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Iranean President Ahmadinejad to visit Baghdad on March 2
Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to meet Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani and PM Nouri Maliki during his two-day visit, which is scheduled to begin on March 2.
The visit comes as Iran postponed talks with the US on Iraqi security.
“When I hear anyone talk of Culture, I reach for my revolver.”
Hermann Goering (1893-1946)
In the Orwellian world of the United States military, when a killing spree in Mesapotamia is embarked upon, it is called an “Iraq Pacification Operation”. There have been hundreds of these (I abandoned counting at three hundred and eighty, with numerous more to go.)
Each ‘pacification’ has a name which brings a glimpse into a very strange mindset: “Operation Devil Thrust”, “Operation Terminator”, “Operation Scorpion Sting“, “Operation Sidewinder”, “Operation Roaring Tiger”, “Operation All American Tiger”, “Operation Panther Squeeze”, “Operation Warhorse Whirlwind”, “Operation Resolute Sword”, “Operation Wolverine Feast”, “Operation Arrowhead Ripper”, “Operations ‘Geronimo Strike’, ‘Rat Trap’ and ‘Grizzly Forced Entry‘”. (Source: Global Security)
In words and deeds, happenings in Iraq are chillingly redolent of Nazi Germany. Neighbourhoods walled in and “cleansed” of Sunnis, others of Shias, Christians and Iraq’s richness of minorities … people who have lived together and inter-married since time immemorial. The distinctions were imposed with the incoming tanks and troops – divide and rule writ large. In Falluja, Goebbel’s ghost walks tall. The residents even have their own ‘identifying arm patch’ to prove it. And it has certainly been cleansed, in uncountable thousands – exactly how many unknown, since in the words of General Tommy Franks it is not “productive” to count Iraqi deaths.
So how is Mosul to be purified? The most ethnically diverse city in Iraq, consisting of Arabs, Syriacs, Kurds, Armenians, Turcomans, Jews, Christians, Yazedis, Muslims and a trading centre since the sixth century BC. Who will draw the short straw? Their slaughter justified in a search, of course, for “Al Qaeda” with the innocents “a mistake”, “regrettable” or “collateral damage”. Americas military planners have become the modern day equivalent of the child who repeatedly cried “wolf’, they continually justify massacre by crying “Al Qaeda. In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler, referred to the ‘”racketeering” of the “military gang”. He described his military career as a: “… muscle man for big business, Wall Street and the bankers”. In Mosul’s case, surrounded by and floating on oil, the “muscle” is for Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobile…
The pastoral Yazedis have already been subject to a cleansing last August, blamed of course on suicide bombers from “Al Qaeda”, who presumably, thoughtfully, left identification amongst their and others body parts – similar to the two “Down’s syndrome” women, who detonated bombs in two pet markets two weeks ago.
Please also see:
No Attack on Mosul!
An Emergency Statement of Intellectuals and Activists – 05 February 2008
Iraq’s third-largest city looks like Baghdad did a year ago. U.S. soldiers drive armored Humvees and tanks through a decimated and dusty landscape. Burned-out cars sit on the street corners, and trash and chunks of concrete litter the medians and the gutters. Poor people from the countryside have flooded the city, but the streets and sidewalks are mostly deserted.
U.S. officials say that al-Qaida in Iraq and other terrorist groups have a significant presence in the city and that Mosul is a gathering point for foreign fighters coming across the border from nearby Syria.
Gunmen killed five U.S. soldiers during a firefight after an improvised explosive device attack on their Humvee, and in the past week, 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of explosives in an insurgent weapons cache exploded, killing 60 people and ripping a huge crater in the city. The next day, a suicide bomber killed the police chief at the blast site.
Terrorists aren’t Mosul’s only problem. The city’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs detest each other, and the Arabs distrust the city’s Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen minorities.
Although 60 percent of Mosul’s population of 1.8 million is Sunni, three-quarters of the provincial government is Kurdish, and the Arabs suspect the Kurds of wanting to take over the city.
“We live in chaos,” said Sheik Fawwaz al Jarba, a former member of the Shiite alliance in Iraq’s central government. He spoke from Baghdad because Sunni insurgents blew up his house in Mosul.
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Al-Maliki called Mosul the last stronghold of al-Qaida and said there would be a final showdown in this city. Still, U.S. military commanders say that is not the way the fight in Mosul is going to play out.
“Our enemy here is not going to do some kind of final stand where they die to the last man,” Oliver says. “The only time they die to the last man is when you have them cornered. Otherwise, they will shoot at us, they’ll engage us, they’ll conduct attacks and then they’ll vanish like vapors in the wind. And there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll do the same thing here in Mosul.”
Commanders say, the 1,400 U.S. soldiers in the city are being bolstered by 9,000 Iraqi army troops, many of them Kurds, who are expected to do most of the work of securing the city.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Commanders say, the 1,400 U.S. soldiers in the city are being bolstered by 9,000 Iraqi army troops, many of them Kurds, who are expected to do most of the (DIRTY) work of securing the city.”
I don`t mean to correct you, as I always cringe when I`m about to read what you write. You seem like an encyclopedia of facts.
I think you forgot to include the word “dirty” in the above quote.
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On a plane full of mercenaries I arrived from Jordan in the early afternoon at Baghdad International Airport. The flight was perhaps the most dangerous part of the journey. The mercenaries (“contractors” the Americans call them) from countries like South Africa, Bosnia and the United States, weren’t so happy about the video I was making on board. Although none of their faces were shown, they came to protest loudly.
It’s a cold, dark evening in Baghdad. Deathly quiet too, especially in this hotel. I’m the only guest. Surprised by my unexpected visit, a couple of hotel staff are trying to get the electricity working. Internet is meant to be the next step.
But what does it matter? I’m back, in the city which until two years ago I so much liked to visit.
In those two years Baghdad has become an even stronger fortress. More concrete walls, roadblocks and barbed wire. But in particular it’s also become an almost impregnable fortress for journalism. Organisations like CNN and the BBC stayed, but mainly withdrew into their secure houses. And like the New York Times, for example, they had their local staff do the real work on the ground.
But OK, at least they were there. And hopefully they didn’t do what a Scandinavian journalist told me – he was even proud of it. He had everything staged. An item on the refuse collection service, for instance, featured a garbage truck doing a round of the blocked off road outside his hotel…
Personally, since being in Iraq as an ‘unembedded’ journalist during the invasion five years ago, I’ve often had the feeling I was seriously pushing my luck. Or I had the feeling thrust upon me, sometimes by other Iraq-goers, more and more of whom were quitting.
Indeed, when my interpreter was killed a couple of years ago, beheaded by extremists, I also nearly quit. But then Iraq kept calling me.
After this incident the family left for Syria, but they recently returned to Iraq. Because it’s safer now. But also because they felt completely unwelcome in Syria. They were treated like second class citizens.
Ammar’s mother beams when I ask her whether it wouldn’t have been wiser to stay in Syria. “No, Iraq is our home.” And Ammar adds, “Whatever happens, we’ll never leave here again. It’s still the place to be.” And despite all the trouble, I can see what he means. Iraq’s the place to be. At least, as long as I make it through my stay without getting a blindfold over my eyes.
● Radio Netherlands Worldwide – News
● Dutch reporter Jaap Melissen’s Blog
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."