Sahel

There was a depressing article in the NY Times Sunday Week In Review titled Iraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory by Edward Wong. After four years of war, it is safe to say that this is not the article that we wish to read. However, it does illustrate some of the defining obstacles of the Middle East.

Perhaps no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets. The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

[…]

Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.

[…]

But in this war, the moment of sahel has been elusive. No faction — not the Shiite Arabs or Sunni Arabs or Kurds — has been able to secure absolute power, and that has only sharpened the hunger for it. Listen to Iraqis engaged in the fight, and you realize they are far from exhausted by the war. Many say this is only the beginning.

Culture is a strong factor in the outcome of wars that do not include the final destruction of the defeated people (i.e. the Roman option). The Germans and the Japanese of World War 2 were probably the best one could hope for in a defeated people.

The Iraqis post-Saddam are an entirely different story. It reminds one of the Arab response to the Israeli victory in the Six Day War - no peace, no negotiations, no recognition; or that of the Palestinians who, as Golda Meir put it, "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Wong's final words are not hopeful. Sadly, they reflect an enemy more intense and challenging than that which we face in our renewed counter-insurgency campaign; that which lives inside men's heads:

Sitting in the cool recesses of his home, the white-robed sheik said he was a moderate, a supporter of democracy. It is for people like him that the Americans have fought this war. But the solution he proposes is not one the Americans would easily embrace.

“In the history of Iraq, more than 7,000 years, there have always been strong leaders,” he said. “We need strong rulers or dictators like Franco, Hitler, even Mubarak. We need a strong dictator, and a fair one at the same time, to kill all extremists, Sunni and Shiite.”

I was surprised to hear those words. But perhaps I was being naïve. Looking back on all I have seen of this war, it now seems that the Iraqis have been driving all along for the decisive victory, the act of sahel, the day the bodies will be dragged through the streets.