Iraq civil war has started

I don't. I think that there are a small group of Saddam loyalists who are pissed off that their favored position in Iraqi society has been displaced. They are making a lot of noise, and worse.

Phoenix
Phoenix, I think so not because of Sunni discontent, but because a large segement the marjority Shiite population is a war with other Shiite factions. They've been fighting among themselves, killing each other and their leaders, jockeying for power. But the fight has widened to include the occupiers.

In addition, there is no way the occupiers will be able to successfully turn over governing to the Iraqi people on July 1st.

If it smells like civil war, it must be civil war.

BBB

On the brink of anarchy
On the brink of anarchy

· US fight on two fronts
· Arrest warrant for Shia radical
· Bush firm on Iraq handover

Julian Borger in Washington and Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Tuesday April 6, 2004
The Guardian UK

The Bush administration was last night facing a nightmare scenario in Iraq, fighting on two fronts against Sunni and Shia militants less than three months before it is due to hand over power to an Iraqi government.
Facing a critical moment in the effort to pacify the country, President George Bush vowed he would not budge from his June 30 deadline for the transition to self-rule, while US forces in Iraq opted for a high-risk strategy of attempting to crush both insurgent groups simultaneously.

American officials in Baghdad announced an arrest warrant for a radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose black-uniformed Mahdi militia revolted against coalition forces at the weekend, killing seven American soldiers in the Baghdad district known as Sadr City. Up to 30 Iraqis were also killed in the clashes, the worst the capital has seen since its fall to US troops a year ago.

In another sign of their tougher strategy, US forces used Apache gunships to attack targets in Baghdad for the first time since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. The helicopters opened fire over the Shia neighbourhood of Shulla after militants destroyed a US armoured vehicle.

Meanwhile, a force of 1,300 US marines and Iraqi troops began moving into the town of Falluja in an attempt to regain control of the Sunni stronghold, which signalled its defiance last week by the torching, dismemberment and display of the bodies of four American private security guards, ambushed in the town centre by insurgents. The marines imposed a curfew and closed the Baghdad-Amman road that runs past the town.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, the foreign minister of US ally Qatar, said last night: "We fear that we are facing a civil war in Iraq, reminding me of what happened in Afghanistan and Lebanon."

Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation and the prospect of a civil war following the transfer of power to a yet-to-be-determined Iraqi government, the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, cancelled a visit to Washington to deal with the crisis.

The US military commander, General John Abizaid, was considering the reinforcement of his 105,000-strong army of occupation. According to Pentagon officials, Gen Abizaid gave his aides 48 hours to come up with ideas on where fresh troops, American or allied, could be found.

Mention of reinforcements has been taboo in the Bush administration as it faces re-election in November, but the revolt in Shia majority areas on Sunday, a few days after the Falluja killings, triggered profound anxiety in Washington.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said last night: "The administration really seems to be stubbornly refusing to do what's necessary to avoid the kind of disintegration that's taking place, and now we see continued violence."

Mr Kerry echoed senior Republicans and Democrats who called for a rethink of the June 30 deadline. But Mr Bush insisted the date remained firm.

"The message to the Iraqi citizens is they don't have to fear that America will turn and run, and that's an important message for them to hear," he said. "If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take the risk to ward freedom and democracy." The president committed US forces to tracking down Mr Sadr. "This is one person who is deciding that rather than allow democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force. And we just can't let it stand. As I understand, the CPA today announced the warrant for his arrest."

However, officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority said the warrant was issued months ago by an Iraqi judge investigating the murder a year ago of a rival Shia cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei. The warrant remained secret and no overt effort was made to detain Mr Sadr. Making the warrant public staked the credibility of the occupation authorities.

Asked when Mr Sadr would be picked up, Dan Senor, a CPA spokesman, said: "There will be no advance warning."

Mr Sadr, 30, the scion of a line of revered Shia leaders, was reported to have sought sanctuary in a mosque in his home base of Kufa near the holy city of Najaf, and his supporters pledged to fight to the death in his defence.

"I'm accused by one of the leaders of evil, Bremer, of being an outlaw," Mr Sadr said in a defiant statement. "If that means breaking the law of the American tyranny and its filthy constitution, I'm proud of that and that is why I'm in revolt."

He ordered his followers into the streets after the arrest of one of his top aides, Mustafa al-Yakoubi, and 13 other followers, for al-Khoei's murder, and the closure a week earlier of his movement's weekly newspaper, al-Hawza.

