Text 20545, 241 rader
Skriven 2006-05-30 10:38:12 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Alan Hess
Ärende: religious strife in Iraq?
=================================
Do you people EVER listen to what the soldiers coming home from Iraq have to
say?  Do you ever listen to anybody but the damn liberal press?

Alan Hess -> all wrote:
 AH> If this is accurate (especially if it isn't just happening in Baghdad),
 AH> this does not bode well toward developing a unified country in Iraq.
 AH> When people fear their neighbors solely due to their respective
 AH> ethnicities, that's a serious problem.  Perhaps a three atate solution
 AH> (either three totally independent states, or three stats under a federal
 AH> government) really is the only answer?
 AH> ********

 AH> washingtonpost.com

 AH> Iraq Is the Republic of Fear

 AH> By Nir Rosen
 AH> Sunday, May 28, 2006; B01

 AH> Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies,
 AH> bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or
 AH> because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture
 AH> device.

 AH> I have spent nearly two of the three years since Baghdad fell in Iraq.
 AH> On my last trip, a few weeks back, I flew out of the city overcome with
 AH> fatalism. Over the course of six weeks, I worked with three different
 AH> drivers; at various times each had to take a day off because a neighbor
 AH> or relative had been killed. One morning 14 bodies were found, all with
 AH> ID cards in their front pockets, all called Omar. Omar is a Sunni name.
 AH> In Baghdad these days, nobody is more insecure than men called Omar. On
 AH> another day a group of bodies was found with hands folded on their
 AH> abdomens, right hand over left, the way Sunnis pray. It was a message.
 AH> These days many Sunnis are obtaining false papers with neutral names.
 AH> Sunni militias are retaliating, stopping buses and demanding the jinsiya
 AH> , or ID cards, of all passengers. Individuals belonging to Shiite tribes
 AH> are executed.

 AH> Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, dissidents called Iraq "the republic
 AH> of fear" and hoped it would end when Hussein was toppled. But the war,
 AH> it turns out, has spread the fear democratically. Now the terror is not
 AH> merely from the regime, or from U.S. troops, but from everybody,
 AH> everywhere.

 AH> At first, the dominant presence of the U.S. military -- with its
 AH> towering vehicles rumbling through Baghdad's streets and its soldiers
 AH> like giants with their vests and helmets and weapons -- seemed
 AH> overwhelming. The Occupation could be felt at all times. Now in Baghdad,
 AH> you can go days without seeing American soldiers. Instead, it feels as
 AH> if Iraqis are occupying Iraq, their masked militiamen blasting through
 AH> traffic in anonymous security vehicles, shooting into the air, angrily
 AH> shouting orders on loudspeakers, pointing their Kalashnikovs at passersby.

 AH> Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy.
 AH> They, too, are killing Iraqis.

 AH> Last fall I visited the home of a Sunni man called Sabah in the western
 AH> Baghdad suburb of Radwaniya, where the Sunni resistance had long had a
 AH> presence, and where a U.S. soldier had recently been killed. On Friday
 AH> night a few days before I came, his family told me, American soldiers
 AH> surrounded the home where Sabah lived with his brothers, Walid and
 AH> Hussein, and their families and broke down the door. The women and
 AH> children were herded outside, walking past Sabah, whose nose was broken,
 AH> and Walid, who had the barrel of a soldier's machine gun in his mouth.
 AH> The soldiers beat the men with rifle butts, while the Shiite Iraqi
 AH> translator accompanying the troops exhorted the Americans to execute the
 AH> Sunnis.

 AH> As the terrified family waited outside, they heard three shots from
 AH> inside. It then sounded to them as though there was a scuffle inside,
 AH> with the soldiers shouting at each other. Thirty minutes later the
 AH> translator emerged with a picture of Sabah. "Who is Sabah's wife?" he
 AH> asked. "Your husband was killed by the Americans, and he deserved to
 AH> die," he told her. At that he tore the picture before her face.

