their Shia neighbors against Zarqawis murderers both at the level of substance, (the act itself is not something that I can recall seeing reported before) and also a rarity because it makes quite clear exactly what the Sunnis in this town think of Zarqawi's group. In other words, there's been evidence of the attitude available before, it just seems as if now a tipping point has been reached. That the point that pushed them over to where they would stand up and risk their lives was a threat to their Shia neighbors is fairly interesting information in and of itself.

That this happened in Ramadi, so often described as an "insurgent stronghold," is even more interesting.


James Joyner: blogged Outstanding. It's far too early to say that this is a trend rather than an isolated incident. Still, the impulse that, whatever their differences, Iraqis must defend other Iraqis from outsiders is a necessary part of institutionalizing Iraqi nationalism.