19 Dead in Violence
Walkout in Parliament over Shiite Ringtone
The Iraqi civil war took at least 19 lives on Wednesday, including especially in the Baqubah area of Diyala province.
Five of Iraq's most dangerous guerrillas fled the Susa Prison in Kurdistan yesterday.
that a Sadrist member of parliament had set her cell phone ringer to a Shiite religious tune caused an uproar that led to a walkout of some members of parliament.
Ahmad Hashim, one of our best analysts of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, explains that the low-intensity civil war has forced the US into a reactive mode. The ad hoc character of the whole enterprise is one of the things that dooms it. Hashim has a new book on counter-insurgency in Iraq.
Turkeyu and Iran are building up troops on the borders with Iraqi Kurdistan. That raises questions for me of what Iraqi Kurdistan is doing to Iran and Turkey.
Almost 1100 persons were killed in Baghdad alone in April, victims of faith-based ethnic cleansing.
Reuters reviews the significance of the anti-British Shiite mob violence in Basra on Saturday.
Ibon Villelabeitia of Reuters reminds us of the role of Gertrude Bell in creating Iraq and its problems.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation sponsored an anti-war press conference with regard to Iran, based in part on a petition signed by the foremost Iran specialists in the United States.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/11/2006 12:30:00 AM
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4 Comments:
The US military is holding over 38,000 prisoners in outdoor camps and is probably undermanned.
Just Wondering....
--What makes the five prisoners who escaped any more dangerous than any of the other 20,000 or so insurgents in Iraq?
--If it was so important to get the Sunnis into Parliament, and they are supposed to all work together, why can't the Sunni Speaker of Parliament tolerate even a ring tone that has Shiite connotations? Is he going to be out on his intolerant ear?
--Why does Hashim think "civil war has forced the US into a reactive mode?" It's not like we have any better ideas, and mostly we don't even seem to be reacting, much less in any planned or rational way. We apparently can't even hold an overnight stake-out on body-dumping grounds. Why don't we go home and find something better to do with our time?
--Have the US and the EU told the Kurds in unmistakable terms to sit on the PKK real hard for the next couple of decades? That's what tyrants and even democratic nations do when they want to get along well with their neighboring states. Or are we just going to let the Kurds go on being armed errand boys for imperialistic purposes, to be dropped when the needs of metropolitan policy change (cf. Hmong, Armenians, Amerindians, Circassians, Iranian Azeris, etc, etc.)?
--What could the Friends do to make the world better if they had even 100 billion dollars to spend?
"that a Sadrist member of parliament had set her cell phone ringer to a Shiite religious tune caused an uproar that led to a walkout of some members of parliament."
Apparently this is not the same as a Republican congressman using the voice of Rush Limbaugh as a ring tone because we Americans are much more civilized. Also, our lawmakers are neither accosted nor mistreated by Capitol police, except for those lawmakers who belong to the minority party.
Before sectarian violence became common place in Iraqi life, which would have been when, for a few months after Bagdad fell into neo-con hands, would this have caused a confrontation? Or has the sectarian bloodshed made everybody just a little bit touchy?
In other words, is this incident a reasonable response in troubled times? I think it is.
One hopes the vacuous talking heads on the right overlook this incident, the hypocrisy would be nauseating, but then hopes are often in vain.
Juan:
I don't believe I have previously seen the current state of violence and conflict in Iraq flattly and without any qualification referred to "the Iraq civil war". "Insurgency" is as close as most of our media are getting.
You are right of course to refer to it this way. The bush administration dare not refer to it this way. But reading it here instead of in the NYTimes makes me wonder anew why our MSM is on such a short leash and makes it all the clearer why a blog like IC is so vital to the public debate.
So much in a name.
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