Rice Apologizes to al-Maliki for Blackwater Shootings
Was Abu Rishah a Fake?
McClatchy reports from Baghdad that Iraqi eyewitnesses maintain that Blackwater security guards fired at civilians without provocation on Sunday, in contrast to the company's own story about the incident. Probably they were firing at a car that neglected to stop when told to, or neglected to stop fast enough. Since such vehicles might be driven by suicide bombers, American military and civilian security forces have often opened fire on innocent Iraqis who just did not hear or did not understand the command to halt their vehicles, or who panicked and sped up. The offending car in this instance had a family of three in it, including a toddler who ended up being melted to his mother's body in the resulting conflagration.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Condi Rice personally apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for the killing of 10 Iraqis by Blackwater guards and promised that steps would be taken to ensure the tragedy was not repeated. The Iraqis are from all accounts absolutely furious about the Blackwater cowboys running around their country armed and dangerous and acting with impunity. The State Department, which employs Blackwater, is highly embarrassed and has ordered State Dept. personnel in Iraq not to circulate for the time being. Debate is raging over whether Iraq has the right to try the apparently trigger-happy civilian security men of Blackwater.
Al-Hayat also says that a US officer in Salahuddin, Col. Barry DiRosa, admitted that the US was paying the salaries (but not the weapons costs) of the tribal irregulars recruited to fight "Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia." The paper says he admitted in a telephone interview that "Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" as it operated in Salahuddin Province is mainly an Iraqi organization, not primarily made up of foreign fighters.
Greg Palast argues that Sattar Abu Rishah, the leader of the Al-Anbar Salvation Council who was assassinated last week, was a 'phony sheikh' who had no real tribe behind him and is opposed by the very powerful and very real sheikh of the Dulaim tribe. He points to video reportage produced by Rick Rowley and David Enders and carried by Aljazeera English, which includes interviews with Iraqis who doubt Abu Rishah's bona fides. The videos had earlier been blogged by Marc Lynch, who had been following Abu Rishah and had blown the whistle on him as having an unsavory past.
My own feeling is that Palast is generally on to something but is exaggerating a bit. The al-Anbar Salvation Council does have representation on it from the Dulaim tribe, and weekly attacks in al-Anbar have fallen from 400 in summer of 2006 to 100 this summer, according to the US military. Al-Anbar is hardly quiet, and it is easy to exaggerate the changes (more especially since at least one major city, Fallujah, has had a private vehicle ban since late May, an artificial policy that cannot continue much longer). But to say that the Al-Anbar Salvation Council is a complete fake and no tribal leaders are cooperating with the US, if that is what Palast is saying, would be to go too far in the other direction.
Another 50,000 persons were displaced in Iraq since July bringing the total to 2.25 million. I don't think the optimism about the 'surge' 'working' included this data.
McClatchy reports attacks in Iraq on Tuesday:
' Baghdad
- Around 7 a.m. a road side bomb targeted police patrol in Zafaraniyah. One civilian was killed and 2 policemen were injured.
- Around 8 a.m. a bomb inside a bus exploded in Zayuna. Two civilians were killed and 5 were injured.
- Around 9 a.m. Two parked car bomb exploded in parking yard not far away from Baghdad morgue. 5 people were killed and 20 were injured.
- Around 1 p.m. a parked car bomb targeted civilians in Ur neighborhood near Al Firdous mosque. 8 civilians were killed and 15 others were injured.
- Police found 9 dead bodies throughout Baghdad . . .'
Another attack was launched on an aide of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Basra, but the aide, Imad Abdul Karim, escaped injury.
At the Global Affairs Group Blog, Barnett Rubin comments on Afghan reactions to recent saber-rattling by Tehran against 'US interests" in Iraq and Afghanistan if Washington attacks Iran.
At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, Sucy writes to Joseph Bonaparte of France's new conquest, Egypt: 'There is much to be hoped for from this country; but then this hope is of the nature of those which a length of time alone can realize. ' It is always the way in colonial conquest, that the military maintains there is hope but it just needs more time . . .
