"The Shadow of Death and Destruction Is Everywhere"
Richard Boegner
December 01, 2006
When the bombs began exploding, supporters of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had already gathered to commemorate the death of his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, in Sadr City, the Shiite stronghold named after him located in eastern Baghdad.
A much revered religious leader, he was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s thugs in 1999.
Six parked cars exploded, including one in the crowded Jamila Market, at fifteen-minute intervals, as several mortar rounds crashed on the district.
More than 200 Iraqis lost their lives that Thanksgiving day…
One man present on the scene said, “there were dead people in the streets, there was blood everywhere”. Another, injured by shrapnel, added, “I looked back, and I saw cars burning. The fire was reaching the sky. A lot of people I know were killed while they were picking up bodies and helping people”(1).
Mahdi Army militants, members of the militia founded and led by Moqtada al-Sadr, as well as other residents of the beleaguered neighborhood, quickly took to the streets, vowing revenge…“Our bellies are full of blood. We’re going to fight the terrorists until the last breath”, declared one aggrieved Iraqi (2).
The avengers wasted no time…
Twenty were killed in mortar attacks targeting the Abu Hanifa mosque, one of the most revered Sunni shrines in the capital, located in Adhemiya, a Sunni district in eastern Baghdad.
The Ghazaliyah quarter, where the Association of Muslim Scholars, a militant Sunni organization close to the insurgency, has its headquarters was also hit by mortar rounds.
In Maatif, gunmen cruising in cars shot and killed 13 Sunnis.
In the mixed district of Hurriyah, in western Baghdad, four Sunni mosques were attacked.
Shiite militiamen marching through the streets collected automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from two white pickup trucks, a black BMW, and a black Opel, and destroyed the front door of the Mustafa Sunni mosque.
They then proceeded to extract six Sunnis from the place of worship, poured gasoline on them and set them alight, according to police Captain Jamil Hussein (3).
Once the victims apparently had burned to death, each was administered a bullet to the head…
Some irate residents, armed with AK47 assault rifles, attacked the militia members, killing eight after a two-hour battle.
All in all, some 30 Iraqis were killed and 48 wounded (4).
Many more attacks and counter-attacks would come…
The barbaric onslaught on Sadr City, which left so many dead and maimed, and similar in significance and portent to the bombing of the holy Shiite Al Askari mosque in Samarra last February, has further infuriated Iraq’s Shiite community, and revenge is now on the mind of even those who had previously been loath to contribute to the vicious cycle of violence engulfing Iraq.
Even they may no longer be able to remain on the sidelines of this raging civil war.
As one Sadr City shop owner said, “the feeling of revenge is more now than for the shrine in Samarra; that was just a building, and we can rebuild it. But what can we say about a family that has lost six members? They can only call on God for mercy. They are poor people, so have no guns and mortars to kill the others”(5).
The government headed by Prime Minister al-Maliki further demonstrated its inability to ensure the safety of Iraqi citizens during this crisis.
As such, more and more Iraqis are joining local committees, militias, established in order to protect their neighborhoods.
The Mahdi Army’s ranks are growing. Saedi, a hotel employee, joined the militia the day after the bombings: “I was not a part of the public committees or the Mahdi Army, but after the attacks I saw the people who were killed and my feelings changed”(6).
Each city block is patrolled by a set number of militants.
In Sunni districts such as Dora, local residents patrol their areas as well. As one inhabitant said, “we have zero trust in the Iraqi army, and minus-zero trust in the police”(7).
Not only is the Maliki government too feeble to protect Iraqis, but it has also been unable to provide services of any sort.
In the immediate aftermath of the Sadr City bombings, it was Sadr’s Mahdi Army that was present to provide assistance, not the government, whose representatives were nowhere to be seen.
As one wounded salesman said, “the Mahdi Army are the people who helped us after the explosion. They saved us”(8).
