THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

Turkey to move against Kurdish rebels

Ankara: Turkey's president said on Tuesday that his country "has decided" on how to proceed against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and had informed the United States.

The United States and Iraq have urged Turkey to avoid a major cross-border attack on Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) rebel bases in Iraq to prevent instability in the region.

President Abdullah Gul did not specify what decision had been made regarding an attack, but made clear that Turkey feels that the PKK is leading instability in the region.

"Iraq's stability cannot be limited to fighting terrorism in Baghdad or other regions," he said. "The terrorist organization in the north is also disrupting Iraq's stability."

The comments came a day after US President George W. Bush promised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting in Washington that the United States would share military intelligence in the hunt for PKK rebels.

"Turkey had made its preparations and had decided what to do on the issue before the prime minister left," he said.

Tens of thousands of Turkish troops have massed at the border with Iraq to prepare for a possible incursion.

revel, Iraq is already a basket case; they have no security, no government, and many are displaced citizens with many professionals already migrating to other countries. There is no way for the remaining citizens to assist in developing their government or economy.

As usual, Bush has done a yeoman's job of screwing up millions of lives with his illegal war. He's also screwed the veterans that come home with injuries many get no follow up medical care or benefits, and they now have co-pays.

and many citizens INCLUDING professionals ARE already RETURNING FROM other countries TO IRAQ.

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

Quote:

and many citizens INCLUDING professionals ARE already RETURNING FROM other countries TO IRAQ.

Evidence, please. Everything I have seen shows the exact opposite happening.

My guess is that you saw this article:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SMC1HG0&show_article=1&catnum=0

Or one like it, and have decided that this constitutes proof of your argument. It does not in fact do so, as there's not any actual evidence given in the article and lines like this:

Quote:

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

Really aren't believable in the slightest.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

and many citizens INCLUDING professionals ARE already RETURNING FROM other countries TO IRAQ.

Evidence, please. Everything I have seen shows the exact opposite happening.

My guess is that you saw this article:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SMC1HG0&show_article=1&catnum=0

Or one like it, and have decided that this constitutes proof of your argument. It does not in fact do so, as there's not any actual evidence given in the article and lines like this:

Quote:

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

Really aren't believable in the slightest.

Cycloptichorn

Where is Cice's and/or Cyclo's proof that Cice's and Cyclo's claims are valid?

Number of Displaced Iraqis Has Soared, Aid Group Says

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page A14

BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 -- The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has more than quadrupled since the U.S. troop buildup began in February, leaving 2.3 million Iraqis displaced and further dividing the country along sectarian lines, according to a new report from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society.

The figures, which measured the number of internally displaced people at the end of September, present a grim accounting of the humanitarian crisis unfolding as Shiite militias and Sunni insurgent groups drive civilians, usually from the opposite sect, out of their homes, neighborhoods and cities.

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

and many citizens INCLUDING professionals ARE already RETURNING FROM other countries TO IRAQ.

Evidence, please. Everything I have seen shows the exact opposite happening.

My guess is that you saw this article:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SMC1HG0&show_article=1&catnum=0

Or one like it, and have decided that this constitutes proof of your argument. It does not in fact do so, as there's not any actual evidence given in the article and lines like this:

Quote:

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

Really aren't believable in the slightest.

Cycloptichorn

Where is Cice's and/or Cyclo's proof that Cice's and Cyclo's claims are valid?

UNCHR.org

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSRYA649418

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110501930.html

Quote:

Number of Displaced Iraqis Has Soared, Aid Group Says

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page A14

BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 -- The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has more than quadrupled since the U.S. troop buildup began in February, leaving 2.3 million Iraqis displaced and further dividing the country along sectarian lines, according to a new report from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society.

The figures, which measured the number of internally displaced people at the end of September, present a grim accounting of the humanitarian crisis unfolding as Shiite militias and Sunni insurgent groups drive civilians, usually from the opposite sect, out of their homes, neighborhoods and cities.

Get with it, Ican

Cycloptichorn

Reconcilable Differences
The Iraqi parliament behaves like a bunch of politicians.
by Frederick W. Kagan
Weekly Standard
11/12/2007, Volume 013, Issue 09

How much does it matter that the Iraqi parliament has not yet passed an oil law? According to war critics, it is the only thing that matters: Iraqis' failure to complete "reconciliation" by passing "benchmark" legislation as required by Washington is evidence not only that the current strategy has failed, but also that any strategy will fail and the United States should simply leave now. Underlying this argument is the belief that a stable peace in Iraq can occur only after the Iraqis have worked out their own basic problems. This is a remarkably unrealistic claim.

The suggestion is that American forces must keep fighting in Iraq until the Arabs and Kurds have put aside their differences, resolved their internal tensions, and started singing "kumbaya" in Arabic. But even the president's most ambitious aims involved only establishing a stable and peaceful democracy in Iraq--which is very different from resolving all tensions, as anyone who knows anything about democracy can tell you. For the United States, reconciliation should mean persuading the peoples of Iraq to address their problems and power struggles peacefully, through a political process rather than through violence, and to reject and oppose those who seek to use force to gain leverage in the political process. That is exactly what we are now in the midst of doing.

