Crash Kills 7 GIs
Arab Demonstration in Kirkuk
A helicopter crash killed 7 US GIs on Wednesday. AP interviewed an Iraqi farmer in the area who said he heard a missile being fired before the crash, and a radical Muslim group took responsibility. Only an investigation will settle if it was a shoot-down, but the previous four such crashes clearly were. It is not clear whether the Sunni Arab guerrillas are getting better weaponry for use against US helicopters.
Hundreds of Arabs demonstrated in Kirkuk on Wednesday against the decree of the Committee for Normalization, which would send Arabs who were brought to the province during the Baath period back to the center or south of the country. The demonstrators maintained that as Iraqis they could live where they liked. Al-Zaman reported that Sunni and Shiite Arabs along with Turkmen all joined in the rally. They shouted or carried placards proclaiming, "No to the Partition of Iraq! Yes to National Unity!"
What they were alleging was that the Kurds are planning to grab Kirkuk province, add it to their Kurdistan Regional Government, and then have all four of their provinces secede from Iraq, taking Kirkuk's petroleum with them.
Kurdish spokesmen maintained that the program, which provides about $15,000 in compensation, is voluntary. Arabs and Turkmen appear afraid that it is not.
Al-Zaman quotes Raad al-Sarkhi, head of the Sadr Movement office in the city, saying that both Islam and Arabism forbid the partition of Iraq. He said that that was the reason he and others had come out, on instructions from the leadership in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, to protest the expulsion of Arabs from the province. He said that most Arabs in Kirkuk had come 30 years ago, and no longer had property or homes in the south or even a place in local government registers, and no amount of compensation would allow them to replace their homes and shops in Kirkuk. Sheikh Abdullah Sami al-Asi of the local Council said that he rejected a second Palestine in Iraq [i.e. the expulsion of people from their homes by settlers]. Kurdish Kirkuk authorities estimate that 7400 Arab families would be affected by the expulsion decree. (At an average of 7 members per family, that would be over 50,000 individuals).
Iraqi Turkmen also allege that they are being ethnically cleansed, and warn that they will boycott the planned December referendum on whether Kirkuk will join the Kurdistan confederacy.
Iraqis in general are being displaced from their homes, with 1 in 7 having fled abroad . Intrepid journalist Warren Strobel writes, "Every day, violence displaces an estimated 1,300 more Iraqis in the country; every month, at least 40,000." That would be half a million displaced persons a year.
The Bush administration has been happy to see Jordan and Syria swamped with the refugees, but has taken in hardly any, itself.
This article says it is the biggest such set of displacements since the Palestinians were expelled or fled in 1948.
That is absolutely true if one is concerned with the proportion of the population affected. Off the top of my head, what I remember is that some 950,000 out of 1.3 million Palestinians lost their homes and were made refugees. With regard to absolute numbers, there have been bigger disasters. In Afghanistan 1980-2001, 5 million were displaced abroad and more millions internally. The displacements from Lebanon 1975-1989 were also substantial as a proportion of the population.
More on sectarian displacement in Iraq
Police found 33 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Reuters reports that guerrillas carried out deadly bombings in Baghdad and Suwayra. A mortar attack killed 4 in Falluja. Police found 3 bodies in Mahmudiyah and 2 in Yusufiyah.
The USG Open Source Center translates the following report:
' Former police officer beheaded in public north-east of Baghdad - website
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Internet Version-WWW)
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 T17:29:20Z
Former police officer beheaded in public north-east of Baghdad - website
An insurgent group have beheaded a former Iraqi police officer in a public park in Sharaban area, north-east of Baghdad, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, website reported on 7 February.
The website quoted a security source from Sharaban area as saying the former lieutenant, Firas Khalifa al-Jaburi, had been abducted in the morning of Wednesday, 7 February, in the Al-Ibara area before he was taken away to Sharaban.
The website said the insurgents called on people to go to a public square in Hay al-Mu'alimin to see the beheading of Al-Jaburi.
The report said Al-Jaburi left his job with Dyiala police three months ago after he was threatened by insurgents that he and his family would be abducted if he would not quit the police.
