Curfews, Clashes, Protests and Mortars;
Five Years after Fall of Saddam;
5 US Troops Die;
23 Iraqis Wounded in Sadr City
April 9, yesterday, marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. But for many Iraqis, it was more notable for marking the beginning of a long-term American military occupation of their country.
The US military was so little in control after five years that two mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone, the American HQ in Iraq. On Sunday, a similar attack killed two US military personnel while they were jogging.
It was a somber anniversary. In Baghdad, Samarra, Tikrit and some other places, vehicle bans and curfews were in place to stop there being any demonstrations or violence to mark opposition to the occupation.
In Baghdad's Sadr City, clashes took the lives of 23 Iraqis and wounded 83. Presumably these were clashes between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's troops, supported by the US, and Mahdi Army fighters. Some of the deaths were from mortar fire.
5 US troops died in Iraq on Wednesday, 3 of them killed in action and two in what were termed non-combat incidents. Iraqi guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill three US troops in Salahuddin Province and Baghdad. The deaths brought to 17 the number of US troops who perished in Iraq since Sunday.
The Times of London reveals that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki snubbed the British commander in Basra, declining to use any of the 4500 British troops already stationed there in his failed campaign against the Mahdi Army. It is suggested that al-Maliki harbors a grudge against the British for making a deal with the Mahdi Army as they withdrew from downtown Basra last fall out to the airport.
The Times also suggests that the governor of Basra Province, Muhammad Misbah al-Wa'ili, is effectively under house arrest, his own guards from his Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) having been replaced by Iraqi army troops. Al-Wa'ili lost a vote of no confidence in late April of 2007 in a maneuver organized by al-Maliki's ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. But al-Wa'ili brandished his Islamic Virtue militia and refused to step down. If the Times's report is true, it may well be that al-Maliki came south to install the Islamic Supreme Council and its Badr Corps paramilitary, along with the Iraqi 14th Division, in power in Basra. That would give ISCI, led by pro-Iranian cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the advantages of incumbency going into October's provincial elections.
I know that al-Maliki earlier had some frictions with ISCI. But my theory of it would be that as various parties (Islamic Virtue, Sadrists, and even Shiite independents) pulled out of his government, he was thrown into an unprecedented dependence on Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his Badr Corps paramilitary.
Sam Dagher of CSM reports that the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is purely Iraqi and opposes the foreign jihadis of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," is still committed to killing US troops. (Since Salahuddin province is largely Sunni Arab, IAI would be a suspect in the roadside bombing that killed US troops on Wednesday there.) The Islamic Army of Iraq says it gets behind the scenes help from the Awakening Councils established by Gen. Petraeus, and from similar elements inducted into the Iraqi security forces.
The Association of Muslim Scholars charges that members of the Awakening Councils are assassinating recently released detainees who had been in US custody. Apparently these detainees had been dirty with the Qutbists (what the US calls "al-Qaeda"), and had killed relatives of the tribesmen who are now taking revenge. Six such released inmates have been assassinated in Haditha recently.
Have Iraqi women been sacrificed to the surge?
Despite the curfew, hundreds came out Wednesday to protest in Fallujah, a city that Bush destroyed in a fit of pique. The Fallujans had held a city-wide strike on March 23, 2004, to protest the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a quadraplegic and spiritual leader of Hamas in Palestine. A few days later, the Brigades of Sheikh Yassin, an Iraqi guerrilla group founded to protest his murder, killed 4 Blackwater security men, one of them a South African, and desecrated their bodies, as "a gift to the Palestinian people," claiming that they were CIA or Mossad (Israeli intelligence). (You would have thought the Israelis could have put off garish assassinations by helicopter gunship of Muslim leaders in wheelchairs for a while, since the US was in a delicate position in Iraq at the time; Ariel Sharon made things infinitely worse than they had to be). Bush is said by Newsweek to have been royally teed off (I gloss the anger as that brown guys did that to white guys), and instructed "Heads must roll!" Bush ultimately made Fallujah his own little Carthage, in November of 2004. The Sunni Arabs were so angered that they boycotted the 2005 election. They had little representation in parliament. The Kurds and the Shiites crafted a constitution the Sunni Arabs rejected. And the country went to civil war, just as I predicted in December of 2004. In many ways it all started with the killing in broad daylight of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza as he was leaving a mosque. Couldn't he have been arrested if he was wanted? It was not as if he could run away. And, you will note, that Hamas is still there in control of Gaza, and Ariel Sharon is now in oblivion.
On Wednesday there were still Fallujans chanting that the US should leave their country. I mean, they were chanting amidst ruins (the US damaged two-thirds of the buildings there), and many of their relatives are refugees living in tents in the desert, displaced from their living rooms by all the firepower a superpower can bring to bear. But there they were rallying. And Westerners engage in glib stereotypes about Arab fatalism. In fact, it is hard to keep some people down.
Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday and Tuesday:
' BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced on Wednesday that five U.S. soldiers had been killed, 3 in separate roadside bomb attacks and 2 from non-combat related injuries. Four of the 5 soldiers died on Wednesday and one on Tuesday.
BAGHDAD - 23 people were killed and 83 injured in the eastern Baghdad slum of Sadr City on Wednesday, Iraqi security sources said.
BAGHDAD - Two unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.
MOSUL - Two successive car bombs killed three policemen and a civilian and wounded 20 people including three policemen when they targeted a police patrol in central Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military killed two armed men northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities imposed curfews on Baghdad as well as the cities of Samarra and Tikrit to prevent violence on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital to U.S. forces. . .
DHULUIYA - A mortar shell landed on a house in Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad overnight, killing a woman and wounding her four sons, police said.
DIYALA - The U.S. military said it destroyed a facility used to make explosive devices in Diyala province, north of Baghdad. . .
NEAR KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a civilian in Tal al-Hadeed village near Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, police said.
NEAR KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a policeman and a civilian in Tuz Khurmato, south of Kirkuk, police said. . .
KIRKUK - Two roadside bombs exploded on Tuesday in the town of Tuz, 70 km (40 miles) south of Kirkuk, wounding 17 Iraqis, the U.S. military said. . .
KIRKUK - Iraqi police found a body hand-cuffed and riddled with bullets east of the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday. '
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/10/2008 12:30:00 AM
|
Facebook
18 Comments:
Juan: "... The US military was so little in control after five years that two mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone, the American HQ in Iraq."
SG: How utterly unappreciative!
Here we are trying to create an ecologically, ga(R)den of eden, 'g(R)een zone' in the dessert, where no good existed 'til we got there, and these Al Qaedas ... err ... insurgents ... Iranian backed terrorists ... err ... Islamo-Fascists ... err ... whatever, are only interested in destroying the good we c(R)eate.
What could possible 'occupying' such a mind, I wonder!
Snerd
Alas,
Iraqi women were not sacrificed to the surge,
so much as to the partial implementation of the "Model Communities" approach.
This approach has many downsides.
Feudal.
Medieval.
Fiefdoms.
I wish there was a better way.
But until a better way is developed,
it remains the best option to turning Iraq over to Iraqis who can actually deliver stability and security at the local level.
Without that foundation, nothing else can be built.
Avid Student
' Sam Dagher of CSM reports that the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is purely Iraqi and opposes the foreign jihadis of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," is still committed to killing US troops. (Since Salahuddin province is largely Sunni Arab, IAI would be a suspect in the roadside bombing that killed US troops on Wednesday there.) The Islamic Army of Iraq says it gets behind the scenes help from the Awakening Councils established by Gen. Petraeus, and from similar elements inducted into the Iraqi security forces. '
So there you have it. Betray-us paying a Sunni force to kill Americans.
That's stark. I'm sure there's lots Neocon Nuance that can be spun about it.
But that's the fact of the matter.
' In many ways it all started with the killing in broad daylight of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza as he was leaving a mosque. Couldn't he have been arrested if he was wanted? It was not as if he could run away. And, you will note, that Hamas is still there in control of Gaza, and Ariel Sharon is now in oblivion. '
And the US is still funding the US/Israeli Neocon wars in Palestine and Iraq.
And neither do the Neocons appear unhappy that the Islamic Army of Iraq is killing Americans. Why else did they start this latest round of aggression? Betray-us, of all people, knew that Maliki was/is not up to winning a war against the Shi'ia people of Iraq.
Blood in one's eyes alway blurs one's vision and blurred vision is what we've had in the US for the forty years since Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories, and now they've got us occupying Iraq for them in the same brutal, senseless way. With nothing but perpetual war as the prize.
But asserting that acts have consequences is the thing most sternly disallowed by Neocon "logicians". The occupation of Palestine had NOTHING to do with the blowback that blew threw NY and the Pentagon on 9/11. (Some Department of Defense, couldn't even protect their own headquarters! Or were they in some way... undone?)
NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!!
The Islamofacists hate us for our freedom!
If we don't stop them over here they'll come after us again and again, over there.
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/what_happens_in_january.php
April 9, 2008
What Happens in January
By Matthew Yglesias
It seems that Rep. Ellen Tauscher actually thought up an original and potentially informative practical question * to ask General Petraeus -- what's he going to do if in January 2009 his commander-in-chief says he wants to withdraw from Iraq and needs his theater commander to start drawing up plans and giving advice on logistics? Apparently, Petraeus wasn't content to say something straightforward about how he'd do his job:
" 'I would back up,' he said, 'and ask what's the mission, what's the desired endstate. And then you advise on resources...' Tauscher said the goal would be to keep the security gains of the surge, fix the readiness problems of the military and cut U.S. costs in Iraq.
