Sadr Rejects al-Maliki's Terms;
Green Zone hit by Mortar Barrage;
Turkish Military Strikes at PKK
Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday rejected Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's terms for ending his campaign against Sadr's Mahdi Army. Al-Maliki wants the militia to give up heavy weaponry and turn over wanted commanders. Salah al-Ubaydi, a Sadr spokesman, called the demands "illogical."
Some 50 Iraqi political leaders from various parties (including Sunnis) protested on Sunday against the US siege of East Baghdad (Sadr City).
The campaign appears to have been launched in part to protect the Green Zone (site of government offices and the US embassy) from incoming mortar fire. Nevertheless, on Sunday as a sandstorm descended on the capital, the Green Zone faced a barrage of mortar fire:
' Thunderous explosions resounded throughout the evening as rockets or mortar shells slammed into the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad. . .
Sirens wailed in the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government on the west side of the Tigris River. The public address system warned people to "duck and cover" and stay away from windows.
The U.S. Embassy confirmed the area was hit by indirect fire, the military's term for rocket or mortar attacks, but said it had no immediate word on casualties.'
There were also clashes between forces loyal to the al-Maliki government and Mahdi Army militiamen in parts of Baghdad.
On Saturday, mortar fire killed 8 and wounded 42 in the area around the Green Zone.
Turkey launched another major operation in eastern Anatolia near Iraq, deploying 8,000 troops against guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). There are fears that the Turkey military will once again invade northern Iraq, where it maintains PKK terrorists hole up.
The USG Open Source Center translates a sermon of Shaykh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i from last Friday. His remarks indicate his discomfort, despite being a supporter of the al-Maliki government, both with the planned Bush-al-Maliki 'agreement' on US-Iraqi relations (which many Iraqis fear will detract from Iraqi sovereignty) and with the al-Maliki- US campaign against Sadr City (which he blames on the lawlessness of the Mahdi Army):
' "Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, imam and preacher of Friday sermon in Karbala, said that the long-term agreement, which will be signed with the United States, should not conflict with national sovereignty. He urged the officials to take the sensitivity of this issue into consideration."
Al-Karbala'i says: "We hope that the Iraqi officials will be very alert to the sensitivity and seriousness of the unresolved issues in these talks. These issues affect the Iraqi sovereignty in the security, political, and judicial fields. The brothers should pay attention to the sensitivity and seriousness of these unresolved issues, which would perhaps shackle the Iraqi people, the current government, and the coming Iraqi governments in a way that encroaches on the sovereignty of the country and people in these important aspects. Any loss in Iraq's sovereignty should not be accepted, whether in the security, political, or judicial fields."
The report says: "In his Friday sermon, Al-Karbala'i called on the government to take urgent measures to alleviate the suffering of Al-Sadr City's citizens who were harmed by the outlaws' crimes." '
McClatchy reports political violence on Sunday:
' Baghdad
- Two roadside bombs targeted an Iraqi Army foot patrol near Filis restaurant in Mansour, downtown Baghdad killing 1 officer, injuring 4 servicemen and 2 civilians.
- Roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy in al-Amin neighbourhood, east Baghdad. No casualties were reported.
- A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber targeted a National Police patrol in Shaab Stadium intersection killing 3, injuring 14 both civilians and police.
- Clashes broke out between security forces and gunmen in Um al-Maalif, Bayaa district, southwest Baghdad late Saturday, and continued through the night. 1 civilian was killed, 15 were injured, 4 of whom were children.
- A roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy near the Assyrian Party headquarters in Zayuna, east Baghdad. No casualties were reported.
- Around 4 pm, 3 mortars hit the industrial compound in Amil neighborhood(west Baghdad) .One person was killed and 7 others were injured. Later,Clashes took place in the neighborhood which became in a siege till the time of having this report posted .
- Around 4 pm, 3 mortars hit Baladiyat neighborhood (east Baghdad) targeting Wahran intermediate school .Five people were injured in that incident.
- Around 5 pm, a car bomb targeted an Iraqi patrol at Jamaa neighborhood (west Baghdad) near Mulla Hweesh mosque .One soldier was killed and eight others were injured including 5 civilians .
- Around 4:30 till 6 pm, eight mortars shells and rockets hit the green zone (IZ) downtown Baghdad. No casualties reported.
- Around 5 pm, 6 mortars hit Kadhimiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad)at Al-Muheet street .One person was killed and 6 others were injured.
- Police found 6 dead bodies in Baghdad today: 4 were found in east Baghdad(Risafa bank) ; 3 were in Ameen and 1 was in Mashtal . While 2 were found in west Baghdad (Karkh bank); 1 was in Dora and 1 was Bayaa.
Nineveh
- A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest targeted an Iraqi Police patrol in Qassim al-Khayat Square, downtown Mosul at 8 pm Saturday, killing 6, 4 of them civilians and injuring 5, 3 of them civilians.
