Figured some of you might like this.

[The1andOnlyKC]

The Real Iraq By Amir Taheri

[2ndChildhood]

The Real Iraq By Amir Taheri

Interesting.
The writer appears to have an agenda since he paints such an overwhelmingly rosy picture and studiously avoids saying anything negative about the US intervention there.
I haven't read it carefully enough to draw firm conclusions, but here's one example where he slants things differently than a US intelligence analyst (who by the way is very pro-Bush, pro-intervention).

Taheri paints the insurgents as almost psycho-destructive, Friedman more clearly explains their motivation and situation. Friedman's analysis rings truer to me. If anyone wants the full text of the Friedman analysis, I'd be glad to email it.


Taheri:
"Since the countrys liberation, the jihadists and residual Baathists have killed an estimated 23,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, in scores of random attacks and suicide operations. Indirectly, they have caused the death of thousands more, by sabotaging water and electricity services and by provoking sectarian revenge attacks.

But they have failed to translate their talent for mayhem and murder into political success. Their campaign has not succeeded in appreciably slowing down, let alone stopping, the countrys democratization. Indeed, at each step along the way, the jihadists and Baathists have seen their self-declared objectives thwarted.

After the invasion, they tried at first to prevent the formation of a Governing Council, the expression of Iraqs continued existence as a sovereign nation-state. They managed to murder several members of the council, including its president in 2003, but failed to prevent its formation or to keep it from performing its task in the interim period. The next aim of the insurgents was to stop municipal elections. Their message was simple: candidates and voters would be killed. But, once again, they failed: thousands of men and women came forward as candidates and more than 1.5 million Iraqis voted in the localities where elections were held.
...
As for the insurgencys effort to foment sectarian violencea strategy first launched in earnest toward the end of 2005this too has run aground. The hope here was to provoke a full-scale war between the Arab Sunni minority and the Arab Shiites who account for some 60 percent of the population. The new strategy, like the ones previously tried, has certainly produced many deaths. But despite countless cases of sectarian killings by so-called militias, there is still no sign that the Shiites as a whole will acquiesce in the role assigned them by the insurgency and organize a concerted campaign of nationwide retaliation.
...
Another of the insurgencys strategic goals was to bring the Iraqi oil industry to a halt and to disrupt the export of crude. Since July 2003, Iraqs oil infrastructure has been the target of more than 3,000 attacks and attempts at sabotage. But once more the insurgency has failed to achieve its goals. Iraq has resumed its membership in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and has returned to world markets as a major oil exporter. According to projections, by the end of 2006 it will be producing its full OPEC quota of 2.8 million barrels a day."

George Friedman (www.stratfor.com)
"The deal that has been shaped is about two things: power and money. First, it addresses the composition of power in Iraq -- defining the Shia as the dominant group, based on demographics, the Kurds next and the Sunnis as the smallest group. At the same time, it provides institutional and political guarantees to the Sunnis that their interests will not simply be ignored and that they will not be crushed by the Shia and Kurds. In terms of money, we are talking about oil. Iraq's oil fields are in the south, unquestionably in Shiite country, and in the north, in the borderland between Kurd and Sunni territory. One of the points of this arrangement is to assure that oil revenues will not be controlled on a simply regional basis, but will be at least partially controlled by the central government. Therefore, at least some of that money will go to the Sunnis, regardless of what arrangements are made on the ground with the Kurds.

The Sunnis got this deal for a simple reason: Their insurgency made them impossible to ignore. First, the insurgency forced the Americans to recognize that their initial inclination, de-Baathification, also meant de-Sunnification of Iraq, and that the price for that would be painful. Second, the insurgency threatened Iraq with partition and civil war. Any such partition would have made Iran the dominant power in the region, something that would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia and the other governments in the Persian Gulf. The Saudis were no friends of the Baathists in Iraq, but the thought of partition -- and of only the United States to provide security against Iranian influence -- forced them to mobilize Arab support for the Sunnis. The insurgency was the Sunni leaders' prime bargaining chip, and they played it well."

[The1andOnlyKC]

Tag to read when i waky waky