The militiamen rescued the wounded; drove them to the hospital in their own cars; donated blood and medical equipment they were able to collect locally. They helped put out fires, patrolled the slum’s streets, and arrested one of the bombers found in a car laden with explosives …They transported the dead to the morgue. “If they were not there yesterday, it would have been a disaster”, one resident concluded (9).
The Mahdi Army’s ability to provide services that are normally the responsibility of a city council or national government will make it all the more difficult for Prime Minister Maliki to respond favorably to American demands and disarm and disband the organization, also suspected of having killed thousands of Sunnis…
For all practical purposes, Sadr’s movement is more efficient, influential and thus more powerful than the Iraqi government. In fact, its effective response to the bombings have bolstered its popularity, and that of its chief, Moqtada al-Sadr.
The Mahdi Army is doing more than the government, which has no presence in Sadr City. Their popularity has increased because they prevent terrorists from bringing down Sadr City. People now think they are heroes; they are champions”, a shopkeeper said (10).
Hence, the Maliki government is in no position to confront Mr Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Until the prime minister can subdue the Sunni insurgency and deliver essential services, it is pointless to even attempt to do so.
One militia member, Ayad al-Fartoosi, put it this way: “It is not possible to disarm the Mahdi Army because these weapons we are using are to defend the innocent people and not to kill the innocent, to help the persecuted people against the persecutors. I would not hand over my gun to Maliki, or to that damned Bush, even if they ask me to”(11).
Other parts of Iraq are no less wracked by violence.
After several days of fighting, the city of Baqouba in Diyala province, 50 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, has fallen into the grasp of Sunni insurgents.
On Wednesday, November 29, 2006, some 50 fighters attacked the city’s main police station. According to a local Iraqi journalist, Sameerah Shibli, “Baqouba is a dead city, controlled by al-Qaeda. They stop all life”(12).
So many bodies have accumulated in the city’s hospital morgue that if they are not claimed within 48 hours, they are then buried in unmarked graves. Many other corpses remain uncollected in Baqouba’s lethal streets, devoured by stray dogs (13)…
Al-Anbar province, a wide swath of land separating the Iraqi capital from Syria and Jordan, and where Fallujah and Ramadi are located, populated by 1.25 million mostly Sunni Iraqis, has all but been abandoned to the insurgency. Dominated by al-Qaeda, insurgents have infiltrated all of the province’s institutions. As a result, the central government has refused to pay the salaries of the police and army there.
According to a report written by Col. Peter Devlin, a military intelligence officer, it would take at least an additional 15 to 20,000 soldiers, and billions of dollars to turn the situation around (14). Instead, the Pentagon is considering transferring some of the 30,000 troops stationed in al-Anbar to Baghdad in order to help quell the violence there. As a senior military official conceded, “if we are not going to do a better job in al-Anbar, what’s the point of having them out there?”(15).
The violence in Iraq has reached such a level of intensity that it may simply no longer be possible for anyone, let alone the Maliki government or US forces to put a stop to it…
Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told Reuters (16) that “Iraq is moving very fast towards the point of no return. The shadow of death and destruction is everywhere. We are all responsible, including me, for this situation”.
Though many are trying to find a way to restore a semblance of order, including MM Maliki and Bush, and Mr Baker’s Iraq Study Group, it is far from clear if, at this juncture, it can be done.
In the meantime, Iraqis struggle to find a means to deal with the violence and chaos.
It is no easy task. “We feel our world has become narrow, and we are being squeezed”, a Shiite taxi driver said. “We have no place to run”(17).
Those still alive, battered and bruised by the ceaseless violence hammering their neighborhoods, no longer have a life to lead. The gunmen, the terrorists, the avengers, the kidnappers and murderers have robbed them of everything but their fear.
