Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Turkish war planes hit 21 targets inside Iraq, in the Kurdish north, on Friday night.
Meanwhile, bombings and attacks killed 24 and wounded 45 in the mixed district of Dora.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/11/2008 12:20:00 AM
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3 Comments:
ref : bombings and attacks... in the mixed district of Dora
The bomb, in a red Daewoo sedan blew up in the Abu Dsheer neighborhood, a Shi'ite enclave in the largely Sunni area of Dora, according to Iraqi security officials. The district had been a hotbed of insurgency before U.S. troops engaged in major combat there last year during the buildup of forces [known as "the surge"].
This news today is notable in light of a recent (and prominent: Front Page) story just yesterday in the New York Times : As Fears Ease, Baghdad Sees Walls Tumble.
Wiki => Dora (also Al Dura) : is a neighborhood in Rasheed administrative district, southern Baghdad, Iraq. It is primarily Sunni, [yet this relatively wealthy neighborhood retains some vestiges of] Christian, Shia and Mandaic families.
The Dora neighborhood of Baghdad has considerable historical and symbolic significance, thus:
In the early morning of March 19, 2003, Dora became the first victim of the air assault by U.S. forces during the Invasion of Iraq. The attempted assassination of Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay [believed to be in a bunker in Dora, also] failed...
imho, In a sense, here we are seeing the Western, utopian idealist notion of nation, IRAQ, ironically ~ that State that originally existed under the Unitary Executive rule of Saddam Hussein ~ tested under fire in the petri dish that is Baghdad's Al Dura neighborhood:
The bomb blew up about 4:30 as shoppers were crowding the outdoor market, officials said. As residents began removing the bodies, National Police arrived from a largely Sunni unit recently assigned to the area, witnesses said. The officers began firing their rifles in the air, apparently to clear away bystanders, they added. [But then] Residents began hurling bricks at the police and setting tires ablaze, sending columns of black smoke into the air, according to the witnesses. Some protesters yelled slogans against Iraq's Shi'ite-led government and in support of Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand Shi'ite cleric known for his anti-American rhetoric, they said.
"The people were accusing them [the Sunni police] of not protecting the neighborhood, and helping the insurgents," said a college student...
Three of the demonstrators were wounded by bullets, according to witnesses. U.S. military and Iraqi security forces [then] cordoned off the area with armored vehicles, warning residents to stay inside, as American helicopters swept overhead.
. . . smoldering resentment remains.
CNN ran a decent article for once about the PKK's egalitarian/feminist philosophy. I had no idea that they were this deep. You learn something new everyday.
The number of foreign journalists in Baghdad is declining sharply, a media withdrawal that reflects Iraq's growing stability and the financial strains faced by some news organizations
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