(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic -- Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website) '
The statistics coming out of Iraq are dreary. A story like this, of a single person, is even more depressing.
[PDF} A Chatham House report on how likely it is that terrorist groups could deploy WMD in the UK. Apparently, not so much.
Jeff Cohen on Jonah Goldberg's wretched bet, which I declined as inhumane. As Cohen points out, the worst travesty of all is that the Tribune Corp. that owns the LA Times fired Bob Scheer, who has a great deal of sound judgment, and hired Goldberg, who couldn't find even his behind with both hands. NPR also gave Goldberg a perch, apparently to fend off the troglodytes in Congress. It isn't right, but, well, the US is run by cranky old rich white men, and some of them like what Goldberg has to say. Has nothing to do with whether he actually knows what he is talking about. As his foolish bet shows, he hasn't the slightest.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/08/2007 12:33:00 AM
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Kirkuk had been mainly Turkmen and secondly Assyrian for a long time, but it neither had been forced out.
Being able to leave Iraq during the sanctions was both very desirable and difficult. The Turkmen and Assyrians were luckier than the rest due to links outside Iraq, so they left in large numbers. The Kurdish claim that they are "emothinally attached" to Kirkuk is both comical and false.
The other overlooked issue is that the majority of the Kurds outside Kurdistan intensely hate the Kurdish warlords who, with the help of the USA, virtually own Kurdistan now.
Another issue is the movement of people within the country. If the oil industry in Kirkuk recovers, a large number of people from other parts of Iraq will move there tipping the balance against the Kurdish warlords. Even without the oil, it is quite easy to Sadr for example to ask few hundred thousands from Sadr City to move there.
The bottom line is: you cannot have a modern state ruled on primitive tribal basis.
Juan, thanks for a good, generally v. informative post here.
However, yr math is a bit off: That would be half a million displaced persons a year. In 13 years at that rate it would be all Iraqis...
Things are bad, very bad in Iraq. But little point in making a bad math case here. If the basline population of Iraqis was 26 million, then it would take 52 years to empty the country through these displacements.
God what a tragic, tragic mess.
Btw, check out my column on Arab attitudes to the prospect of a US-Iran war, in the CSM today.
Half a million per year times 13 years equals 6.5 million. This is hardly all Iraqis, Juan.
Goldberg is just a dime-a-dozen pundit. Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure that rightwing views come to predominate."
You hit the nail on the head there. Somebody should go back and read all of Goldbergès fine analysis on Iraq. He is no journalist but a professional propagandist (Annals of Bush bashing give me a break) for the Matrix and his presence at the Times is disheartening.
It is instructive to wonder what the reaction of the UK or US to an attack using CBRN might be
The final element of the CBRN system is the response to attack. Terrorists expect a targeted population to panic, thus magnifying the effect of any attack. Yet while a terrorist attack using CBRN would certainly be terrible for all those affected, in most cases the broader impact could be governed by the quality of the public reaction. There is a strong case, therefore, for retaining the initiative in that part of the CBRN system which is largely beyond the reach of terrorists, by
ensuring a proportionate, non-panicked public response to an attack. It follows that the CBRN
threat should be understood as well and as widely as possible, and it is with that goal in mind
that this paper has been written.
Just at the moment it sounds as if two firecrackers going off simultaneously in a dustbin in the Bronx might trigger a wave of air raids on Iran
Is there a mechanism to avoid the hysteria that followed the World Trade Centre attacks?
Is anyone rationally discussing what the repsonse should be an event?
Isn't it true that one of the main factors that convinced the Soviets to pull out of Afghanistan was the improved anti-helicopter weaponry used by the Afghan resistance?
oh, good. I was hoping you'd have something to say about Jonah Goldberg Day. One can never shower too much derision upon the Doughy Pantload.
Not sure if we allowed to post links on this blog, we never did, but this is a well written article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02052007.html
Your President launched an endless 'Global War on Terror' during his first year in office.
In the past five years, your government has killed more US citizens than Osama Bin Laden did. You now have more Iraq War veterans on VA disability support than you have soldiers in Iraq.