To this day, not all outstanding political tensions have been resolved in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, or Kosovo, yet the civil wars and terrorist campaigns that once threatened to engulf those places have ended, and

the competing factions are pursuing their agendas primarily by peaceful political means. After our own Civil War, Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House did not coincide with the resolution of the slavery problem, much less the racial problem generally. Violence and terrorism at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations continued to disrupt America's peace for decades--and are not unheard of to this day.

Balancing racial, ethnic, religious, and even regional tensions continues to be part of every national political campaign in the United States. Rather than being settled once and for all, core issues are addressed through politics, and the accompanying violence is limited and infrequent enough that police can handle it. If the standard for a successful end to the American Civil War had been passage of legislation that satisfied all parties, then the war would have been judged a failure. By that standard, even the civil rights legislation of the 1960s hasn't brought complete and final success. But achievement of perfect harmony was not the standard for the United States, and it should not be the standard for Iraq.

Iraqis, like the people of almost any modern state, are engaged in power struggles. Hitherto these struggles have been pursued largely by violence that has destabilized the country and threatened to destabilize the region. In particular, it has created an opportunity for al Qaeda and Iran to establish themselves in Iraq, either directly or through proxies. We are fighting to bring the violence under control as a means of driving al Qaeda and Iranian agents and proxies out of Iraq and keeping them out. Our aim is to create a stable government in Iraq that is able to govern its own people and drive violence down to a manageable level.

We have been remarkably successful in 2007 in reducing violence in Iraq. According to Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, the operational commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, enemy attacks are at their lowest since January 2006 and continue to drop. There has been a 60 percent decrease in IED attacks in the past four months. The reduction in violence is partly a result of the presence of additional American forces and their adoption of a sound counterinsurgency strategy. This has allowed Iraqis to turn against al Qaeda and the Baathist insurgents and form their own local defense groups in concert with the Iraqi government. It even appears to have encouraged some Shias to turn against the Shia militias. Also driving these trends are the Iraqis' rejection of al Qaeda's ideology and, more profoundly, their exhaustion with the struggle--a key development in the winding down of any violent internal conflict. What these positive developments do not reflect is any expectation that Iraq's internal tensions can be quickly or comprehensively resolved. Nor do Sunni Arab tribesmen coming over to the coalition side ask when an oil law will be passed. They ask whether we will continue to help protect them.

As the violence recedes, leaders in all the contending Iraqi communities will naturally seek to address their internal differences. Our interest in the outcome is limited: As long as the Iraqis are committed to the principle of resolving their differences through a political process rather than violence, and as long as any settlement they reach is sufficiently fair so as not to reignite the violence, then our interests will have been secured. The Iraqis can continue to debate the oil law, provincial rights, federalism, and so on for decades (as Americans have debated civil rights, Social Security, immigration, health care, and states rights) with no harm to our interests, assuming their debates are channeled through a political process. And this is almost certainly what will happen. Even if the current Iraqi parliament passed all the benchmark legislation Americans desire tomorrow, Iraqis would continue to debate, argue, adjust, and press for reforms on these key issues, probably for generations. That is what a self-governing people does.

We therefore made an enormous mistake--one in which the Bush administration was complicit when it promulgated the benchmarks in 2006--by defining success as the resolution of Iraq's internal problems, rather than as the creation of a political system within which Iraqis could pursue their struggles peacefully.

Many believe that as long as major grievances remain, violence will persist. More likely, a point will be reached where contending groups are convinced that they will suffer more than they will benefit from resorting to force. At that point, political players will either moderate their objectives or find ways of pursuing them peacefully, or both. Which is what is happening among Iraq's Sunni Arabs today. Where previously Sunni hotheads believed that an alliance with terrorists would give them the leverage to insist upon a maximalist political solution, now local leaders, including leading sheikhs, recognize that the violence is hurting them far more than it is helping them, and that they must reduce their demands and find peaceful ways to pursue them.

There is still a long way to go. Shia extremists inside and outside the government continue to see force as a way to change the situation in their favor and so shape the ultimate political contest to suit them. The danger remains that these extremists will antagonize the Sunnis into renewed violence. More likely, outside actors with an interest in stirring trouble in Iraq will find their footing once again and either prevent the situation from stabilizing or destabilize it once it has.

No doubt the difficulty of resolving political issues will also seem to some extremists an opening to gain leverage by use of force. There are likely to be spikes in violence in the coming years, as outside actors and hardcore extremists maneuver and resist final defeat. The passage of legislation now would not change that. Any meaningful legislation would be a product of compromise, and it is the nature of extremists to reject compromise.

