Khamenei, Global Demonstrations, Blame US
Demonstrations in Sadr City, Basra, Kashmir
3 Sunni Mosques Torched
Iran's Supreme Jurisprudent,Ali Khamenei, managed to blame the Iraqi Baath Party, the Wahhabi sect of Islam, the Salafi Jihadi radicals among Sunnis, and the United States, jointly for the blowing up of the minarets at the al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra. The shrine is among the holiest sites for the Shiite branch of Islam. Iran is the largest Shiite country, with 90% or so of its 70 million people adhering to it. Khamenei is both the head of the Iranian state and the head of Iranian Shiism, and is recognized as authoritative by some Shiites outside Iran, especially the Hizbullah Party of south Lebanon. Most non-Iranian Shiites follow instead Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, who has called for calm. But Khamenei has a big megaphone among Shiites. His laying of responsibility for the bombing at the feet of the US will increase anti-American hatred in the Shiite world. Khamenei's heated and irrational rhetoric, positing a vast conspiracy among various groups that hate one another, is typical of the hardliners in Iran, but it is my impression that in recent months he has tended to leave the wilder talk to his rival Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi and his protege, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. I don't think Khamenei's remarks on this matter are a good sign.
The English text of Sistani's statement on the bombing of the shrine can be found here.
There were angry demonstrations by Muslims in Srinagar and elswhere in Indian Kashmir, at which the US was blamed for the Samarra bombing and Bush was burned in effigy: 'The protestors said that the US had launched a war against the Muslim world, and decried its policy in West Asia [i.e. Israel/Palestine]. . . Reports of protests have also come from other parts of the valley like Baramulla, Pattan, Mir Gund Divsar and Qazigund.'
Oh, great. Now Bush's Iraq blunder has made us hated in Mir Gund. He is such a great leader. I'll bet the people of Mir Gund once just ignored the United States. Bush got their attention all right. God talks to him and gives him missions, you know. To rile up Kashmiris in Mir Gund.
Not to mention the Caucasus. And we thought Azerbaijan was on our side.
And Bahrain, for a second day. Bahrain is not that big a place and 6,000 people are a lot there. Are there other good places in the Gulf for a naval base? I'd shop around.
And, wait until Friday afternoon in the Middle East and Asia. Shiites in Karachi, Pakistan, are planning fiery anti-American sermons and demonstrations. They are demanding that Pakistan cut off diplomatic relations with the US.
Tina Susman and Suhail Ahmad of the LAT provide ample anecdotal evidence that a lot of Baghdad Shiites are buying the conspiracy theory that the American military was behind the explosions in Samarra. Some even think that the US generals are in league with al-Qaeda. It is horrible, but I suppose it is ironic that Dick Cheney sent the poor US troops off to fight Saddam in Iraq on the ridiculous grounds that Saddam was in bed with al-Qaeda, so now those lies and conspiracy theories in Washington are being met by similar ones generated by Khomeinist Shiites, tying Cheney to al-Qaeda!
The biggest tragedy is that any sane person would have recognized after 9/11 that the US and the Shiites had a common enemy in Bin Laden and his ilk, and the US could have made up with Khatami's Iran. If the Iraq War had not happened, and the hardliners had not won the summer 2005 Iranian elections, the US position in the Muslim world would have been potentially strong by now. Instead, those great Islam scholars and political geniuses, Richard Perle and David Frum, managed to get Bush to put Iran in a cockeyed 'axis of evil.' It has been downhill ever since.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Reuters reports that a curfew and the presence of Iraqi and US troops in the street did not prevent large demonstrations from being held in Sadr City and in southern Shiite cities such as Karbala and Basra. In the capital, the Green Zone took mortar fire, as did the courtyard of the nearby al-Rashid Hotel (an employee was killed and several injured).
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Sadr City and some other Baghdad neighborhoods closed up their district gates for security reasons. There were also scattered clashes, it says, between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi government & US forces.
There are reports of fair numbers of Iraqis defying the curfew to flee their homes in Baghdad in fear of sectarian reprisals. Some are showing up in displacement camps outside the city. Some are attacked by militiamen on the way.
South of Baghdad in the cities of Iskandariya and Mahaweel, angry Shiites torched three Sunni mosques.
On Wednesday, 23 bodies had been found in Baghdad, victims of death squad killings. Even with all the security and curfew, 5 bodies were found on Thursday.
McClatchy adds these incidents around the country:
' During the last 24 hours, seven people in Basra were killed in sectarian violence resulting from the Samarra explosions. . .
DIYALA: Around 5 p.m. Wednesday, gunmen planted bombs inside Ali Kamal al-Deen shrine in Arab Thuailib village, destroying the dome and a large portion of the shrine. . .
