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Conservative Shiites are winning the civil war
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Shi'ite Advantages in the Civil War
♦ Sadr's Mahdi Army controls the national police force and much of the army.
♦ Muqtada al Sadr has taken over the Ministries of Health and Transportation.
♦ The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq controls the Ministry of Interior.
♦ The Prime Minister is a conservative Shi'ite and beholden to Muqtada al Sadr.
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Nir Rosen is perhaps the best informed journalist concerning the Iraqi civil war. He has spent two years in Iraq interviewing, insurgent leaders, religious leaders and ordinary Iraqis. His book In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, was published by Simon and Schuster early in 2006.
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Excerpts from Killing Fields, by Nir Rosen
May 28, 2006. The Washington Post. (full text)
Across town, U.S. troops had also raided the Mustapha Huseiniya, a Shiite place of worship in the Ur neighborhood. ... The [Shiite] Mahdi militiamen were already back in force [the next] morning, blocking off the roads and searching all who approached, wielding Iraqi police-issue Glock pistols and carrying Iraqi police-issue handcuffs. In Baghdad and most of Iraq, the police are the Mahdi Army and the Mahdi Army is the police. The same holds for the actual Iraqi army, posted throughout the country. ...
Many Iraqi government ministries are now filled with the banners and slogans of Shiite religious groups, which now exert total control over these key agencies. ...
For instance, in the negotiations between parties after the January 2005 elections, [Shiite] Sadr loyalists gained control over the ministries of health and transportation and immediately began cleansing them of Sunnis and Shiites not aligned with Sadr. The process was officially known by the Sadrists as "cleansing the ministry of Saddamists." Indeed, some government offices now do not accept Sunnis as employees at all.
Based on my visits to the ministries, it is clear that an apartheid process began after the Shiites' electoral success. In the Ministry of Health, you see pictures of Moqtada al-Sadr and his father everywhere. Traditional Shiite music reverberates throughout the hallways. ... I also saw walls adorned with Shiite posters—including ones touting Sadr—in the Ministry of Transportation. Sunni staffers have been pushed out of both ministries, while the Ministry of Interior is under the control of another Shiite movement, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Shiites with no apparent qualifications have filled the ranks. In one case in the transportation ministry, a Sunni chief engineer was fired and replaced with an unqualified Shiite who wore a cleric's turban to work. In all cases, this has led to a stark drop in efficiency, with the health and transportation ministries barely functioning, and the interior ministry operating much like an anti-Sunni death squad, with secret prisons uncovered last November, and people disappearing after raids by shadowy government security units operating at night.
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When the Golden Mosque of the Shiites in Samarra was blown up. More than 1,000 Sunnis were killed in retribution, and then the Shiite-controlled interior ministry prevented an accurate body count from being released. Attacks on mosques, mostly Sunni ones, increased. Officially, Moqtada al-Sadr opposed attacks on Sunnis, but he unleashed his fighters on them after the bombing.
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Shiite Prime Minister lashes out at U.S. military for attacking Shia death squad
August 8, 2006.
American officials said the attack, which used airstrikes on the densely populated Shia slum, targeted a specific cell responsible for murdering Sunnis. When the troops went in, however, they triggered a two-hour battle with Mahdi Army fighters, who run the Shia fiefdom of the hardline cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Mr al-Maliki, a Shia, said: “I am very sorry for what happened. Such aircraft attacks are unjustifiable on a vulnerable residential area like Sadr City under the pretext of arresting one person.” He promised to pay damages to those wounded in the attack. full story
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http://zfacts.com/p/459.html | 01/18/12 07:20 GMT
Modified: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:34:43 GMT
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Rosen has interviewed insurgent leaders, religious leaders, and numerous ordinary Iraqis. If you want to know what’s really going on, this is the book.
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