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/19/2007 12:30:00 AM
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12 Comments:
Doctor Cole - Do you know anything about "Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800?"
Maybe you wrote about it - after Patraeus mentioned it in testimony.
It seems like something made up.
You say,
But to say that the Al-Anbar Salvation Council is a complete fake and no tribal leaders are cooperating with the US, if that is what Palast is saying, would be to go too far in the other direction.
He is not saying that. He is saying Abu Risha is a fake. He actually says Al Anbar tribal sheikhs are cooperating with US Forces at the moment because they got money from US.
Actually a Jordanian Journalist Moyad Abu Subiah of Al Ghad newspaper is quoted as saying he has never heard anyone by the name Abu Risha. He is the analyst of Iraqi Insurgency for that paper.
And another sheikh of one anbar tribe is saying in the same video that Americans invent cartoon characters like Abu Risha for their own purposes. I think Palast is not exaggerating. It seems to me Professor Cole didn't carefully read the Palast article.
At least Bonaparte saw the writing on the wall and left Egypt, letting his troops fend for themselves. He was a lot smarter than Bush, Petraeus & Co.
"...no tribal leaders are cooperating with the US, if that is what Palast is saying, would be to go too far in the other direction."
My $0.02...
Imho, The only reason the tribal leaders are cooperating is because we PAY them to, and with the current state of domestic security, an infusion of guns/surveillance equipment, etc for their militias go a long way towards securing their 'cooperation' with people they would normally despise.
Sattar Abu Rishah, in American history, would be considered one of the 'Peace Chiefs', the natives who cooperated with the settlers and often claimed to own the land they were selling to the whites, although no such authority was imbued in them by their group.
Most ended up living in the white world, were assassinated, or executed.
BTW, Ward Churchill is absolutely correct when he says that we are doing EXACTLY the same thing to the Iraqis, as we did to the First 'Americans'.
The playbook of global domination hasn't changed in 500 years or more.
The purple thumb election of hand picked candidates for an utterly illegitimate government in Iraq is OBVIOUSLY causing no change in the present... But 100 years from now that (and other) socio-cultural events WILL have caused a permanent change in their society.
Leigh
But to say that the Al-Anbar Salvation Council is a complete fake and no tribal leaders are cooperating with the US, if that is what Palast is saying, would be to go too far in the other direction.
That's not what Palast is saying. He's saying that the U.S. decided to buy the cooperation of the same people who were attacking the occupying forces previously. He says that Abu Rishah wasn't killed by "al Qaeda," he was killed by one or another of the very factions who now constitute the Awakening Council among whom are, in fact, the same people who the U.S. used to identify as al Qaeda.
That I think is exactly correct.
On the use of private contractors on the battlefield, the Daily Star (Lebanon) has a brusing editorial titled "Enough havoc: Send the 'dogs of war' home" - it's not about military dogs, but mercenaries. They write:
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The White House is running for cover on the issue, and with good reason: The return of mercenaries to the global stage is a direct consequence of US President George W. Bush's insistence on invading Iraq in defiance of the international community - and on doing so in a manner dictated by neo-conservative theory rather than military necessity. ... These "dogs of war" have no business on the modern battlefield, especially one created by a great power espousing the selfless goals that Washington has trotted out to defend its misadventure in Iraq - and particularly when indigenous Iraqi militias are summarily dismissed as 'terrorists.'
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The Daily Star editorials on Iraq may be especially influential with al-Maliki. Source:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=85380
Hi Juan,
I think you missed the point of the BBC video about bush's sheik. Palast conveyed the idea that he was a fake in terms of his representative authority and the video substantiates that. However, the real point of the video is that the money funnelling into Anbar for the "freedom fighters" is being used for large scale ethnic cleansing, in this case removing the Shias from a Sunni controlled area. This has happened in horrific proportions throughout Iraq and is really the central effort of the so called "surge". The diversity of Iraq's population and culture is being decimated and "safety" for the civilian population is a bush & co. fantasy as the recent Blackwater "event" dramatically revealed.
