Iraq inching closer and closer to civil war
 

Iraq struggles to contain sectarian violence
Scores killed as Sunnis, Shiites trade accusations after mosque bombing



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Religious and political leaders scrambled Thursday to halt a descent into all-out civil war after the destruction of a Shiite shrine sparked the worst sectarian violence the country has seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with scores of people killed in Baghdad in the past 24 hours.

In one of the worst incidents, gunmen pulled factory workers off buses northeast of Baghdad and killed 47 of them, a provincial council member said.

The victims were traveling in three buses when they were stopped at a checkpoint in the Nahrawan area, about 12 miles south of Baqouba, said Dhari Thuban, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council. The buses were burned and their passengers killed, he said.

The motive for the killing was not immediately clear.

Residents told police that the bullet-riddled bodies were found around midday behind a brick factory, the Interior Ministry said.

The victims, who ranged in age between about 20 and 50, were dressed in civilian clothes and their deaths appeared recent, the ministry’s Maj. Falah al-Mohamadawi told the Associated Press.

Thuban said the victims were brick factory workers, but al-Mohamadawi said no identification documents were found on them.

Other attacks

* Earlier in the day, eight Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bombing on a Sunni mosque in Baqouba, and nearly a dozen people were wounded.
* Iraqi police and army officials said at least 40 bodies were found in one spot just south of Baghdad. It was not clear if the number *******d 53 people already reported by police to have died in Baghdad since Wednesday's bombing.
* At least 25 people were killed in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said. A bomb targeting an Iraqi army foot patrol killed 12 people and wounded 21 in the city of Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, an army source said.
* Near Samarra, the bodies of three Iraqi journalists, including a well-known correspondent for Al Arabiya television, were found Thursday, police and the Arabic network said.

In an effort the staunch the sectarian violence, Iraq cancelled all police and army leave and extended curfew hours in Baghdad and other cities, an interior ministry source said on Thursday.

Security personnel have been placed on the highest alert, the official said. Curfew hours were extended indefinitely in Baghdad and will now run from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., instead of 11 p.m.. to 5 a.m.

Struggling to form government
The sectarian tensions sparked by Wednesday’s attack on the Askariya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, came at a critical time for Iraq, as fractious politicians struggle to form a new government two months after elections ushered in the country’s first full-term parliament.

The negotiations had been mired in sectarian differences, prompting the U.S. ambassador to warn that Washington had spent too much tax-payers’ money in Iraq to tolerate sectarianism and militias in government.

President Jalal Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a summit Thursday morning to calm sectarian tension after the bombing.

This new ugly crime comes as a warning that there is a conspiracy against the Iraqi people to spark a war among brothers," Talabani said. "We must cooperate and work together against this danger, the danger of civil war. This is the fiercest danger because it threatens our unity and our country with a devastating civil war.”

But Iraq’s the main Sunni Arab bloc boycotted the meeting, accusing supporters of the Shiite-led government of shedding Sunni blood.

“The leadership of the Iraqi Accordance Front has sent its apologies to the president to say they will not attend today’s meeting,” senior Front official Iyad al-Samarrai told Reuters.

“The government neglected to provide security for our sites ... They did not condemn these acts of aggression.”

The meeting was scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m., but officials later said it would take place in the afternoon because the main Shiite United Iraqi Alliance bloc, which dominates the interim government, was holding an internal meeting in the morning.

“We are considering suspending negotiations with the United Iraqi Alliance specifically because we believe some of its factions were responsible for shedding the blood of our people, burning our mosques and arresting our sons,” said Thafer al-Aani, spokesman for the main Sunni bloc.

“If the price of participating in the political process is the blood of our people, then we are willing to go back on this. This atmosphere does not help the resumption of negotiations.”

It was not clear if broader talks would now go ahead without the presence of the Accordance Front, which *******s the Iraqi Islamic Party. The Front won 44 of 275 seats when the once dominant Sunni minority ended its boycott of the U.S.-sponsored political process and took part in an election in December.

Religious leaders also weighed in and Iraq’s leading Sunni Muslim religious organization blamed top Shiite clerics on Thursday for fuelling the sectarian tension.

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Criticism of al-Sistani
“The Muslim Clerics Association points the finger of blame at certain Shiite religious authorities for calling for demonstrations,” said spokesman Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Qubaisi.

In all but unprecedented criticism, the comments appeared aimed at Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who called for protests on Wednesday over an attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra. Sistani also called for restraint and said mosques should not be attacked.

Since U.S. forces toppled Saddam’s Sunni-dominated government in 2003, Sistani has helped hold in check anger many Shiites feel against al-Qaida and other Sunni militants as the Shiite majority tastes power after years of oppression.

Militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr patrolled streets in Baghdad and clashed in Basra and elsewhere with Sunnis. A Sadr aide said: “If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people we are ready to do so.”

Sadr himself also called for national unity.

International concern
President Bush urged Iraqis not to rise to the bait of what U.S. and Iraqi officials called an al-Qaida attempt to fuel civil strife.

“Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought to achieve,” he said in a statement, as 130,000 U.S. troops stood by to back up Iraq’s new security forces and keep order.

The U.N. Security Council, rarely able to find a common voice on Iraq since its bitter divisions over the U.S. invasion in 2003, sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis to rally behind a non-sectarian government.

“The members of the Security Council understand the anguish caused by the attacks but urge the people of Iraq to defy its perpetrators by showing restraint and unity,” it said.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States and Israel on Thursday for the shrine's destruction, saying it was the work of “defeated Zionists and occupiers.”

“These passive activities are the acts of a group of defeated Zionists and occupiers who intended to hit our emotions,” he said in a speech that was broadcast on state television. Addressing the United States, he added: “You have to know that such an act will not save you from the anger of Muslim nations.”

“We don’t know what could happen in the next few days,” said Mohammed Tariq, standing in a long line outside a bread shop in Baghdad as residents hurried home after the government declared three days of mourning that will keep businesses closed. “I will buy as much as I can because of the security situation.”

Washington wants stability to help it extract its forces but Shiite political leaders renewed sharp criticisms of its calls for them to give Sunnis key posts in government, with one party leader accusing the U.S. ambassador of encouraging the bombers by supporting Sunni demands for a share of power this week.

Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, accused the bombers, who dressed as policemen, of trying to derail talks on a national unity coalition: “We must ... work together against ... the danger of civil war,” he told Iraqis in a televised address.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a showdown almost 800 years in the making. Will it be the Shi'ites or the Sunnis that are dominant in the former Mesopotamia?

It's like Hamas and Israel. Peace is as possible as turning lead into gold. Both sides only know how to do one thing: fight to the last man because their god is better than the other sides' god.

Well to the citizens of Iraq, I say this: May the best Allah win. And to the victor (which will be whatever side Zarqawi backs) I say, enjoy your big piles of rubble and sand. You've earned them. I'm sure your ancestors will be proud of you.

Worry not, for Bush is spreading freedom and democracy over there. He's really helping them all become free.

Bush isn't entirely to blame for this. Shi'ites and Sunnis have been at each other's throats for centuries. Hussein was an oppressive Sunni ruler, and his overthrow kinda let the cat out of the bag as far as this rivalry is concerned. The Shi'ites may outnumber the Sunnis there, but the Sunnis still have all the guns.

It's all about politics. Sunnis are used to being the top dog in Iraq. Now that that is not the case anymore, the militants are doing everything they can to make sure the Shi'ites can't consolidate their power in Iraq, or ever establish a sense of stability. In layman's terms, it's a game of "If I can't have it, no one can." Like I said, the cat is out of the bag. Bush is not respaonsible for their prejudices. This is a war 800 years in the making. It's not like this is anything new...Christians fought amongst themselves in Europe during the Rennaisance (Thirty Years War)...eventually they learned to (relatively) coexist, with Northern Ireland being an obvious exception.

The U.S. cannot back either side. It needs to keep pursuing a peaceful compromise between the two (and the Kurds as well).

They should have divided Iraq into three nations from the get go

But that's why it was kinda stupid to invade Iraq and remove the government without having a solid game plan for what to do after 'the win'. That's not to say things would have been perfect otherwise, but the completely half-assed approach really didn't help any

Then they'd be fighting over oilfield distribution and Turkey would be ultra-pissed about Kurdistan appearing on their southern border

I partially agree with you. It *was* coming. I just think our being there sped up the process. I still can't help but laugh at the whole "spreading of democracy" and how adamant bush is that this is really going to happen. I'll be surprised to see it in my life time. What role will US and other soldiers have there now that civil war has broken out? So far they claim they will back up the Iraqi soldiers. Are we really capable of fighting in a civil war that doesn't belong to us? We sure as hell do not know how to fight urban warfare and IED's.

Something legitimate to fight for?