No one is immune”, Rania Sarkis, a Christian housewife from the Dora district, sadly concluded. “Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, no one. If gunmen want to turn this into a Sunni or Shiite area, where would we go? I have stopped sending the boys to school. My husband fears going out every morning; maybe they’ll come and shoot him. We are expecting death every minute here”(18)…
In today’s Iraq, that is probably all that is left to expect…
Notes/
1) Sudarsan Raghavan and Nancy Trejos, “Assault on Iraqi Civilians Is Deadliest Since 2003”, WP, November 24, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300399_pf.html
2) See note 1
3) « AP Defies Military, Bloggers on Story of 6 Iraqis Set on Fire», E&P, November 29, 2006.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003439706
4) Alastair MacDonald and Mussab al-Khairalla, “Shiites take bloody revenge”, The
Scotsman, UK, November 25, 2006.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1746712006&format=print
5) Scott Peterson, “Iraq’s deepening religious fissures”, Christian Science Monitor,
November 28, 2006.
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=12019
6) Solomon Moore, “Rising violence swells ranks of Iraq’s militias”, LAT,
November 28, 2006.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-militias28nov28,1,954754,print.story
7) See note 6.
8) Sudarsan Raghavan, “A Day When Mahdi Army Showed Its Other Side”, WP
November 27, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112601242_pf.html
9) See note 8.
10) See note 5.
11) See note 8.
12) Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Sectarian Rifts Foretell Pitfalls of Iraqi Troops’ Taking Control”, NYT, November 12, 2006.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/11/africa/web.1111diyala.php
13) Hannah Allam and William Douglas, “Bush-Maliki meeting canceled; lawmakers
withdraw from posts”, McClatchy Newspapers, November 29, 2006.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16125507.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
14) Dafina Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks, “Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker”,
WP, November 28, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701287_pf.html
15) Jonathan Karl, “Pentagon Considers Moving troops From al-Anbar Province to
Baghdad”, ABC News, November 28, 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=2685559
16) Ross Colvin, “Bombings push Iraq closer to abyss”, Reuters, November 26, 2006.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL624230.htm
17) Sudarsan Raghavan and Nancy Trejos, “Baghdad Braces For More Reprisals”,
November 26, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500253_pf.html
18) “Baghdad residents tell of a society ripping itself apart”, McClatchy Newspapers,
November 27, 2006.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16109733.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
A much revered religious leader, he was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s thugs in 1999.
Six parked cars exploded, including one in the crowded Jamila Market, at fifteen-minute intervals, as several mortar rounds crashed on the district.
More than 200 Iraqis lost their lives that Thanksgiving day…
One man present on the scene said, “there were dead people in the streets, there was blood everywhere”. Another, injured by shrapnel, added, “I looked back, and I saw cars burning. The fire was reaching the sky. A lot of people I know were killed while they were picking up bodies and helping people”(1).
Mahdi Army militants, members of the militia founded and led by Moqtada al-Sadr, as well as other residents of the beleaguered neighborhood, quickly took to the streets, vowing revenge…“Our bellies are full of blood. We’re going to fight the terrorists until the last breath”, declared one aggrieved Iraqi (2).
The avengers wasted no time…
Twenty were killed in mortar attacks targeting the Abu Hanifa mosque, one of the most revered Sunni shrines in the capital, located in Adhemiya, a Sunni district in eastern Baghdad.
The Ghazaliyah quarter, where the Association of Muslim Scholars, a militant Sunni organization close to the insurgency, has its headquarters was also hit by mortar rounds.
In Maatif, gunmen cruising in cars shot and killed 13 Sunnis.
In the mixed district of Hurriyah, in western Baghdad, four Sunni mosques were attacked.
Shiite militiamen marching through the streets collected automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from two white pickup trucks, a black BMW, and a black Opel, and destroyed the front door of the Mustafa Sunni mosque.
They then proceeded to extract six Sunnis from the place of worship, poured gasoline on them and set them alight, according to police Captain Jamil Hussein (3).
Once the victims apparently had burned to death, each was administered a bullet to the head…
Some irate residents, armed with AK47 assault rifles, attacked the militia members, killing eight after a two-hour battle.
