The Plot

"BAGHDAD—The Iraqi national psyche is a Janus-faced beast when it comes to belief. On the one hand, Iraqis on the street will believe the very last thing you tell them. No conspiracy theory is too outlandish not to find some traction among the population. In a fit of black humor the other day I joked with A., my office manager and Y., an interpreter for us, that the Kurds were obviously behind all the suicide bombings.

Why? Because they could use a civil war between Shi'a and Sunni to claim Kirkuk and draw a green line around their territory. No one gets in from south of this line. Bingo! Instant Kurdistan. Or, alternately, if the Arabs discover this fiendish plot and counter-attack, the Kurds can set down their green line and set their pesh merga to defend their territory. Either way, they get Kirkuk and a state. Game, set, match.

Now, I don't really believe this. But A. and Y., got into the “fun” of it, and said I should go tell a few people on the street my theory. “In two days, it will be on every front page in the country,” A. said. Y. protested that it wouldn't be true. Ah! I countered. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It only matters if enough people believe it to be true.

Y. smiled. “Now you are thinking like an Iraqi,” he said.

And yet, tell an Iraqi that many of the problems of their country—lack of security, meddling by Iran, Shi'a-Sunni violence, Zarqawi—is a result of a cascading series of American blunders and incompetence, and they will refuse to believe it. “America put a man on the moon,” said a friend of A. as we puffed on a nargilah last night. “That America has f**ked up so much is very hard for us to accept.” "
Back to Iraq 3.0