A follow-up to my comment about payoffs, courtesy of Docuticker & Penn Law:
Bribes v. Bombs: A Study in Coasean Warfare
Source: Scholarship at Penn Law
The use of bribes to co-opt an enemy’s forces can be a more effective way to wage war than the conventional use of force: Relative to bombs, bribes can save lives and resources, and preserve civic institutions. This essay evaluates the efficacy and normative desirability of selectively substituting bribes for bombs as a means of warfare.
[Suummary, With Linkage, At Docuticker]
In response to some of the posts above, Abu Risha was apparently head of his extended family in Ramadi - they had a compound there right next to the US base. With US money he rallied the young men of Ramadi and elsewhere to fight against the insurgents.
Often the tribal leaders in Anbar couldn't control the young men of the tribe, who had no jobs and would join the insurgents. They still do sometimes. Therefore anyone who could rally the young men and pay them to drive off the insurgents would potentially be more powerful than even the tribal leaders.
Sheik Ali Hatem however represented the traditional tribal structure and there are some very strong critics in Anbar of giving power to tribal leaders. The critics say tribal leaders are good at what they do, but they aren't political leaders. There are photo's of Abu Risha touring the Anbar Governor's compound with the governor, which is an indication of how powerful he became.
Obviously he represented a kind of leader who gained his position by ability rather than tribal connections. As I understand it Sheik Ali Hatem, the tribal leader, publicly made a number of accusations about Abu Risha on several occasions but after his death he strongly called for finding his killers.
However eventually many of the young men went on to join the Anbar police and Iraqi army, so they would be paid by the Iraqi government and there was less need for Abu Risha. Abu Risha remained head of the Awakening Council until his death, even though his primary function seemed to evolve to economic development. Now the US military claims to have arrested someone involved in Abu Risha's killing, and they haven't attempted to dispel it was a powerful insurgency group.
As far as ethnic-religious cleansing, a primary purpose of the surge was to stop that. In Baghdad and elsewhere the US military erects controversial concrete barriers and checkpoints in order to control access to neighborhoods. Often they are partly manned by local "volunteers" who know who properly belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn't.
Juan, any comment on the latest research by ORB, a British group once touted by the Bush administration, showing that over a million Iraqis have been murdered since the war began?
This study is backed up by previous estimates and has a margin or error of just 2.5%.
Bush told the US people that only 30,000 had been killed. Over a million dead is worse than Rwanda. The people of the USA need to wake up and ask themselves: "WHAT HAVE WE DONE?"
Writing of the Sunni Anbar sheikhs Greg Palast states "With new US protection, weapons and cash they have turned on the Shia of Anbar. Fifteen thousand Shia families from a single district were forced at gunpoint to leave Anbar"
And yet one of the those interviewed in the documentary says the refugees have been living away from Anbar for two years.
So the doco itself indicates this ethnic cleansing took place in 2005 when Anbar was the hot bed of the insurgency and the US was hardly supplying "protection, weapons and cash"..
The tone of Palast's comment is hardly one of objective journalism. Rather he has done a disservice to his cameraman and reporter and discredited the documentary, revealing it as a propaganda piece.
Niqash has an interesting story about the reaction of the anti-al Qaeda forces to the assassination of Abu Risha:
http://www.niqash.org/content.php?contentTypeID=277&id=2001
"Sheikhs and tribal notables in Baghdad, Diyala and Kirkuk vowed to avenge the death of Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha ... the leader of the Hmaidat tribe, Shaykh Abd al-Ali al-Hamidawi told Niqash ... We reiterate that the assassination of Abu Risha will not weaken the determination of the Iraqi tribes ... to dispose of this organization [al-Qaeda] and all other organizations allied to it in all Iraqi cities"
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