- Gunmen killed 1 civilian in al-Maash market, central Mosul at 8 am.
- In the morning, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Al-Zihour neighborhood (east Mosul).Two civilians were injured in that incident.
- Before noon, gunmen opened fire one of the houses in Al-Quds neighborhood in downtown Mosul city. Two people were killed in that incident (a woman and a man ).
Diyala
- A roadside bomb targeted one of the headquarters of the Popular Committees at Mualmeen neighborhood in central Baquba. Three people were injured in that incident.
- A mass grave was uncovered in an orchard in al-Gubba area, al-Abbara district, 15 km to the north of Baquba at 2.15 Sunday by Iraqi Army and Sahwa council members. The mass grave contained 50 bodies in an advanced state of decomposition.
Kirkuk
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in al-Quds Street, al-Tiseen neighbourhood, south Kirkuk city on Saturday. The explosion injured 3 policemen.
Tikrit
- 1 woman killed,2 men and 2 children injured in an explosion of a car bomb in al-Qadisiyah neighbourhood, northeast Samaraa city, 120 km to the north of Baghdad. The car was parked near some concrete blast walls and was detonated by remote control at 1.30pm.
- Around 9:30 pm, gunmen opened fire on two police officers in downtown Tikrit .Police announced a curfew in the city till a further notice.
Anbar
- At dawn , 9 gunmen attacked Al-Khaldiyah police station(25 km east of Ramadi) with light and mid weapons . One gunman was killed and two others were injured who were captured by police with the rest of the group when police opened fire on them. Also two policemen were injured in that incident. '
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/27/2008 06:47:00 PM
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" ...the planned Bush-al-Maliki 'agreement' on US-Iraqi relations... "
Anyone have a copy of this 'agreement'? I have the idea that it provides for the occupation to extend indefinitely.
The Congress, of course, ought to be all over it.
But the Congress is just all over.
Professor: the Economist is reporting that Sadr has given up Basra. Do you have any comments/information?
Forensic economist
Some invasionites and collaborationists have now decided that it is time to proclaim Success and Victory on the native political front over and above that utterly magnificent military suRGe of theirs.
And when one reflects how they owe it all to one Hero who dared to act alone!
"It was a very bold step of Maliki's to take on these militias, so we have to say he's doing a good job," said Salim Abdullah, the spokesman for the [Tawáfuq] (...) Al-Maliki's decision to move against them has proved ... transformational, said independent parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi. No one had expected al-Maliki to confront the Sadrists, but once he did, the aura of invincibility surrounding them evaporated. "You had to be nice to the Sadrists or they would kill you. Now they have nothing. That's why we're all supporting Maliki!" (...) "This experience is enough to demonstrate the true personality of Maliki. He's tough, he's not sectarian and all he wants is to build a state of law in Iraq," said his political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi. "Those who were criticizing him should renew their assessments. He's come out very well from this and he's satisfied."
So don’t just sit there, everybody, renew your assessments!
One sandstorm doesn't make a spring, but probably there will soon be a lot more along these lines. And should you happen to be in the market for a paleface Hero, try today’s Los Angeles Times.
Happy days.
"Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, imam and preacher of Friday sermon in Karbala, said that the long-term agreement, which will be signed with the United States, should not conflict with national sovereignty."
Has the good imam checked his country's sovereignty dipstick lately? I think he'll find it's down to the fill mark already and I can't believe an agreement with GB will add any.
Children killed in Gaza raid
Seven Palestinians have been killed during a raid by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip, six of them by a shell which hit a family home.
Four children and an elderly man were among the dead; the children's mother was taken to hospital but died later as doctors struggled to save her life.
The children were aged between seven months and five years.
"The continued Zionist massacres are new proof that the Occupation (Israel) is not interested in calm," Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said.
"Therefore Palestinian armed wings should continue to respond to the aggression by all possible means."
Mission accomplished! The filthy, dirty offer of a cease fire has been forcefully aborted!
Ariel Sharon sleeps peacefully in his cocoon, knowing that any chance at peace has been crushed immediately by his stepchildren.
Israelis, please look at what you have become. In future it will not be the likes of me that compares your present actions to those of the Nazis sixty years ago.
It will be your own children and grandchildren.
Juan,
Kudos to Tom Englehardt for his dispatch on Gen PetRaeus. As I've noted since Operation Forward Together, the man's PR generalship is extraordinary. The more he fails the larger he becomes.
THAT is a coveted talent in a Bush general. You know the march with no clothes
The campaign appears to have been launched in part to protect the Green Zone (site of government offices and the US embassy) from incoming mortar fire.
