69 Dead in Bombings, Shootings;
Al-Maliki Stops Wall-building at Adhamiya
Reuters reports that a lot of wounded vets from the Iraq War are having to turn to private care. A chilling passage: "Of the nearly 24,000 wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, about a third suffer from some degree of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to the General Accounting Office."
What? A third have brain injuries! That's 8,000 persons!
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked Sunday that the US military halt its construction of a security wall around the Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya. Al-Maliki spoke from Cairo where he is meeting with foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors.
The mainstream US media will sidestep this point, but al-Maliki pretty explicitly said that the reason he called off the wall building is that he doesn't want his government compared to that of Israel. That is, the Adhamiya wall is being likened in the Arab world to the Apartheid Wall being built by the Israelis in the West Bank. Al-Maliki made the statement in Cairo, and when he referred to the "other walls" he didn't want the one in Adhamiya compared to, he pointed toward Israel. The Western press is bringing up the Berlin Wall as part of his meaning, but the videotape makes it absolutely clear that his referent was Israel's project. On the other hand, Nassar al-Rubaie, a Sadrist member of the Iraqi parliament, did warn that the US is building a series of Berlin Walls in Baghdad.
The politics of the wall points to the ways in which the Israeli-Palestinian issue is absolutely central to the difficulties the United States is having in being accepted in Iraq. Many Iraqis perceive the US presence as just an extension of Israeli occupation of Arabs and Arab land, and routinely refer to US troops as "the Jews."
The Israeli government has grossly mistreated the Palestinian people, the current condition of which is grave. The wall the Israelis are building is built on Palestinian land and has stolen more land from Palestinians and has in some instances run through Palestinian villages, cutting them in two and separating families. The Apartheid Wall has provoked demonstrations.
So being a foreign military force in an Arab country and looking like they are building security walls similar to that of the Israelis just puts the US and its ally, al-Maliki, in a very difficult position.
Not to mention that walling people up is intrinsically unappealing as a governing strategy. Mahmud Osman, a member of parliament in the Kurdistan Alliance and a former member of Paul Bremer's Interim Governing Council, told al-Zaman that the Adhamiya wall is "the peak of failure" for the new security plan and "a violation of human rights." He added that the wall "is a clear sign of the failure of the American and government policy for safeguarding security." Other MPs complained that the policy would create and reinforce sectarian divisions in the capital.
The US military had planned to build 5 such walls around Sunni Arab districts in Baghdad. It is not now clear if any will be built. Another corner of this story is the unpredictability of the political environment for the US military. It is inconceivable that al-Maliki did not earlier sign off on the Adhamiya wall, but then he changed his mind. The US officer corps in Iraq must be fit to be tied.
Some 69 Iraqis were killed in political violence on Sunday. 11 bodies were found in the capital on Sunday. Suicide bombers in Baghdad hit a police station, striking a blow at the new security plan, killing 12 and wounding 95. Another car bomb in the Saidiya district in the south of the capital killed 6 and wounded 37.
Up north around Mosul, Sunni Arab guerrillas captured a bus with Christian and Yezidi Kurdish passengers, separated them out by religion,and then executed 23 Yezidis. The murders were said to come from a local dispute stemming from the marriage of a Yezidi girl to a Sunni, and consequent Yezidi attacks on the groom.
The word Yezidi comes from the ancient Iranian Izad, a word meaning "God," and is related to the Persian "yazdani," meaning "divine." The religion is a survival of ancient Iranian beliefs and motifs shaped by a Muslim social context. Thus, the 7 angels they revere are probably originally 7 Indo-European gods. The chief angel, Melek Ta'us ("King Peacock"), is said to have extinguished the fires of hell with his tears, so that Yezidis do not believe in hell and are universalists. There are Zoroastrian influences on their beliefs and rituals, though these may actually derive from a common Indo-Iranian ancestry. It is not true, as some outsiders have alleged, that Yezidis are devil worshippers. They believe Melek Ta'us was a good angel, not satan. For a blogger's encounter with Iraqi Yezidis, see this site.
Indo-European peoples called Parsumash immigrated into what is now Iran and Iraq from about the 800s BC, according to the Assyrian clay tablets. These were probably tribal predecessors of the Medes and the Persians. The Kurds are linguistic and cultural heirs of these ancient Iranians, whose mythology was similar to what is in the Vedas. Most Kurds converted to Islam, but some retain older religious ideas.
This incident demonstrates that if the Iraqi conflict escalates (yes, it still can get worse), the Kurds may well get drawn in, willy nilly.
Guerrilla groups in South Iraq are saying that they will attempt to capture Prince Harry and use him to release imprisoned colleagues when he deploys to Basra. This article misidentifies the groups. Thar Allah is not an "Iranian-backed Sunni" group (it is rather Shiite), and I can't find any evidence that the Malik ibn al-Ashtar Brigade is Mahdi Army.
