Nir Rosen, [who by way of disclosure, works with my brother at the New America Foundation] has a horrifying description of life in Iraq. Here’s the lede:
Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device.
Rosen describes a country in the throes of a sectarian civil war, where it is no longer safe to engage in conversation unless you know whether your interlocutor is a Sunni or a Shi’a. It took a while for this to develop, and I have to wonder whether America didn’t help it along. The surface explanation for it places the weight of responsibility on bogeyman al-Zarqawi.
During the first battle of Fallujah, in the spring of 2004, Sunni insurgents fought alongside some Shiite forces against the Americans; by that fall, the Sunnis waged their resistance alone in Fallujah, and they resented the Shiites’ indifference.
But by that time, Shiite frustration with Sunnis for harboring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the bloodthirsty head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, led some to feel that the Fallujans were getting what they deserved. The cycle of violence escalated from there. When Sunni refugees from Fallujah settled in west Baghdad’s Sunni strongholds such as Ghazaliya, al-Amriya and Khadhra, the first Shiiite families began to get threats to leave. In Amriya, Shiites who ignored the threats had their homes attacked or their men murdered by Sunni militias.
This is when sectarian cleansing truly began. Sunni refugees in Amriya seized homes vacated by Shiites.
Whether by accident or design, the Americans saw the enemy splinter between the two attacks on Falluja. The Shiites had come to see Falluja as a symbol of the car bombs and other attacks attributed to Zarqawi that were killing them in droves. They withheld their support when America attacked a second time. That was when the civil war really began, but it didn’t become catastrophic until this year.
In November I asked a close Shiite friend if — considering all this violence, crime and radicalism in Iraq — life had not been better under Hussein.
“No,” he said definitively. “They could level all of Baghdad and it would still be better than Saddam. At least we have hope.”
A few weeks later, though, he e-mailed me in despair: “A civil war will happen I’m sure of it . . . you can’t be comfortable talking with a man until you know if he was Shia or Sunni, . . . Politicians don’t trust each other, People don’t trust each other. [There is] seeking revenge, weak government, separate regions for the opponents . . . We have a civil war here; it is only a matter of time, and some peppers to provoke it.”
The time came on Feb. 22, when the Golden Mosque of the Shiites in Samarra was blown up. More than 1,000 Sunnis were killed in retribution, and then the Shiite-controlled interior ministry prevented an accurate body count from being released. Attacks on mosques, mostly Sunni ones, increased. Officially, Moqtada al-Sadr opposed attacks on Sunnis, but he unleashed his fighters on them after the bombing.
The bombing of the Samarra mosque has also been attributed to al-Zarqawi. But it’s effect has been at least a mixed blessing to American troops.
Sunni militias that had fought the American occupier became Sunni militias protecting Sunni territory from Shiite incursions and retaliating in Shiite areas. The insurgency became secondary as resistance moved to self-defense.
So, here is my question. Have our military commanders encouraged sectarian violence for the precise purpose of getting the Sunni militias to make the insurgency secondary to self-defense against the Shi’a?
Could we have blundered into helping to create a civil war in order to take the heat off our troops? And, even if that is not the case, and this happened in spite of our best efforts to bring peace, calm, and security to Iraq, what does that tell us about our ability to control events and make a positive difference?
It’s Memorial Day. It’s a day to remember the sacrifices of our soldiers. They have sacrificed a lot in Iraq, but they have not succeeded in their mission. It’s time to bring them home.
See my diary on this.
Does the phrase “holding pattern” sound right?
(And stop looking at that damn fuel gauge! You’re making me nervous!)
Somehow I can’t help seeing the influence of Negroponte here. It all seems so familiar (like El Salvador).
Been thinking it strange that death squads popped into the lexicon near the end of his ambassadorship.
Death Squad sadism does seem to be Negroponte’s forte.
