Dozens of Mosques Attacked, Over 100 Dead, Thousands Protest
CNN reports that 7 US GIs were killed in Iraq on Wednesday.
There will be a curfew in the core Sunni Arab areas, including Baghdad, to prevent the worshippers from rioting afer the Friday prayers ceremony.
Sunni Arabs in Iraq blamed US troops for not protecting Sunni mosques and worshippers from violence. The US military ordered the US soldiers in Baghdad to stay in their barracks and not to circulate if it could be helped. [Later reports said some US patrols has been stepped up.] This situation underlines how useless the American ground forces are in Iraq. They can't stop the guerrilla war and may be making it worst. Last I knew, there were 10,000 US troops in Anbar Province with a population of 1.1 million. What could you do with that small force, when the vast majority of the people support the guerrillas? US troops would be useless if they hcad to fight in alleyways against sectarian rioters. If they tried to guard the Sunni mosques, they'd have to shoot into Shiite mobs, which would just raise the level of violence they face from Shiites in the south.
Reuters reports that ' The main Sunni religious group said 184 Sunni mosques had been damaged, some destroyed; 10 clerics had been killed and 15 abducted. The Muslim Clerics Association accused Shi'ite religious leaders of stoking the anger by calling for protests. '
Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi of the [Sunni] Association of Muslim Scholars slammed grand ayatollah Sistani for calling for demonstrations, and implied that Shiite trouble makers were coming over from Iran:
“They are all fully aware that the Iraqi borders are open, and the streets are penetrated with those who want to create strife among Iraqis,” Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi said at a news briefing. Al-Kubaisi said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad may also have enflamed the situation when he warned on Monday that the US would not continue to support institutions run by sectarian groups with links to armed militias.
In Diyala province, guerrillas set up a phony checkpoint and pulled 47 largely Shiite factory workers off a bus and summarily executed them. Other bodies showed up in the streets of Baghdad and other cities. Guerrillas set off two bombs in Baghdad, causing casualties.
Guerrillas used a bomb to kill 16 persons and wound 20 in Baqubah.
Thousands of Shiites marched in Baghdad, Tal Afar, Kut, Karbala and Najaf.
Young Shiite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr charged that the Iraqi government and the US had failed to protect the Askariyah shrine in Samarra, and commanded his Mahdi Army militiamen to guard Shiite shrines throughout Iraq.
In Mahmoudiyah to the south of Baghdad, Muqtada's Mahdi Army militiamen fought a pitched battle with Sunni guerrillas, killing two civilians and wounding 5 militiament.
Muqtada issued a statement:
“If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened,” al-Sadr said in a statement. “Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samara.”
Al-Hayat [Ar.] says that Muqtaada al-Sadr had originally called on his followers to go to Samarra for Friday prayers, but cancelled this call later when it became clear that there might be riots.
Pakistani Shiites demonstrated against the destruction of the Askariyah shrine.
Likewise, tens of thousands of Shiite protesters came out to rally in Beirut against the bombing on Thursday. In both Lebanon and Pakistan, the demonstrations turned anti-American.
I am interviewed at the Metro Times by by Curt Guyette & W. Kim Heron about Iraq and the war on terror.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/24/2006 12:33:00 AM
|
Facebook
8 Comments:
I read your interview by metro with great interest.
Concerning the UN involvement. One precision : It's Sergio de Mello who refused the US military protection because he (rightly, albeit naively) didn't want the UN to be seen like a US tool. The problem is that the US as you describe didn't allow the UN to take a leading role. So the UN could only appear as a US tool, cqfd the bombing.
Concerning the role of the UN in Iraq's future : first you are confounding the World's interest with the American interest : why would any other country go there and pay in blood and money for the mess created by the US ? Further, IMO, the UN role isn't to be a peace-enforcing force, which would mean that she get involved in the conflicts instead of preventing them. The UN is an institution created to maintain and save the peace between countries. Once a war breaks, she can't do nothing, unless the fighters see they are in need of a mediator and are ready to return to non violent negotiations and accept the UN as that mediator. The UN doesn't have the means to wage wars and it is good so. Your description of Iraq's best scenario is particularly shocking in this respect : "That's with the UN presiding over a good decade of bloodshed before it stabilizes." My best scenario is that the US get a firm condemnation for the Iraq invasion by the Hague. That along with the UK she is condemned to pay due compensations to the Iraqis and to forward big reconstruction money. That these ressources are sufficient, so that the different factions of Iraqis don't need to fight for them. The Hague may judge that in order to get these compensations, the different factions have to peacefully agree on their repartition. May be that could be the right way to bring the UN back in Iraq. Last but not least, in my best scenario, Bush is impeached. For EU citizen, it's hard to conceive that Clinton went near impeachment for a private extra-conjugal affair, while Bush, who lied about WMDs in order to draw the US in an irresponsible war and a looming debacle, could end his mandate without being even threatened by impeachment.
At the end of the interview, you are right to state that : Washington misses the Cold War, and the great tragedy is that the Muslims are just not going to be providing the analogy. We can talk as though they do, but they don't, and eventually this whole smoke-and-mirrors thing is going to collapse. However you have put pink glasses on when you describe US relationships with the Muslim governements in North Africa and ME. IMO, the caricatures story has revealed the deep frustration of these countries toward the the US and the West in general. IMO, political islam, as you call it, is a general trend in these countries and the emergence of these new elites will strain relationships with the US and the West. I have no objection to it personnally, since they have to find their way out of colonialism and imperialism and to find respect for their cultures. I hope it won't be done at the detriment of women and human rights of course.
