LET US NOT FORGET THAT BLOODSHED IS EVERYWHERE
Richard Boegner
April 24, 2006
In Iraq these days, militias seem to be everywhere.
When asked if they had any role in the sectarian attacks now so pervasive in Iraq and particularly Baghdad, Lt Colonel Chris Pease (1), deputy commander of the US military’s police training programs in eastern Baghdad replied, (We’re not stupid. We know for a fact that they’re (the militias) killing people. We dig the damn bodies out of the sewer all the time).
According to Pease, an Iraqi military official (2) told him that his “officers were not going to do anything about that because their units are infiltrated and they know what the cost would be for working against the militias”.
Yet not only have the Iraqi authorities shown no particular desire to confront the militias. But at a time of political uncertainty due to the inability of the Iraqis to establish a new government following the December 15 elections, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, headed by Bayan Jabr, a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a major Iraqi Shiite party belonging to the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), winner of the elections, has also refused to recruit graduates of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (3), an American and British organization designed to train an ethnically balanced police force of some 134,000 by the end of 2006. Instead, the ministry has recruited its own men, and sent them out on the streets….SCIRI has a militia of its own, the Iran-trained BADR Corps, which has been accused of executing Sunnis suspected rightly or wrongly of supporting the insurgency…Shiite militias therefore, have infiltrated the very security apparatus designed to bring violence, including militia-sponsored violence, to an end!
Violence in Iraq has not only worsened (“let us not forget that bloodshed is everywhere” recently lamented an imam (4) during Friday prayers at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad), but also changed in nature. Sunni-Shiite relations are becoming evermore tense, particularly since the February 22 bombing of the al-Askari mosque (5) in Samarra, one of the holiest of Shiite shrines.
The attack unleashed a wave of retaliatory anti-Sunni killings orchestrated ,Sunnis claim, by the Mahdi Army, the militia of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, thereby exacerbating ethnic tensions.
This led the head of the US Central Command in Iraq, General John P. Abizaid (6) to conclude last month that “sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency”. And yet, US officials were warned more than two years ago (7) that Shiite militias could pose a growing security problem, but they had other priorities. Now, it may be too late…As Abu Haider Lami (8), a BADR senior official explained, “they (the US) forget that the Sunnis have been killing us for 45 years- for every action there is a reaction. What do they expect?”.
According to Jeffrey Gettleman (9), of the New York Times, who recently returned to Iraq after a one-year absence, the violence in Iraq has turned “inward…The focus of the bloodshed has changed”, becoming “more sadistic and less selective”.
Last month, Mohammed al-Jubouri (10), a resident of Baghdad claimed that two of his nephews were killed “when men wearing the signature black outfits of the Mahdi Army drove through his neighbourhood and randomly emptied gun magazines at pedestrians”. In March, more than 370 (11) dead bodies were found in Iraq…In Baghdad alone, the homicide rate tripled, from 11 to 33 (12) per day…
As a result, Iraqis have now become highly suspicious of one another. Trust between the communities has all but disappeared. The Sunnis fear that they will be persecuted by the Shiites now that the latter have finally gained power after years of oppression under Saddam. The Shiites for their part accuse the Sunnis of supporting the insurgency…
Ahmed Ali (13), a 34 year-old barber from Dora, an ethnically-mixed neighbourhood in Baghdad said “the Shiites are afraid of threats and assassinations, while Sunnis are afraid of raids (by Shiite militias). The kidnappings and assassinations take place during the daylight hours and the raids happen at night”.
Miriam Ali (14), also from Dora, whose father, denounced by an informant, was taken from his home never to be seen again, said “since that incident we lost confidence in everyone. We suspect everybody”.
The police cannot be trusted because they are infiltrated by the Shiite militias, yet neither can one’s neighbour because he or she may be an informant…
The Iraqi blogger Riverbend (15) recently reported that she saw the following warning broadcast on several Iraqi TV channels: “the Ministry of Defence requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in the area”… The Ministry is headed by Saadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni.
This climate of fear is accentuated by the fact that there is no justice in today’s Iraq, no accountability, the kidnappers, death squads and thugs roam and rule with impunity.
With no credible, effective and respected government to protect them, Iraqis are fleeing their neighbourhoods and finding refuge among their own brethren elsewhere.
As such, the al-Askarya bombing may have been a turning point. According to Jeffrey Gettleman (16), “there is before Samarra and after. Before Samarra, many Iraqis tried to play down the Sunni-Shiite tensions. Since Samarra, they live in mortal fear of them”.
As a result, in the current political vacuum and subsequent state of anarchy, the militias can only become more influential and powerful. Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul Kareem Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf (17), a Sunni, said “it’s not the time to ask the militias to put down their arms when we cannot properly provide security”.