What matters more than any benchmark laws, then, is whether Iraqis believe they must work to resolve their differences through a political process and that they cannot resort to force because doing so would hurt their cause. That is the essence of the reconciliation we seek. The acceptance of a political process as the only legitimate means of resolving internal differences cannot be measured by any legislative checklist, but it is the measure that actually counts.

Frederick W. Kagan is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

ican711nm wrote:

Success is not achieved merely by complaining about the lack of it.

Nor cheerleading false statistics.

Cycloptichorn

Perfection is not achieved merely by complaining about lack of perfection.

Ican you are a sickening purblind self-satisfied smug posturing little apologist.

Nearly 2.3 mln driven from their homes remain inside Iraq

6 November 2007



BAGHDAD - The Shia militia's threat came in a typed letter tossed at Mohammed Abdul-Wahab's door: "Leave this house within 48 hours or you will face death."


The Sunni government worker did just that - fleeing his ancestral home in a mostly Shia area of Baghdad with his wife and 2-year-old son.

Now, struggling to pay rent higher than his salary, Abdul-Wahab is among the nearly 2.3 million people the Iraqi Red Crescent says have been driven from their neighbourhoods as Iraq is increasingly carved up along sectarian lines.


The number of internally displaced people, or IDPs, has swelled in Iraq since the beginning of 2007, when the group counted less than half a million displaced.

A new report issued Monday by the Iraqi Red Crescent shows the number of IDPs is now greater than the number of Iraqis who have fled the country altogether, seeking refuge in neighbouring states like Syria and Jordan.

The rise came despite a sharp drop in bombings, shootings and other violence more than four months after the US completed a 30,000-strong force buildup here. American and Iraqi death tolls have also fallen dramatically.

At least 17 Iraqis were killed or found dead Monday, police and morgue officials said, including a local councilman gunned down in a neighbourhood next his own in western Baghdad.

On average, 56 Iraqis - civilians and security forces - have died each day so far in 2007.

Many residents of Iraq's sectarian patchwork aren't waiting for violence to drive them from their homes - they're fleeing first.

"I didn't harm anybody, and I don't know why I was displaced and my house was taken by another family," said 28-year-old Abdul-Wahab, who fled his Jihad neighbourhood last December.

His house had been in the family for generations. Now, coupled with his wife's income as a teacher, Abdul-Wahab's meager government salary _ US$120 (Ð82) per month _ is just enough to rent another house in nearby Amariyah, a Sunni enclave. They have almost no money left for food.

"The two salaries are not enough. We have to buy milk for our baby," Abdul-Wahab said. "We filled out an application form for displaced people at the immigration ministry, for extra income, but so far we have received nothing."

More than 60 percent of those forced to flee are in Baghdad, the report said.

Deadly rivalries have forced Shia and Sunni Muslims to flee once diverse neighbourhoods across Iraq's capital, leaving the city fractured and reassembled with clear boundaries between sects. In some places like Shia-dominated Hurriyah in northwest Baghdad, fighting has subsided because there are literally no more Sunnis left to kill.

The scramble for safety in segregated enclaves was thought to have eased, after anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called a formal cease-fire in August. His militia, the Mahdi Army, was blamed for dozens of bodies turning up on Baghdad's streets each day _ apparent victims of sectarian murders.

But while the daily body count has dropped dramatically _ three corpses were found Monday in Baghdad _ the Red Crescent said the number of residents displaced from their homes rose 16 percent in the month after al-Sadr's ceasefire.

About 83 percent of the country's displaced people are women and children under the age of 12, the organization reported. And many are not able to find permanent housing like Abdul-Wahab was.

"Children do not attend schools and are being sheltered in tents, abandoned government buildings with no water or electricity, mosques, churches, or with relatives," the report said. "In addition to their plight as being displaced, the majority suffer from disease, poverty and malnutrition."

Four and a half years after the US-led invasion, the Iraqi government struggles to provide basic services _ water, electricity and access to schools and medical care _ to citizens across the country. Much of Iraq, especially the capital, is beset by violence, crumbling infrastructure and rampant crime, and most humanitarian groups are unable to reach victims who need help.

Some 2,299,425 Iraqis have been driven from their homes but remain inside the country's borders, according to the Red Crescent's most recent figures, through Sept. 30.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, some 2 million Iraqis have fled their country. Of these, 1.2 million are in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, 10,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in various Persian Gulf countries.

http://www.icasualties.org
Military Fatalities in Iraq: By Month
Period ... US UK Other*
11-2007 .. 13 1
10-2007 .. 38 1 1
9-2007 .... 65 2 2
8-2007 .... 84 4
7-2007 .... 78 8 1
6-2007 ... 101 7
5-2007 ... 126 3 2
4-2007 ... 104 12 1
3-2007 .... 81 1
2-2007 .... 81 3 1
1-2007 .... 83 3
...
3-2003 .... 65 27
Total ..... 3857 171 133

Ican,

What if the number never drops down to 30 a day?

Cycloptichorn