Ashura Massacres Shake Iraq
At Least 130 Killed
The Western press reported on 130 of the iraqis killed in political violence in Iraq on Monday, and the some 200 wounded.
It isn't ordinary time in Iraq for the Shiites, it is ritual time, sacred time. It is a time of deep mourning, of grief and the beating of chests and even flagellation with chains. It is the season for commemorating the martyrdom, the cosmically wrongful killing of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who led the people of Kufa in what is now Iraq against the tyrannical empire of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. His generals cut the plucky scion of the House of the Prophet down without mercy, along with his relatives and followers. They are said to have carried Husayn's head aloft on a stave and to have deposited it before the caliph in his palace in Damascus. The death of Husayn is the "passion" of Shiite Islam, their Good Friday. His shrine is in the Iraqi city of Karbala, where guerrillas dressed as American troops killed 5 American soldiers on Sunday. Emotions run high already. A sense of the meaning of the commemoration for Shiites can be gained from this British Shiite web site.
The Sunni guerrillas' killing of over 100 Shiites in Baghdad and Khalis on Monday was therefore no ordinary carnage, even in an Iraq where to have 70 persons blown up by a single bomb is no longer a novelty to say the least. But for it to be done during these days is to drive Shiites wild with grief, to push them to take revenge. It is to universalize the martyrdom of Husayn, making all Shiites martyrs. The guerrilla movement depends on people taking revenge, from every side.
That blackhawk helicopter that crashed, killing 13 Americans on Saturday was probably shot down with a shoulder-held missile launcher. If the guerrillas ever get hold of a big supply of those, we'd be in big trouble. The Soviet-made SA-14s and SA-16s, with good guidance systems, are available on the international arms market and have occasionally shown up in Iraq. The more common SA-7s, mostly from a big batch made by the Soviet Union in 1971, are by now a hit or miss sort of thing.
Richard Engel points out that Bush's escalation plan for Iraq concentrates solely on Baghdad and al-Anbar provinces, ignoring hotspots such as Diyala Province, where Sunni-Shiite violence is extreme.
Shiite militiamen have demanded that all Palestinians leave Iraq on pain of death. Yes, no doubt they should go back to their own country. Ooops. I forgot. They don't have one.
So long, Iraqi Christians. Their new sobriquet? Syrian Christians.
Another translation of Muqtada al-Sadr's interview with an Italian newspaper.
On the all but forgotten eastern front, a suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan killed 10 and wounded 14 just outside a US military base.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/23/2007 06:32:00 AM
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7 Comments:
This "new plan" seems quite similar to that from the movie "HELP!" That plan failed too.
Indeed, what I read of this '3rd or 4th "surge"' as Republican senators in opposition put it and its "strategy" is a copy of Model's and Hitler's "surge" at Stalingrad. The scapegoat for this impending, massive defeat will be Iran. The political drama intensifies daily as it's clear Pelosi is being pushed by Cheney's intransigence to put impeachment to use as the only tool capable of stopping his mad gambit--a prospect made possible by ever more sensible Republicans being turned away from the Dark Side.
Based on the recent poll findings, thousands of troops are against the "plan." It may not include all services, but a mutiny is becoming a possibility. This weekend's demo in DC will provide an indication of how much police repression Cheney can apply and how many people are motivated to protest.
Syria took in a good many Lebanese refugees during the Israeli Incursion and remains the only Iraqi neighbor who has not either closed its borders or restricted entry. Given the numbers of refugees created by US policy and our refusal to speak to Syria because it is a vassal state to Iran, there has to be some sort of cosmic irony here.
Interesting that the push in Israel is to ensure that a replacement head of IDF is not named until investigations into the IDF failure in Lebanon is thoroughly investigated.
It appears the rightwing is determined to bring down Olmert and Peres. Any guesses as to whom the replacement PM would be?
Netanyahou perhaps?
Juan,
The news doesn't make sense, The Shiite militiamen have demanded that all Palestinians leave Iraq on pain of death. Sounds like the new Propaganda message. The new strategy in Iraq seems to be to use mis-information to mobilize Sunnis from Arab world against Shiites. Divide and Conquer.
In the propaganda message, Iranians are always chastised for being pro-Palestinians. The Iraqi Shiites are chastised for being pro-Iranians. Now the propaganda says that Iraqi Shiites are trying to kill Palestinians. Just doesn't add up.
Along with Helena Cobban, I find the "Iraqslogger" site slightly dubious, but presumably they do not simply make stuff up.
At the moment there are two items of interest, an order from Maliki's office that nobody in the defense or interior ministries is to talk to the press about security, and a very peculiar account of the invasion and occupation of Iraq from a Pentagon-first point of view that seems -- but I'm really not quite sure -- to end by writing it off, provided we all agree how to do such things better next time.
Happy days.
2 small corrections: The number killed in the Blackhawk crash was revised down to 12. And the air defense system you are thinking of is probably the SA-18 or SA-16. The SA-17 is a large armored tracked vehicle, while the SA-18 and -16, like the earlier SA-7 and -14 are shoulder-fired missiles.
Hello,
I'm a Shia Muslim (12er) and I just wanted to clarify. Ashura is next Tuesday the 30th, not today. Tuesday the 23rd was the 3rd of Muharram. The word "Ashura" literally meants "Ten".
Hope that helps!
Unfortunately the Shia community is bracing for the largest attack in several years, next Tuesday. Despite the highest levels of security, they always do their best to kill innocent people. May Allah curse them.
Hi king, thanks for clarifying that. Many news sources, including those often fairly well presented like Juan's blog, seem to have made that mistake.
In other mistakes, I'm glad Juan highlighted the plight of the Palestinian population of Iraq here:
Shiite militiamen have demanded that all Palestinians leave Iraq on pain of death. Yes, no doubt they should go back to their own country. Ooops. I forgot. They don't have one.
But unfortunately this article, like many about the Palestinian refugees in Iraq possesses numerous factual errors often overlooked by the press, which tend to provide a kind of "understanding" for why Shi'as might want to kick out the Palestinian refugges from their country.
To mention a few,
"Now the Shia militias are stepping up their campaign to drive out Iraq's 20,000 remaining Palestinians – half the estimated 40,000 living in the country at the start of the war, all of whom were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and provided with housing, money and free education."
This implies that all Palestinians in Iraq emigrated under Saddam Hussein's watch but, as Juan and any self-respecting Arabist is well aware, the first Palestinians migrated to Iraq in 1948.(when Saddam Hussein was only 11)
Second,
"Hundreds of Iraqis were forced to leave their homes to make way for the migrants, many of whom joined the ruling Ba'ath party."
Whether you support the move or not, this quote ignores te fact that many, if not all, of those Iraqis who were "forced to leave" left not only their homes, but their country, as they were Iraqi Jews whom were made to leave in a "tit for tat" response to Israel's exile of many Palestinians from their family homes.
Again, though it is important to highlight the plight of Palestinians in Iraq, it is also important to take issue with press that continues to justify the brutal acts taken against Iraq's Palestinian populace.
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