Ethnic civil war rages through Iraq
This article linked from Juan Cole's excellent
website : Informed Comment at www.juancole.com
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10402824
By Patrick Cockburn September 25, 2006
Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside.
Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the
province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the
insurgents are close to establishing a 'Taleban
republic'. Officials in the strategically important,
mixed Sunni and Shia province with a Kurdish minority,
have no doubt about what is happening.
Lt Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary looking
commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an
ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment the Sunni seem to be winning it. As the
violence has escalated in Iraq over the past three years
it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out
what is happening in the provinces outside the capital.
The UN said last week that 5106 civilians were killed
in Baghdad in July and August and 1493 in the provinces
outside it.
Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the
west and the north.
As I travelled through the provinces of this vast,
war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively
calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through
the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware
that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.
We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river
which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a
smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green
vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert.
Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered
the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.
What could have happened if we had continued down the
main road was evident at Col Hassan's headquarters.
In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a
blue-and-white police land rover, ripped apart by a
bomb.
"Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up
at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a
policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but
both his legs were amputated."
In Diyala it is possible to see the anguished break up
of Iraq at ground level.
Going by the accounts of police and government officials
in the province given to the Independent the death toll
outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously
reported.
Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala provincial
council who had survived an attempt to assassinate him
in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day, says
he believed that "on average 100 people are being killed
in Diyala every week."
In the latest illustration of the spiralling violence,
three civilians were shot dead just yesterday by
unidentified assailants.
Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car
through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead
were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing
their arms open to the sky in despair.
Many of those who die disappear forever, thrown into
the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and
fruit orchards.
The reason for their killing can be spurious, and
people have become careful to avoid incurring the
wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of
the province according to strict Islamic laws.
"They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the
provincial capital Baquba and kill anybody selling
cigarettes," said Mr Bajalan.
"I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to
give them to council members who are smokers."
In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north
east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful
looking middle aged woman, described how she had run
too late.
Born in al-Muqdadiyah, a Sunni-dominated town of
200,000 people, she was caught by surprise when death
squads began to target Kurds and Shia in her
neighbourhood.
In March Mrs Mirza's eldest son Khalil Mohammed Ahmed,
a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine
and never came back.
She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was
discovered.
"Kurds and Shia were being driven out of our district,"
she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they
would kill my sons even if they flew up into the sky
unless I moved away."
One of her other sons was a policeman permanently
disabled by a bomb explosion.
Mrs Mirza and her family are one of 300,000 Iraqis
forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the
year. Everywhere minorities frightened for their lives
are on the move.
"Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is
real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin who effectively runs the
town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children
people will run."
Most often the threat is very real.
Col Hassan has a collection of light blue files in which
are registered the names of the latest refugees, mostly
Kurds, coming in from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the
rest of the country.
He hands over a piece of paper showing how month by
month the number of refugee families arriving in this
small town alone had risen from 29 in January to 318 in
June and 239 in August.
Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are
particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon
because most of the killing is done by local or tribal
militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are
very strong but that the government forces are so weak.
Col Hassan says there is a division of 7000 government
soldiers in Diyala "but they are all Shia and only
arrest Sunni."
Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala,
saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He
reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square
kilometre of the province.
"The soldiers are badly armed," he says. "They just
have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket
launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack they
always kill 10 or 15 army or police."
The Americans do have a base near Baquba but act in a
supportive role when they are asked to.
"That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr
Bajalan.
"They've all gone home by the time the Americans
arrive."
Over the last week the government in Baghdad has
announced signal successes around Baquba by capturing
leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups, the Ansar
al-Sunna and 1920 Revolution Brigades.
Nobody on the ground in Diyala had heard about this
and, without exception, they expected the civil war
to grow in intensity.
Patrick Cockburn - UK INDEPENDENT
This article linked from Juan Cole's excellent
website : Informed Comment at www.juancole.com
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10402824
--
other choices:
www.lp.org
www.gp.org
.
|