Mohamad Bazzi of Newsday considers the rising importance of young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for the future of Iraq's government.
How many terrorists are there in Iraq? Good question. Of 18,000 persons in US custody, only 250 are foreign fighters.
The Fall of John McCain.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/23/2007 12:30:00 AM
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16 Comments:
Your description of Yezidism is outdated. Yezidism is simply a Sufi sect that went too far and completely left Islam. The founder, Shaikh Adi, was a Sunni Arab Sufi from Baalbakk in the 13th century, who claimed descent from the Umayyad caliphs, and who found followers among the Kurds. The independent religion is later, around the 15th century, as far as I remember.
The story about ancient Iranian religion is partly 19th-20th century orientalism, and partly a Kurdish nationalist narrative.
Its up to a third with PTSD, not TBI. If Reuters said a third with TBI, the reporter was confused. But PTSD IS a brain injury in a sense...
Can they build a Wall around Iraq? How about a moat filled with crocodiles? If it works there, then maybe they can replicate it against the Mexicans who are terrorising this country with their cheap labor and curbside orange sales.
Dear professor cole:
Yesterday's NT Times had a piece on Moktada al-Sadr in which as "senior Iraqi official is reported as referring to the cleric as "Mookie".
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/weekinreview/22wong.html
While I've seen "Mookie" used in this fashion in the blogosphere, it has been used disrespectfully and/or as a diminutive -- thus the quote from the official seemed odd.
Is "Mookie" a nickname that al-Sadr acknowledges as appropriate? Is "Mookie" used disparagingly in Iraq? Is it possible that its a mistranslation of a more respectful nickname?
Other sources are saying that the situation with the Yezidis actually took place because the women, Yezidi, who married the Muslim man, converted to Islam. She was then taken and stoned to death by her family for converting.
There is a video of her killing making rounds on the net. Survivors from the bus from which the Yezidis were taken say that the insurgents yelled that a person who converts to Islam is none of their business.
Re: John McCain
The editorial paean to John McCain is off the mark. While McCain may well be falling in his candidacy (although I cannot see Guiliani or Romney winning the nomination either, maybe it will go to Nixon), the editorial's presentation of McCain as "changed" regarding his views on the war simply has no merit. McCain fully supported every military engagement that has occurred during his tenure in the Senate (perhaps not Somalia post-"Blackhawk down"). He was even more of a warmonger on Serbia and the Balkans than "Mad" Madelaine and President "Wag the Dog."
McCain has never presented himself as anything other than a warmonger (indeed, he attacked Bush from the "right"--whatever that now means--on foreign policy in 2000). McCain may be playing political calculations in reconciling with "Religious Right" figures (which will always infuriate the "independent" poseurs who supported McCain in 2000), but on matters of war and foreign policy, McCain is what he's always been. It has been his starry-eyed supporters (who likely supported the Iraq War to a man and who have now been disillusioned by the war they wrought) who have changed.
To the extent that means his candidacy (and the perpetuation of a militarist foreign policy that would follow it) is finished, then, whatever the "change" is, it is a welcome one.
I was wondering further up the page whether you had any inkling of the numbers of new jihadis that have been and are being created out of the chaos in Iraq. At the bottom you link to an article on 'terrorists'. Seems to me they are getting very good training in Iraq, whilst weeding out the less able among them. I'm being facetious, but its not funny.
That argument about over there vs over here seems completely insane to me. They can get in and out of Iraq easily enough, so why should they be restrained from coming here just because we are there? It's not as if we had them all on a leash.
If our goal is to make America safe from terrorism, the borders here must be more secure. I am not advocating draconian measures, just a better organized, better funded, better managed system of border and immigration control.
But the US, nor any other country will ever be 100% safe from terrorists - witness T McVeigh, et.al.
Professor Cole,
I have been attempting for years to criticize Israel and America's support for Israel, on both national and local AM talk radio programs (nearly all right-wing), in ways that are nearly identical to your criticism of Israel but I am cut off and not allowed to continue. In nearly every case I am accused of being a bigot. I have been called names by the right-wing talk radio hosts such as "Osama", "nazi", etc. The problems in the Middle East will never be solved as long as Israel is immune from criticism.
Jim King
Harrisburg, PA
jdk27110@comcast.net
The wall the Israelis are building is built on Palestinian land and has stolen more land from Palestinians and has in some instances run through Palestinian villages, cutting them in two and separating families. The Apartheid Wall has provoked demonstrations.
One of the latest demonstrations was carried out by our own Tito Kayak (bless his soul!):
Yesterday, after planting the Palestinian flag upon the Israeli army camera tower which watches over the village of Bil'in, and remaining up there for over five hours, Puerto Rican activist Tito Kayak was arrested by Israeli forces. (...)