It is the state of paralysis afflicting the new Iraqi institutions that creates the deleterious environment in which militias and vigilante justice thrive.
In Baghdad alone, some 65,000 (18) left their homes since the al-Askari bombing to find haven in safer neighbourhoods. A spokesman (19) for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, Sattar Nawruz, said “for all Iraq’s past troubles, we have never seen sectarian problems before. We hear 1000 people a day are being intimidated to quit their homes”.
The ethnic cleansing (20) of Baghdad has begun…
Vigilantes paint black crosses on the doors of their future targets. Baghdadis have learned to interpret these symbols as “the mark of death” (21).
Is the situation in Iraq now beyond hope?
According to a report (22) by the US Embassy and military command in Baghdad, only three of Iraq’s 18 provinces are characterized as “stable”. The seven provinces considered in a “critical” or “serious” state account for 60% of Iraq’s population of 25 million.
Is it, or is it not civil war? Does it matter?
It’s difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become” observed Jeffrey Gettleman (23). The French military analyst François Heisbourg (24) said that “in Beirut when the civil war began, you had electricity 24 hours a day and running water, and the air conditioning was working and so were the elevators. In the case of Baghdad, it looks like Beirut after 10 years of civil war”.
An Iraqi friend of the NBC News correspondent Richard Engel (25) suggested that “everything is expensive now. Tomatoes, fuel, everything. The only thing that is cheap is human life”.
Would the long awaited formation of a unity government make any difference now, or is it already too late?
What we have opened is Pandora’s box (26) and the question is, what is the way forward” asked the US Ambassador Zalmy Khalilzad (27)?
Can Iraqis find a way to live together harmoniously once again, or has a point of no return been reached?
Bassam Fariq Daash (28), a 34-year-old Shiite mechanic who left Awad, a mostly Sunni village north of Baghdad after receiving death threats from the Sunni insurgency summed up the situation this way: “I don’t think it will be possible to go back to the way we were”.
Upon his return to Baghdad after a few weeks absence, Richard Engel (29) of NBC was given the following advice by two close local friends:
Trust no one”, warned one;
only dumb people trust these days”, added the other…
Engel’s conclusion is one that all Iraqis now have to contend with everyday:
So what do you do when the people you trust the most tell you not to trust anyone?”
Vierzy, April 23, 2006
Richard Boegner, a graduate of the American University of Paris and the Sorbonne, lives and works in northern France.
Other work includes:
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6167.htm
www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewarticle.asp?articleID=6012
Notes:
1)Aamer Madhani,“On the ground, it’s a civil war”, Chicago Tribune, April 14, 2006; see http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/trib02.html
2)See Note n°1
3)“Iraq Govt. refuses to deploy US-trained police”, The Hindu, Guardian News Service, April 4, 2006; see www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200604041450.htm
4)Tom Lasseter, “Iraq’s insurgents focus on creating civil strife”, Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 24, 2006;
see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13955379.htm
5)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Askariya_Mosque
6)Ellen Knickmeyer, “Sectarian Fighting Changes Face of Conflict for Iraqis”, Washington Post, March 13, 2006;
see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201415.html
7)Tom Lasseter, “US knew Shiite militias were a threat but took no action largely because they were focused on Sunni emergency”, Knight Ridder Newspapers, April 17, 2006; see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14363583.htm
8)See note n°7
9)Jeffrey Gettleman, “Redirecting Bullets in Baghdad”, New York Times, March 26,
2006, see www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/weekinreview/26gettleman.html
10) See note n°1
11) Steven R. Hurst, “Iraq war changing with attacks on cos.”, Associated Press, March 29, 2006; see www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14216202.htm
12) Jeffrey Gettleman, “Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad”, New York Times, March 26, 2006;
see www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12489.htm
13)Nancy A. Youssef, “Fear of informants has stoked climate of fear in Baghdad”,
Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 24, 2006;
see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13955182.htm
14)See note n°13
15)http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#114357319665675277
16)See note n°7
17)See note n°1
18)Ali Hamdani, Nick Meo, Daniel McGrory, “Beaten, burnt and bullied: the families hounded out by religious vigilantes”, The Times, London, April 15, 2006;
see www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-2134971,00.html
19)See note n°18
20)See note n°18
21)See note n°18
22)Eric Schmitt and Edward Wong, “Few parts of Iraq are stable, report finds”, The New York Times, April 9, 2006;
see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002920238_report09.html
23)See note n°7
24)John Ward Anderson and Jonathan Finer, “The Battle for Baghdad’s Future”, Washington Post, April 9, 2006;
see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040801147.html
25)http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/04/life_in_the_tim.html
26)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box
27)Borzou Daragahi, “Envoy to Iraq Sees Threat of Wider War”, Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2006;
see www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030706K.shtml
28)See note n°6
29)See note n°25
When asked if they had any role in the sectarian attacks now so pervasive in Iraq and particularly Baghdad, Lt Colonel Chris Pease (1), deputy commander of the US military’s police training programs in eastern Baghdad replied, (We’re not stupid. We know for a fact that they’re (the militias) killing people. We dig the damn bodies out of the sewer all the time).