Sweet!

you are really wrong, i think. on a multitude of levels. namely: this is indeed the bush administrations fault. the US has, in deciding to invade, adopted responsibility for the maintenance of security, amongst other things. the animosity between the sects and its potential to descend into civil conflict is just a reality of that situation and its one that they were very well aware of. im pretty sick of this selective amnesia everyone is having. the bush administration were pretty much the only people pushing this "dancing in the streets" scenario. the entire intelligence community predicted nothing short of a long, hard, intractable mess of an occupation, and everyone else with even a grain of knowledge knew of the potential of this outcome. ignoring this was explicitly and completely deliberate and hugely, hugely irresponsible. one could not ever portray them as being the victim of their own ignorance or soemthing. the way youre presenting this is so bizarre. like as if the bush admin just blew the lid off, obliviously, and was helpless to deal with the outcome. for one, if you decide to blow that lid off you automatically shoulder the responsibility for the outcome. and, two, as the mountain of evidence pointing to this gets larger and larger, they very well couldve maintained the peace (relatively) had they followed the advice of their own generals and went in with the 400,000+ troops that were seen as being the minimum number in maintaining security, and had not committed the laundry list of other absurd fuck ups that they did. the immediate postwar period was incredibly crucial and it was their failure to act correctly then that largely created the situation we have today, and its their repeated failure to act correctly since then which is cementing what couldve been a largely contained, temporary flare up into the new permanent status quo. its the bush administrations revolting disregard for experts and the facts in favour of preferable lies that brought this about, from start to finish. in this regard, the bush administration is virtually peerless
but really, the logic you are using is so ridiculously flawed. its not his fault because theyve been at each others throats for years? thats akin to, say, having two handcuffed thugs that hate each other and then being shocked by the outcome when you uncuff them. its very basic: you either dont uncuff them or you have a coherent plan in place if you do. no exceptions here whatsoever


and:
-the shiites are in fact the ones with all the guns. i mean, collectively, if you tallied it up, the shiites, having fully infiltrated the army and police, are the ones with superiority in terms of firepower. i dont mean in raw numbers, because there are almost 3 times as many shiites than sunnis, but as a percent
-its not at all some kind of childish "if i cant have it, no one can" thing. they legitimately believe that they can win. how they define winning is up for debate, but just perpetually playing to role of sore loser is not it

as clueless as ever. how cute

that is, of course, not to mention the fact that the three sects are hardly neatly split up geographically. people always talk of the shiite "dominated" south or the sunni "dominated" centre and west; there are no clear divisions and a split up into 3 statelets would all but automatically be accompanied with civil war and, subsequently, massive bouts of "cleansing." untold thousands would die. in fact, the various sects have already taken up to doing something that largely resembles this. one example that comes to mind is the with the kurds and kirkut. kirkut was dominated by sunnis before the war and kurds always saw it as theirs, and they have since began systematically moving in people and trying to expel the sunnis. the demographic shift in that city alone is very portentous and stands as an example for many other cities, and, indeed, the future.

and on top of all of this is the risk of broad, regional conflict that would destabilize things for god knows how long. not only with turkey, but iran and syria especially

I smell Nimrod vs. Sleeper pt. 2 - Secret of the Ooze

I see what you're saying. In a nutshell, "If Bush was smart (and merely by invading Iraq he's made an argument that he isn't), he should have seen this ethnic feuding coming, and either should have planned on leaving a much larger occupying force in for a longer amount of time, or simply not bothered at all."

Firstly, you're taking the easy way out. If all else fails, blame Bush. Yes, I believe that the Bush administration is doing a much less than ideal job of handling the Iraq situation and they, in part, created this mess. However, (and I'm guessing you believe otherwise) I believe that it was not as if Bush went in with the intention of overthrowing Saddam and then just sitting back and letting the Arabs kill themselves in a bloody civil war. People can coexist if they want to; the citizens of Iraq are just choosing not to, and that's making Bush look worse and worse, because it's seen worldwide as his mess (which admittedly, is in part). The people of Iraq need to be doing their part. Peace isn't impossible in that region. It's improbable, yes, but not impossible. The Bush administration can't just send in hundreds of thousands of troops and hold the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds at gunpoint and say "You WILL get along." In the short term, that works, but that cannot last forever. Yes, a larger U.S. troop force would have helped, but the government in place has to prove that it is workable, and it would be workable if the people of Iraq were willing to work on that goal.

The Bush administration was hoping that, free from the oppression of Hussein's regime, that the people of Iraq would make rational steps toward a less despotic society. Unfortunately, the Iraqis would rather engage in age-old religious conflicts than seize this opportunity to work towards an amicable society. It is the Bush administration's fault for being too shortsighted in their vision of a democratic Iraq, but if the Iraqis were willing, they could have salvaged something. Instead, it's "My God vs. Your God" all over again.