Tito's action was part of the weekly Friday demonstrations against Israel's Apartheid Wall in the village of Bil'in, which has stolen 60% of the land from the village. Yesterday's demonstration came after the Second Annual Bil'in International Conference on Non-violence. Speakers included Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian Information Minister, Vice president of the European Parliament Luisa Morganitini, and Noble Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan, who was shot in the leg by Israeli forces with a rubber-coated steel bullet at Friday's demonstration.
Re: the wall. The AP is reporting that confusion persists about whether the plan would continue in some form: The chief Iraqi military spokesman said Monday the prime minister was responding to exaggerated reports about the barrier.
"We will continue to construct the security barriers in the Azamiyah neighborhood. This is a technical issue," Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said. "Setting up barriers is one thing and building barriers is another. These are moveable barriers that can be removed."
"It's exaggerated by the media. We expected this reaction by some weak-minded people," he said.
Like Robert Frost?
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
I don't find it inconceivable that Maliki did not sign off on the wall.
Building a wall between ethnic groups is the action of a party that wants to divide a region - US claims to be working to maintain a unified Iraq have lost more credibility, even though they were not to be taken seriously before.
If Maliki had signed off on it, the US military in Iraq would be saying so explicitly, rather than letting Maliki hang them out.
The wall is another sign of orientalist thinking at its peak. By defining sectarian devisions explicitly, as building a wall does, you only further reinforce ideas of ethno-religous hatred. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding towards the cultural dynamics in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world.
Instead of adequately addressing the issue at hand, a power struggle between various groups in society, and instead generally labeling corporate understandings of ethnicity to the groups in relation to one another, you consequently create an explicit Sunni-Shi'ite-Kurdish conflict. While various factions within these religious groups are fighting amongst one another (and often targeting civilians), there is no direct confrontation along purely religious lines. This is something building a wall has a likely probability of building a mindset of. If that sounds too overblown, you can observe the impact colonial Europe had on tribal groupings in Africa when they established formal caste systems (one example is Tutu-Hutsi conflicts) to see how damaging an orientalist policy making position can be to ethnic groups in the long term.
Building a wall may yield slight security benefits for some groups in the short-term. But in the long-term it is potentially dangerous, most laymen on the street in Iraq understand this concept, which is best illustrated by massive protests within communities that are being walled in.
According to the front part article on today's Washington Post, "walling off" communities is the central mechanism of the current Baghdad surge plan: surround each neighbor with barriers, take everyone's fingerprints and biometrics, and control all passage with secure IDs.
In that's carried out, Baghdad won't resemble Israel's barrier wall so much as the West Bank as a whole: it will be governed by a vast network of checkpoints.
FBOW, this is a classic counterinsurgency plan. But I don't remember hearing anything like this mentioned when the surge plan was being discussed.
Bush and the GOP cannot possibly continue along this same path - with this same strategy, with this high rate of violence in Iraq - through to the November 2008 election or the GOP will be blown out in the election. There will be very little left of the GOP in Congress. I see two possible strategies for Bush and the GOP. 1)Bush, before the November 2008 U.S. election, could start a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq while at the same time making certain that the Iraqi government of al-Maliki does not fall before the November 2008 U.S. election. This would take a lot of heat off of the GOP's 2008 candidates. Or 2)Bush and the GOP, before the November 2008 U.S. election, could allow just enough GOP members of Congress to defect to the Democrats' side for a two-thirds majority needed for overriding Bush's veto thus allowing the start of a U.S. troop withdraw from Iraq. This also would take a lot of heat off of the GOP's 2008 candidates.
Jim King
Harrisburg, PA
jdk27110@comcast.net
Prof. Cole,
I completely agree with you and Mr. King. The commonly held mindset here and abroad is that the Israeli government is acting with a forced hand and thus there is nothing particularly aggressive about the actions it takes. It's as if no one listened to that lesson of journalism, 'Governments Lie.' The hypocritical apologetics of 'necessary evils' in building the wall are widely accepted because of the 'security' benefits they may yield, in which it becomes clear that the well being of Israeli civilians under Israeli control is worth more to the Israeli government and its defenders than Palestinian civilians also under its control. South African or American comparisons don't even need to be drawn to see the racist element in this. It shows the lengths individuals will go to defend a project that, while apparently built on humanitarian concerns, grows more and more inhumane. Thank you sticking your neck out on this issue in the midst of the social gag order placed on debate about the Israeli end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ian Maley
Jerusalem/Al-Quds, the city that should belong to everyone and no one
What about the near obliteration of the small Christian communities in Iraq? Because of killings, kidnappings, persecution, forced conversions, and exile, the communities are disappearing.
George and Tony, two self-proclaimed "Christians," seem to consider the Iraqi Christian communities expendable - if they are even aware of them - in their zeal to spread "democracy" in Iraq.
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