At Least 61 Dead in Iraq Civil War, Dozens Injured
Censure Motion Against Iran Fails
Another wave of violence washed over Iraq on Wednesday. A suicide bomber killed 18 potential police recruits in Fallujah and left 20 others injured, mostly critically.
The black psy-ops folks not so long ago were touting Fallujah, 2/3s of the buildings in which were damaged in the US military assault of November, 2004, as subsequently the "safest city in Iraq." But I guess, not so much.
Then some 39 (-Al-Zaman) bodies showed up in the streets of Baghdad, victims of the Sunni-Shiite civil war in the capital. Al-Hayat reports that the morning corpse patrol has become a regular part of Iraqi police work.
Guerrillas set up a checkpoint in the Dura district, stopped a mini-bus with college students on it, pulled 4 of them off and shot them dead. Presumably they were from the wrong branch of Islam or wrong ethnicity.
Al-Zaman / wire services report that a measure failed to pass in the Iraqi parliament that would have condemned Iran for its military attacks on the Kurdish Marxist guerrilla group PKK/ Pejak, which has been given refuge by Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani inside Iraq. The Kurdistan Alliance introduced the motion to condemn.
MP Wael Abdul Latif (a secular Shiite from Basra) of the Iraqi National List said that parliament should not rush in issuing a statement, but rather should first get details from Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. His colleague in the Iraqi National List, the Communist Hamid Majid Musa, in contrast, wanted an immediate condemnation of Iran. Musa also wanted parliament to condemn recent American (mainly Senator Joe Biden) proposals for a partition of Iraq, saying that "to remain silent is to fall short." (Note that Iran is fighting Kurdish Communists).
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari suggested that the incidents had been relatively minor and did not constitute a security threat for Iraq. He asked that the problem be dealt with through diplomacy, and that no hasty steps be taken before the information was gathered.
Kurdistan Alliance MP Husain Barzinji said he would ask for details from Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi and from Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari about the issue, as a way of bringing it to closure. It appears that the censure motion was blocked by a coalition of a) secular Shiites, b) religious Shiites, and c) pragmatic Kurds. The latter appear to have felt that a parliamentary motion of censure against a neighbor was unwise, and that the issue was best dealt with by quiet behind-the-scenes negottiation.
Note that the Turkish build-up of troops on the Iraqi border and Turkish rockets landing inside Iraq, also aimed at PKK sites, did not result in a similar censure motion.
A significat number of MPs in the new parliament [Ar.] would like to see the government talk directly to the leaders of what locals call the "Resistance," i.e. the guerrilla movement.
Parliament established a committee headed by MP Husain Shahristani to set rules for parliamentary procedure. The formation of another committee, to oversee negotiations on amending the constitution, was put off until after the formation of a government.
Sunni Arab MP Dhafir al-Ani said that the provision in the current constitution allowing further provincial confederacies, including Shiite superprovinces in the deep south and in the middle Euphrates, threatens to break up Iraq.
Al-Zaman/Reuters report that the Basra Provincial Council has restored relations with the British military. The lack of relations, which were broken off when the British came into conflict with local militias and their official supporters late last summer, has been an obstacle to talks on a British and Danish withdrawal from the region. (The withdrawal would have to be coordinated with Iraqi military units.)
Reuters points out, correctly, that high politics inside the Green Zone (the 4 sq mile heavily fortified and guarded compound in downtown Baghdad) is irrelevant to the guerrilla war going on in the 7 or 8 center-north provinces of the country.
Baghdad is often getting only one hour of electricity a day! It is hot in Iraq, now. People's groceries are spoiling. It will be years and billions more invested before sufficient electricity can be generated, assuming the guerrillas don't just blow up the new plants.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/04/2006 12:30:00 AM
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4 Comments:
Regarding Iranian incursions into Iraq, can you please comment on Riverbend's recent post about this situation? She and her fellow Iraqis seem to be taking Iran's active involvement far more seriously than those of us who are not there.
This deserves another look.
On Sunday [1 May 2006] Mr. Bush said
"This new government is going to represent a new start for the Iraqi people. It's a government that understands they've got serious challenges ahead of them. And the three leaders spoke to Secretary Rice and Secretary Rumsfeld about their need to deploy the growing strength of the Iraqi security forces in such a way as to defeat the terrorists and the insurgents. And we will continue to support them in that effort. That they talked about the need to establish control over the militias and other unauthorized armed groups and enforce the rule of law. And we will support them in these efforts to achieve that important objective."