 AH> Walid was then taken away, and inside the house the family found Sabah
 AH> dead. His bloody shirt showed three bullet holes that went through his
 AH> chest; two of the bullets had come out of his back and lodged in the
 AH> wall behind him. Three U.S.-made bullet casings were on the floor. Sofas
 AH> and beds had been overturned and torn apart; tables, closets, vases of
 AH> plastic flowers, all were broken and tossed around. Even the cars had
 AH> been destroyed. Photographs of Sabah had been torn up and his ID card
 AH> confiscated. One photograph remained on his wife's bureau: Sabah
 AH> standing proudly in front of his Mercedes.

 AH> I later asked Hussein if they wanted revenge. "We are Muslim, praise
 AH> God," he said, "and we do not want revenge. He was innocent and he was
 AH> killed, so he is a martyr."

 AH> Across town, U.S. troops had also raided the Mustapha Huseiniya, a
 AH> Shiite place of worship in the Ur neighborhood. The Huseiniya, similar
 AH> to a mosque, belonged to the nationalistic and anti-occupation Moqtada
 AH> al-Sadr movement, and in front of its short tower were immense signs
 AH> with images of the movement's important clerics. The Sadr militia, known
 AH> as the Army of the Mahdi, had been using the Huseiniya as a base for
 AH> counterinsurgency operations. Mahdi militiamen kidnapped Sunnis
 AH> suspected of supporting the insurgency, tortured them until they
 AH> confessed on video, and then executed them.

 AH> When the Americans raided the Huseiniya, they brought Iraqi troops with
 AH> them. They killed not only Mahdi fighters but also innocent Shiite
 AH> bystanders, including a young journalist I knew named Kamal Anbar, in
 AH> what witnesses described to me as summary executions. Although neighbors
 AH> blamed the U.S. troops, Iraqi troops were so laden with gear, flak
 AH> jackets and helmets provided by the Americans, they were often
 AH> indistinguishable.

 AH> When I visited the next morning, the Huseiniya's floors, walls and
 AH> ceilings were stained with blood; pieces of brain lay in caked red
 AH> puddles. Just as Shiites cheered when the Americans hit Sunni targets,
 AH> Sunni supporters of the insurgency greeted news of the U.S. raid with
 AH> satisfaction.

 AH> The Mahdi militiamen were already back in force that morning, blocking
 AH> off the roads and searching all who approached, wielding Iraqi
 AH> police-issue Glock pistols and carrying Iraqi police-issue handcuffs. In
 AH> Baghdad and most of Iraq, the police are the Mahdi Army and the Mahdi
 AH> Army is the police. The same holds for the actual Iraqi army, posted
 AH> throughout the country.

 AH> The sectarian tensions have overtaken far more than Iraq's security
 AH> forces and its streets. Militias now routinely enter hospitals to hunt
 AH> down or arrest those who have survived their raids. And many Iraqi
 AH> government ministries are now filled with the banners and slogans of
 AH> Shiite religious groups, which now exert total control over these key
 AH> agencies. If you are not with them, you are gone.

 AH> For instance, in the negotiations between parties after the January 2005
 AH> elections, Sadr loyalists gained control over the ministries of health
 AH> and transportation and immediately began cleansing them of Sunnis and
 AH> Shiites not aligned with Sadr. The process was officially known by the
 AH> Sadrists as "cleansing the ministry of Saddamists." Indeed, some
 AH> government offices now do not accept Sunnis as employees at all.

 AH> Based on my visits to the ministries, it is clear that an apartheid
 AH> process began after the Shiites' electoral success. In the Ministry of
 AH> Health, you see pictures of Moqtada al-Sadr and his father everywhere.
 AH> Traditional Shiite music reverberates throughout the hallways. Doctors
 AH> and ministry staffers refer to the minister of health as imami, or "my
 AH> imam," as though he were a cleric. I also saw walls adorned with Shiite
 AH> posters -- including ones touting Sadr -- in the Ministry of
 AH> Transportation. Sunni staffers have been pushed out of both ministries,
 AH> while the Ministry of Interior is under the control of another Shiite
 AH> movement, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (its
 AH> name alone a sufficient statement of its intentions).

