Monday, September 18, 2006
News RhetIraq: Conditions Around Baghdad
Who: Peter Beaumont, Guardian Foreign Affairs Editor
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Inside Baghdad: last battle of a stricken city"
What is happening in Zafaraniya is not unique in the capital. Sunni families in largely Shia neighbourhoods, and Shia families in majority Sunni areas, are being driven out of their homes in the rapidly worsening campaign of sectarian violence and intimidation.
From Adhamiya in the north, through the giant teeming Shia slum of Sadr City, to Zafaraniya in the south, a slow boiling but malevolent ethnic cleansing campaign is separating two communities that once lived side by side. In the middle are the US forces. Targeted daily by both Shia and Sunni extremists resisting the occupation, they now find themselves trying to protect each community from the other, even as they fend off the lethal attacks on themselves.
It is not quite civil war. Not yet. It is ugly enough, but it lacks the speed and the intensity. Instead, it is a vicious and slow motion three-way fight in which each act is magnified by the spiralling events.
Zafaraniya is a case study in the crisis facing Iraq. Its largest mosque, a huge green dome and sandy minaret that overlooks the highway, was once Sunni. Now it has been taken over by the militia of the Jaish al-Mahdi, becoming their second biggest base for operations outside Sadr City.
As the Jaish-al Mahdi has grown in strength and confidence, so has the bloodletting. Nowhere is that more visible than in the area of Adhamiya, to the north and west of Sadr City. Separated into halves - one largely Sunni, the other Shia, along the Army Canal - Adhamiya has been the focus in recent weeks of a massive effort by Iraqi and US forces to clear out extremists of both sectarian persuasions - Operation Forward Together - and launch the latest effort to improve the quality of life for the residents there.
The success or failure of that operation will be a critical test of whether the further slide towards a wider conflict can be halted.
In Adhamiya's district council offices, on the Sunni side of the canal, the challenges could not be more dramatic. According to the council chairman, Sheikh Hassan Sabri Salman, an imam at one of the local Sunni mosques, 450 families on both sides have been forced out of their homes and across the canal since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February.
'There are fanatics on both sides,' he says. 'The royal cemetery here [the Sunni graveyard] is full of dead bodies killed by the Shia, while the Sunni fanatics have killed many Shia in their turn. They have killed neighbours, employees, even women. We have persuaded the major mosques to sign a statement renouncing violence - but Jihadis and the al-Tawhid on the Sunni side, and the Mahdi militia on the Shia side, do not agree. And if we are talking about the Mahdi militia they are just gangsters who refuse to listen to their religious leaders and instead push people from their houses. Those who are pushing people from their homes on both sides are also stealing. They take their houses, their televisions and their furniture.' Sheikh Hassan describes a family who arrived at his office that morning who had been driven out by the Mahdi militia. Their children, he says, were killed in front of them.
One US military intelligence officer with an interest in the Jaish al-Mahdi and the Sadr Office, said: 'Certain parts are now operating like old-fashioned mobs. In the last year or so power has been given to certain individuals. They have created their own small armies which have gained power by controlling rackets around petrol stations, and thefts from people they kidnap and kill. What we have started to notice is that Moqtada al-Sadr, who is now based in Najaf, is having difficulty controlling these people who derive their power from his name. It has forced people to reassess what the Jaish al-Mahdi really is.'
It is a recognition, in large part, that has persuaded the US and Iraqi government that the way to tackle the Mahdi militia violence is not through military operations but policing, and an extra 5,000 Iraqi policemen are to join the 2,000 already deployed in Sadr City. US officers, aware of the history of massive infiltration of the Iraqi police, and its implication in death squad activities, admit it is a gamble that could backfire by arming and equipping thousands more gunmen but believe it is a risk worth taking.
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Inside Baghdad: last battle of a stricken city"
What is happening in Zafaraniya is not unique in the capital. Sunni families in largely Shia neighbourhoods, and Shia families in majority Sunni areas, are being driven out of their homes in the rapidly worsening campaign of sectarian violence and intimidation.
From Adhamiya in the north, through the giant teeming Shia slum of Sadr City, to Zafaraniya in the south, a slow boiling but malevolent ethnic cleansing campaign is separating two communities that once lived side by side. In the middle are the US forces. Targeted daily by both Shia and Sunni extremists resisting the occupation, they now find themselves trying to protect each community from the other, even as they fend off the lethal attacks on themselves.
It is not quite civil war. Not yet. It is ugly enough, but it lacks the speed and the intensity. Instead, it is a vicious and slow motion three-way fight in which each act is magnified by the spiralling events.
Zafaraniya is a case study in the crisis facing Iraq. Its largest mosque, a huge green dome and sandy minaret that overlooks the highway, was once Sunni. Now it has been taken over by the militia of the Jaish al-Mahdi, becoming their second biggest base for operations outside Sadr City.
As the Jaish-al Mahdi has grown in strength and confidence, so has the bloodletting. Nowhere is that more visible than in the area of Adhamiya, to the north and west of Sadr City. Separated into halves - one largely Sunni, the other Shia, along the Army Canal - Adhamiya has been the focus in recent weeks of a massive effort by Iraqi and US forces to clear out extremists of both sectarian persuasions - Operation Forward Together - and launch the latest effort to improve the quality of life for the residents there.
The success or failure of that operation will be a critical test of whether the further slide towards a wider conflict can be halted.
In Adhamiya's district council offices, on the Sunni side of the canal, the challenges could not be more dramatic. According to the council chairman, Sheikh Hassan Sabri Salman, an imam at one of the local Sunni mosques, 450 families on both sides have been forced out of their homes and across the canal since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February.
'There are fanatics on both sides,' he says. 'The royal cemetery here [the Sunni graveyard] is full of dead bodies killed by the Shia, while the Sunni fanatics have killed many Shia in their turn. They have killed neighbours, employees, even women. We have persuaded the major mosques to sign a statement renouncing violence - but Jihadis and the al-Tawhid on the Sunni side, and the Mahdi militia on the Shia side, do not agree. And if we are talking about the Mahdi militia they are just gangsters who refuse to listen to their religious leaders and instead push people from their houses. Those who are pushing people from their homes on both sides are also stealing. They take their houses, their televisions and their furniture.' Sheikh Hassan describes a family who arrived at his office that morning who had been driven out by the Mahdi militia. Their children, he says, were killed in front of them.
One US military intelligence officer with an interest in the Jaish al-Mahdi and the Sadr Office, said: 'Certain parts are now operating like old-fashioned mobs. In the last year or so power has been given to certain individuals. They have created their own small armies which have gained power by controlling rackets around petrol stations, and thefts from people they kidnap and kill. What we have started to notice is that Moqtada al-Sadr, who is now based in Najaf, is having difficulty controlling these people who derive their power from his name. It has forced people to reassess what the Jaish al-Mahdi really is.'
It is a recognition, in large part, that has persuaded the US and Iraqi government that the way to tackle the Mahdi militia violence is not through military operations but policing, and an extra 5,000 Iraqi policemen are to join the 2,000 already deployed in Sadr City. US officers, aware of the history of massive infiltration of the Iraqi police, and its implication in death squad activities, admit it is a gamble that could backfire by arming and equipping thousands more gunmen but believe it is a risk worth taking.
