Over 55 Killed, Including 25 in Sadr City Bombings
Iraq to Ask UN to Withdrew US Troop Immunity
Guerrillas detonated two huge car bombs in a Shiite neighborhood on Monday, killing 25 and wounding 41. The guerrillas set both off in the Talbiyah district of Sadr City, a stronghold of the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. Sunni Arabs accuse a Sadrist militia of having massacred 42 Sunnis in the al-Jihad district on Sunday.
Guerrillas set off two other bombs in the capital, as well. A bomb exploded outside a restaurant, killing 6 and wounding 28. A roadside bomb killed 5 policemen. Gunmen also killed two bodyguards of a judge.
Gunmen ambushed a bus in the Sunni Arab district of Amiriyah in the capital, killing 7 [late reports say 10].
That is 44 dead in the capital alone.
The Aljazeera report on the violence in the capital was particularly graphic and touching on Monday evening. You watched it and it was hard to see how this thing comes back together any time soon. You watched it and your heart broke.
CNN's report was less graphic but no less depressing. Scroll down or keyword search to "watch how sectarian killings"
There were also bombings in Kirkuk, Hilla and Baquba. In Baquba, a member of the Diyala governing council was assassinated. The bombing at a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party office killed 5 and wounded 12. With bodies found in the river, and assassinations, the death toll for Monday in civil war violence was certainly more than 55.
Shaikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie of the Umm al-Qura Mosque (a hard line Sunni) has called for a summit and compact of honor among Iraq's clergymen, to be held at Mecca. He suggested that Sunni and Shiite clerics gather in the holy city and revive the tradition of national unity against foreign occupation that characterized Iraq in the 1920s. He put forward the names of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr as potential attendees.
The same source says that 200 fired policemen attacked the offices of the governor of Muthanna Province in Samawah and beat up some of the employees. The fired police have staged a number of demonstrations.
The Aljazeera program "Al-Mashhad al-`Iraqi" on Monday evening featured a debate between Shaikh Muhammad Bashar al-Faydi of the (hardline Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars and Abu'l-Hadi al-Darraji of the (hard line Shiite) Sadr Movement. Shaikh Faydi reviewed all the help that the AMS proferred the Sadrists when they were fighting the Americans in spring-summer 2004, and expressed regret that relations had soured. He said that the Mahdi Army had now started attacking Sunnis. Shaikh al-Darraji maintained that it wasn't the Mahdi Army that carried out massacres like that at the al-Jihad District, but possibly local militias or even (he hinted) foreign forces trying to divide Sunni and Shiite. He also said that he had not believed rumors that the 1920 Brigades guerrilla group was the armed wing of the Association of Muslim Scholars, and he was disappointed that Faydi had believed the rumors about the Mahdi Army. (Did Darraji just out Faydi?) Shaikh Faydi wasn't buying it. Al-Darraji invited him to hold joint Sunni-Shiite prayer services.
I took away from the program that the prospect of any genuine pan-Islamic union against the US military presence has receded enormously in the past two years since I broached the possibility. The guerrilla movement, which is mainly led by secular Arab nationalists, ex-Baathists or post-Baathists in the main, has been trying to set Sunnis and Shiites at each other's throats as a way of making the country ungovernable and forcing the US out. They seem to be on track to succeed in the former, at least. They won't like their success.
The new Iraqi military still isn't much of a force, mainly infantry with rifles and no heavy armor or artillery (or helicopter gunships). I don't know how the US expects the Iraqis to accomplish anything if they don't have any better equipment than the guerrillas.
Iraq will ask the United Nations to remove the immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts now enjoyed by US troops in Iraq. If it cannot get the UN Security Council to go along, the Iraqi government says it wants a major role in the investigation of the Mahumdiyah incident, where several US soldiers are accused of raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl, and killing her and her family after stalking her for a week.
A guerrilla group said it killed 3 US soldiers recently in revenge for the rape-murder.
The good news is that a majority of Jordanians considers Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to have been a terrorist, is glad to see him gone, and believes that it is unacceptable to offer his family condolences on his death. Only 15 percent view his organization as a legitimate resistance movement.
The bad news? Thirty percent of Jordanians are "angered" by his death, only 41 percent say that Bin Laden's al-Qaeda is a terrorist group, and 77 percent see US military operations in Iraq as "terrorism." Jordanian public opinion has shifted against the US with the bloody military occupation of Iraq and the Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
David Kaiser has some sobering thoughts about the likely consequences of a US strike on Iran being to mire America in an intractable asymmetrical struggle of the sort Israel faces in Gaza.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/11/2006 12:31:00 AM
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7 Comments:
"the prospect of any genuine pan-Islamic union against the US military presence has receded enormously in the past two years since I broached the possibility. The guerrilla movement, which is mainly led by secular Arab nationalists, ex-Baathists or post-Baathists in the main, has been trying to set Sunnis and Shiites at each other's throats as a way of making the country ungovernable and forcing the US out. They seem to be on track to succeed in the former, at least. They won't like their success."
