Muqdadiyah Massacre of Shiites
Baghdad Sunni Neighborhoods Organize Militias
At Muqdadiyah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town north of Baghdad, guerrillas came to a bus station, separated out 24 or more Shiites from the other passengers, and took them to a nearby village where they killed most of them (al-Zaman says they murdered 22). The massacre is a continuation of the tit for tat "identity killings" that began last Sunday when Shiite militiamen massacred Sunnis in al-Jihad district of Baghdad. This tactic has brought the low-intensity civil war in Iraq to the boiling point.
In addition to the massacre of the Shiites at Muqdadiyah, another two dozen or so Iraqis were victims of guerrilla violence on Wednesday. Among several bombings and killings in the capital, the worst was a suicide bombing in a restaurant in largely Shiite East Baghdad, which killed 7 and wounded 20. Bombings were also reported in Haswa, Hilla and Tikrit. The latter killed the wife of the governor of Salahuddin Province late Tuesday.
In a rare outbreak of brutal candor, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki revealed on Wednesday that the daily violence in West Baghdad has not been random, but rather derives from a concerted plan by the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement to take over West Baghdad politically. He insisted that their advance in Karkh district had been repulsed, whereby they were attempting to move north.
My guess is that a key objective of the guerrillas is to surround and besiege the Kadhimiyah district of north-central Baghdad, which lies to the west across the river from Adhamiyah, a Sunni Arab stronghold. Kadhimiyah is the site of a very major Shiite shrine, that of Imam Musa al-Kazim,the seventh Imam or divinely-guided dynast of the House of the Prophet. The middle-class Shiites there are more or less behind enemy lines and isolated from the lower-class Shiites of East Baghdad (Sadr City). The guerrillas already have demonstrated that they can plunge Iraq into the fires of Hades by blowing up a shrine. I am sure that everyone in authority in Baghdad knows all this, but I don't have any confidence that Kadhimiyah is properly protected. It has been the site of many horrific bombings.
Eyewitnesses to the massacre at the al-Jihad District are now saying that the Shiite militamen who undertook the killings had with them long lists of ex-Baathists who had held office under the old regime but had been purged by the Debaathification Committee. The Debaathification Committee has been dominated by Ahmad Chalabi, and much of the documentation for its work was turned over to Chalabi by Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also played a central role in the Debaathification Committee. How have these lists leaked to local militias.
Al-Zaman/ DPA say that Sunni Arabs in the West Baghdad districts of Amiriyah, Khadra, Jihad, Ghazaliyah, Sayyidiyah and Al-Dura (Dora) have formed emergency neighborhood patrols for fear that Shiite militias from nearby Shiite-dominated districts to the east will make further raids into their areas. Muezzins or callers to prayer in the Sunni mosques of the Khadra district used amplifiers to call for volunteers, and dozens of young men responded by taking up arms. They especially hastened to do so after armed militiamen attacked the Muluki Mosque in al-Amiriyah District near Karkh late on Wednesday. They set up concrete blocks as barriers barring entry to the Khadra District. As soon as the callers to prayer broadcast the attack on the Muluki Mosque, shopkeepers and merchants in the commercial district closed their establishments.
This narrative of innocent Sunni Arabs policing their neighborhoods from predatory Shiite attacks on mosques obscures those other processes that PM al-Maliki described, whereby the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is trying to take over these districts politically and extend its sway to Karkh. In a civil war, disentangling offense and defense is no easy task.
Arianna Huffington rightly makes fun of Rumsfeld's fatuous pronouncements in Baghdad.
Riverbend is touching on the loss of a friend in the al-Jihad massacre.
PS
About all those health centers supposedly built in Iraq with our $20 bn. in US tax money. Not so much.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/13/2006 12:30:00 AM
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5 Comments:
Hey Prof. Can I make a suggestion. I think the news you provide on the Iraqi civil war is going to go down as one of the great advances in how one man can really make a difference especially at a time when Americas media is so 'sanatized'(or is that 'Hannitized').
You description of the tactical efforts of the Baghdad factions would be so much better understood by ignorant westerners if an ethnic map of Baghdad could be linked to or provided.
I think people want to hear the real facts only news but its hard to imagine how this news fits in relation to each other, a map showing where these actions take place would help people to understand the front lines.