All in all, some 30 Iraqis were killed and 48 wounded (4).
Many more attacks and counter-attacks would come…
The barbaric onslaught on Sadr City, which left so many dead and maimed, and similar in significance and portent to the bombing of the holy Shiite Al Askari mosque in Samarra last February, has further infuriated Iraq’s Shiite community, and revenge is now on the mind of even those who had previously been loath to contribute to the vicious cycle of violence engulfing Iraq.
Even they may no longer be able to remain on the sidelines of this raging civil war.
As one Sadr City shop owner said, “the feeling of revenge is more now than for the shrine in Samarra; that was just a building, and we can rebuild it. But what can we say about a family that has lost six members? They can only call on God for mercy. They are poor people, so have no guns and mortars to kill the others”(5).
The government headed by Prime Minister al-Maliki further demonstrated its inability to ensure the safety of Iraqi citizens during this crisis.
As such, more and more Iraqis are joining local committees, militias, established in order to protect their neighborhoods.
The Mahdi Army’s ranks are growing. Saedi, a hotel employee, joined the militia the day after the bombings: “I was not a part of the public committees or the Mahdi Army, but after the attacks I saw the people who were killed and my feelings changed”(6).
Each city block is patrolled by a set number of militants.
In Sunni districts such as Dora, local residents patrol their areas as well. As one inhabitant said, “we have zero trust in the Iraqi army, and minus-zero trust in the police”(7).
Not only is the Maliki government too feeble to protect Iraqis, but it has also been unable to provide services of any sort.
In the immediate aftermath of the Sadr City bombings, it was Sadr’s Mahdi Army that was present to provide assistance, not the government, whose representatives were nowhere to be seen.
As one wounded salesman said, “the Mahdi Army are the people who helped us after the explosion. They saved us”(8).
The militiamen rescued the wounded; drove them to the hospital in their own cars; donated blood and medical equipment they were able to collect locally. They helped put out fires, patrolled the slum’s streets, and arrested one of the bombers found in a car laden with explosives …They transported the dead to the morgue. “If they were not there yesterday, it would have been a disaster”, one resident concluded (9).
The Mahdi Army’s ability to provide services that are normally the responsibility of a city council or national government will make it all the more difficult for Prime Minister Maliki to respond favorably to American demands and disarm and disband the organization, also suspected of having killed thousands of Sunnis…
For all practical purposes, Sadr’s movement is more efficient, influential and thus more powerful than the Iraqi government. In fact, its effective response to the bombings have bolstered its popularity, and that of its chief, Moqtada al-Sadr.
The Mahdi Army is doing more than the government, which has no presence in Sadr City. Their popularity has increased because they prevent terrorists from bringing down Sadr City. People now think they are heroes; they are champions”, a shopkeeper said (10).
Hence, the Maliki government is in no position to confront Mr Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Until the prime minister can subdue the Sunni insurgency and deliver essential services, it is pointless to even attempt to do so.
One militia member, Ayad al-Fartoosi, put it this way: “It is not possible to disarm the Mahdi Army because these weapons we are using are to defend the innocent people and not to kill the innocent, to help the persecuted people against the persecutors. I would not hand over my gun to Maliki, or to that damned Bush, even if they ask me to”(11).
Other parts of Iraq are no less wracked by violence.
After several days of fighting, the city of Baqouba in Diyala province, 50 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, has fallen into the grasp of Sunni insurgents.
On Wednesday, November 29, 2006, some 50 fighters attacked the city’s main police station. According to a local Iraqi journalist, Sameerah Shibli, “Baqouba is a dead city, controlled by al-Qaeda. They stop all life”(12).
So many bodies have accumulated in the city’s hospital morgue that if they are not claimed within 48 hours, they are then buried in unmarked graves. Many other corpses remain uncollected in Baqouba’s lethal streets, devoured by stray dogs (13)…
Al-Anbar province, a wide swath of land separating the Iraqi capital from Syria and Jordan, and where Fallujah and Ramadi are located, populated by 1.25 million mostly Sunni Iraqis, has all but been abandoned to the insurgency. Dominated by al-Qaeda, insurgents have infiltrated all of the province’s institutions. As a result, the central government has refused to pay the salaries of the police and army there.
