28 Killed, 40 Wounded;
Peshmerga Killed in Roadside Bombing;
4 Sharqiya Staff Kidnapped, Killed
In a continuing wave of violence in Iraq, 28 persons were killed and 40 wounded on Saturday. Among the dead were 9 members of the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary, killed by a roadside bomb near the disputed city of Khanaqin in Diyala. Arabs and Kurds are increasingly at odds over the future of this city, which Kurds wish to incorporate into the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the director of the Sharqiyyah television channel is blaming the official Iraqiyyah television channel for a campaign of vilification of Sharqiyyah correspondents, which he said led to the kidnapping and killing of 4 Sharqiyyah staff in Mosul on Saturday. Sharqiyyah is run by a former director of television and radio under Saddam Hussein and so is considered a Baath organ and viewed with suspicion by Shiites and Kurds, who control the Iraqiyyah channel.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Kurdish politicians are now demanding that an article be struck from the proposed Status of Forces Agreement between the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government. The offending paragraph permits the Iraqi central government to strike similar security deals with its neighbors. Presumably the Kurds are afraid of being constrained by a Federal government SOFA with, e.g., Turkey or Iran. Al-Maliki spokesman Ali Dabbagh expressed surprise at the demand, saying that the Kurds had for some time been urging a swift passage of the SOFA and had never objected to that paragraph before.
The government's increasing conflicts with the Kurds are also apparent in the collapse of a parliamentary committee appointed by speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani to attempt to resolve the differences over Kirkuk so that the law on provincial elections can be passed. Members of the committee accused their Kurdish colleagues of continually bringing up issues that had nothing to do with the provincial elections, and thus derailing the party-based talks. There is a dispute about whether Kirkuk province should vote at the same time as the other provinces, and how power should be distributed there. The Kurdish leadership would like to incorporate oil-rich Kirkuk into the Kurdistan Regional Government, but Arabs and Turkmen object.
Amit Paley of WaPo finds that the Peshmerga have quietly expanded into 300 sq.mi.of neighboring territory, incorporating it de facto into the Kurdistan Regional Government even though it lies in Iraq proper. The US military,he reports,sees this Kurdish expansion as destabilizing.
Patrick Cockburn argues that Iraq violence is down, but not because of the US troop escalation or 'surge' of last year.
McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday:
' Baghdad
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Dora neighborhood(south Baghdad). Four policemen were wounded.
- Around 11:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted a national police patrol in Karrada neighborhood in central Baghdad. Three people were killed including one policeman and five others were wounded (including 2 policemen).
- Around noon, a bomb planted under a civilian car detonated near Adela Khatoon mosque in Bab Al-Mutham (north Baghdad). Four people were injured.
-Around 6:30 pm, a roadside bomb detonated near Mulla Huish mosque in Jamia’a neighborhood(west Baghdad). Three people were wounded.
- Around 8 pm, a bomb planted under a car in Adhemiyah neighborhood(north Baghdad) detonated when it stopped near a check point for the Sahwa members. Six people were wounded (three Sahwa members and three civilians).
- Police found two dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods today: One was found in Tobchi in western Baghdad in Karkh bank. While one was found in Binouk neighborhood in eastern Baghdad in Risafa bank.
Diyala
- A roadside bomb targeted a Peshmerga patrol on the way between Khanaqeen city and Sadiyah town (east of Baquba). Nine members were killed including a colonel and three others were wounded.
Mosul
- Around 12;30 pm, the Sharqiya crew of Iraqi satellite channel in Mosul who were 4 persons( the local manager, two camermen and driver) were kidnapped and then killed by gunmen who broke out the house where the crew was filming in Zanjili (west of Mosul). The four dead bodies were found 30 minutes later in AL-Bursa neighborhood in Zanjili.
Basra
-On Friday night, one civilian was killed and three others were wounded including a traffic policeman when an Iraqi soldier opened fire randomly in Abu Al-khaseeb market(about 13 miles south of Basra). The spokesman of the Iraqi army in Basra said that it was an accident when the soldier pulled the trigger by mistake and he is now in detention.'
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/14/2008 12:28:00 AM
|
Facebook
4 Comments:
Professor Cole,
Each passing day makes something you said earlier on all the more true..."Iraq is not a country, it is a mafia movie," or something to that extent.
Television competition leads to reporters being murdered? Cripes, it sounds like something Crazy Joey Gallo might have done.
What the hell have we done over there? This Iraq occupation is insanity.
from the Patrick Cockburn article that you linked to:
... the war that was being waged against the american occupation by the Sunni community, the 20% of Iraqis who were in control under Saddam Hussein, has largely ended. It did so because the Sunni were being defeated, not so much by the us army as by the Shia government and the Shia militias.
Sunni insurgent leaders who were nationalists or Baathists realised that they had too many enemies. Not only was al-Qa'ida trying to take over from traditional tribal leaders, it was also killing Sunni who took minor jobs with the government.
--------
is this true ? is this why the Sunni stopped fighting ? if so, then why in the hell didn't the Sunnis and the foreign fighters COORDINATE their activities in such a fashion as to fight ONE enemy at a time instead of trying to fight everybody and LOSE ? and why would the foreign fighters kill fellow Sunnis ? i don't get that part at all.
and did the amerikan invader / occupier purposely set the Shia / Sunni at each other's throats in order to subjugate the country and its Oil reserves ?
the Underdog actually had a chance to defeat the invader / occupier / Oil Stealer and screwed it all up. man.