Maliki, and Iraq, are facing a huge new task: since the destruction of the state in 2003, lots of mini and micro states have sprung up.
A good example is Sadr city. The Mahdi Army runs everything: security, health, education ..etc. The chaotic nature of the organization and the size of the money involved lead to constant splintering and regrouping which Mr Sadr has no knowledge, let alone control, of.
For the first time since the Iraqi Nakba (catastrophe)of 2003, an Iraqi state is being reborn. The mini and micro-states must make way. This means that the low-life criminals, Turbans, traitors, and a whole assortment of other shit, must loose the enormous power and wealth they have been enjoying. They are not going to give in easily.
Maliki has shown great resilience so far, but not much success. What he needs to do is to get the 'good Iraqis' masses on his side.
Step 1 is to lift the immunity of the theives now in high office. He has failed to do that so far.
Step 2 is to resist the US saboteurs in Iraq. He has failed to properly equip the Iraqi forces or even put that on the agenda.
He has now accepted an invitation to visit Washington. He will most likely be put under obscene amount of pressure to be paraded, like an oriental monkey, in front of Congress and the press expressing the deep gratitude of all Iraqis to the heroic Bush. This will destroy his credibility and add virtually nothing to Bush's.
Step 3 is to force the Militia heads to dissociate themselves unreservedly from all acts of violence, or be exposed in public and even held to account.
Sadr has made some noises and refused to defend the Jihad masacre, but must do a lot more.
Bard is still roaming free due to US support. This must end.
The Sunnis in parliament are right to support small groups of vigilantes to protect their homes, but not large groups turning big chunks of Baghdad into no-go areas and asking for IDs.
The Peshmergas are acting as if the Iraqi Government does not exist although they get paid for it and most are its sleeper enenmy.
The Iraqi silent majority can be a great asset if called upon, but can also destroy the Government if they continue to be used and abused.
A while back Prof. Cole, you did an interesting speculation of federalization of Iraq. Now I would like to ask you to think like a Sunni strategist and show a diagram of what neighborhoods are strategic and their locations, if you as a minority wanted to consolidate your hold on a defensible area based on small arms.
Secondly is this only a strategy for Baghdad, or are there other areas outside the capital where Sunnis could seize and defend territory more easily than in the concentrated urban center of Baghdad?
Third, the Iranian factor. Separately from the moves of the Sunni strategists, is it unreasonable for Iran mediate a peace, by saying, "Sunnis, you can either come to the bargaining table, where certain guarantees will be offered or surely and eventually be crushed if you resort to continued violence.In return, we will slowly make sure that rebel Shiite militias are either controled or crushed. Which do you choose?"
Today's NYT has a brief article on the handing over of security in Muthanna to the Iraqis. Everything there is swell, it seems, even though the article closes with the mention that the Japanese are getting out of there, pronto. There's nothing in the online frontpage about the killings in Baghdad, as far as I could see.
Re Ariana's commentary on Rumsfeld's maunderings in Baghdad: There is no qualitative difference between the things Rumsfeld said earlier and what he is saying now. He has never been anything but vicious and self-promoting. The briefings he gave earlier, to which the press flocked and at which they often laughed appreciatively, were deeply unsettling then and in the rearview mirror are shown to have been completely wrong-headed. Those who laughed then were the delusional ones.
Juan, I am quite scared by the escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The spin our administration seems to be putting on this is that it's 'regional' and Iran is the common thread in the three crises facing us in the region: Iraq, Iran, the Palestinian-Israeli war. Robin Wright's article in today's WaPo is illustrative; our options are 'limited', she writes. But the 'experts' quoted are fixated on Iran, rather than on our precipitating invasion of Iraq. If this were seen for what it was and is, a terrible mistake, there would be options which we cannot now consider. Furthermore, if we were to step back from complete endorsement of Israeli policy and strategy in regard to the occupied territories and East Jerusalem, we would have options. But apparently, we cannot admit either mistakes or responsibility.
Juan,
When you get the chance, check out Phillip Robertson's excellent reporting from Iraq in Salon:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/12/baghdad/
I'm not quite sure how Robertson stays alive, but his coverage is always exceptional -- mainly because he puts himself in harms way to get real sources.
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