US buried in Iraq with its head in the sand

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US buried in Iraq with its head in the sand

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The Irish Times, Thu, Dec 29, 05
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2005/1229/3709469607FANNIRAQNEW.html

US buried in Iraq with its head in the sand

IRAQ: Despite Bush's boasts, the Shia-Sunni conflict has escalated
into a veritable civil war, a fact not acknowledged by Washington,
writes Lara Marlowe

President George W Bush said this year "will be recorded as a turning
point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East, and the
history of freedom". Vice-president *** Cheney told troops the US had
"turned a corner," in Iraq and that 2005 "was in fact a watershed year".
US leaders base the rash assertion that "we are winning the war in Iraq"
on the successful organisation of three landmark polls: the election of
a transitional assembly in January, the ratification of a constitution
in October, and the election of a four-year, full-term parliament on
December 15th. But there is no guarantee that this month's election will
improve the situation. Senator Richard Lugar, who heads the foreign
relations committee, predicts it could take until April 2006 for
squabbling Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties to agree on a government. In
the meantime, the insurgency is likely to thrive in the power vacuum, as
it did in early 2005.

Despite the "democratic process", violence has worsened. Attacks on US
troops increased to an average of 2,000 each month. Mr Bush admitted
that 30,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, though other
estimates range much higher. More than 2,140 US servicemen have lost
their lives in Iraq.

Washington is still backing Iyad Allawi, the former CIA and MI6 agent
whom it appointed prime minister of the interim government in 2004.
Although he is a Shia Muslim, the secular Mr Allawi is detested by the
pro-Iranian Shia parties who probably won the largest share of the vote
this month . Thanks to the US invasion, Iraq may be well on its way to
becoming the first Shia Muslim state in the Arab world since the 10th
century.

The Shia Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and
Dawa parties which won the January election were nurtured by Iran for
the past 25 years. In the coming weeks, Washington will try to foster a
coalition that would limit the power of the religious Shia. It's a
Catch-22 situation: if the majority Shia feel robbed of their democratic
victory, they will turn on US occupation forces. But the Sunni
insurgency is unlikely to be quelled as long as Islamist Shia rule Iraq.

The Shia-Sunni conflict has escalated into a veritable civil war - a
fact not acknowledged by Washington. The Shia are massacred by Sunni
suicide bombers: 125 in Hilla in February; 98 by a suicide bomber in a
fuel truck near Kerbala in July; 114 in the Baghdad neighbourhood of
Kazamiya in September. The mere rumour of the presence of a suicide
bomber led to the year's single worst loss of life: 965 Shia pilgrims
drowned, suffocated or trampled to death in a stampede on a bridge on
August 31st.

With the government - and especially the interior ministry - under their
control, the Islamist Shia took revenge. Iyad Allawi told the Observer
newspaper that human rights abuses in Iraq were now as bad or worse than
they were under Saddam Hussein.

Scores of bodies of Sunni Muslim men were found dumped in ditches,
fields and dry riverbeds, often handcuffed with bullets in the head,
acid burns and holes from electric drills on their bodies. Their
relatives said they were taken away by commandos under the control of
the minister of the interior, Bayan Jabr Solagh, a high-ranking member
of SCIRI who has brought members of SCIRI's militia, the Badr Brigades,
into the ministry's forces.

On November 13th, US soldiers discovered 173 Sunni Muslim prisoners held
by the interior ministry in an underground bunker in Jadriya. They were
famished and had been badly beaten. On December 8th, the Iraqi
government found 625 men held in terrible conditions in a second
detention centre.

Late this year, Gen Muntazar al-Samarai, a special forces officer at the
ministry of the interior, defected to Jordan because of torture and the
infiltration of the ministry by Shia militias. "Every night there are
Iraqi police raids in which people are pulled out of their beds to be
tortured and often killed," Gen al-Samarai told the French journalist
Nicolas Hénin. "American soldiers are present during these operations."

On the same day Bush said torture by Iraqi forces was "unacceptable" and
promised that "an investigation has been launched, " his former envoy to
Iraq, Robert Blackwill, told the Council on Foreign Relations that there
were instances when torture may be appropriate. The US occupation of
Iraq was further discredited by the Pentagon's admission on November
16th that it used white phosphorous, a burning agent that consumes flesh
down to the bone, in the offensive on Falluja a year earlier.

Washington hopes the participation of large numbers of Sunni Muslims in
this month's election will weaken the insurgency. But Sunni politicians
and insurgents have made it clear they now intend to combine politics
with armed "resistance".

The Sunnis voted with the goal of changing the constitution that was
ratified in October. Iraqis could not reach a consensus on the charter
and it was passed only on condition that it be renegotiated by the new
parliament - another looming crisis.

The mainstay of President Bush's "Strategy for Victory" in Iraq is to
strengthen Iraqi forces until they are able to take over from US troops.
Lt Gen Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi forces, said:
"When people say, 'When will Iraq take control of its own security?' the
answer truly is it already has."

The claim is patently false: in September, top-ranking US generals said
only 700 Iraqi troops were "combat ready" and US military intelligence
is pessimistic that Iraqi forces will ever be capable of crushing the
insurgency.

Saddam Hussein's long-awaited trial has been blighted by inconsistency,
confusion and violence. The murder of two defence lawyers raised serious
questions about the possibility of continuing the trial in Iraq.

By broadcasting the sessions with a half-hour delay, and sometimes
blotting out the sound and picture with an image of the scales of
justice, the court gave the impression that it was afraid of the fallen
dictator, who raged at the judge this month: "Go to hell, you and your
agents of America!"

Seven more westerners were kidnapped in Iraq in late November and early
December. Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since 2003, and some
60 Iraqi civilians are being killed every day.

British foreign secretary Jack Straw said in October that he was
"optimistic" that Iraq could be "stabilised" within five to 10 years. To
Iraqis, that sounds like a very long time.

© The Irish Times

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