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Civil war: the Iraq quagmire
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Q: Is there a civil war?
zFact:Yes. Less than 2% of the fatalities in the Iraq war are American. If that 2% makes it a war for us, then the 50-times-greater death toll from Sunnis killing Shiites and vice versa certainly makes it a civil war for Iraq. more Just sectarian violence?
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Q: Who's winning?
zFact:Maliki and the fundamentalist Shi'ites. They formed the "United Iraqi Alliance," which is mainly
(1) SCIRI = Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
(2) Islamic Al-Da'wa party. Maliki is it's #2 man.
(3) Muqtada Sadr's party.
Together, they are 10 short of a majority in Parilament, but the Kurds help them out against the Sunnis and have 58 representatives.
SCIRI has close ties with Iran and controls the Badr Brigade. Like SCIRI, the Da'wa party was based in Iran until the invasion. Sadr also has ties with Iran and is very anti US and anti Israel. He has his Mahdi Army. Mahdi and Badr are the two strongest militias in Iraq and kill about 4 times as many Sunnis as the Sunni insurgents kill Shi'ites.
zFact:The US is backing the Iraqi government, which is basically the fundamentalist Shi'ite alliance. Naturally, they are winning, though they do not seem to want to help us dislodge Al Qaeda from Anbar province. We are training and equipping the government army and police, but once they feel they have what they need, they will turn against the US. Sadr is open about that and has already killed many American troops.
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Q: How fast is it getting worse?
zFact:The Iraq civil war is twice as deadly as half a year ago.
Full graph & explanation.
Q: What are the numbers?
zFact:The death toll in January was 1778, and five months later in June, it was 3149. The six-month total is 14,388, and the Iraqi government says this is an undercount.
Q: How does that compare with US fatalities?
zFact:Iraqi fatalities are 50 times higher, and Iraq's popluation is 12 times smaller. In proportion, their civil war is 600 times worse than our "Iraq war."
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Q: How long are we stuck?
zFact:The US military thinks 5 more years.
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There are five or six main sides to the Iraqi civil war besides the US and official Iraqi forces, both of which wish to stop it.
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• The Saddamist insurgents — Their focus is both anti-US and anti-Shiite, but they apparently disagree with al-Qaeda's attacks on Shiite religious events and symbols and are now even killing some top al-Qaeda figures.
• The Badr Organization — The armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), supported by Iran. Supports Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani.
• The Mahdi Army — The milia force of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric for the poor section of Baghdad.
• The Kurdish militias — The two don't fight each other much, so count them as one. They fight Sunnis and Shi'its for control of Kirkut, Mosul and their oil riches.
• The Iraqi government — The army and national police are primarily under Shiite influence, but in Sunni areas they are often under Sunni influence.
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Although the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army are both Shiite and mainly attack Sunnis, they are rivals and engaged in a struggle for control of Basra in the South. Both groups are fanatical fundamentalists and want to impose Islamic law. This is not particularly representative of the Shiite population as a whole.
The Badr forces fled to Iran when Ayatollah Khomeini took over and they fought against Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war. Since they were anti-Saddam, the US assisted in their return to Iraq in 2003. The neocons' Chalabi is Shiite with close ties to Iran, and the neocons have favored a US-Shiite alliance.
(Badr Organization associated with Hakim family.)
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Q: What role do you think Iran is playing, and how do the Shi'a feel about Iran?
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: It's like a big poker game. Everyone's sitting around the table, and the Iranians have the biggest number of cards in their hands, far more than the Americans, and they have played very smart. They control, they equip, directly and indirectly most of the Shi'a militias. Muqtada al-Sadr was in the beginning an anti-Iranian Shi'a militia, and within a year he was totally on board. They are now in Iraq saying that the Americans hate Iran, and the Mahdi army will fight. This is a huge victory for the Iranians.
How do the Iraqi Shi'a look at the Iranians? In 2003 and before there was a distinctive Iraqi character and identity, quite separate from the Iranians, but now with all this sectarian fighting, the Iranians are much closer. As a Shi'a, the Iranians won't fight me, they will protect me – so they are closer to me than the Sunnis.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, is an Iraqi photojournalist born in Baghdad in 1975. more
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The Sunni / insurgent side
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Riverbend , a "Girl Blog" from Iraq*
The thing most worrisome about the situation now,
is that discrimination based on sect has become so commonplace. For the average educated Iraqi in Baghdad, there is still scorn for all the Sunni/Shia talk. Sadly though, people are being pushed into claiming to be this or that because political parties are promoting it with every speech and every newspaper- the whole ‘us’ / ‘them’. We read constantly about how ‘We Sunnis should unite with our Shia brothers…’ or how ‘We Shia should forgive our Sunni brothers…’ (note how us Sunni and Shia sisters don’t really fit into either equation at this point). Politicians and religious figures seem to forget at the end of the day that we’re all simply Iraqis.
And what role are the occupiers playing in all of this? It’s very convenient for them, I believe. It’s all very good if Iraqis are abducting and killing each other- then they can be the neutral foreign party trying to promote peace and understanding between people who, up until the occupation, were very peaceful and understanding.
*one of 19 publications listed for the BBC Four's Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. If Riverbend wins, she'll receive £30,000, about $52,437.
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Senior Tory calls for withdrawal from Iraq
Guardian, April 21, 2006
A senior Conservative MP has gone against party policy to call for British troops to withdraw from Iraq before they become "part of the problem" and conceded that his original decision to back the war in 2003 was a mistake.
The former shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, said Iraq is effectively in a state of civil war and it would be both "pointless and dangerous" for troops to remain there.
He conceded in the article that he had voted for the war in Iraq in 2003 fearing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but added: "On this I was wrong. So were many others."
Tory policy has been that soldiers should stay as long as necessary. Earlier this week, the Tory party chairman, Francis Maude, sought to silence party dissenters by telling them to "shut up, get on with their jobs or, perhaps even better, leave".
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http://zfacts.com/p/466.html | 01/18/12 07:17 GMT
Modified: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:44:21 GMT
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Amazon
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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