Informed Comment

Tribal/Fundamentalist Violence
Guerrillas Economically self-sustaining

That a tribal group and Sunni fundamentalists clashed in al-Anbar is believeable. That the tribe lost 9 and “al-Qaeda” lost 55 is not, unless it was a sneak attack.

The NYT says that oil smuggling, antiquities smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and fraud raise as much as $200 million a year for the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. I suspect money comes in from the Oil Gulf, as well. There has been no success in cutting the funding off.

John Tirman on regionalizing Iraq: “Few if any peace processes can succeed without the neighbors’ active consent.”

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Dozens of Bodies Found
Firefight at Taji
Dhari Urges Arabs to turn on Maliki

Police found 17 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday. They found 21 bodies of Shiites in Balad Ruz, a small Sunni city near Baquba northeast of the capital. US forces said they killed 22 Iraqis at Taji in a fight with guerrillas.

As for a fear of civil war, that cow has been out of the barn for some time.

Harith al-Dhari, Secretary-General of the Association of Muslim Scholars said in Cairo that the Arab League and the United Nations should withdraw their support from the Shiite-dominated government of PM Nuri al-Maliki.

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Peshmerga to Guard MPs: Mashhadani

The USG Open Source Center translates this item from the Kurdistan press:

‘Iraqi Parliament To Entrust Kurdish Peshmerga With Guarding MPs
Unattributed report: “Al-Mashhadani recommends the peshmerga to guard Council of Representatives’ members”

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan WWW-Text
Saturday, November 25, 2006 T20:56:20Z

Iraqi Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani recommended entrusting peshmargas with guarding members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. Al-Mashhadani made his recommendation during the council’s in camera session that discussed the members’ safety, today 23 November 06. Al-Mashhadani’s proposal comes following an unsuccessful assassination attempt against him in which his convoy was targeted by explosive devises.

Iraqi Council of Representatives’ Member Azad Chalak told PUKmedia that Al-Mashhadani made the recommendation to entrust peshmargas with guarding council members during today’s session. He added that nobody had voted against the proposal. Chalak added that the council decided to vote on a bill for preventing the guards of the council members from entering the parliament carrying guns.
On Al-Mashhadani’s proposal, Minister of Region for Peshmerga Affairs Shaykh Ja’far Shaykh Mustafa told the PUKmedia that guarding council members was a patriotic mission; we were ready to discuss it.

(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan WWW-Text in Sorani Kurdish — Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website) ‘

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Sunnis Set Afire, Mosques Attacked
Nearly 100 Killed in Reprisals
Muqtada Challenges Dhari

The death toll in Thursday’s massive assault on Sadr City by Sunni Arab guerrillas has risen above 200. Trains of bodies have been delivered to the Valley of Peace cemetery outside Najaf, which is said to contain 2 million graves.

Friday morning, Shiite militiamen in Sadr City largely ignored clerical calls for restraint and continued to target Sunni Arab neighborhoods with mortar fire.

The Scotsman reports that then the Mahdi Army invaded the mixed Hurriyah district of the capital:

‘ Shiite gunmen took their revenge. One group stormed the Sunni-dominated Hurriya district of Baghdad, burning four mosques and several homes. A police source said 30 people had been killed and 48 wounded. Rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns were used as the militants rampaged through the area.

Imad al-Din al-Hashemi said 14 people had died when the mosque in Hurriya where he had been praying was attacked. He said he had heard of ten deaths in another mosque. “They attacked four mosques with rocket-propelled grenades and machinegun fire,” the university academic said. Six of those killed were grabbed as they left Friday prayers, doused with kerosene and burnt alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, according to police. ‘

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that at one point the Mahdi Army rounded up Sunni youths in the District of al-Jamilah and took them to a square and publicly executed them. The Sunni quarter of Adhamiyah took a constant rain of katyusha rockets.

The US military went into Sadr City to contain the Shiite guerrillas. At one point a US aircraft took out a mortar emplacement that was hitting a nearby Sunni quarter. Al-Zaman says that they killed three persons.

Ed Wong of the NYT reports that at the same time, there were heavy sectarian clashes in the city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. The US military raided Sadr’s offices in that city. Soon thereafter Sunni Arab guerrillas blew the offices up. The LA Times says that in response Shiite guerrillas blew up a Sunni mosque.

A Sunni mosque in the northern mixed city of Kirkuk was also damaged by a bomb.

