5 US GIs Killed
British Raid Rogue Police in Basra
Coeds Raped, Killed in Baghdad
Reuters reports several deadly bombings in Baghdad.
In addition, US military spokesmen said that 5 GIs were killed by guerrillas on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, "Three U.S. Marines and a sailor were killed in action in the western Anbar province on Thursday, the U.S. military said in a statement on Friday."
In Basra on Friday:
"British troops backed by tanks yesterday seized a leader of a rogue Iraqi police unit suspected of being behind the killing of 17 people in an ambush near the Iraqi city of Basra, the British military said. Some 800 troops launched a pre-dawn raid on a house in a southern district of Basra and captured seven people, including a "significant" member of Basra's police Serious Crimes Unit, spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said."
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Friday, Baghdad awoke to discover that a horrible crime had been committed. Militiamen kidnapped three coeds from Mustansiriya University, raped them, killed them, and tossed their bodies into a courtyard at al-Adli Medical School in the capital. A woman's organization complained bitterly that the Iraqi government was doing nothing to halt a building crime wave. The organization and the girls' friends among Mustansiriya U. students also blamed the Shiite ayatollahs for lending their support to the Shiite militias. (Mustansiriya University is near to Sadr City and the implication is that the kidnappers were Mahdi Army, attacking Sunni girls).
Likewise, the militias kidnapped a female teacher from Ghazaliya district, raped her, and cast her body in the street in the Shu'la district of Baghdad.
The honor of women is a key value in Iraqi society and the kidnapping and raping and killing of these female students "in the most vile manner" has enormous shock value. Historian of Iran Afsaneh Najmabadi argued that Turkmen kidnappings of Iranian women in 1905 helped weaken the legitimacy of the Iranian state and were an element in the debates of the subsequent constitutional revolution.
A member of the Student Union said that the ability to hold classes at Iraqi universities had been put in doubt and studies might well have to stop.
Al-Zaman also reports that there is a growing split in the ruling Shiite bloc in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, between the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and the Sadrists, led by Muqtada al-Sadr.
A number of UIA leaders have headed to Najaf, where they are seeking the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the crisis, in a last ditch attempt to avoid a break-up of the alliance. Sadrist MP Nasir al-Ruba'i said that talks between SCIRI and the Sadrists on Friday had failed.
The Archbishop of Canterbury writes that Middle Eastern Christians are being put at risk by the Anglo-American Iraq War.
Statements of Abu Omar Baghdadi, leader of the "Islamic State of Iraq" that 70 percent of Sunni Arab Iraqis support "al-Qaeda" should be taken with a very large grain of salt. That 70 percent support the guerrilla war against the Americans, now that is clear. Secular-leaning ex-Baath nationalists and tribal chieftains still constitute a very large proportion of the guerrillas.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/23/2006 12:38:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Although the Mahdi Army indulge in large scale criminal and secterian activities, we must not jump to conclusions.
The Salafis and al-Qaeda are particularly interested in destroying the education system in Iraq, and they also gain from having the crimes attributed to Shi'ias in general.
Juan, the news about the women students at Mustansiriyah Univ. is tragic and alarming. However, please don't demean the women any further, posthumously, by using the patronizing terms "coed" or "girl" to refer to them. (Like only men are entitled to get an "education" whereas females are "co-educated" alongside them??)
Actually, I think one does take away from the gravity of these students' deaths by turning the piece into an opportunity to police language. I'm not impressed by the scolding. I routinely refer to 18 year old males as boys, so I don't see why the other shouldn't be girls. And, not all institutions of education in Iraq are coeducational, so I don't see why that language shouldn't be used where they are. I'm getting old and crusty and uninterested in anyone's shibboleths.
Dr Cole. As a getting-old crusty woman and with greatest respect to old, crusty, unreconstructed males I would like to weigh in support of Helena's admonishment. Language is important, particularly in relation to this sort of issue.
This is not to detract from the gravity of the allegations which is an extremely serious development. I am thinking back to the orchestrated mass rapes of women in Bangladesh by Pakistani troops all those years ago. If the victims were Shiite students, almost certainly the perpetrators must have been from the other side? Or vice versa.
As the Buddha said, Juan, you can't give offense to anyone unwilling to take it. (Note the nature of the transitive verbs in question). This goes for Popes, Danish cartoonists, and Muslims, as well. You go ahead and use whatever language you want. Others can do the same. "Let truth and falsehood grapple in the open. Truth will win." If monotheism itself doesn't insult the human mind beyond all endurance, then (to use Korzybski's terminology) meaningless "noises" in the air or "spell marks" on paper shouldn't hold any undue terrors for us. "It maks no sense," a Tibetan Buddhist once said, "to run away screaming from a picture of a snake."
As Humpty Dumpty sort of said (and I paraphrase): "Do want to master this thing called language, Alice, or do you propose to let it master you?" Or, as I used to say to my (rather limited number of) high school students: "Learn for your own purposes, or somebody else will train you for theirs."
Anyway, I suggest we concentrate on the American government's deliberate Orwellian euphemism du jour: namely, "surge," which replaces the now-defunct "spike," which in reality means "another increase" which we should more precisely decide for ourselves to call "escalation." Language does matter, but as long as everyone says what they mean by the words they use, then we adults can make all the necessary allowances and conclude for ourselves what to think. No language police, "sacred-scripture" manuscript mongers, or lexical baby-sitters required or requested.
Well, I think Helena may have half a point, though not the one she intended. I'm not fussed about the boys and girls part, but I think I'm correct in saying that in for example Britain, Australia and NZ (dunno about Canada) there is no portmanteau word for female students - certainly here in NZ you would refer to one as a "co-ed," with possible connotations of female inferiority, at your peril.
So perhaps using "co-ed" to refer to Iraqi female students is, while not sexist exactly, a bit of an example of "Yankee imperialism."
Which I believe is what got you you into this mess in the first place?
As far as I can gather, Sadr is more nationalistic than SCIRI, so we should be supporting him, no? So why do we hear this talk in Washington about weakening Sadr, that would seem like a bad idea. Am I missing something here?
lol, u should excuse her prof. :)
Surge is a dirty word meaning to kill as many Iraqis as possible before Congress cuts funding. Recall, one purpose of the War was to punish Saddam Hussein for paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
How interesting that Juan;s bloggers follow the pattern of the Bushies and argue about the correct terminology and ignore the glove that has been thrown down. After many decades of observation it seems to me that the males (boys or men?) have announced that females (girls or women?) are now a tool of war and are open for exploitation.
To surge or not to surge is a moot argument in the face of that dare!
Alice
Juan you have this peculiar habit of refering to Zaman like it is any more or less impartial than the other baghdad papers. This paper routinely glosses over sunni atrocities against shias while talking endlessly about shia crimes.
Juan there is absolutely no evidence to suggest shias are raping sunni girls systematically. Let us not forget that saddam emptied his jails and mental hospitals before the invasion. Id say theres a good chance that good old fashioned criminals are to blame.
And i also dont understand americas obsession with Sadr. Its a bit like the obsession they had with Saddam. Its unhealthy. Wouldnt the more pro-iran Sciri be a bigger threat than the nationalist al sadr?
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