Robert Stone ("Dog Soldiers") reviews Dexter Filkins new book
"The Forever War":
It is not facetious to speak of work like that of Dexter Filkins as defining the “culture” of a war. The contrast of his eloquence and humanity with the shameless snake-oil salesmanship employed by the American government to get the thing started serves us well. You might call the work of enlightening and guiding a deliberately misguided public during its time of need a cultural necessity. The work Filkins accomplishes in “The Forever War” is one of the most effective antitoxins that the writing profession has produced to counter the administration’s fascinating contemporary public relations tactic. The political leadership’s method has been the dissemination of facts reversed 180 degrees toward the quadrant of lies, hitherto a magic bullet in their never-ending crusade to accomplish everything from stealing elections to starting ideological wars. Filkins uses the truth as observed firsthand to detail an arid, hopeless policy in an unpromising part of the world. His writing is one of the scant good things to come out of the war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/books/review/Stone-t.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all
From the Patrick Cockburn article that you linked to: "[T]he war that was being waged against the American occupation by the Sunni community, the 20% of Iraqis who were in control under Saddam Hussein, has largely ended. It did so because the Sunni were being defeated, not so much by the U.S. Army as by the Shia government and the Shia militias. Sunni insurgent leaders who were nationalists or Baathists realised that they had too many enemies. Not only was al-Qa'ida trying to take over from traditional tribal leaders, it was also killing Sunni who took minor jobs with the government."
(1) Is this true ?
(2) Is this why the Sunni stopped fighting ?
(3) If so, then why in the hell didn't the Sunnis and the foreign fighters COORDINATE their activities in such a fashion as to fight ONE enemy at a time instead of trying to fight everybody and LOSE ?
(4) And why would the foreign fighters kill fellow Sunnis ? I don't get that part at all.
(1) Yes, by and large. Maybe with a 10% to 15% discount because P. C. is so eager to pooh-pooh the Ever-Victorious Su®ge of ’07.
(2) You can take your pick about WHY:
(2a) Maybe it was those hush-hush whizbangs that Mr. Woodward leaked about the other day, the ones that let the cowpokers send you a personal cruise missile if they ever catch you thinkin’ a discouragin’ thought about the International Zone neorégime.
(2b.1) Maybe it was that nifty Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme conceived as the invasionites conceived it. "Boost, don't knock!" Not fear of bombs, but love of bucks!
(2b.2) Maybe it was not exactly Bribe-a-Tribe™ as such, but rather the Irak Erwache! movement considered as a spontaneous effusion of the Sunní theocommunity. I.e., the Orthodox Muslim natives started awakening before AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP (&c.) started payin’ ’em to. The natives would have behaved the same if Salvific Awakenment had never been externally funded at all. [*]
(2c) Maybe it really was Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point and that [exp. del.] su®ge! P. C. would obviously hate to think so, but then, Mr. Cockburn of the Independent is not infallible either. Not all the time, he isn’t.
(2d) You can always roll your own. You might speculate, for instance, that undercover financial support from the Sunní International broke down. Or that the tribal chieftains secretly conferred with Neocomrade Professor Doctor Fu’ád al-‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University, who persuasively pointed out the error of their ways. Or . . . .
(3) Ah, this one I have a prepared speech on! To be brief about it: the Orthodox theocommunity in the former ‘Iráq ran the joint as a Sunní Ascendancy racket under Turks and Brits and Mecca Monarchs and Free Officers and ‘Aflaqi Ba‘thís all alike. Then suddenly along came AEI and GOP and DoD and USIP and EiB and WSJ (&c. &c.) like an aggression from Mars and snatched control of the State out of theologically correct hands. It then turned out that there no longer was any Orthodox Muslim theocommunity left, nothing organised and coherent and equipped with recognised leadership that could stand on its own as a "civil society." The Free Kurds and the Nasty Sectarian Twelvers were in great shape, but the heirs of Hárún and Saláh ad-Dín and Miss Gertrude Bell were smashed to smithereens worthy of the late Dr. Humpty Dumpty.
This being the case, of course the Arabophone Orthodox of the former ‘Iráq do not "COORDINATE their activities." They can’t do that trick any more, they have forgotten how. The State used to do all their heavy coördinating for them. Not even with one another can they coördinate, let alone with "foreign fighters" too.
And the moral of that is, "Don’t lie in bed all day every day unless you are perfectly sure that you will never need to get up and walk. Not just reasonably confident, but PERFECTLY SURE!"
(4) "No more; where ignorance is bliss / 'Tis folly to be wise."
Still, if Mr. Poster foolishly wants to get to know the odium theologicum, he might unimaginatively start with the Wikipedia .
Happy days.
___
[*] OK, but WHY would the noble and lucre-despising gentlemen of the desert have behaved so? I guess we must subdistinguish still further:
(2b.2.A) The Sunnitarians stopped shooting and IED’ing the operatives of AEI and GOP and DoD and USIP (&c.) because they finally perceived the excellence of the Greater Texan Way of Life and decided to come to the trough.
(2b.2.B) Not at all, they stopped strictly because of their own ancestral Bedouin Way of Life, which Al Kayduh did not properly understand, Al being a town Arab. Only a pseudo-Arab, really, was Al, and as to the quality of his ’Islám, . . . .
(2b.2.C) None of the above. They stopped because of some other aspect of the echt Semite Mind that no paleface can ever grasp. Except possibly a credentialled practitioner of Social Scientism, which the present paleface is not.
Post a Comment
<< Home