The LA Times adds:

‘ In the southern port city of Basra, rocket-propelled grenades damaged a mosque, the headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and an apartment complex, injuring 15 people.

In Fallouja, a restive Sunni city in western Al Anbar province, a car bomb exploded at an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing at least six soldiers. ‘

In the northern city of Mosul, 3 bodies were found, according to Al-Zaman.

AP says that 31 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday, most showing signs of torture.

Young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave a sermon in Kufa on Friday before a congregation of thousands in which he demanded [Ar.] that Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari issue fatwas to the following effect:

1. Sunnis must avoid killing Shiites
2. Sunnis must not join al-Qaeda
3. Sunnis must rebuild the Askariyah Shrine at Samarra, destroyed last February. It is dedicated to the Twelfth Imam of the Shiites.

(Aljazeera is running a clip of this part of the sermon, which I’ve seen.)

The government of Nuri al-Maliki has issued a warrant for al-Dhari, the Secretary-General of the Association of Muslim Scholars [Sunni]. Muqtada said he would oppose that warrant if al-Dhari issued these fatwas. Al-Dhari has in the past condemned attacks on Shiites.

Muqtada also renewed his demand that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Members of Muqtada’s bloc in Parliament, such as Faleh Hasan Shanshal, have threatened to pull out of the al-Maliki government if the prime minister follows through with his plans to meet US President George W. Bush in Amman on Wednesday. Bush’s spokesman say that the meeting would be held nevertheless. Why US news services feel the need to report the rest of what the spokesman said, especially fairly high up in the article, is beyond me. Nonsense such as that Iraq is not in a civil war or that the violence will be “high on the agenda” at the Amman meeting is only worthy of being ignored or derided. If Bush was able to do anything about the violence in Iraq, he wouldn’t have to meet al-Maliki in the neighboring country of . . . Jordan. I think the Pentagon has concluded that Baghdad is just too dangerous and unpredictable to allow Bush to go there anymore.

Ahmad al-Safi of Karbala, a key agent of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, said in his Friday prayers sermon that any cabinet minister in the al-Maliki government who cannot stop the violence should resign [Ar.]. He said that Iraqis could no longer accept excuses from the ministers of defense and the interior in particular.

In Najaf at the Husayniyah Fatimiyah, Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) preached a sermon in which he pointed out that guerrillas have killed 7,000 Iraqis in the past two months but in four years have only killed 2876 foreign troops. “Is this a resistance or a slaughter of the Iraqi people?” he asked. He demanded that neighboring countries expel remnants of the former regime and cease instigating in their media. He also called on Shiites to avoid any “undisciplined” reprisals for the Thursday bombings. [You have to wonder if he thinks the “disciplined” reprisals will be quite enough. SCIRI has a feared paramilitary, the Badr Corps.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that in the northern Turkman city of Tal Afar, guerrillas detonated a car bomb and a belt bomb that killed 22 persons and wounded 24. The Sunni Turkmen who form the majority of the population of Tal Afar are complaining that the Iraqi police barged into a Sunni mosque Thursday evening and mistreated the worshippers, even beating some of them. The police are said to be mostly Shiites. The US military invested Tal Afar in August of 2005 in an attempt to stop Sunni Turkmen guerrilla actions there. The US at that time used Kurdish Peshmerga troops as allies and employed Shiite Turkmen as spies and informants. The city of 350,000 is increasingly riven by sectarian and ethnic tensions.

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233 Dead in Civil War Carnage
Health Ministry Besieged
3,000 Widows Created Each Month

So as Thursday began, Sunni Arab guerrillas surrounded and attacked the Ministry of Health, which is dominated by followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The guerrillas trapped 2,000 employees in the compound and threatened to kill any who came outside. They also subjected the building to mortar fire. The ministry guards, who are probably Mahdi Army, kept them at bay but lost 7 men doing it. It took US and Iraqi forces 2 hours to respond, and the guerrillas were only finally dispersed by helicopter gunships. The siege probably came in revenge for the Mahdi Army attack on the Sunni-run Ministry of Higher Education two weeks ago.

Then US troops searching for a kidnapped US soldier in Sadr City were a approached by van traveling at a high speed, which did not slow as they instructed it. They shot up the van, killing 4 civilians and creating some unhappy families in Sadr City; then this incident was overshadowed by several big attacks.