The blame is 50/50, not 99/1. And forget about using the argument "We should never have been there in the first place", because it is not vaild. We all know that's true, and that's not relevant in this discussion.

The majority of the terror acts in Iraq have been launched by rebel Sunnis who were once in league with Saddam and feel like they will be slighted in the new government. If they are slighted, they have no one to blame but themselves. For years, the Sunni minority-dominated government ran roughshod over a Shi-ite/Kurdish majority. Forgive the majority of the people in Iraq if they'd rather have nothing to do with that regime once and for all. I'm not saying Sunnis shouldn't have a voice in the new government. In order for there to be peace, this is necessary. The Sunnis inability to accept anything less than a much bigger share of the pie than the majority of Iraq are willing to give them has resulted in this resentment that has lead to most of the violence. It's not without cause. They were the top dog for years and years. What would you do if you were king of all you knew and then suddenly the rug was swept from under you and you knew you'd only have a fraction of the luxury you once knew from now on? Forgive me, but after that, the argument "If I can't have it, no one can" suddenly seems plausible. I'm not saying it's all the Sunnis' fault: there are plenty of severely prejudiced Shi'ites in Iraq who would rather wage endless jihad against their fellow Muslims. Think of this as an example of the point I'm trying to make.

Greed is eternal. Yes, it's Bush's fault for not having the foresight to see this mess. But it's also the Iraqis fault for their unwillingness to do their part in making the best of a bad situation.

If idealism fails, you have to be pragmatic...and pragmatism is something nobody seems to be interested in anymore.

*deep breath*

What the hell? '50/50'? What sleeper was saying was that there were massive tensions in Iraq, partly caused by and almost totally repressed by Saddam's regime - when Bush decided to invade and remove the government, that lifted the lid on the whole thing. Knowing full well what would happen and still doing it, and not having a solid plan or even commitment to containing the danger (i.e. minimal troop deployment) was utterly irresponsible. This is why you just don't go around invading countries.

And stop with the 'the Iraqis are fighting!' bit - it's not THE Iraqis, it's a small minority of Iraqis who are taking the welcome opportunity to influence things using violence. The idea that Bush handed Iraq a chance for peace and they outright rejected it is stupid. The problem is that this small, violent minority are being allowed to cause all this trouble - and guess whose responsibility it was to keep them under control? The occupying power. The new government can't prove itself until the situation is calmed.

Also it's not 'my god vs your god' - they're all muslims, it's the exact same god.

Funnily enough, the coalition forces pretty much holed up during this whole thing, which isn't exactly pragmatic. It took the government to impose a curfew, and religious leaders speaking out against the attacks and in favor of unity to calm things down. Then you see peaceful demonstrations, Sunnis and Shi'ites together, condemning what's happening. Kinda shits all over your 'Iraq hates peace!' theory huh

Whoa, sleeper upgraded.

I agree 100%

only issue is the wealth distribution


as far as turkey goes... turkey isnt going to do shit as long as they get the majority of their weapons from the US

Al Qaeda in Iraq is undoubtedly responsible for these bombings which in turn triggered these attacks. Honestly though, I'm surprised civil war hasn't erupted sooner.

its not even a question of if. they were well aware of the realities of the situation and repeatedly chose to ignore them. this type of behaviour is hardly contained to iraq, obviously, and is pretty much the modus operandi of the bush administration. preferable untruths over reality, with disastrous consequences again and again. look at how long the bush administration was trying to ignore all evidence to the contrary and mitigate the severity of the insurgency to the public by selling it as just a few "baathist remnants and outside terrorists," as opposed to the basically sectarian conflict that it was and is. where the bush administration is unique is in the fact that it believes its own lies, for the information that it wasnt just "baathist remnants" was a secret to no one. in this case, that lie led to a perpetual misallocation of resources and directly to any number of egregious errors. only now is it catching up to what has been the reality all along, and grudgingly so at that. the same goes with their failure to properly plan, or even plan at all, for the postwar situation in general. thats non-debatable as far as im concerned

thats pretty silly. this is exactly not a "blame bush" situation. saying that is a pretty convenient card to play itself. i mean, theres nothing really contentious about this. this was a war of choice. that choice was made virtually exclusively by the bush administration. if one chooses some course of action they automatically adopt responsibility for it. i mean this logically, that someone adopts responsibility, and even legally (a moot point maybe on this topic), where an occupying power legally bears responsibility. they have been indisputably irresponsible and incompetent and iraq is a mess (or much more of a mess) because of it. period. the fact that iraq was something of a powder keg does not change any of this one bit. thats just the reality of the situation. if it was completely intractable and there was never any hope of implementing any kind of respectable peace then you simply dont invade. this is all very cut and dry