Indeed. But surely it was the Sunni islamist section of the resistance, epitomised by Zarqawi, that led the way in attacking Shia targets, as far as we know, rather than the secular nationalists? To what extent, if at all, do you think the US has been complicit in this (ie in the sectarian terrorism element of the Sunni resistance)?
From the remarkably convenient timing of Zarqawi's death, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the US could have killed him beforehand, but allowed him to continue because his actions suited them.
Against this, you could argue that the US wanted Iraq to settle down for US political reasons (or, if you are particularly naive, so that they could "go home"), and that the goal of "making Iraq ungovernable" was indeed, as you have it here, a guerilla objective and not a US one.
However, against this are two points. First, we know that al Qaeda disliked Zarqawi's sectarian approach (rightly, imo, from their point of view). Secondly, the greatest threat to the US presence was always a pan-Islamic (or at least, pan-Arab Sunni and Shia) resistance. This would also have suited the secular nationalists, who presumably believed that once the US had been driven out they would have a much better chance of regaining power - precisely why Sistani has (in effect) collaborated with the US occupation. There was a period in 2004 when it looked as though this might come about, between the Mahdi Army and the Sunni resistance.
Is your faith in the US regime sufficient to rule out that they might have allowed or even assisted a campaign of sectarian terrorism to destroy this possibility? Mine isn't, based upon the history of past US counter-insurgency campaigns.
However, actual evidence is lacking. Probably we will never know the truth.
"David Kaiser has some sobering thoughts about the likely consequences of a US strike on Iran...." (re: Hersh article in the current New Yorker)
A protracted military disaster in Iran starting in Sept-Oct would give the Bushists a "new-war" boost in the mid-term elections and a possible "state of emergency" scenario for postponing/canceling/suspending the 08 Pres. elections if their chances look bad... I put nothing beyond these people...and...I hope I'm completely wrong!
Appreciate your including the Jordanian poll. One of my main learnings from a recent trip to the region was the extent of the pressures generated on Jordan trying to get by between Israel/Palestine and occupied Iraq. Jordanians are close to their wits end about the developing Iraqi refugee crisis which seems unlikely to abate as long as the U.S. stays and the civil war gets hotter. The Jordanians we talked with were pessimistic about Iraqis solving their internal differences as long as the U.S. remained -- and pessimistic in general.
If you think Al-Zarqawi was anything but a Pentagon psy-ops phantasm, you have no legitimacy. "Al-Queda in Iraq?" Piffle.
"Iraq will ask the United Nations to remove the immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts now enjoyed by US troops in Iraq."
I wonder if the US will threaten to remove monetary aid to Iraq if the USMIL is not allowed to run carte blanche. God knows holding money and aid as a tactic was used on several different countries in the run-up to war in Iraq, as the US attempted to undermine the power of ICC. With no immunity, will Pentagon officials finally be compelled to hold themselves and their subordinates to an international standard the US essentially proclaims it already upholds?
Perhaps one of the outcomes of removing USMIL immunity will surface in the form of a more stabilized Iraq. If the accusations prove true that members of the USMIL raped and murdered a little girl and her family and then tried to blame it on "terrorists" -one must at least entertain the idea of just how many of these seemingly mindless assaults against the Iraqi people are being conducted by the US foot soldier and subsequently blamed on the Iraqi population.
In the meantime, female Army soldier, Army Specialist Suzanne Swift, claimed her AWOL was because her "...superiors repeatedly sexually harassed her while serving in Iraq...." (command rape)
Women and African-American soldiers show the highest drop in enlistment and re-enlistment over the last five years.
There is a call for more "cultural sensitivity" if the US and its military intends to "win" its wars. Perhaps the best way to obtain "cultural sensitivity" is by first examining the "culture" of the military institution (which is certainly touted as a representative of US "culture" as a whole).
Where are the "real military men"? Even the poster boy of American Militarism, John McCain -right up to his 2000 election- referred to the Vietnamese as "Gooks".
"I don't know how the US expects the Iraqis to accomplish anything if they don't have any better equipment than the guerrillas."
They don't expect them to, and that is the whole point of not doing it. Time to wake up and smell the coffee of what the Bush administration has planned of Iraq.
I don't think it follows that the Ba'athists want a civil war to kick the US out and put them back in. If they're responsible for the insecurity, is anyone going to trust them for security? I blame the worsening situation on a number of other factors, like the various groups jockeying for control and each reprising the other.
You keep repeating that belief as to the Ba'athist strategy, but I'd really like to see some proof or explanation of it. Is it mentioned in their communiques or their English and Arabic videos online?
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