According to a report written by Col. Peter Devlin, a military intelligence officer, it would take at least an additional 15 to 20,000 soldiers, and billions of dollars to turn the situation around (14). Instead, the Pentagon is considering transferring some of the 30,000 troops stationed in al-Anbar to Baghdad in order to help quell the violence there. As a senior military official conceded, “if we are not going to do a better job in al-Anbar, what’s the point of having them out there?”(15).
The violence in Iraq has reached such a level of intensity that it may simply no longer be possible for anyone, let alone the Maliki government or US forces to put a stop to it…
Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told Reuters (16) that “Iraq is moving very fast towards the point of no return. The shadow of death and destruction is everywhere. We are all responsible, including me, for this situation”.
Though many are trying to find a way to restore a semblance of order, including MM Maliki and Bush, and Mr Baker’s Iraq Study Group, it is far from clear if, at this juncture, it can be done.
In the meantime, Iraqis struggle to find a means to deal with the violence and chaos.
It is no easy task. “We feel our world has become narrow, and we are being squeezed”, a Shiite taxi driver said. “We have no place to run”(17).
Those still alive, battered and bruised by the ceaseless violence hammering their neighborhoods, no longer have a life to lead. The gunmen, the terrorists, the avengers, the kidnappers and murderers have robbed them of everything but their fear.
No one is immune”, Rania Sarkis, a Christian housewife from the Dora district, sadly concluded. “Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, no one. If gunmen want to turn this into a Sunni or Shiite area, where would we go? I have stopped sending the boys to school. My husband fears going out every morning; maybe they’ll come and shoot him. We are expecting death every minute here”(18)…
In today’s Iraq, that is probably all that is left to expect…
Notes/
1) Sudarsan Raghavan and Nancy Trejos, “Assault on Iraqi Civilians Is Deadliest Since 2003”, WP, November 24, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300399_pf.html
2) See note 1
3) « AP Defies Military, Bloggers on Story of 6 Iraqis Set on Fire», E&P, November 29, 2006.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003439706
4) Alastair MacDonald and Mussab al-Khairalla, “Shiites take bloody revenge”, The
Scotsman, UK, November 25, 2006.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1746712006&format=print
5) Scott Peterson, “Iraq’s deepening religious fissures”, Christian Science Monitor,
November 28, 2006.
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=12019
6) Solomon Moore, “Rising violence swells ranks of Iraq’s militias”, LAT,
November 28, 2006.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-militias28nov28,1,954754,print.story
7) See note 6.
8) Sudarsan Raghavan, “A Day When Mahdi Army Showed Its Other Side”, WP
November 27, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112601242_pf.html
9) See note 8.
10) See note 5.
11) See note 8.
12) Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Sectarian Rifts Foretell Pitfalls of Iraqi Troops’ Taking Control”, NYT, November 12, 2006.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/11/africa/web.1111diyala.php
13) Hannah Allam and William Douglas, “Bush-Maliki meeting canceled; lawmakers
withdraw from posts”, McClatchy Newspapers, November 29, 2006.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16125507.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
14) Dafina Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks, “Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker”,
WP, November 28, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701287_pf.html
15) Jonathan Karl, “Pentagon Considers Moving troops From al-Anbar Province to
Baghdad”, ABC News, November 28, 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=2685559
16) Ross Colvin, “Bombings push Iraq closer to abyss”, Reuters, November 26, 2006.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL624230.htm
17) Sudarsan Raghavan and Nancy Trejos, “Baghdad Braces For More Reprisals”,
November 26, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500253_pf.html
18) “Baghdad residents tell of a society ripping itself apart”, McClatchy Newspapers,
November 27, 2006.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16109733.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
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