So far your government has stolen more than half a trillion dollars from you, taking money from nurses and teachers and giving it to oil executives, weapons-makers, and mercenaries. Many of these 'contractors' have served in this Administration and your Vice President is a stock-holder in one of them.
Your government has killed staggering numbers of civilians.
I never thought I'd live to see an American torture camp. Abu Ghraib was and Guantanamo Bay is an American torture camp. Fear the deed, not the word.
I do not remember fearing you when I was growing up. I was glad you were there.
You now have an Office of Information Awareness that boasts a Total Information Awareness Program. Your government will soon be aware enough to open an ashram.
You now have a Department of Homeland Security. The Department maintains a colour-coded 'national security advisory' scale that will never drop to green. Today is a yellow day, which means there is an 'elevated' risk of terror, except in your airline industry where today is an orange day, which means there is a 'high' risk of terror.
You are not much governed by a President anymore, but by a Commander-in-Chief.
Mr. Bush played a guitar while New Orleans drowned.
Your leader took and then re-took power amid serious electoral irregularities.
Your government is stripping you of rights English-speakers have had for centuries. If you are arrested on suspicion of 'terror,' you no longer have the right to challenge the fact and conditions of your detention. That right is usually considered foundational to modern democracy.
Your Executive has declared it will no longer share power with your Legislature: your Vice President has said Congress will not stop him no matter what. 'Co-equality' used to be considered foundational to American democracy. In spite of its majority, your opposition party cannot even pass a non-binding resolution against the worst defence policy in American history.
You are occupying 55 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq and, though your military is stretched as never before, you are about to attack another 70 million people in Iran. You will be at war with an unbroken chain of nations from the border of Jordan to the edge of China, unless the other 90% of the world's Muslims get pulled into your vortex of slaughter, in which case borders will become irrelevant and American mass-murder will define our times. You cannot rely on your career-minded representatives to do what you elected them to do. American citizen, demand impeachment or know you are complicit.
John Burns' Revisionist Whitewash Comments Took My Breath Away
"My guess is that ..the forces that we liberated by invading Iraq were so powerful and so uncontrollable that virtually nothing the United States might have done,...would have effectively prevented this (present) disintegration." (JOHN BURNS)
The Generals were forbade from writing a comprehensive post war plan under threat of being fired.
The State Department's 15 Volume post-war plan and analysis was effectively trashed.
Since day one of the Iraq fiasco my mind frequently offers up what I call the "Einstein Exception." All time is relative. Whether the mission in Iraq was to install a friendly government by force thusly cementing a US presence in hydrocarbon central or to vanquish a threatening regime it makes no difference. What makes a difference is that the amount of time available to plan a successful liberation was in no way constrained. The speed at which the invasion was executed, which precluded comprehensive post-war planning, was itself the greatest element of incompetence.
I strongly argue that John Burns' argument is therefore null and void.
"...and hired Goldberg, who couldn't find even his behind with both hands."
And a map, compass and flashlight.
I'd be more worried about a situation developing similar to the partition of India, but a partition born of violence rather than negotiation. That is, to some extent, what is going on in Baghdad right now. Or, at least from what I can tell.
Withdrawal...Redeployment...Disengagement?
By any other name, the Cut and Run Coalition policy streams appear to be converging at least on a slogan, and perhaps a plan which can be imposed legislatively.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an Op-Ed from Edward Luttwak arguing for a "disengagement" once Bush has satisfied his urge to surge.
Luttwak made a similar proposal in a Foreign Affairs article two years ago. A few months later, Juan Cole withdrawal plan incorporated similar concepts.
Tomorrow, the Council on Foreign Relations will release a report "After the Surge" which will argue that the US "has achieved all it can achieve" in Iraq and should begin disengagement after the surge has passed.
I think that it is at least plausible that Congressional republicans, worried about their future, might embrace the concept to in sufficient numbers to force a policy reversal.....
"Is there a mechanism to avoid the hysteria that followed the World Trade Centre attacks?"
I doubt it. However we aren't experiencing a new century or a new millenium for quite a while. Some of the hysteria was down to the dramatic calender change.
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