I've always thought that the walls officially built by the US in order to prevent sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites were in fact a way to controll Baghdad and to protect the Green Zone from more attacks : I'd like to see a map of these walls, I'm sure they have created kinds of security belts around the Green Zone. It's interesting to note that they are at a point where they have to admit that they are attacking cities neighbourhoods in order to defend the Green Zone : this points to a dire situation, if even the Green Zone is so continually attacked.
Mr. Cole
The British Times portrays the Basra result as success.
Any informed comments on this?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3671861.ece
ref : “the Green Zone faced a barrage of mortar fire”
U.S. reports big battle with Shi'ite militants : “dozens of Shi'ite militants attacked a Baghdad [Sadr City] checkpoint under cover of dust storms; 45 were killed in 24 hours of clashes... U.S. troops firing the heavy guns of their M1 tanks... dust storms have grounded U.S. Apache attack helicopters.”
“The end is inevitable. They are going to lose. We don't understand why they keep fighting, why they keep putting the people they are supposed to be protecting in danger,” a U.S. military spokesman, Mark Cheadle, said.
Such remarkable candor: “We don't understand why they keep fighting;” yet, so painfully revealing. Could many Americans say, "Why We Fight" with any rational certainty, or life-and-death clarity? That they fight, and they hurl themselves against our guns, and they die ~ for their God, or their Country, or their Home and Family ~ against an alien invader/occupier that is US: is this not obvious?
“We don't understand why they keep fighting” ...have we so entirely forgotten, the things we used to fight for, and against; and the whole world of freedom-loving, or -wanting, men and women did everything they could to help our cause; and we hurled ourselves against their guns, and their dungeons, gladly; do you remember when our purpose was in God's name, humane, and we had no shame?
Have you read the new story on McClatchy?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/35146.html
Amazing article on the guy that brokered the Sadr Government cease fire in Basra 2 weeks ago. Interesting stuff. Could use a Juan Cole post on it.
You are not the only one to have noticed the smply ghastly similarity, Christiane:
The New Walls of Baghdad
The explosion of walls and enclaves reinforced by aerial violence across Iraq suggest that the primary counterinsurgency lessons being followed by the U.S. military in Iraq today derive less from the lessons of "Lawrence of Arabia" than from Israel's experiences in the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past decade.
Over the past decade, Israel has developed a pacification strategy against Palestinian resistance to its military occupation by erecting separation walls and checkpoints across Palestinian territory that has enclosed Palestinians within a proliferating archipelago of ethnic enclaves to separate them from each other and from illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. This wall and enclave strategy is maintained under a blanket of aerial Israeli surveillance and deadly unmanned drones, which target the frequent airborne assassinations and strikes. This strategy reached its apotheosis in Gaza following Israel's withdrawal of its soldiers and settlements in 2005. In Gaza, 1.5 million Palestinians are now living within an enclosed cage, while Israel controls access to the essentials of life through high-tech border terminals and unleashes "penetration raids" and airborne "targeted killings" when resistance is offered.
Iraq, it seems, is surging towards Gaza.
Monsieur Gonzo
It is only about winners and losers. The primary philosophy is a nationalist darwinism. Might is right. Virtue from the barrel of a gun. There is a certain anxiety that such heroic self-obsession might have a down side, evidence of a trace of a previous religious foundation, but faint. So faint.
Astonishing, really, just how faint. I share that astonishment with you.
Prof Cole,
On today's Charlie Rose show (on some channels it still can be caught later tonight), John Negroponte stated that Iran, among other things, is involved in helping Taliban. Could you please comment on this?
If it is as mendacious as it seems to be, and coupling it with the documented statements of John McCain that Iran is helping Al Qaeda (that I brought to your attention some time ago), what confidence can one have in subtler and not so clear-cut issues on which even experts like yourself may not have definitive information and have to rely on government sources only?
"The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination."
[snip]
"It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense's planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations' military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China."
[snip]
"In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect."
[snip]
"This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion."
[snip]
"If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defense expenditures."
[snip]
"During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union's detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR's European satellites, the U.S. sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S. Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the U.S. pursues to the present day."
[snip]
"By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in U.S. manufacturing."
"Our short tenure as the world's lone superpower has come to an end." - Chalmers Johnson
http://www.alternet.org/story/83555/?page=entire
********************
"It's going to be a tough sell to convince people in my district that funding the war for six months into the new president's term is the way to end the war," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, a leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus who plans to oppose the funding. "It sounds like we are paying for something we don't want."
The bill is expected to provide $108 billion that the White House has requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers who are drafting it say it also will include a so-called bridge fund of $70 billion to give the new president several months of breathing room before having to ask Congress for more money."
[snip]
"They are the biggest hypocrites in the world," said Medea Benjamin, the San Francisco-based founder of the anti-war group CodePink. "[The Democrats] want to paint the Republicans as warmongers and [the Democrats] want to keep funding the war, and they think we don't see through this?"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/28/MNCU10BATO.DTL
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