" 'My response would be dialogue on what the risks would be. And, again, this is about risk.' Petraeus sounded a lot like he was saying he would not be willing to advise a President Obama or a President Clinton on withdrawal -- something that, unless he was willing to resign, is very Constitutionally dubious."
He then backed up and said "I absolutely support the idea of civilian control of the military" (good to hear!) but still didn't say either that he would offer the requested advice or that he'd resign in protest and let someone new come on board. This kind of thing -- resistance from inside the command structure to implementing a new president's electoral mandate to end the war -- is likely to be a substantial political landmine for the next administration. It's one of several reasons why I think it's absolutely vital to campaign on a clear and unambiguous determination to genuinely end the war (i.e., without this residual business) to ensure that there's no doubt in anyone's mind about where the country stands.
* http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/petraeus-wont-say
"I know that al-Maliki earlier had some frictions with ISCI"
Some qualification is in order. Although Maliki fought al-Mahdi, the ISCI candidate, for the PM position and one narrowly, the clash was between Sadr and ISCI. Maliki was basically Sadr's choice.
I do not recall any friction with ISCI after that. In fact Maliki has always been subservient to Hakim, the head ISCI who is the bridge to the vital Iranian influence.
Hakim and Badr combined have 30 seats only, 11% of total. This in itself is small. But Hakim is also the head of the Shiite Alliance with 83 seats, including Da'wa: the highly fractured Maliki party.
If I am remembering correctly, the slaying of the Blackwater guys was precipitated by the shooting down of unarmed protesters, including children, the week before. I don't remember if that happened during the strike or not.
anyway, I think it makes more sense to pin the beginning of the civil war on bush's assault on Fallujah rather than the Gaza killing. It was a pure stroke of evil for him to destroy Fallujah for the sake of the behavior of less than 100 people. Imagine if we destroyed a town ever time there was a mass shooting incident..... most of America would no longer be standing.
I read one report that said that the US service man killed jogging was actually on a treadmill - and indoors in the new US embassy.
I wouldn't believe that Times of London story if I were you. Pretty well all the sources cited were either American or Maliki's crowd, both of whom have a strong interest in getting the British back into action in Basra. There was one source who might have been British, but was not certainly, and that's all.
I think most British military are quite happy to be out of Basra, and want to be out of Iraq. This is just an intrigue to get them back in.
The Times does quite often come up with false stories seeded from US (or Israeli) sources. The 'Box-on-the-Euphrates' last autumn was one which was pushed and pushed with new and ever more unbelievable supposed revelations. On the other hand it is not as bad as the Telegraph, which is a constant war-mongerer.
My guess is that the Awakening Councils (read, local mafias/former killers of US soldiers) label anyone they want to bump off as Al Quaeda.
"The Times of London reveals that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki snubbed the British commander in Basra, declining to use any of the 4500 British troops already stationed there in his failed campaign against the Mahdi Army."
Do you suppose he's on the same medication regime as president Bush?
Neither of them seem capable of making rational decisions.
Enquiring minds want to know...
I hope this does not come off as me questioning the intellect or credibility of Mr. Cole, but connecting the Israelis killing a suspected terrorist to the civil war that followed is fanciful, to say the least.
And I don't understand why a guy as well read, informed, and credible as Mr. Cole needs to so gratuitously denigrate President Bush. If he's such an awful President, then simply stating the facts should suffice, without implying that he is a racist. It's disturbing to see an intellectual stoop to the level of a TV talking head.
Bush on troop withdrawal.Here's a portion of what he said that should be of great concern to Americans and Iraqis:
''The day will come when Iraq is a capable partner of the United States,'' Bush said. ''The day will come when Iraq's a stable democracy that helps fight our common enemies and promote our common interests in the Middle East.
''And when that day arrives, you'll come home with pride in your success,'' Bush said to the military and U.S. civilians in Iraq.
So much for Iraqi sovereignty. We'll stay until we've pounded Iraq into a compliant ally that agrees with our Middle East objectives and helps us achieve them.
I suppose that means that Iraq must be pro Israel, anti Iran and Syria, and maybe even independent of OPEC so the US can have its way with the country's oil.
So its not just about the violence subsiding. Its about eliminating any political force that would advocate an Iraq with independent foreign and domestic policies at odds with "US Interests".
I think the best advice one could give al Sadr is: WATCH OUT FOR DRONES. (Although he's probably already on the lookout.)
If Clinton and Obama can't come up with n sane alternative to Bush's, and most likely McCain's, criteria for bringing the troops home, then we'll be locked into this one way dead end street of horror forever.
Re casualties and collateral.
I take issue with the endlessly innaccurate repetition of the war deployment and casualty counts.