According to Pease, an Iraqi military official (2) told him that his “officers were not going to do anything about that because their units are infiltrated and they know what the cost would be for working against the militias”.
Yet not only have the Iraqi authorities shown no particular desire to confront the militias. But at a time of political uncertainty due to the inability of the Iraqis to establish a new government following the December 15 elections, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, headed by Bayan Jabr, a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a major Iraqi Shiite party belonging to the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), winner of the elections, has also refused to recruit graduates of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (3), an American and British organization designed to train an ethnically balanced police force of some 134,000 by the end of 2006. Instead, the ministry has recruited its own men, and sent them out on the streets….SCIRI has a militia of its own, the Iran-trained BADR Corps, which has been accused of executing Sunnis suspected rightly or wrongly of supporting the insurgency…Shiite militias therefore, have infiltrated the very security apparatus designed to bring violence, including militia-sponsored violence, to an end!
Violence in Iraq has not only worsened (“let us not forget that bloodshed is everywhere” recently lamented an imam (4) during Friday prayers at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad), but also changed in nature. Sunni-Shiite relations are becoming evermore tense, particularly since the February 22 bombing of the al-Askari mosque (5) in Samarra, one of the holiest of Shiite shrines.
The attack unleashed a wave of retaliatory anti-Sunni killings orchestrated ,Sunnis claim, by the Mahdi Army, the militia of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, thereby exacerbating ethnic tensions.
This led the head of the US Central Command in Iraq, General John P. Abizaid (6) to conclude last month that “sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency”. And yet, US officials were warned more than two years ago (7) that Shiite militias could pose a growing security problem, but they had other priorities. Now, it may be too late…As Abu Haider Lami (8), a BADR senior official explained, “they (the US) forget that the Sunnis have been killing us for 45 years- for every action there is a reaction. What do they expect?”.
According to Jeffrey Gettleman (9), of the New York Times, who recently returned to Iraq after a one-year absence, the violence in Iraq has turned “inward…The focus of the bloodshed has changed”, becoming “more sadistic and less selective”.
Last month, Mohammed al-Jubouri (10), a resident of Baghdad claimed that two of his nephews were killed “when men wearing the signature black outfits of the Mahdi Army drove through his neighbourhood and randomly emptied gun magazines at pedestrians”. In March, more than 370 (11) dead bodies were found in Iraq…In Baghdad alone, the homicide rate tripled, from 11 to 33 (12) per day…
As a result, Iraqis have now become highly suspicious of one another. Trust between the communities has all but disappeared. The Sunnis fear that they will be persecuted by the Shiites now that the latter have finally gained power after years of oppression under Saddam. The Shiites for their part accuse the Sunnis of supporting the insurgency…
Ahmed Ali (13), a 34 year-old barber from Dora, an ethnically-mixed neighbourhood in Baghdad said “the Shiites are afraid of threats and assassinations, while Sunnis are afraid of raids (by Shiite militias). The kidnappings and assassinations take place during the daylight hours and the raids happen at night”.
Miriam Ali (14), also from Dora, whose father, denounced by an informant, was taken from his home never to be seen again, said “since that incident we lost confidence in everyone. We suspect everybody”.
The police cannot be trusted because they are infiltrated by the Shiite militias, yet neither can one’s neighbour because he or she may be an informant…
The Iraqi blogger Riverbend (15) recently reported that she saw the following warning broadcast on several Iraqi TV channels: “the Ministry of Defence requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in the area”… The Ministry is headed by Saadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni.
This climate of fear is accentuated by the fact that there is no justice in today’s Iraq, no accountability, the kidnappers, death squads and thugs roam and rule with impunity.
With no credible, effective and respected government to protect them, Iraqis are fleeing their neighbourhoods and finding refuge among their own brethren elsewhere.
As such, the al-Askarya bombing may have been a turning point. According to Jeffrey Gettleman (16), “there is before Samarra and after. Before Samarra, many Iraqis tried to play down the Sunni-Shiite tensions. Since Samarra, they live in mortal fear of them”.
As a result, in the current political vacuum and subsequent state of anarchy, the militias can only become more influential and powerful. Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul Kareem Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf (17), a Sunni, said “it’s not the time to ask the militias to put down their arms when we cannot properly provide security”.
It is the state of paralysis afflicting the new Iraqi institutions that creates the deleterious environment in which militias and vigilante justice thrive.