Steven R. Hurst of the Associated Press reported that the death toll in the string of car bombings targetting Sadr City and other Shiite neighborhoods on Thursday has risen to 161, with 257 wounded. Altogether, he says, “Counting those killed in Sadr City, at least 233 people died or were found dead across Iraq on Thursday.” Oh, my. Since Iraq is 11 times smaller in population than the US, that would be like the deaths of 2,563 Americans. On September 11, on the order of 2,783 Americans were killed, and several hundred of other nationalities.*

Armed Shiites came into the streets amid the charred and bloody corpses, says al-Hayat, cursing Sunni Muslims and firing their automatic weapons in the air in frustration and rage. They were taking mortar fire. The footage from Sadr City on Aljazeera looked like the seventh level of hell, with vehicles burning, the air thick with smoke, and mortar shells and small arms fire boiling in the background.

KarbalaNews.net reports in Arabic that after the car bombs were detonated in Sadr City, the Sunni Arab guerrillas set up checkpoints and attacked ambulences and rescue crews, stopping further ambulances from getting through. The Sunni Arab guerrillas also surrounded hospitals near to Sadr City and prevented cars bearing the wounded from getting through, firing on them.

The Iraqi government imposed a curfew on Baghdad and closed the Baghdad and Basra airports, cutting the country off from the outside worlds. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Basra ports were also closed “until further notice.”

How bad the situation is in Iraq is suggested by this email I just got from a professional who used to be in Iraq but now is in a nearby country:

‘ It is desperate in Iraq, worse then ever and there is no end in sight. I had lunch with [a former high ranking medical educator in Iraq] two days ago. [He]noted that Iraq no longer has neuro-surgeons, no cardiac surgeons, few pediatric doctors – they are all gone, killed or fled to neighboring countries like him. He was given seven days to get out or be killed. He is one of the lucky ones. He and his family have an opportunity for a new life in the US. But what about all the others. Where are they to go?

Another friend, a Sunni sheikh of the Shammar tribe noted to me that thousands of former officers are prepared to assault the G[reen] Z[one]. It is no longer a matter of can they do it, they are only mulling over the timing. The breach of the Green Zone security the other day was a test of their ability to get in, and not a real attempt at a coup, though it is reported as such. Every Iraqi I talk to says unambiguously that the resistance attached to the former regime would take out the Shiite militias with barely a fight, but that the resistance will not commit wholesale revenge against the Shiite population. They just want to get rid of the “carpet baggers” from Iran. ‘

Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite nationalist cleric, is said to be afraid that he cannot constrain his Mahdi Army militiamen from taking revenge on the Sunni Arab community for Thursday’s mass slaugher.

AP reports:

‘ In a TV statement read by an aide, al-Sadr urged unity among his followers to end the U.S. “occupation” that he said is causing Iraq’s strife. Al-Sadr said the attacks coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shia religious leader. The anniversary reckoning was by the Islamic calendar. “Had the late al-Sadr been among you he would have said preserve your unity,” the statement said. “Don’t carry out any act before you ask the Hawza (Shia seminary in Najaf). Be the ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who treat others unjustly.”

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shia religious figure in Iraq, condemned the bombings and issued condolences to family members of those who were killed. He called for self-control among his followers. ‘

In fact, Shiite guerrillas went ahead and took some revenge on Thursday, lobbing mortar shells at the HQ of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars as well as at the mosque and shrine of Imam Abu Hanifa, which they damaged. Most Turks, Pakistanis, Indian Muslims, and many Lebanese and Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis follow the Hanafi legal rite founded by Abu Hanifa. His is an important shrine, an attack on which will inevitably produce a Sunni backlash of some severity.

Harith al-Dhari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars [Sunni revivalist clerics], told al-Sharq al-Awsat that he had not sought out Arab states as mediators between himself and the Iraqi government. Baghdad issued a warrant last week for his interrogation on suspicion of instigating terrorism. The Arab League has intervened on his behalf. He is visiting Egypt for a conference but resides in Jordan and has not been taken into custody. In Thursday’s interview, al-Dhari insisted that he would travel back to Iraq at a time of his choosing, undeterred by the warrant. He said that those who have taken up arms against the American occupier would not relinquish them for the sake of entering the political process. He expressed pessimism that the establishment of diplomatic relations with Syria would change the situation in Iraq.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that Raja’ al-Khuza’i, a secular Shiite woman physician and the head of the National Council for Iraqi women, announced Thursday that Iraqi women are subjected to increasing violence and that 3,000 become widows each month. Al-Khuza’i served on the Interim Governing Council during the tenure of US proconsul Paul Bremer and had fought against the imposition of religious law on Iraq’s women. Speaking in Vienna, al-Khuza’i said that a large number of female activists had been assassinated, along with large numbers of school teachers, female physicians, and woman police officers. She said the 100 new widows every day were often left with no means of supporting themselves and their children.

