Bill Roggio’s weekly summation of Security Incidents In Iraq links to an intriguing analysis of why the Iraqis are slowly ending the terrorist insurgency themselves.
The Civil War Among Sunni Arabs: January 16, 2006: Terrorist attacks against certain types of targets get lots of media coverage, especially when, as there usually are, lots of attacks. What is less reported is the ultimate success, or failure, of those attacks.The attacks are not achieving any long term goals the article reasons, because the impetus behind the terrorist insurgency has always been a mixture of both the desire for power and the need for a paycheck.
As large as it is, the oil industry is not the largest employer in Iraq, the government is, with 1.2 million employees. The government has always been a major employer in Iraq, and during the 1990s, it became the main employer because the embargo, imposed at the end of the 1991 war, shut down much of the economy.George W. Bush effectively ended the “old economy” and what is not being reported in the MSM is that a “new economy” is growing as the Iraqi population exercise their new freedom.
… before 2003, the Sunni Arabs had the lowest unemployment rate in the country, because they got priority for those government jobs. That all changed in early 2003, and the Sunni Arabs want to get back to work. Right now, one of the easiest, if dangerous, ways to make money is to go to work with one of the many Sunni Arab terrorist or criminal gangs. … The problem with the terror economy is that most of the people getting terrorized (killed and maimed) are Iraqis, many of them Sunni Arab Iraqis. This has caused a backlash against the terrorists. Moreover, the booming economy has made more jobs available even to Sunni Arabs.Many newly unemployed individuals in need of money accepted terrorist money in the wake of the collapsed dictatorial economy, but as the new economy develops there are increasingly ways to earn income without dodging the dangerous backlash of murderous activity. Most Sunni Arabs, like most all people, prefer peaceful livelihoods.
While Sunni Arabs believe, in general, that they should be running the country, they are more specifically concerned about having a job, and access to the rapidly rebuilding economy. The Sunni Arabs have access to the ten TV and 75 radio stations that have opened up since 2003, and know what's going on in the rest of the country. The Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004, and has been going up as the unemployment rate is going down.The violence will end in Iraq as the Iraqis themselves lose the will to fight the brighter future unfolding around them.