At the same time as Sunday's clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City, 24 Iraqis died in gunfire between Mahdi militiamen and Spanish-led forces in Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, where a Salvadorean coalition soldier was reported killed. Mr Sadr's forces also demonstrated in the British-run cities of Basra, Amara and Nassiriya.

Western diplomats had predicted that the occupation would remain tenable as long as the Shia majority acquiesced in the expectation that transition to a representative democracy would bring it political power.

Yesterday, US officials played down the significance of Mr Sadr's movement. The Pentagon said he commanded only 600 militiamen and a few thousand supporters. However, the Iraqi Shias' most senior religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a relative moderate, was reportedly ambivalent in his response to the Mahdi revolt.

"The good news here is Sadr is just one extreme cleric we already knew was an extremist and by resisting firmly we will send a message," said Michael O'Hanlon, a strategic analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The more nerve-racking news is that Sistani seems to be divided in his instincts."

Senator Joseph Biden, the Democrats' most prominent voice on foreign policy, compared the US quandary to a 1920 revolt against British colonial rule. "We are caught in the middle. The greatest concern here is a two-front war like the Brits faced." The 1920 revolt was suppressed only after 2,200 British troops and an estimated 8,450 Iraqis were killed or wounded.

The UN special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss the transition and elections scheduled for January, but there is no consensus on what form of government should take office in the interim.

Wanted Iraqi cleric 'willing to die'
Wanted Iraqi cleric 'willing to die'
Tuesday April 6, 2004 - Guardian UK

Radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said today that he was willing to die resisting any attempt to capture him, as US-led occupying forces struggled to contain insurgencies on two separate fronts.
Faced with US vows to hunt him down on a day which saw at least 30 people die in clashes across Iraq, Mr Sadr issued a defiant statement saying that he was willing to shed his own blood for Iraq and denouncing the US president, George Bush.

"America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit," he said.

"I would like to direct my words to the father of evil, Bush. Who is against democracy? Is it the one who calls for peaceful resistance, or the one who bombs people, sheds their blood and leads them away from the leaders under feeble and dirty pretexts?"

Mr Sadr also said that he had left the fortified mosque in the town of Kufa, south of the capital, Baghdad, where he had been with a group of heavily-armed supporters since Sunday.

"I feared that the sanctity of a glorious and esteemed mosque would be violated by scum and evil people," he said, adding that the US "will have no qualms to embark on such actions".

A second statement from one of Mr Sadr's aides said that fighting would continue until their demands - a withdrawal of US-led forces from populated areas and a prisoner exchange - were met.

True to their leader's words, Mr Sadr's black-uniformed Mahdi fighters engaged in gunfights with British troops in the southern town of Amara, in which at least 15 Iraqis have died in the past 48 hours, according to a Ministry of Defence spokewoman in London.

Another 15 Iraqis were killed during firefights between Mahdi insurgents and 500 Italian troops in the town of Nassiriya, according to Paola Della Casa, a spokeswoman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

"There were victims during the clashes and, right now, it seems the number of dead is about 15, although this is just an approximate estimate," she said, adding that isolated clashes were still continuing.

In Baghdad, a US soldier was killed during renewed clashes in a Shia stronghold, and a further two died yesterday, the military said. The deaths brought the total number of US casualties in the capital since Sunday to 11. Local health officials said 66 Iraqis had died in the same period, and a further 317 had been injured.

Clashes with Shia rebels were also reported in the southern town of Kut, where a Ukrainian soldier was killed and five were injured, and near the western town of Kerbala, where two militiamen were wounded by Polish soldiers.

Mr Sadr has mobilised his forces in Baghdad and across the mainly Shia south of Iraq following the arrest last week of his deputy, Mustafa Yacoubi, and the closure of his newspaper by the US-led authorities.

The US-led forces in Iraq are facing battles against both Shia and Sunni rebels, and four US marines have been killed "as a result of enemy action" in Iraq's western province and Sunni stronghold of Anbar, the US military said in a statement today.

The four members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed while "conducting security and stabilisation operations" yesterday, the statement said, giving no further details.

The largest city in Anbar, however, is Falluja, which has been surrounded by hundreds of US troops in preparation for a crackdown on insurgents who last week signalled their defiance by the torching, dismemberment and display of the bodies of four US private security guards.

Heavy fighting was reported in some areas of the city today, and US forces attempted to make incursions, but no casualties were reported.