DIYALA: TV news reports Thursday said the head of Diyala university has disappeared. Earlier, he had reported that 12 university lecturers were killed and 44 others transferred to other universities seeking safety. . .
KIRKUK: Around 12:30 p.m. Thursday, a suicide bomber targeted the municipality building of al-Riadh district (west of Kirkuk) during the weekly session of the board. Six were injured - three soldiers, two policemen and a civilian. . .
ANBAR: Around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, a suicide car bomber targeted the highway police patrol station in Fallujah, killing two policemen and injuring five others. . .
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/15/2007 12:18:00 AM
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18 Comments:
Perhaps the people of Mir Gund are right.
Personally, I think this new bombing of Samarra was a big, big mistake, because it re-opens the questions about the first bombing. Why is it, that nobody has been able to seriously interview the people of Samarra about what they know about the first bombing. They know a lot and it has never been allowed to come out in public.
This is a big strike against the US: if it was really al-Qaida who did the first bombing, they should have been inviting the press to come and discover anything they wanted. But no, it has all been hushed up. OK, we don't know for certain who killed the journalist Anwar Bahgat. But you would have thought that subsequently secure facilities for the press would have been provided, if the US had nothing to hide.
What's the source for Bush's conversations with God, who GWB believe assigns him missions like invading Iraq? (It would be useful to reference and to cite for my own work, which includes teaching and occasional public commentary.)
Prof. Cole,
Thank you for your continued efforts at getting the history, story and facts straight.
As Noam Chomsky said:
"If we choose we can live in a world of comforting illusion."
I and many others choose not to.
Regards,
Massachusetts
Professor Cole:
Why do you now so seldomly discuss the events in the Israel and the Occupied Territories?
Professor Cole, Your blog informs and enrages daily. Thanks.
"Oh, great. Now Bush's Iraq blunder has made us hated in Mir Gund. He is such a great leader. I'll bet the people of Mir Gund once just ignored the United States. Bush got their attention all right. God talks to him and gives him missions, you know. To rile up Kashmiris in Mir Gund."
God in this case just might be G.O.D. Inc.
The principle of civilian control of the military was, I think, to prevent an organization (read Army et al) from taking control. Civilian, elected leadership would be responsive to the people and would answer to them for misdeeds. Ha!
What we have now is worse. A boy king taking advice from Corporate America. Corporate America answers to its collective Boards of Directors, responsive to the moneyed few, and as for our elective leadership, well they, too, are responsive ... to Corporate America.
All the while the Boy King deludes on.
Is it a conspiracy theory?
Sidney Blumenthal reported a while back that the US was feeding money and weapons through the Saudis to Al-Qaeda elements in Lebanon in order to counter Hizbollah.
And we know that Cheney is itching for a reason to bomb Iran over the recommendations of this generals.
These are the people who generated an elaborate web of lies in order to use the entire US military to invade Iraq in the first place.
Isn't possible that independent forces loyal to Cheney had a hand in this for the purpose of antagonizing Shiite Iran in the hope of provoking a response to which they could argue for a US military response?
Dr Dahlia Wasfi observed that she has sunni and shia relatives, and that these groups had coexisted for hundreds of years without conflict.
The point about familial relatives, as distinct those genetically tied to us, means that we often have connections outside of a closely defined identity. This is especially so for those of us who live in colonized parts of the world, and even true it seems for the ethnic mosaics, for example the Middle East and South Asia.
The idea that the US and Al-Qaida are in a conspiracy is of course ridiculous. But there's a similar problem that looks like its going to be brewing. That is the deal that the US is making with some of the Sunni resistance to attack Al-Qaida.
The fact that there's a conspiracy theory about the US and Al-Qaida working together shows how easy its going to be for the Shiites to get very suspicious and worried about truces and deals between the US and the sunni resistance.
My own uninformed guess from a long ways a way is that these deals are an opening move in the strategy change Sy Hersh was writing about. If that's the case, how long can a combination of truces and deals with the Sunnis combined with stepped up operations against Shiites such as in Sadr City go on before the Shiites in Iraq get very, very worried that we are about to change sides and back a Sunni-Kurd government in Iraq?
Dr. Cole, very insightful and enlightening as always. One question - I thought that Sistani as marja held sway over many more followers than Khamanie both inside and outside of Iran...Is there a different dynamic inside Iran than I believed?
Thanks
Dr. Cole,
This might be a little bit off topic, but what do you think about the idea floated recently that Iran is supporting the Taliban against NATO forces in Afghanistan?
By the way, I saw your talk at Ohio State in January. Very informative! Any plans to come back?
What's the source for Bush's conversations with God, who GWB believe assigns him missions like invading Iraq?
