Shiite Fighters Kill 70 Sunnis in Tal Afar
Saudi King Abdullah Condemns Illegitimate US Occupation of Iraq
Kim Gamel of AP reports that Shiite militants and some Shiite policemen went on a rampage in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar on Wednesday, killing 70 Sunnis indiscriminately, injuring another 30, and kidnapping 40 others. The Shiites were taking revenge for a Sunni truck bombing of Shiites on Tuesday that killed 80 persons and wounded 185. According to what I was told by a knowledgeable US resident of the city a couple of years ago, Tal Afar is 80 percent Turkmen, and the Sunnis are a slight majority there. Gamel says that the Shiites are the majority.
Guerrillas have been firing rockets at will into the Green Zone, the supposedly safe district of downtown Baghdad where the US embassy and Iraqi government offices are located. Reuters reports that on Wednesday they killed a US soldier in the Green Zone that way, and wounded another. On Tuesday they had killed a US contractor in the zone. Also on Tuesday, guerrillas had killed a US Marine in al-Anbar province. Folks, when guerrillas can kill a US soldier inside the Green Zone, Baghdad is just not safe.
Guerrillas in Fallujah attacked Iraqi and American troops with a chlorine gas truck, wounding 7 US GIs and 8 Iraqi troops. There were scattered bombings and killings in the rest of the country.
Saudi King Abdullah said on Wednesday at the opening of the Arab League meetings, "“In beloved Iraq, blood is shed among our brothers while there is an illegitimate foreign occupation and a hateful sectarianism that is threatening to develop into a civil war . . .”
King Abdullah followed up on these harsh criticisms of the US by cancelling his planned appearance at a White House dinner in April. The Saudi royal family is fit to be tied that Bush gave Iraq away to fundamentalist Shiite parties that have close ties to Iran.
Although the Saudi statement is remarkable for its brutal frankness and coldness toward the United States, its real significance is its slam of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Abdullah has not only said that the US presence is an illegal occupation, he has said that the al-Maliki government is nothing more than Shiite sectarian hegemony. The Saudis are known for their behind the scenes diplomacy and their public discretion. King Abdullah is hopping mad, to talk this way. It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations. Abdullah is also angry that Bush is letting the Palestine issue fester and that he pushed for open Palestinian elections but then cut off the Hamas government once it was elected. Abdullah thinks Bush is pursuing irrational policies, the effect of which is to destabilize the Middle East. He is so angry that he sounds a bit like Iraqi Sunni fundamentalist leader Harith al-Dhari, who is connected in some shadowy way with the Sunni guerrillas fighting the US. (See the interview, below).
Iran is offering to settle the issue of its capture of 15 British sailors and Marines in what it maintains were Iranian waters, if only the British will admit they were in the wrong.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/29/2007 12:30:00 AM
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7 Comments:
Re: Saudi Abdullah and Iraq - the alternative to turning Iraq over to the Shiites is to have Saddam or someone like him remain in power. The fact of the matter is that any pretense of democracy would give Iraq to the Shiites because the Shiites are the majority.
I think that beyond giving Iraq to the Shiites, the United States has gone further by backing parties that want to break up the country. By doing that the United States has made sectarian tensions much worse than they could have been.
The anger the Saudis are expressing towards the US, in my opinion is more from promoting the breakup of the country and promoting the increase of sectarian tension than from putting Iraq in the hands of Shiites.
I think Sadr and the Saudis could come up with an arrangement acceptable to both sides if the US was not in the way. I think the same is true about Sadr and the insurgents. The down side for the US is the US would not get bases. The Saudis are angry that the US is willing to break up the country and exacerbate the civil war for bases.
But the Saudis have never been true believers either in the goodness of the United States, US values of democracy or support for Israel. The Saudis have always been going along only because it seemed the US was unbeatable. If the US was vulnerable, the Saudis would be just as radical as the Taliban. Domestically the Saudis are nearly indistinguishable from the Taliban and more fanatic than Tehran.
As the US position weakens, we can expect the Saudis to move further and further outside of any boundaries the US would like to set for Saudi foreign policy.