 AH> Shiites with no apparent qualifications have filled the ranks. In one
 AH> case in the transportation ministry, a Sunni chief engineer was fired
 AH> and replaced with an unqualified Shiite who wore a cleric's turban to
 AH> work. In all cases, this has led to a stark drop in efficiency, with the
 AH> health and transportation ministries barely functioning, and the
 AH> interior ministry operating much like an anti-Sunni death squad, with
 AH> secret prisons uncovered last November, and people disappearing after
 AH> raids by shadowy government security units operating at night.

 AH> Even shared opposition to the Occupation couldn't unite Iraq's Sunnis
 AH> and Shiites, and perhaps that was inevitable given their bitter history
 AH> of mutual hostility. Instead, as the fighting against the Americans
 AH> intensified, tensions between Sunni and Shiite began to grow, eventually
 AH> setting off the vicious sectarian cleansing that is Iraq today.

 AH> During the first battle of Fallujah, in the spring of 2004, Sunni
 AH> insurgents fought alongside some Shiite forces against the Americans; by
 AH> that fall, the Sunnis waged their resistance alone in Fallujah, and they
 AH> resented the Shiites' indifference.

 AH> But by that time, Shiite frustration with Sunnis for harboring Abu Musab
 AH> al-Zarqawi, the bloodthirsty head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, led some to feel
 AH> that the Fallujans were getting what they deserved. The cycle of
 AH> violence escalated from there. When Sunni refugees from Fallujah settled
 AH> in west Baghdad's Sunni strongholds such as Ghazaliya, al-Amriya and
 AH> Khadhra, the first Shiiite families began to get threats to leave. In
 AH> Amriya, Shiites who ignored the threats had their homes attacked or
 AH> their men murdered by Sunni militias.

 AH> This is when sectarian cleansing truly began. Sunni refugees in Amriya
 AH> seized homes vacated by Shiites. These operations were conducted by
 AH> insurgents as well as relatives of the refugees. Soon such cleansing had
 AH> become widespread and commonplace, both out of vengeance and out of its
 AH> own cruel logic; both sides took part. There was no space left in Iraq
 AH> for nonsectarian voices. Sunnis and Shiites alike were pushed into the
 AH> arms of their respective militias, often joining out of self-defense.
 AH> Shiites obtained lists of the Baath party cadres that were the
 AH> foundation of Hussein's regime and began systematically assassinating
 AH> Sunnis who had belonged. Sunni militias that had fought the American
 AH> occupier became Sunni militias protecting Sunni territory from Shiite
 AH> incursions and retaliating in Shiite areas. The insurgency became
 AH> secondary as resistance moved to self-defense. In the Shiite-dominated
 AH> south, meanwhile, Shiite militias battled each other and the British
 AH> forces.

 AH> In November I asked a close Shiite friend if -- considering all this
 AH> violence, crime and radicalism in Iraq -- life had not been better under
 AH> Hussein.

 AH> "No," he said definitively. "They could level all of Baghdad and it
 AH> would still be better than Saddam. At least we have hope."

 AH> A few weeks later, though, he e-mailed me in despair: "A civil war will
 AH> happen I'm sure of it . . . you can't be comfortable talking with a man
 AH> until you know if he was Shia or Sunni, . . . Politicians don't trust
 AH> each other, People don't trust each other. [There is] seeking revenge,
 AH> weak government, separate regions for the opponents . . . We have a
 AH> civil war here; it is only a matter of time, and some peppers to provoke
 AH> it."

 AH> The time came on Feb. 22, when the Golden Mosque of the Shiites in
 AH> Samarra was blown up. More than 1,000 Sunnis were killed in retribution,
 AH> and then the Shiite-controlled interior ministry prevented an accurate
 AH> body count from being released. Attacks on mosques, mostly Sunni ones,
 AH> increased. Officially, Moqtada al-Sadr opposed attacks on Sunnis, but he
 AH> unleashed his fighters on them after the bombing.

 AH> Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed
 AH> neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on
 AH> the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are
 AH> afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police,
 AH> for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu
 AH> Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are
 AH> being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

 AH> The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis
 AH> fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend.
 AH> In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the
 AH> first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It
 AH> began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned
 AH> what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

 AH> nirrosen@yahoo.com

 AH> Nir Rosen is a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "In
 AH> the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq" (Free
 AH> Press).
 AH> + 2006 The Washington Post Company

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