[Peace-discuss] Out now

[Chas. 'Mark' Bee]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 1:44 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Out now


> 
> Published on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
> Civil War Won't End Until Troops Leave Iraq
> by Patrick Cockburn
> 
> 
> On a bend in the Tigris River in north Baghdad people try to prevent
> their children from seeing the headless and tortured bodies that drift
> ashore every day. The number of civilians being killed in Iraq may top
> 1,000 a week in July after reaching 3,149 in June.
> 
> I have been visiting Baghdad in peace and in war since 1978 and I have
> never seen this city of 6 million people so paralyzed by fear. The
> streets are empty in the middle of the day because Sunni and Shiite
> Muslims are terrified of running into a checkpoint manned by members of
> the other community who may kill them after a glance at their identity
> cards.
> 
> Civil war is raging across central Iraq. Baghdad, a city whose
> population is almost the same as London, is splitting into hostile and
> heavily armed districts. Minorities, be they Sunni or Shiite, are being
> killed or forced to flee. People dare not even take their furniture in
> case this might alert their neighbors to their departure and lead to
> their deaths. Sunni no longer let the mostly Shiite police enter their
> districts.
> 
> "If this isn't civil war," a senior Iraqi official said last weekend, "I
> don't know what is."
> 
> It is at this moment that the new Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki,
> arrived in London to see Prime Minister Tony Blair and to deny Iraq is
> sliding into civil war. He spoke confidently about disarming militias.
> He has now gone to the US to see President Bush, and, if he follows the
> ignoble and cowardly tradition of Iraqi leaders visiting the US over the
> past three years, will most likely repeat what he said in London.
> 
> "When our so-called leaders go to Washington they always produce a rosy
> picture of what is happening in Iraq for the Americans, though they know
> it is a lie," sighed one veteran Iraqi politician.
> 
> Iraqi leaders are not what they seem. They live in the Green Zone, the
> heavily fortified enclave guarded by US troops, in the heart of Baghdad.
> Many never leave it except for extensive foreign travel. Eighteen months
> ago, an Iraqi magazine claimed to have discovered that at one point the
> entire cabinet was out of the country at the same time.
> 
> The government remains reliant on the US One former minister told me:
> "There is a culture of dependency. Part of the time the Americans treat
> us as a colony, part of the time as an independent country."
> 
> Al-Maliki became prime minister only because the US and Britain were
> determined to get rid of his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Al-Maliki
> is inexperienced, personally isolated without his own kitchen cabinet,
> guarded by US guards and heavily reliant on shadowy US advisers.
> 
> The quasi-colonial nature of the Iraqi government may not be obvious to
> outsiders who see that it has been democratically elected. But its
> independence has always been a mirage.
> 
> For instance, its own intelligence organization should be essential to a
> government fighting for its life against a violent insurgency. At first
> sight, Iraq might appear to have one under Maj.-Gen. Mohammed
> al-Shahwani, but it has no budget because it is funded directly by the
> CIA, to the tune of $110 million to $160 million a year and, not
> surprising, it is to the CIA that it first reports. Not surprising,
> Iraqis will need a lot of convincing that Al-Maliki is not one more US pawn.
> 
> In theory he should be in charge of a substantial army force. The number
> of trained Iraqi soldiers and police has grown from 169,000 in June 2005
> to 264,000 this June. But the extra 105,000 armed men have not only made
> no difference to security in Iraq but that security has markedly
> deteriorated over the past year. The reason is that the armed forces put
> their allegiance to their own communities -- Kurd, Sunni or Shiite --
> well before their loyalty to the state. Shiites do not believe they will
> be defended from a pogrom by Sunni units and the Sunni feel the same way
> about Shiite units.
> 
> This is why the militias are growing in strength. Everybody wants an
> armed militia from their own community to defend their neighborhoods. In
> any case, the largest political parties making up the present Iraqi
> government -- the Kurds and the two biggest Shiite religious parties --
> all have their private armies, which they are not going to see dissolved.
> 
> Not only is Al-Maliki's suggestion that the militiamen might be stood
> down untrue but also the trend is entirely the other way. The army and
> police are themselves becoming sectarian and ethnic militias. This makes
> absurd Bush's and Tony Blair's claim that at some stage the US-trained
> Iraqi security forces will be strong enough to stand alone.
> 
> Al-Maliki's visit to Washington has more to do with the White House's
> domestic political agenda than with the dire reality of Iraq. The Bush
> administration wants to have live Iraqis say in the lead-up to mid-term
> elections in November that progress is being made in Iraq. A frustration
> of being a journalist in Iraq is that the lethal anarchy there cannot be
> reported without getting oneself killed in the process.
> 
> Can anything be done to lead Iraqi out of this savage civil war even if
> it is now too late to stop it? Friction among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds
> was always likely after the fall of Saddam Hussein. But what has divided
> the communities most is their differing attitude to foreign occupation.
> Ending that is essential if this war is to be brought to an end.
> 
> Patrick Cockburn writes for The Independent in Britain.


  Doesn't sound like the French Resistance to me.  ;)