i dont even understand what that last big sentence is about. its as if the whole thing is supported with the assumption that im on the side on the sunnis or of the insurgency or something. which, i need not say, is not the case
with regards to that "if we cant have it" thing, i dont know why you cant understand that theyre not just lashing out out of bitterness or poor sportsmanship, but are threatened and are defending themselves. not against attacks, per se (although those are, you have to accept, no less brutal than sunni attacks on shiites), but against a new order that specifically puts them under foot. you make it seem like they are in a content state but just generally want more, when, in reality, their livelihood is threatened by a government that is colluding with the great satan and is incredibly hostile to their interests. imagine how the shiites felt, and why they wanted to fight against the government, during the worst of the shiite repression of the saddam hussien years. its not the exact same situation, but im just trying to use that example to change your paradigm of their motives, because yours is not only false and unsupported by the facts but so implausible that just a priori you shoudlve logically ruled it out. its important to understand that the shiites were perceived by the sunnis as basically primitive peasants. imagine being a sunni, in a privileged position in society, and then having the great lower class, the religiously inferior, ignorant, and despicable masses, now have complete domain over you and your life. this isnt some left-field notion either, the shiites have been doing exactly what youd expect them to do: take over the government, police, army and everything and brutally persecute the sunnis, dragging their families out at night and executing them, or, as you should have heard of, running secret torture facilities under the auspices of the interior ministry and loading them to the rafters with bruised and battered sunnis. that, i need not say, is basically exactly analogous to the behaviour of the baathis government under saddam, excpet its sunnis not shiites. do you see what im saying now?


again: its not about not having the foresight. i said specifically that one could really not present the bush administration as being an innocent victim of its own ignorance. they did have the foresight. they, not should have known or could have known, but they did know and they just acted irresponsibly and incompetently. the evidence of this is a mountain high and pretty hard to just wave away

the fact that you, and the bush administration, fail to realize is that there is no popular desire for an iraq in the model that the US is proposing. there never was. to a distinct minority, yes, but the whole notion of it is just absurd to the rest. theres just no incentive for it whatsoever. they all stand to gain more following their own designs and they all stand to lose with the US model. the people who have colluded with the US in the past, namely the shiites, have done so out of convenience and, as we are seeing, are now starting to shake of the reigns and act entirely without restraint. the way youre presenting the situation is really odd. you present it as if the iraqis are presented with two choices: participate in a peaceful democracy or kill each other. they want neither, and the latter is coming about out of circumstance. the killings and the conflict are just means, theyre not ends. why do i even have to clarify that? ridiculous

but now the whole crux of your position has to be addressed: this idea of blame. 50/50 blame, you say? do you not see the perversity of this logic? its utterly glaring to me, i have to say. so 50/50 blame in what? blame in the failure of the iraq project. define the iraq project: the drive to produce a "free, democratic, united" iraq. do both of those parties who allegedly share the blame for that failure even want that project to succeed? no, they dont. in other words: you cant be blamed for the failure of something you never wanted to succeed. that objective was the US's and its failure to manifest is its failure -- its failure to either engineer the situation so as to make succeed or its failure in choosing such a ludicrous, pie in the sky goal in the first place.

what do you mean by this? ive thought about it and i dont understand

it means you got better

ive regressed if anything, actually

the sleeper downgraded

Arboreally, my boreal compadre

yeah i like my new avatar too

the old one was better

whats yours? i have an idea but i dont want to say it and have it not be it

i feel as though i pretty much have a duty to post this article for those interested in the whole pre-iraq war build up

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200603...r-in-iraq.html

its a preview from the march/april issue of foreign affairs and is by paul pillar, the former head of the CIAs middle east affairs division, or something like that.

this is one of the more interesting quotes in the article

and he does a pretty good job of explaining how indirect influence is exerted in such an organization. that was another key part

it's a painting by my current favourite artist

ok i know who it is. i like her paintings too.

and here's a fairly easy going article about the history of the feud from the bbc news website for anyone wanting an overview:

Divided History - what lies behind Iraq's spiralling sectarian violence?

i read that and thought it was ok. i think it brought up some interesting information, about the origins of the sunni dominance in particular, and a good point, that the conflict is not just all about sects and that thats an oversimplification, but it wasnt incredible. some of the stuff they said contradicted the stuff i just read a few days ago in this article on sunni-shia relations that you might be interested to check out
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...shia-sunni.htm

i liked that article quite a bit and it also brought up some interesting, revealing figures. i reas yours now you read mine, ok