As I've said before, fifteen to twenty percent of the population just does not qualify as a major opponent of the other 80-85 percent which has the army, police, and other security apparatus at its disposal. Add in American and Coalition support to that majority and the very idea that the Sunnis of Iraq could fight a civil war is ludicrous.
Well if you won't believe me, try Strategypage (given its own unique link here later):
People who should know better, including diplomats, and those just looking for an exciting headline, are talking up civil war in Iraq once more. You can't have a civil war if one side is so weak that it's unable to raise an army and put up much of a fight. In that case you have the weaker side expelled, wiped out, or forced to accept whatever terms the stronger side will grant. In this case, the Sunni Arabs of Iraq have the short end of the stick. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq never comprised more than 20 percent of the population. Emigration in the past three years, to avoid the violence, and vengeance of Shia and Kurds, has reduced that to fifteen percent. But the worst thing that's happened to the Sunni Arabs, is the creation of an effective non-Sunni Arab army and police force. The Sunnis Arabs are outnumbered and outgunned, and facing the growing threat of massacre and expulsion from Iraq. ...
In 2003, the apparatus of Sunni domination, was taken apart. Sunni Arabs no longer held nearly all the senior military, police and government jobs. The Sunni Arab secret police force(s) were disbanded, as was the army. For the first time in over three centuries, the Sunni Arabs of Baghdad were not in charge, and they did not like it. They have been resisting this change in status ever since. But in the last three years, things have only gotten worse for the Sunni Arabs. The new government (dominated by Kurds and Shia Arabs, who are 80 percent of the population) has created an army and police force. So not only are the Sunni Arabs outnumbered, but they are confronted with an army and police force controlled by their enemies.
And it gets worse, because the Sunni Arab dictatorship got worse as time went on. The last 10-15 years of Saddam's rule were particularly horrible for the Kurds and Shia Arabs. There were massacres and constant terror from Saddam's secret police. So not only are the Sunni Arabs now outnumbered, and facing over a quarter million soldiers and police they do not control, they are also on the receiving end of revenge attacks by millions of enraged Kurds and Shia Arabs.
This is not the recipe for civil war, it's the prelude to massacre and mass expulsion. Of the Sunni Arabs. In Iraq, everyone is aware of this, but too many foreigners, including many who should know better, just don't get it.
Yes, it is a problem that Iran is trying to incite Shias to kill Sunnis and prevent them from agreeing to a political settlement that ends terror and prevents justice against Saddam's thugs from degenerating into ethnic cleansing.
But don't confuse the problem we face with some strange future where Sunnis--who mostly live in mixed areas and not a distinct region anyway--carve out their own Sunniland within Iraq.
The Sunnis surely realize they are playing a dangerous game. The longer they hold out making a deal with the majority, the more likely it is that the Shias will tire of talking while Sunni terrorists car bomb Shia civilians. Sadly, the perverse refusal to face reality that we've seen from Saddam claiming to have won the Persian Gulf War, to Baghdad Bob denying American tanks were near Baghdad as they were routing Saddam's forces, to Hizbollah claiming victory for surviving a month of continuing Israeli assaults, means the Iraqi Sunnis may come to their senses too late.
Absent a peace deal, the Shias will eventually just go Mediaeval on all the Sunnis--as the Sunnis established as the traditional means of dealing with enemies in the region.