If I'm not mistaken he was overheard telling that to either the Israeli ambassador or the Israeli prime minister? Or maybe the said Israeli official related the story.
US generals in league with al-Qaeda? Sounds absurd, unless you define "in league" as not conspiring, but as indirectly assisting each other. The fact is that the Bush Administration is the best thing that ever happened to al Qaeda and vica versa.
Should a historian simply cite what others said happened or what masses believed happened? Are the Samarra stories or theories the alpha and omega of it all? Were this the case, then the US decision to invade Iraq would need to be discussed and justified only in terms of what Bush or PNAC believed about Iraq and WMD.
Is it beyond all possiblity that a Shiite faction colluded with whoever blew up the minarets, in order to bring down the al-Maliki goverment, almost the way the Reichstag burning brought down Weimar. After all, Shiite FPS guards were in charge of the site, the demolitions were not flash hit and run jobs. Some aspiring theocrat might justify the attack more as as a coup de grace against a detested rival than against an already dilapidated shrine.
It costs authorities nothing to blame Baathists, al Qaeda, the CIA, or Mossad for being behind such an event. The first two are plausible candidates, just as Syrian intelligence is a "usual suspect" for bombings in Lebanon. But probity entails at least some concern for evidence.
Of course, there is no arguing with folks who insist that foreign spooks, extraterrestrials, or the ghost of some arch villain are behind every tragic event. People who claim that Elliot Abrams or some neocon faction would sponsor this (and cut off the USA's own nose) need at least furnish some document or proof, not just anecdotes or analogies. Otherwise, the allegation is no better than Rumsfeld's assertion that "absence of proof is not proof of absensce."
Ok, so [fill in the blank] did it. Prove he didn't.
The Financial Times on U.S. sponsored 'soft revolution' in Iran:
Backlash feared to US funding in Iran
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Guy Dinmore
Published: June 14 2007 22:12 | Last updated: June 14 2007 22:12
The survival of Iranian non-governmental organisations is being threatened by the US administration’s continuing attempts to fund the country’s civil society, leading activists have warned.
Prominent NGOs say the US funding, and Iranian suspicions that the money is designed to create the conditions for a “soft revolution”, have helped President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad justify a crackdown on their activities.
[...]
“There is a general agreement among Iranian intellectuals inside Iran and academics outside that the loose talk of regime change and allocation of money supposed to advance democracy in Iran has done a great deal of harm to Iranian academics, intellectuals and re-searchers,” Mr Bakhash told the FT. “It also feeds the pa-ranoia of the Iranian regime of American intentions.”
But there is no sign the US administration will retreat. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, made clear last month the US would not be deterred from funding pro-democracy efforts in Iran by requesting a sharp increase in spending to $75m for “civil society and human rights projects in Iran” in 2008.
[...]
[In Full]
God source is easy to get with a little googling... http://google.com/search?q=bush+talks+to+god+missions
at least here in the UK we can still get the occasional bit of reality published, even in the Murdoch owned Times - see Anatole Kaletsky's article today about the American Crazies at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1934770.ece
First- considering that we can not imagine that US occupation may be indirectly involved in the actual bombing of Samara shrine.
Now - all the Muslims and Iraqis will ask then why for the last few centuries nothing like this happened not even during the Ottoman ruling of current Iraq and even when Sunni Ottomans where fighting the Shieh Safavids Iranians, this is just happening in last five years.
Then - one can think if all fails in Iraq the best think for Occupation forces will be a sectarian war for more then one reason ( divide and rule principal) that will give them a legitimacy to prolong there stay, or gives them power to get new resolutions with even more mandates through UN to aid one side or another the Palestine model, historically that is what the British end up doing in Iraq at the 1920’s, so it is not far fetched to think the US policy makers came to conclusion that since you can not fix it let’s shovel the deck we may get a better hand Samara Bombing was a deck shoveling that is what happened during the 1920’s so much so that Shieh Ayatollahs of Najaff escaped to Qoum Iran and that is how Qoum became important theology center for Shih Islam after Najaff.
I am sure professor Cole can enlighten all of us with history of Iraq and British occupation since this is almost a mirror image this will be very useful for readers of this very popular belog.
Journalist Robert Fisk said that one of his informants said that "Chaos *is* the plan." Maybe he got it from Josh Marshall.
It sounds crazy until one remembers that US policy throughout the 1980s was to sell weapons to both Iran and Iraq and have them grind one another down. When Iran got the upper hand, the US provided intelligence and the components of chemical weapons to Iraq to even the balance of power. As painful as it is to contemplate, it seems very likely that the US is engaged in calculated genocide against Iraqis and now plans to spread its "plan" to the region.
Charles of MercuryRising
http://www.phoenixwoman.wordpress.com
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