In a further threat to US-led efforts to bring order to Iraq, an audio tape purported to be from senior Al Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged to carry out more attacks on US troops there.

"We will not let you off, you snakes of evil, until you lift your hands off our mosques and stop shedding the blood of Sunnis ... and helping the enemies - the crusaders and Jews - against Muslims," said the voice on the tape, which was broadcast via an Islamist website.

Mr Zarqawi also claimed responsibility for a long list of attacks that have targeted US-led forces and their allies over the past 12 months.

In London, Tony Blair said today that Britain would "hold firm" in the face of "extremists" as he met the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

Mr Blair was defiant in the light of the last 48 hours, saying: "Our response should not be to run away in fright or hide away or think we have done something wrong. Our reaction must be to hold firm."

Mr Zebari - a Kurd who was educated at Essex university - said Mr Sadr did not represent the views of the majority of the Shia population, let alone the majority of Iraqis. He called for a new UN resolution ending Iraq's occupied status.

Both he and Mr Blair stressed that progress was being made despite the continued attacks and said the June 30 deadline for the handover of power to an interim Iraqi authority should be met.

"In case the perception is that Basra is in flames, that is not the case. Basra this morning is calm, and the UK troops are working in support of the governor and Iraqi police as they respond to the situation," a Downing Street spokesman said earlier today.

However, British commander Brigadier Nick Carter said that the situation in Iraq's second city was extremely volatile.

Speaking from Baghdad, US Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt insisted that Iraq was not slipping into anarchy.

"There has been an upsurge of violence recently, but that upsurge of violence ... is a very small number of people relative to the overall population. The overall population remains very committed to the process of moving this country towards democracy and sovereignty," he told GMTV.

The latest violence in Iraq comes as Britain is making routine changes to troop deployments in the country. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said that around 700 soldiers from the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment would fly there in the next 48 hours.

They form part of the 4,500-strong 1st Mechanised Brigade, based in Tidworth, Wiltshire, which will arrive in Iraq in the coming weeks. They will take over the running of southern Iraq from the 20 Armoured Brigade and are not reinforcements, the spokesman said.

BBB--

Only one war? Besides the war against us evil oppressors? The Iraqis are a contentious people.

BBB
Bush et al have walked into a nicely laid trap. If our military kills or captures radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiites will rise up against us. If the more moderate competing Shia clerics capture or kill him, the al-Sadr faction will rise up against us and them. If either side kills or captures the leaders of either faction, the Sunnis will rise up against them and the occupiers to fill the vacumn. If the Sunnis rise up against the occupiers, the Kurds will go on the attack against them.

Its a no win situation that can only lead to civil war, which is very near or already started.

BBB

When America pulls its troops, Iraq will have a civil war.

I can think of dozens of reasons to leave...from it was a mistake to go there in the first place... to it is only going to get worse. I can't understand what is gained by staying, and by necessity increasing the stakes.

Moron G.W. Bush and his administration have made one hell of a mess.

The sleeping dragon are the Kurds.

I think the civil war is still a good 6 months off though.

Shia split over Iraqi 'uprising'
Shia split over Iraqi 'uprising'
By Roger Hardy
BBC Middle East analyst - 4/7/04

Iraqi Shia are divided in their response to the outbreak of violence between coalition forces and the supporters of cleric Moqtada Sadr.
What is going on in Iraq is not a Shia uprising, though many people are asking whether it might become one.

But it suits Moqtada Sadr to call it an uprising - in Arabic an "intifada" - because that puts his campaign of resistance on the same level as the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.

And in the Iraqi context, the word has another meaning too.

The young cleric wants Iraqis to believe he is in the same heroic mould as the men who led the revolt of 1920 against British colonial rule.

The three-month revolt - which the British subdued with RAF bombers - has become an important part of Iraq's historical memory.

Repeating a mistake?

But some Iraqis draw a very different lesson from the events of 80 years ago.

They argue that by fighting the British, the Shia simply ensured that the British, (following the example of the Ottoman Turks,) would entrust the government of Iraq to a Sunni elite - a pattern which continued until the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year.

Thoughtful Iraqis warn that if the Shia make the same mistake now, they could lose a unique opportunity to win a share of power which reflects their majority status.

But the Shia are divided between those who realise this and those who are being swept along on a tide of angry anti-Americanism.

The country's most senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, has so far been cautious in the public statements issued in his name.