In Baghdad alone, some 65,000 (18) left their homes since the al-Askari bombing to find haven in safer neighbourhoods. A spokesman (19) for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, Sattar Nawruz, said “for all Iraq’s past troubles, we have never seen sectarian problems before. We hear 1000 people a day are being intimidated to quit their homes”.
The ethnic cleansing (20) of Baghdad has begun…
Vigilantes paint black crosses on the doors of their future targets. Baghdadis have learned to interpret these symbols as “the mark of death” (21).
Is the situation in Iraq now beyond hope?
According to a report (22) by the US Embassy and military command in Baghdad, only three of Iraq’s 18 provinces are characterized as “stable”. The seven provinces considered in a “critical” or “serious” state account for 60% of Iraq’s population of 25 million.
Is it, or is it not civil war? Does it matter?
It’s difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become” observed Jeffrey Gettleman (23). The French military analyst François Heisbourg (24) said that “in Beirut when the civil war began, you had electricity 24 hours a day and running water, and the air conditioning was working and so were the elevators. In the case of Baghdad, it looks like Beirut after 10 years of civil war”.
An Iraqi friend of the NBC News correspondent Richard Engel (25) suggested that “everything is expensive now. Tomatoes, fuel, everything. The only thing that is cheap is human life”.
Would the long awaited formation of a unity government make any difference now, or is it already too late?
What we have opened is Pandora’s box (26) and the question is, what is the way forward” asked the US Ambassador Zalmy Khalilzad (27)?
Can Iraqis find a way to live together harmoniously once again, or has a point of no return been reached?
Bassam Fariq Daash (28), a 34-year-old Shiite mechanic who left Awad, a mostly Sunni village north of Baghdad after receiving death threats from the Sunni insurgency summed up the situation this way: “I don’t think it will be possible to go back to the way we were”.
Upon his return to Baghdad after a few weeks absence, Richard Engel (29) of NBC was given the following advice by two close local friends:
Trust no one”, warned one;
only dumb people trust these days”, added the other…
Engel’s conclusion is one that all Iraqis now have to contend with everyday:
So what do you do when the people you trust the most tell you not to trust anyone?”
Vierzy, April 23, 2006
Richard Boegner, a graduate of the American University of Paris and the Sorbonne, lives and works in northern France.
Other work includes:
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6167.htm
www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewarticle.asp?articleID=6012
Notes:
1)Aamer Madhani,“On the ground, it’s a civil war”, Chicago Tribune, April 14, 2006; see http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/trib02.html
2)See Note n°1
3)“Iraq Govt. refuses to deploy US-trained police”, The Hindu, Guardian News Service, April 4, 2006; see www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200604041450.htm
4)Tom Lasseter, “Iraq’s insurgents focus on creating civil strife”, Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 24, 2006;
see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13955379.htm
5)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Askariya_Mosque
6)Ellen Knickmeyer, “Sectarian Fighting Changes Face of Conflict for Iraqis”, Washington Post, March 13, 2006;
see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201415.html
7)Tom Lasseter, “US knew Shiite militias were a threat but took no action largely because they were focused on Sunni emergency”, Knight Ridder Newspapers, April 17, 2006; see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14363583.htm
8)See note n°7
9)Jeffrey Gettleman, “Redirecting Bullets in Baghdad”, New York Times, March 26,
2006, see www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/weekinreview/26gettleman.html
10) See note n°1
11) Steven R. Hurst, “Iraq war changing with attacks on cos.”, Associated Press, March 29, 2006; see www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14216202.htm
12) Jeffrey Gettleman, “Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad”, New York Times, March 26, 2006;
see www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12489.htm
13)Nancy A. Youssef, “Fear of informants has stoked climate of fear in Baghdad”,
Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 24, 2006;
see www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13955182.htm
14)See note n°13
15)http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#114357319665675277
16)See note n°7
17)See note n°1
18)Ali Hamdani, Nick Meo, Daniel McGrory, “Beaten, burnt and bullied: the families hounded out by religious vigilantes”, The Times, London, April 15, 2006;
see www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-2134971,00.html
19)See note n°18
20)See note n°18
21)See note n°18
22)Eric Schmitt and Edward Wong, “Few parts of Iraq are stable, report finds”, The New York Times, April 9, 2006;
see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002920238_report09.html
23)See note n°7
24)John Ward Anderson and Jonathan Finer, “The Battle for Baghdad’s Future”, Washington Post, April 9, 2006;
see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040801147.html
25)http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/04/life_in_the_tim.html
26)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box
27)Borzou Daragahi, “Envoy to Iraq Sees Threat of Wider War”, Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2006;
see www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030706K.shtml
28)See note n°6
29)See note n°25
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