14 Killed, 71 Wounded
Maliki Demands Haditha File from US
14 deaths were from political violence were announced on Friday, according to Reuters, from bombings and assassinations around Iraq. In the most deadly single incident, "Two roadside bombs went off in an old and popular street market in central Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 57 . . ." 71 were announced wounded, including 2 US troops.
The US military denied reports about a deliberate massacre of civilians by the US military at a house in Ishaqi in mid-March. A spokesman said that the troops had taken fire from the house and had responded with appropriate force. The BBC aired a video on Thursday that showed shot-up dead children at the building. Local Iraqi police alleged that the GIs deliberately killed the civilians and then tried to cover up their crime by having the building collapse on them. The US military calls this scenario "absolutely false."
Seven Marines are facing charges that they dragged an unarmed man out of his house and shot him, and that they may have tried to frame him by planting a shovel and AK-47. An Iraqi human rights activist charged that US troops murdering innocent Iraqis seemed to be a "daily event."
Iraq's new government will ask the US for the Haditha file, regarding an alleged massacre by GIs last November.
50 families had to be moved from Buhriz on Friday and distributed among other towns in Diyala after they received death threats if they did not leave their homes. A 9 pm curfew has been imposed in the province until further notice. The governor of Diyala is disgusted at this ongoing process of ethnic cleansing, and is unhappy with the performance of the new Iraqi army, though happier with the police.
Al-Zaman reports that on Friday the state of emergency was implemented in Basra. Unites of the Iraqi Army 10th Division were stationed at the major intersections and sensitive areas therein. It says that some locals are calling on the provincial security council appointed by Prime Minister al-Maliki to establish an emergency provincial government that could take control of security in the city for the period of one month. Two new members have been added to the security council, one from the Fadhila or Virtue Party and the other from the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalist). The previous members were Safa' al-Safi, the minister of state for parliamentary affairs, Salam al-Maliki of the Sadr Movement, Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Badr Corps, and three members of the (Shiite) United Iraqi Alliance. These major parties have been fighting one another, and there has been violence from criminal gangs and smuggling rings.
Al-Zaman reports that US troops are conducting search and seizure operations in Samarra, searching for the radicals who assassinated a police commander. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that a curfew had been imposed there.
A sermon attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi calls Shiites snakes, threatens to kill Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and threatens violence against the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars for not urging Iraqis to avoid joining the new police and army. (The extra details are from al-Zaman.) It also taunted the Mahdi Army that it gave up the fight against the US troops in spring of 2004. (-al-Sharq al-Awsat).
Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP report that the representative of Sistani, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi Karbala'i, has crticized those Iraqi officials who isolate themselves from the people in the Green Zone of central Baghdad. He said the Green Zone can only be entered with special ID, as though it were a visa to another land.
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/03/2006 12:30:00 AM
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6 Comments:
It is hard to understand why there isn't more outrage about the Iraq war among the military families and among the soldiers themselves.
I understand that an astonishingly high number of Americans - soldiers included - still believe that they are in Iraq because of Saddam's connection to 9/11.
Why isn't the media doing its job and emphasize on a daily basis that the Bush administration has misled this country as far as the Iraq war is concerned ? Why isn't there a serious public debate on the subject of bringing the troops home and coming up with the plan to minimize the damage to Iraq ?
More importantly, what can we do, as individuals, to avoid having the troops in Iraq for the next 20 years?
Dear Professor Cole
If you or any of your readers care to dig through the reports of the doings of the British Army in Ireland in 1921 or 1922 you will find similarities between the reports of the US Army and Marines behaviour and that of the Black and Tans.
The commanders of some of the regiments were destined to become some of the senior commanders of the British Army twenty years later.
The division that is starting to emerge in the US press between the professional military attitude that Murder, Rape and Pillage are forbidden and contrary to good order and military discipline, and the feelgood excuse that it is all understandable because the boys and girls are in a strange land fighting a war that they weren't trained for is revealing. It is similar to the division of opinion in France during the late fifties and early sixties about Algeria.
Algeria is a particualrly troubling example because the result of de Gaulle's decision to abandon a battle already lost (because the US wanted an end to colonial regimes, Alistair Horne says the French were close to military victory at one point because the enemy in Algeria were all dead) resulted in the formation of the OAS and bombs in Paris.
The image of the Foreign Legion Para being hauled off to gaol, singing "Non je ne regrette rien" after they mutinied lingers.
So I suspect we are seeing the last days of the occupation of Iraq, but the chance for an orderly exit with honour has probably been lost.
As you say further reports of wrong doing will emerge and in the absence of proof to the contrary will be accepted as fact. Too many stories of casual killing and wounding of Iraqis have appeared of the last couple of years and been ignored for there not to be a mess lurking under the surface.
Thus newspaper columnists who want to make excuses for military crimes should perhaps beware of the trap of being asked to empathise with the Hessians of the American War of Independence or even, perhaps, SS Panzer Division "Das Reich".
http://www.dasreich.ca/oradourindex.html
Is it the job of historians to interpret these events and reconcile them with the present?
Yeah, things are going great huh
Looks like Bush & Cheney's military experience is really starting to pay off.
The U.S. should preemptively attack and illegally occupy other countries more often.
"The US military denied reports about a deliberate massacre of civilians by the US military at a house in Ishaqi in mid-March. ...The US military calls this scenario "absolutely false."
Yeh, sure, just like Saddam Hussein had WMD.
Reading the whole al-Zaman story cited here, it doesn't look like things are going to get much better in Basrah with the appointment to the municipal security council of members of the INA and al-Fadhilah. As the article says, Fadhilah already works hand in hand with the governorate. Is this supposed to coopt Fadhilah into working with Baghdad simply because they're now represented in a Baghdad appointed council? This more likely has to do with al-Maliki maneuvers in Baghdad politics. Note also that this security council is discussiong things with not just the many party leaders there but also with "the tribes" - Iraqi reality. Personally, lacking a useful central government I'd feel a lot more comfortable with my tribal leader than with one of the power-hungry ideological parties splitting up Basrah amongst themselves.
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