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Tue 6 Apr, 2004 03:20 pm
Published on Tuesday, April 6, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
On the Brink of Anarchy
US Now Fighting on Two Fronts
by Julian Borger in Washington and Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
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 neighborhood of Shulla after militants destroyed a US armored 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 signaled its defiance last week by the torching, dismemberment and display of the bodies of four American private security guards, ambushed in the town center 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 defense.
"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 Salvadoran 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.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Brink? It passed "brink" stage two or thee months ago, and is pretty much there!
I don't think It is quit there yet, but it took a big step in that direction this past week. The key is security. Iraq has always had these elements but tyrants like Hussain kept them stifled and they see absence of an oppressive hand as weakness. This is just another little unanticipated problem that any anthropologist familiar with the region could have warned George Bush and his cronies about, had they been willing to listen.
Aquiunk, they were warned, repeatedly! But they stuck their fingers in their ears!
Acquiunk wrote:I don't think It is quit there yet, but it took a big step in that direction this past week. The key is security. Iraq has always had these elements but tyrants like Hussain kept them stifled and they see absence of an oppressive hand as weakness. This is just another little unanticipated problem that any anthropologist familiar with the region could have warned George Bush and his cronies about, had they been willing to listen.
That's a good assessment. I've read things about this region before. For some reason they don't respond well to freedom and democracy. There's a kind of grudging respect for those who can sieze and hold power.
Wilso, that is such complete and total bovine residue that it is difficult to even know where to begin! It is this neo-colonialist attitude that led to the invasion in the first place!
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1130577,00.html
130 SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ - REPORTS
A Pentagon source has said up to 130 US troops have been killed in fierce fighting in Iraq.
The large scale battle, described as "intense", has taken place in the town of Ar Ramadi, 20 miles west of Fallujah.
Sky News' David Chater said: "None of this is official yet - none of it is confirmed."
But he added: "It sounds very much like this is being carried out by men who are militarily trained."
Chater described the attack as "highly sophisticated".
More follows...
hobitbob wrote:Wilso, that is such complete and total bovine residue that it is difficult to even know where to begin! It is this neo-colonialist attitude that led to the invasion in the first place!
Well I was against the invasion. Maybe you've got a better explanation for the turmoil there at the moment.
Wilso wrote:hobitbob wrote:Wilso, that is such complete and total bovine residue that it is difficult to even know where to begin! It is this neo-colonialist attitude that led to the invasion in the first place!
Well I was against the invasion. Maybe you've got a better explanation for the turmoil there at the moment.
Indeed. The invaders destroyed the infrastructure, and removed law enforcement. Your comment about "those people" not understanding "freedom or democracy" makes me ill! When have "those people" ahd a chance, eh? Are you better than "those people" because you are not an Arab? This is no different than me implying that you cannot be trusted, because "those Australians" are lazy drunks who like to break things and get into fights ! Do you understand why your comment above was completely stupid? If you did the same thing to the US, or Belgium, or Australia, or wherever, I would bet the results would be the same!
Quote:There's a kind of grudging respect for those who can sieze and hold power.
The Hobit was right to take you up on this Wilso. It's as true of the Iraqi people as it is of EVERY PERSON ON EARTH.
Quote:This is no different than me implying that you cannot be trusted, because "those Australians" are lazy drunks who like to break things and get into fights !
Totally different Bob... Australians ARE lazy drunks who like to break things and get into fights.
What's so tragic to me about the anarchy in post-Saddam Iraq is that it didn't have to happen in the first place.
Before Bush launched his Iraq war, scholars of modern day Islam warned that a US invasion and occupation of Iraq would be seen throughout the Islamic world as a "jihad" against all of Islam.
The neocons orbiting Bush's tiny pinhead pooh-poohed such warnings as just so much fluff and Americans were assured our troops would have flowers tossed at their feet and little Iraqi children would hug the muscular legs of the Marines chanting, "Booosh, Booosh."