<< http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/ >>
I notice that the ghostwriter put "terrorists AND insurgents" into the President's mouth, as if they were two different groups of people.
Could it be that the Bushies are thinking about seriously negotiating with "insurgents" in neo-Iraq who are (I presume) not quite so fiendishly wicked as "terrorists" are?
Yours for Crawfordology,
JHM
US Troops To Israel!
As the discussion on US troops redeploying from Iraq proceeds, there has been little discussion of where they might go.
One obvious place to put them is Israel:
--They (US troops) have lots of expertise dealing with terrorist bombings, much more than the Israelis.
--They can put up roadblocks all over the place and give Israeli troops a chance to rest.
--They can man border posts and wall checkpoints.
--They can serve as a "tripwire" deterrent to Arab or Persian attacks on Israel.
--They can bring their own Patriot missile batteries, reducing the need for Israel to buy more for its protection.
--Many Israelis speak English, so problems of communicating with locals will be reduced compared to those in Iraq.
--The US has given so many tens of billions of dollars in every form of aid to Israel, Israelis would probably be delighted to find places to put the soldiers, and might come up with some funding to support their presence.
--GI's could work part-time on the local economy in their spare time, thus reducing the need to employ Palestinians or workers from other countries.
--US procurement from local suppliers would be a boon to the Israeli economy and reduce the need to use expensive US-based contractors.
--US air forces based in Israel can do double duty protecting both Israel and US bases, reducing the need for Israeli air forces by a corresponding amount.
--US forces can drive back to Iraq if necessary; Jordan won't mind.
--US forces can deploy atomic weapons if necessary to deter the ever growing growing number of bombs in Islamic hands; who knows how Israel would counter an atomic threat on its own.
The advantages seem overwhelming.
What do you think?
Whatever happened between Iran and that Kurdish group in northern Iraq, the Bush Administration is obviously anxious to play it up. This is supposedly a tiny opening they could build upon to portray Iran as an aggressor to justify and military strikes against Iran.
Juan, I've been wondering your take on something, and I'll try to put myself in the distasteful shoes of a cold, amoral, neocon-ish realpolitiker here (since I'm appalled by the idea of a US-led war on Iran): Since Iran appears to be the bete noire of the region here, the ultimate enemy from the Bush Administration and neocons' perspective, why in the world are the US-led Coalition Forces still focusing their guns so heavily on the Sunni Arab insurgent forces? Aren't these folks, uh, sort of potential allies here in a sense?
It's starting to feel like 1914 all over again, there's that inevitability in the air, both sides so heavily invested that they can't back down without suffering a severe humiliation, both mistrustful of the other, both realizing that the probably inevitably bloody war only gets more painful the longer they wait (e.g., Iran installing deadlier anti-aircraft systems, stocking up on short-range missiles and attack craft to hit US navy ships, the whole lot). So war is probably coming.
If war with Iran is coming, then by far Iran's strongest card is the capacity to hit the vulnerable Coalition troops in Iraq extremely hard, both with Iranian soldiers and with Iranian-trained Shiite Arab militias (such as the Badr Brigades) as well as the Mahdi Army and possibly even sympathizers among the nascent Iraqi army, police and national guard. Within Iraq itself, these Iranian forces and their proxies would have only two major adversaries-- the Americans and other coalition troops, and the hardened, well-trained and professional Sunni Arab insurgent cadres, both Baathists and Salafis, who for their own reasons loathe the prospect of Iranian hegemony. (I'd presume that the Iranians would largely eschew any big incursions into Kurdistan, to avoid complicating things too much).
So this would suggest that if anything, for the US and British to reshuffle the deck in their favor in preparation for the coming war on Iran, they should be doing everything possible to arm and shield the Sunni Arab insurgents, ironically enough, while starting to launch raids and other targeted operations to wear down and break the power of the Shiite militias within Baghdad in particular. Even if the Sunni Arabs aren't exactly allies, they're the only ones who would probably be willing to fight independent street battles against the Iranians and their proxies in the event of an Iranian incursion into Iraqi territory (as a retaliation for US airstrikes and/or cruise missiles and ground troops). From a brutal realpolitik standpoint, it would seem that the US would want to at least have the Sunni Arab guerrillas around and with enough strength to act as an additional, internal check against a quite probable Iran or Iran-sponsored militias. Any thoughts on this?
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