The current mid-surge deployment of 160K US troops should include 190K contractors, a record level. Among the contractors are about 30K armed 'shooters', transport soldiers and facility guards in combat roles, under both DoD and DoState contracts.
When Balckwater's Mr. Prince and his competitors have been the subject of televised congressional hearings, a mercenary force the size of the surge itself is no secret.
We may not like it, but we ought to take Rumsfeld, Gates and Rice at their word, that troops from Blackwater and Co. are a strategic element in our war deployment of approximately 200K occupation troops, as are the 150K contract support workers that sometimes get caught on the road, or under mortar fire.
The oft-repeated 4030+ figure should include more than a thousand contractors who have been killed in our employ, and 300+ "coalition" KIA's, troops that were mostly funded by US borrowing.
If we are counting our human costs, I don't see a reason to differentiate between native citizens, immigrants or Samoans recruited into the US Marines, MNFI Polish and Fijian troops, or Ghurka mercenaries. They all had parents; some had children.
Does anyone remember Gen. Shenseki, fired for telling Congress in 2003 that 350K was a median figure for Iraq occupation? Truth is the first casualty, as the saying goes.
Adding in contractors and the non-US coalition dead takes us up to more than 5,300 killed to date, vs the 4,030+ reported daily to have died wearing a US service uniform. That's a difference of 1/3.
So let's describe it like the figures show: a debt-funded US occupation force of 350,000 (100K in combat role) has suffered loss of 5,300-6,000 killed.
Our Iraqi allies in this civil war have suffered even higher losses, perhaps 8-10,000+ KIA's. But it has been hard to tell friend from insurgent foe in the police and Iraqi army, or among the militias. Sometimes the bad guys survive to become good Sunni militiamen, and Maliki's former allies now fire rockets at his seat of govt.
Now in it's 6th year, our war of choice has inflicted an unknown but much larger amount of death and human cost on insurgent arab fighters and their civilian supporters in Iraq, and the rebels kill gov't supporters and each other. The scale of cost to Iraqis is officially estimated 4 millions of internal displaced and external refugees. The low estimate is 200,000 of extra war mortality, primarily civillians caught in a civil war. Many tens of thousands are missing-murdered, or prisoner.
A press or congressional mantra of "4,030+ killed" doesn't begin to describe the scale of violence and destruction in Iraq.
Pax.
I read things like the CSM and Newsweek stories even as I'm listening to yesterday's and today's Congressional hearings, and it's like listening to the Red Queen and her court in Alice in Wonderland. I expect the administration to spin a web of fantasy, but don't our Senators and Congressmen read these publications? Don't they at least have staff members who point them out? Do they really think we'll ever arrive at an acceptable result by wishing away reality? Are they children?
I just watched Dexter Filkins and John Burns on the Charlie Rose show, giving their usual oracular, delphic readings of the Iraq situation which invariably hearten the stupid interventionists (light at the end of the tunnel)crowd. These mercenary media careerists won't do anything to endanger their 'access' to the Pentagonians and that will never change. The war has been just too 'good' for them.
So THIS is why the US cannot get out of Iraq?
The human brain - Bush's brain included - is about the size of a small cauliflower. How can it be that something the size of a small cauliflower has wrought death and destruction and catastrophe and waste and untold misery and suffering on this scale? Half way around the planet from where it is. And over and over and over again - for half a decade now. Am I the only person here - or anywhere for that matter - who finds this "unthinkable"? That 1500 grams of "tissue" has turned much of the world not just upside down, but into something closely approximating Munch's The Scream...it is beyond belief. Primitive's not the word for us - we're much further down the scale than that.
Why doesn't anyone in the Bush administration seem to understand that if they start a war with Iran, Maliki and most of the other Iraqi Shiites will be furious. We could see a massive Shiite uprising on our supply line, while Maliki might actually demand that US troops leave the country. Our forces could be caught between two hostile populations with no easy way to get out. Maybe we could evacuate to the west/northwest, but it would be a disaster.
The assassination of Sheikh Ahmad of Hamas in Palestine did play a part in the March 31, 2004, ambush of 4 Blackwater USA as security guards.
But,
is Blackwater a professional firefighter and arsonist?
How many dollars has Blackwater made from the escalation of the war in response to the loss of the 4 men?
Is Blackwater responsible for increases in fighting with the Mahdi Army?
There is the April 04, 2004 fight between Blackwater and the Mahdi Army.
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/20/blackwater_the_rise_of_the_worlds
Watch the "BLACKWATER SNIPER TEAMS IN NAJAF" video to see how Blackwater fought with Madhi in April 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nnxi4tk_SM&mode=related&search=
Was Blackwater stirring up trouble before the big 04/04/04 fight?
Jim Byrne
Post a Comment
<< Home