Ed Wong reports on sophisticated training camps in Diyala for Sunni Arab guerrillas of a Salafi or Sunni revivalist bent (they are not actually Wahhabis for the most part, i.e.– Wahhabis predominate in Saudi Arabia). The guerrillas were able to stand and fight US troops in a pitched battle, deploying platoon-sized units.

Aljazeera reports that ex-Baathist Sunni fighters of the Awda [Return] Party have asserted control in the region near the Syrian border, driving Salafi Sunni revivalists out. Awda’s paramilitary is called the Army of Muhammad even though it is secular.

—
*Corrected text; thanks to a kind reader– see comments.

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Breaking News: Mass Slaugher in Baghdad

A string of car bombings in Sadr City and Kadhimiya (Shiite neighborhoods) wrought vast slaughter and destruction, leaving a death toll creeping toward 150 and over 200 wounded. Shiite guerrillas fired mortars at Sunni neighborhoods in response.

I just saw the news conference of President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Tariq Hashimi, and Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim on Aljazeera. They called for an end to this violence and a new vision. Hashimi, a Sunni, called on the Resistance to join the political process. They all looked dejected and bowed, reminding me more of prisoners on death row than vigorous leaders of a country. Hashimi was the least bowed.

You have to ask yourself, where is the US military? Where is the Iraqi Army? Where is the Iraqi police?
It is as though nobody was home except the Sunni Arab guerrillas, who seem to be closing in on a takeover of the Green Zone.

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36 Killed in Iraqi Civil War
Britain may Leave Iraq

British troops could withdraw from Basra by this spring. It is widely felt that the 7200 remaining troops are trapped in the south and probably cannot expect to achieve a great deal more in the way of providing security to the area. Late this coming spring, Prime Minister Tony Blair will step down in favor of his successor, Gordon Brown, who will face the Tories in 2009. Brown will not want the Iraq albatross around his neck.

The Iraqi government will talk to leaders of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements next week, according to the London Times.

Vice President Dick Cheney will stop in Saudi Arabia Saturday for talks. In conjunction with Bush’s planned meeting with PM Nuri al-Maliki next Thursday in Amman, these movements suggest building momentum for a new direction in Iraq, the contours of which are still unknown.

Guerrillas killed 3 Marines in al-Anbar Province on Wednesday.

Reuters reports that it could identify another 33 of the persons killed in political violence in Iraq on Wednesday. Major incidents:

‘ MOSUL – Police said they recovered 14 bodies, including three women in different areas of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. (A mostly Sunni Arab area with Kurds and Turkmen in the north). . .

NEAR RAMADI – Police found the bodies of three people near Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD – Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession, wounding two policemen when they went to retrieve the bodies of three people in Haifa street in central Baghdad, police said.

NEAR MUQDADIYA – A car bomb near an Iraqi army checkpoint and an attack by gunmen killed four people . . and wounded three civilians, near the town of Muqdadiya . . .

ISKANDARIYA – A roadside bomb planted near members of the Facility Protection Services (FPS) killed seven and wounded another on Tuesday in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAQUBA – Gunmen attacked a police patrol and killed three policemen in the religiously mixed city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.’

Al-Sharq al-Awsat / Reuters report that Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, leader of the [Sunni] Association of Muslim Scholars, has said that the current Iraqi government is a plot aiming at partition of the country and the purging of the opposition. The ealier summons to al-Dhari for an investigation of his views by an Iraqi court has apparently lapsed in the wake of international outrage.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashimi met Wednesday in Baghdad with Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi. Hashimi: “Tareq al-Hashemi said Iran plays a valuable security role in the region, so we must strengthen our ties with Tehran in all fields.” He also called for closer ties between Iran and Iraq.

Hashimi is a fundamentalist Sunni, and generally his party is suspicious of Iran and Shiite Islam, which predominates in that country. So this lovefest is unexpected. I suspect it is a sign that the Americans do plan to negotiate with Iran about Iraq. Such a plan would require the approval of at least some Sunni Arabs. Hashimi was invited to Iran and says he will go.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish Sunni, will go to Tehran on November 25 for bilateral talks.

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