Everybody Is Arming Sunnis (Sources Say)

June 11, 2007

Saudis reportedly funding Iraqi Sunni insurgents, USA Today, Dec 8, 2006

Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.

US says Iran arming Sunni groups, BBC, April 7, 2007

Sunni militants are being armed with Iranian-made munitions, US military spokesman Maj Gen William Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.
…
Gen Caldwell said the Iranians were not only supplying weapons to unspecified groups fighting the coalition and Iraqi government forces but training them too.

U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies, IHT, June 11, 2007

American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.

After the Sunnis, now armed by the U.S., have ousted those few "Qaeda" fighters, the weapons will be used to eliminate the occupier next. The same happened in Algeria, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Again proof that the U.S. military is inclined to retry every trick that failed against past insurgencies.

Posted by b on June 11, 2007 at 05:31 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The Sunni population of Iraq are not favored by Allah with vast tracts of oil-bearing sand. The All Merciful One has instead gifted the Shias and the Kurds with the bulk of Iraq’s oil.
Where you find most of the oil — you find mostly these second class Muslims, these heretics and outsiders.
The Sunni — no matter whom they are fighting this week, or next, or next — must ultimately win the battle to resume their place atop the Iraqi nation, or become a collection of tribes mostly involved in melon farming and camel trading.
This being unacceptable in the extreme, they will never give up their struggle to hold sway over the lowly Shia, and certainly never cooperate well or happily with the despicable Persians.
It’s a caste thing. It’s an identity thing. It’s ethnic. It’s about second class citizenship for everyone who isn’t born and raised among the true followers of The Munificent One.
It’s about death to all kaffirs.

Posted by: Antifa | Jun 11 2007 6:09 utc | 1

Funny: Jumping from reading NYT/IHT to WaPo, the Sunnis armed by the U.S. and lauded for their unity against “Qaeda” are already splintering: Tribal Coalition in Anbar Said to Be Crumbling

A tribal coalition formed to oppose the extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, a development that U.S. officials say has reduced violence in Iraq’s troubled Anbar province, is beginning to splinter, according to an Anbar tribal leader and a U.S. military official familiar with tribal politics.
In an interview in his Baghdad office, Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, 35, a leader of the Dulaim confederation, the largest tribal organization in Anbar, said that the Anbar Salvation Council would be dissolved because of growing internal dissatisfaction over its cooperation with U.S. soldiers and the behavior of the council’s most prominent member, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Suleiman called Abu Risha a “traitor” who “sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money.”

Posted by: b | Jun 11 2007 6:28 utc | 2

The tale that has Iranians arranging the death of their own co-religionists by arming their Sunni enemies, wins the prize for the most unbelievable of stories.
Behind door number 2 is the strange bedfellows story, a story that could have come out of the Disney Studios; and it’s not the way to bet. I saw two old men on the News Hour, touted as experts, who nodded and agreed with wry smiles over what is, in their estimation, the long-awaited silver lining that chases out the dark clouds of futility. In this animated, musical feature, Sunni tribesmen decide to trust their occupiers, in a common battle against the other “foreign fighters”. That oil money is as good as in the bank!
Behind the third door lies the tiger. The Saudis are arming their Sunni brothers and placing considerable sums of money at the disposal of their favorites. In this case our gooses are cooked.

Posted by: Copeland | Jun 11 2007 7:45 utc | 3

The US is, I suppose?, also funding rebel groups in Sudan. (Oil, uranium.) Now they want to support these with NATO ‘peace keepers.’ I guess the idea is to split the Sudan and turn the rich part into a rebel stronghold. These will be beholden to Washington. It goes on and on.
Vietnam and Algeria, though, are pretty poor countries today, and need not have become so.
Peak oil (70 some) and peak energy (80 some) per capita are long past. Ever since then, the mythical average consumer has been using less. What has really happened is that in the ‘west’ per capita consumption has stayed stable (or even lowered a tiny bit) or grown, if not too wildly – the effects of technology and in the west, ‘relative’ poverty that has flourished alarmingly.
The rest of the world – excluding Gulf States and some other energy producing countries – has had to do with less, far less, or with disruption of traditional ways, war, or with nothing (eg. Congo.)
Rebels or insurgents are in those terms very cheap: they need arms and transport, both small scale, and food. That is all. They don’t drive fancy cars or live in MacMansions or send their daughters to ballet lessons. Their maintenance and their lives are cheap, and they are endlessly replaceable, there is always a new lot of young men without hope who know nothing but war coming up. In this way, chaos and poverty (under consumption, no trade, food dependence, etc.) become a stable, traditional state of affairs.

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 11 2007 13:41 utc | 4

After the Sunnis, now armed by the U.S., have ousted those few “Qaeda” fighters, the weapons will be used to eliminate the occupier next. The same happened in Algeria, Malaysia and Vietnam.
no. antifa nails it. it appears all sides in iraq need to bargain w/ the devil, the u.s.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 11 2007 15:15 utc | 5

“there is nothing new except what has been forgotten”
— attributed to marie antoinette

Posted by: b real | Jun 12 2007 6:03 utc | 6

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