Sami Ramadani , Iraqi academic and former political exile from the Saddam regime, writes today in the Guardian on the nationalist, anti-sectarian reactions to the Samarra bombing. Not enough has been made of the strength of nationalism in Iraq. One can only hope that it is strong enough to withstand the immense pressures of the current situation.
Its worth mentioning that nationalism, whilst being Iraq's best hope of avoiding an even more serious civil conflict, would not be something that any sensible occupier would want to encourage. Polls seem to show that majority opposition to the occupation is common throughout Arab Iraq, and not inconsiderable even in the Kurdish north. A strong Iraqi nationalist movement would surely make the occupation untenable.
Ramadani's article mentions the suspicion held by many in Iraq that the occupiers are responsible for those terrorist atrocities apparently designed to inflame sectarian strife. Juan - you described these suspicions yesterday as ridiculous, but I'd be interested to hear your reasons for holding that view in some more detail. The suspicions may be incorrect, but it seems to me that they merit serious discussion at least. The motivation for the occupiers to engage in such activity would be as I described above. Plainly no moral barrier would exist for the people who gave the world the Contra death squads and the genocidal sanctions regime on Iraq in the 1990s. So any reasons why those suspicions might be incorrect would have to do with practical considerations from the point of view of the occupiers. I'd be interested to know what you think those considerations might be.
With the picture of the resistance as murky as it is, and in the absence of any substantial amount of hard evidence, any discussion of this kind is bound to be speculative. But that being the case, it seems sensible to keep an open mind and not rule out the possibility of occupier involvement without first giving it serious consideration. Divide-and-rule is, after all, one of the more significant chapters in the colonial handbook.
David Wearing
London, UK
www.democratsdiary.co.uk
Outrageous! What sort of "Muslim" burns down a mosque? This is awful, the attack and the reaction. It's only going to exacerbate matters.
Iraqi blogger Riverbend had visited the mosque once, and has a reaction.
In an interview on NPR, a Sunni politician said that Iran was responsible for the Golden Dome bombing.
The bombing directly enraged Sadr and his Mahdi Army, who have spiritual ties to the Golden Dome. In response to the bombing, Sadr redirected rage toward the U.S., even though it was Sunnis, in Sunni territory, who had been guarding the mosque.
How unlikely is it that this is a tactical move by the Iranian government? It seems to advance their interests without soiling their hands.
Professor, what is your take on Hakim using the word "takfiris" today?
I fear Cheney's going to tell us that refers to people who do not like democracy and freedom.
biwah: even though it was Sunnis, in Sunni territory, who had been guarding the mosque.
What's the support for that (the Sunni guards)?
Samarra is a predominantly Sunni city, but the immediate neighborhoods around the mosque are (were?) Shiite. How do we know who was guarding it externally (which would be Iraqi police or army)? Internal guards would surely be Shiites. I'm skeptical of the report in some news stories that there was only one internal guard. If there was, this really does look like an inside job.
Prof. Cole: Better late than never to face facts. Your point about the uselessness of U.S. forces has been true for the last year, and was the primary argument of those calling for speedy withdrawal.
Professor Cole,
Regarding the bombing of the domed Askariya shrine in Samarra, I am wondering if you will be addressing Imad Khadduri's question: "Who are the perpetrators?"
GU. Sami Ramadani. Exit without a strategy
The shattered golden dome of Samarra is yet another milestone in George Bush's "long war" - in which a civil war in Iraq shows every sign of being a devastating feature. But what sort of civil war? I am convinced it is not the type of war that politicians in Washington and London, and much of the western media, have been anticipating.
The past few days' events have strengthened this conviction. It has not been Sunni religious symbols that hundreds of thousands of angry marchers protesting at the bombing of the shrine have targeted, but US flags. The slogan that united them on Wednesday was: "Kalla, kalla Amrica, kalla kalla lill-irhab" - no to America, no to terrorism. The Shia clerics most listened to by young militants swiftly blamed the occupation for the bombing. They included Moqtada al-Sadr; Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah in Lebanon; Ayatollah Khalisi, leader of the Iraqi National Foundation Congress; and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader. Along with Grand Ayatollah Sistani, they also declared it a grave "sin" to attack Sunnis - as did all the Sunni clerics about attacks on Shias. Sadr was reported by the BBC as calling for revenge on Sunnis - in fact, he said "no Sunni would do this" and called for revenge on the occupation.
Two years ago I argued in these pages that the US aim of installing a client pro-US regime in Baghdad risked plunging the country into civil war - but not a war of Arabs against Kurds or Sunnis against Shias, rather a war between a US-backed minority (of all sects and nationalities) against the majority of the Iraqi people. That is where Iraq is heading.
For nearly two years, we have been inundated with US and British "exit strategies". So, why do you need a strategy to pack up, end the occupation and let the Iraqi people decide their own future? The "threat of civil war" of course. But that is to ignore the war unfolding in Iraq thanks to the continued occupation.
Post a Comment
<< Home