This is the most thorough, horrifying description of current reality in Iraq I’ve seen in the mainstream press. I was sitting down to write a review of his book (same subject, more detail), came across this, and just pointed to it. But if you are serious about taking it the nightmere our regime has pulled the trigger on, read In the Belly of the Green Bird.
There is a panel on c-span2 right now of jounalists talking about what’s going on in Iraq. Phillip Robertson from “The Nation” just agreed with Nir Rosen and said that the country started being ruled by fear after the second assault on Falluja.
[[[[Could we have blundered into helping to create a civil war in order to take the heat off our troops? And, even if that is not the case, and this happened in spite of our best efforts to bring peace, calm, and security to Iraq, what does that tell us about our ability to control events and make a positive difference?]]]]
Of course you are right! Negroponte is part of the reason, but look at who was in before him. None of them had the common sense to know better,,,only the fact that they are bad ppl, who will never know any different let alone do any better.
Flogging the same beast I’ve been flogging for several years now, where you ask;
I say, we have not blundered into helping to create a civil war, BushCo is deliberately fostering civil war whenever and wherever it can!
It’s at least open to debate. I keep changing my mind on it. The fact is that no theory seems to incoporate all the facts neatly. I think the tragedy in Iraq surpasses any plan. I also think our military commanders would not put forth plans that had such an effect intentionally, without dissent and without leaking about it. Some of the big macro non-military decisions do seem to have been directed at the direction you suggest. Perhaps some of the covert operations as well. It’s just to smoky for me to see this all clearly.
Bear in mind that it is definitely not the military commanders who are the architects of war strategy in Iraq. these commandrs for the most part may at best contribute tactical plans, but of course the tactics are always subordinate to the strategic plans.
The strategic negligence that allowed the ammo dumps to go unguarded in the early stages of the invasion prompted many a field commander to have to engineer the best tactics he could come up with to fight against those who armed themselves from those ammo dumps and sought to fight against our forces, but no amount of tactical genius or determination could have overcome the sheer self-destructiveness of the Pentagon-led strategic catastrophe.
Likewise, no field tactics could have compensated for the strategic insanity of disbanding the Iraqi army pre-emptorily and overnight creating 400,000 or so impoverished, mainly young Iraqi males who, because of their need to feed their families or uphold their dignity, turned into active enemies because we made them unemployed.
Keeping a war going and spreading and intensifying doesn’t require all that much planning. Usually impoverishing, insulting,killing, torturing, raping and humiliating members of the civilian population is all one needs to do to create and incentivise new enemies by the busload. Even bin Laden would be hard pressed to make new enemies with the speed and surety displayed by BushCo.
Maybe I’m missing something but I can’t identify one single significant strategic decision made in this war that has advanced the cause of stability one iota. Maybe you can think of one and if so I’d like to know what it might be.
the last elections were a mixed bag, but probably the only thing done that has had a net positive effect on stability. The numbers will not bear that out, but I think that is because of the country is descending into hell and other factors are overwhelming the stability a newly elected government can provide. Also, the battles of seating ministers and so forth have played into and exacerbated the sectarian wars. So, it’s hard to judge. I’ll say this, the elections were not intended to create instability. And the new government is the only thing that provides a vehicle for the Iraqis to force the Americans out. So, I think it is a net plus.
I wish I could believe the new (so-called) government in Iraq provides a vehicle for the Iraqis to force the Americans out, but, alas, I do not believe thusly.
I agree that in some (but not all) respects the new government is not precisely designed to create instability, but I see the government more as cover, a masquerade designed to give the appearance that the Bush regime is “trying to foster peace and stability in the region with all the best intentions”, when in fact there is no way this government can attain any real power unto itself to steer the country away from inevitable civil war.
I fully realize I am more prepared than many, even here on the left, to assume the absolute worst about the agenda of our own executive branch and the monsters that devise and implement it’s policies. I’m hopeful that more people will come to understand this perspective before too much longer because if we don’t, our own country and all we once stood for, is lost.