As a matter of fact, now that the Saudis have torpedoed hopes that Hamas would be confronted in a civil war, had a state visit from the president of Iran, invited Iran to the Arab summit and called the US occupation of Iraq illegitimate, it is becoming questionable whether or not the Saudis still deserve their designation as moderate US allies.
Iran has not said how soon after any apology it would release the sailors, and it said so knowing that Britain had committed itself to the story that the sailors were in Iraqi waters by saying so publicly. Iran has no reason to give up the sailors and will not for at least several months unless the US makes substantial concessions.
I think (and I wrote a post in my blog) that Iran has made a calculation, especially after both the Russian reverse or fueling Bushehr and the new sanctions regime passed that a confrontation with the West is unavoidable, but also that now is the best time for a confrontation anyway.
Iranian leaders keep bringing up how they survived the war with Iraq, are better for it and can do it again. I don't think Iran is as afraid of the confrontation escalating as most Western commentators think they should be.
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan on the Iran/Iraq maritime boundary
A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.
B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one.
I have a strong suspicion that the ship intercepted was trading with Iran, which would have been a substantial provocation.
"Abdullah thinks Bush is pursuing irrational policies, the effect of which is to destabilize the Middle East."
"Thinks" should be omitted. Knows would be better, or no qualifier at all. One could go as far as saying irrational is precisely the types of policies pursued by the USA in the Middle East since the end of WW2.
There was another sentence in the AP item containing this tidbit, "only the flag of Arabism will be raised on Arab soil," which I see directed primarilly at Israel, but Iran too. Clearly, this whole crisis has finally spawned a new opportunity. And there is nothing really the USA can say in reply.
How could all this be important? The lead story on the ABC Evening News last night was about "Breast Cancer". Who cares if our president is "...pursuing irrational policies..."
The British keep insisting, "We were in Iraqi waters! We were in Iraqi waters!" to the amazement of many Iranians, other residents of the Persian Gulf...
...as if they, the British ~ had some right to occupy IRAQ, quarantine the Shat Al Arab waterway, and engage Royal Navy forces to halt, board & 'inspect' neutral-flagged commercial shipping.
The irony of the British political position escapes them, as they (and the western media) remained obsessed about the GPS position of Iranian patrol boats when the British Marines were arrested.
USS Nimitz Scheduled To Depart For Persian Gulf
Ship To Join Another Local Aircraft Carrier
POSTED: 12:05 pm PDT March 28, 2007
UPDATED: 12:22 pm PDT March 28, 2007
SAN DIEGO -- The USS Nimitz and its support ships will depart San Diego on Monday for the Persian Gulf to join another local aircraft carrier strike group already in the region, military officials said.
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will join the San Diego-based John C. Stennis Strike Group and relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to Naval Air Forces Public Affairs.
Military officials said in a statement that the two-carrier presence in the Persian Gulf area is intended to demonstrate the country's "resolve to build regional security and bring long-term stability to the region."
Click here to find out more!
The Nimitz's departure comes amid heightened tensions in the region following the detention of 15 British sailors and marines by Iran last week. Iran maintains the detainees were operating in its territorial waters, a charge the British government strongly denies.
While deployed, the crew of the Nimitz will support the war on terrorism, patrol the Horn of Africa and conduct marine security operations as part of the larger effort to "deter and dissuade others from acting counter to U.S. national interests," according to a Navy statement.
The Nimitz Strike Group is comprised of the guided-missile cruiser Princeton, guided-missile destroyers Higgins, Chafee, John Paul Jones and Pinckney, two helicopter squadrons and an explosive ordnance disposal unit.
The Stennis, and its strike group, left Naval Base Coronado on Jan. 20. The aircraft carrier entered the Persian Gulf Wednesday, according to authorities. It is the largest carrier presence in the area since the start of the war in Iraq.
http://www.10news.com/news/11422067/detail.html
Craig Murray, former british ambassador to Uzbekistan, on "How i know Blair faked the Iran map".
interesting read.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=445896&in_page_id=1770&ICO=NEWS&ICL=TOPART
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