Whatever he may be feeling privately, the ayatollah clearly has no wish to be seen taking America's side at a time when Shia blood is being spilt.

The Americans are sounding tough, saying they will arrest Moqtada Sadr and crush his militia.

They seem to have lost patience with quiet, behind-the-scenes mediation.

But if the violence continues and the silent majority remains silent, Sadr's support may grow.
---------------------------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3607501.stm

Published: 2004/04/07 11:37:36 GMT

Iran, Hezbollah support al-Sadr
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

Iran, Hezbollah support al-Sadr
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 7, 2004

Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery Iraqi Shi'ite cleric who ordered his fanatical militia to attack coalition troops, is being supported by Iran and its terror surrogate Hezbollah, according to military sources with access to recent intelligence reports.

Sheik al-Sadr's bid to spark a widespread uprising in Iraq comes at a particularly pivotal time. The United States is conducting a massive troop rotation that leaves inexperienced troops in some locations, including Fallujah, which is west of Baghdad and where Sunnis have mounted another series of rebellions.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he will consider more U.S. forces for Iraq if his top commander there, Gen. John Abizaid, requests them. There are about 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and the force strength is scheduled to shrink by 15,000 once the rotation is completed.

"The commanders are using the excess of forces that happen to be in there because of the deployment process," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters. "They will decide what they need, and they will get what they need."

Sheik al-Sadr, who has traveled to Iran and met with its hard-line Shi'ite clerics, is an ardent foe of the United States who wants all foreign troops to leave.

The United States suspects that his goal is to create a hard-line Shi'ite regime in Iraq modeled after Tehran's government. Military sources said Sheik al-Sadr is being aided directly by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which plays a large role in running that country, and by Hezbollah, an Iranian-created terrorist group based in Lebanon.

One of the sources said these two organizations are supplying the cleric with money, spiritual support and possibly weapons. "Iran does not want a success in Iraq," the source said.

"A democratic Iraq is a death knell to the mullahs." Sheik al-Sadr upped the ante during the weekend by calling for his 3,000-strong militia, the Army of the Mahdi, to begin attacking coalition forces. His fiery words touched off attacks throughout southern Iraq.

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad announced on Monday that an Iraqi judge months ago had issued an arrest warrant for Sheik al-Sadr on a charge of murdering a moderate Shi'ite cleric.

The question for U.S. commanders is how to arrest Sheik al-Sadr without further enraging his small but violent group of followers. "Let the Iraqis kill him," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney. "We should not kill him, but we may have to. He's trying to create an uprising. This is their Tet offensive. We're going to kill a lot of them just like we did at Tet."

John Hillen, a former Army captain who fought in Operation Desert Storm during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, said the first step should be to try to discredit the cleric, using the condemnation of moderate Shi'ite leaders, before arresting him.

"You need to defuse the situation," Mr. Hillen said. "You need to make it Iraqi versus Iraqi. You've got to discredit him by his own people and find legitimate sources on our side. Make this as much a Shi'ite-to-Shi'ite issue as opposed to the Americans versus Sadr."

The U.S. military is trying new tactics to try to quell insurgents in Fallujah, avoiding time-consuming house-to-house sweeps in favor of targeted raids based on hard intelligence. When the 82nd Airborne Division first tried to subdue Fallujah in the summer, units went block by block to locate insurgents. Now, in the second intense battle for the city of Saddam Hussein loyalists, intelligence collection has improved and U.S. Marines can target specific dwellings.

"The plan is not to go house to house, street to street. We are trying to get insurgents," Capt. Ed Sullivan told Agence France-Presse.

Mr. Hillen said such precision operations mean that the Marines are getting good intelligence. "If you have good intelligence beforehand, which is the key to the whole Fallujah-type operations, you can at the same time be precise and overwhelming. We've been in and around Fallujah for quite some time, and I'm sure we have some pretty good intelligence sources there."

Mr. Rumsfeld said part of the intelligence resources are photographs of Iraqis who participated in the killings and mutilations of four American contractors. The former military commandos were serving as security staff in Fallujah and moving on a main road frequently traveled by coalition personnel when they were ambushed.

"They have photographs of a good many people who were involved in the attacks against the individuals, and they have been conducting raids in the city against high-value targets," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "They've captured a number of people over the past 36 hours. The city is isolated. A number of people have resisted and been killed. And it will be a methodical effort to find the individuals who were involved."

I fear the worst.

And here the news media is always making these people out to be so unreasonable...