View From a Height

Squaring the Sunni Triangle

The Indispensible MEMRI is reporting that 64 Sunni clerics (no, despite the useful number, there's no Mullah Madness basketball tournament scheduled) are advocating that Sunnis join the new Iraqi armed forces, militia, and police.

This is probably good news. I say "probably," because my friend Michael Eisenstadt points out that Sunnis traditionally have dominated those institutions, and more likely to have military training in arms and tactics. Despite the British efforts to integrate Shiites into the Iraqi military during their occupation, Sunnis eventually rose to the top and controlled the command structure. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the mullahs are planning on history repeating itself.

Which, of course, is exactly no guarantee that it will. There's plenty of evidence that, if anything, Iraq is much less sectarian than it has been in the past, and that large numbers of Sunnis are ready to join the rest of Iraq in building a country worth keeping together. The mullahs make a point of stressing non-cooperation with the Americans, which may also be a way of appealing to people not enamored of US troops, suggesting that switching rather than fighting may be the fastest way to get the US to leave.