Of course, nothing even remotely like this has happened in Iraq as anti-American rage grows by the day and the targets are US troops who were lied to by Bush in the first place.
Now, we have a true guerilla war on or hands that suggests Vietnam.
And, Titus, the Bush administration refused to enact plans made by the Dept of State that would have proviuded for continuance of utilities and public order. Their reasons seem to have been twofold:
First, they would have required more troops (the issue Shinseki was forced out over).
Second, "ME Experts" like Wolfowitz and Pipes (of whom, only Wolfy has ever set foot in the ME, and then only for a few days, after the invasion) insisted that the Americans would be welcomed as liberators. Through either stupidity or malignacy, the Bush administration has ensured the worst possible outcome at every step.
It is worse than malignant stupidity, it is profound ignorance. Their view of the nonwestern world is rooted in the 19th century in which the "little brown people" simply roll over and passively surrender whenever the white colonial armies show up. They could not imagine any thing else.
Well, we all know the wogs need a good caning, lest they begin acting above their stations.
hobitbob:
I read something in one of the UK's papers a almost a year ago that said Baghdad, Iraq's largest city, now has to deal with cholera outbreaks on top of everything else they've had to endure the past 30 years.
Little wonder anti-American rage is growing.
Why can't the Bush loyalists comprehend what the rest of the world so easily sees?
Because it is only natural to believe that you and yours are in the right, and it is similarly difficult to accept failure, especially when failure may be interepereted as personal defeat. For many on the far right, their identification with Bush, and with the "rightness" or "holiness" of the US and its policies must make it exceptionally difficult for them to admit defeat.
We are in it up to our eyeballs now and failure is not an option because what would follow would be incomparably worse than what we destroyed. Some how or other Bush and the rest of this administration must be convinced to climb down out of the tree they have chased themselves up and accept international participation and particularly UN control of this mess.
Here's the text of an update of the story EB referred to, from his Sky News link:
Sky News wrote:As many as 12 US marines have been killed in fierce fighting in Iraq between Coalition forces and what is thought to have been Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Earlier reports put the death toll after the "intense" battle as high as 130.
The marines' position was attacked by dozens of Iraqis in the town of Ar Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, in an area known to troops as the Sunni Triangle.
The losses were among the heaviest inflicted on US forces in any single clash on the ground since the Iraq war began a year ago.
A US military official said there had also been "a significant number" of Iraqi deaths in the fighting.
Sky News' David Chater said: "It sounds very much like this (was) being carried out by men who are militarily trained."
Chater described the attack as "highly sophisticated".
Meanwhile, Tony Blair has announced he will fly to Washington to meet George Bush on April 16 to discuss the worsening situation.
And Iraqi radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has vowed to continue a Shi'ite uprising until the forces answer his demands.
It has forced Mr Bush to consider sending more troops in an attempt to deal with, what is in effect, an attempted coup.
The cleric's aide said the Coalition must withdraw troops from populated areas, such as Baghdad and Fallujah, and release prisoners.
Al-Sadr's militiamen have opened up three fronts across the country, targeting coalition forces and causing casualties in American, British and Italian held areas.
The cleric is believed to have gone underground in an attempt to keep his armed opposition going.
Dozens have died in the past two days in an apparent grab at the Shi'ite leadership by the young cleric.
The British have agreed a deal with al-Sadr's militiamen to re-take the governor's office in Basra, one of the incidents which sparked the current crisis.
The situation is not so encouraging in the north of the country where hundreds of US and Iraqi troops have surrounded the city of Fallujah where yesterday a mob killed four Americans and mutilated their bodies.
Last Updated: 00:54 UK, Wednesday April 07, 2004
And as someone pointed out on able2know, the US military will remain in Iraq indefinitely not to guarantee democracy, but to protect the "Investment."
The "Investment?"
That 3 letter word: o.i.l.
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