March 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Big Question
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Since the start of the Iraq war, it's been clear that "victory" rested on the answer to one Big Question: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a country congenitally divided among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be held together only by an iron fist.

Unfortunately, to answer this big question — even Iraqis didn't know — the U.S. had to provide a minimum degree of security for all Iraqis, so people could feel relaxed enough to think beyond their most narrow tribal or religious identities. We didn't do that, because of President Bush's decision to approach the Iraq invasion with the Rumsfeld Doctrine, which calls for just enough troops to fail, rather than the proven Powell Doctrine, which calls for overwhelming force to win.

What happened in the absence of an overwhelming U.S. force was the looting of government buildings and ammo dumps, open borders for infiltrators, and then widespread insecurity, which naturally prompted Iraqis to fall back on tribal loyalties and militias, rather than trusting the Iraqi Army or the police. People are very good at figuring out who will protect them in a crisis, and too many Iraqis opted for local militias.

Yes, we are now better at training an Iraqi Army and have held national elections. But the failure to provide security after the invasion means we are trying to build these national institutions in competition with the insurgents, Qaeda terrorists, Shiite death squads and sectarian Iraqi militias that sprouted in the security vacuum.

One thing that covering the Lebanese civil war taught me was this: once sectarian militias take root, they develop their own interests and are very hard to uproot. "Militias are the infrastructure of civil war, and the basis of warlordism," the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told The Washington Post.

This did not have to be. The Bush team repeatedly declared that it had enough troops in Iraq and that no one on the ground was asking for more. Totally untrue. As Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian administration in Iraq, reveals in his new book, "My Year in Iraq," he repeatedly asked for more troops, but was ignored.

Mr. Bremer confesses in his book: "Coalition forces were spread too thin on the ground. During my morning intelligence briefings, I would sometimes picture an understrength fire crew racing from one blaze to another." He writes that he told Condoleezza Rice in 2003, "The coalition's got about half the number of soldiers we need here, and we run a real risk of having this thing go south on us."

Mr. Bremer describes this in 2004: "On May 18, I gave Rice a heads-up that I intended to send Secretary Rumsfeld a very private message suggesting that the coalition needed more troops. ... That afternoon I sent my message. ... I noted that the deterioration of the security situation since April had made it clear, to me at least, that we were trying to cover too many fronts with too few resources." But, Mr. Bremer writes of Mr. Rumsfeld, "I did not hear back from him."

Because the U.S. never deployed enough troops, America alone cannot establish order in Iraq today. We don't have a way to do that. And Iraq's Army, no matter how well trained, will never have enough will — without a broad political consensus. So we're down to the last hope, and it's a mighty thin reed. The only people who can produce a decent outcome now are Iraq's new leaders — by coming together, burying their hatchets, forging a real national unity government and getting their followers to follow.

This is the season of decision. We have an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi-written constitution. Either the elected Iraqi leaders will heroically come together and forge a national unity government — and save Iraq — or they will divide Iraq. Our job was to help them decide in a reasonably secure environment, not in a shooting gallery. We failed in that task, but they will have to decide nevertheless.

It is Iraqis who will now tell Americans whether they should stay or go. A majority of Americans, in a gut way, always understood the value of trying to produce a democratizing government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. That is why there has been no big antiwar movement. Americans should, and will, stick with Iraq if they sense that Iraqis are on a pathway to building a decent, stable government. But Americans will not, and should not, baby-sit an Iraqi civil war. The minute they sense that's what's happening, you will see the bottom fall out of U.S. public support for this war.



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http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060...13323-8165r.htm

Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 2, 2006


Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.
Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.
The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.
"We do not go as far as to say it is a global insurgency, because it lacks a centralized command and control," he said.
Groups such as al Qaeda, though, are constantly trying to increase their capabilities, and in some cases are outstripping the United States, Gen. Caslen said.
"We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communications -- either to recruit or train," he said. Compared with historical jihads, or enduring Muslim wars, this one "is accelerated because of its capability in communications."
The Pentagon official said Muslim thought ranges from secular and mainstream to extremist and intolerant.
The takfir (infidel) view of the world that falls under the Salafist teachings of the Sunni sect -- such as al Qaeda in Iraq -- is an example of the extremist view that condones violence to accomplish ideological ends, he said.
The general said the extremists' goal is to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and establish a radical state under Shariah, or Islamic law, remove what they consider the apostate governments of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, and destroy Israel.
But the enemy has vulnerabilities.
"The ideology is not popular among most, even Muslims," he said. "We need to undermine support by amplifying the moderate forces and undermining the enemy's repressive and corrupt behavior."
Gen. Caslen said the government and military are working to integrate their strategies and plans, and that a national strategic presidential directive and homeland security presidential directive are being drafted to face the terrorist threat.
Leading the war on terrorism is Special Operations Command based in Tampa, Fla. The command is writing a military global campaign strategy with a specific plan to deal with each terrorist organization.
Gen. Caslen said a governmentwide plan to assign tasks and responsibilities to all U.S. government departments and the military also is being created.

US advisers warn threat of civil war mounting in Iraq
Baghdad leaders must take reins, Bush aides say
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | March 1, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Describing the situation in Iraq as ''very tenuous," President Bush's top intelligence advisers warned in a blunt assessment yesterday that mounting violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims there could spark a full-blown civil war unless a unified government can quickly take the reins of the country.

Bush decried the continuing attacks nearly a week after the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, sacred to Shi'ites, was destroyed, setting off a series of reprisals that have claimed hundreds of lives. At least 76 people were reported killed in violence yesterday.

''Obviously there are some who are trying to sow the seeds of sectarian violence," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office before leaving on a five-day trip to India and Pakistan. ''And now, the people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice. The choice is chaos or unity, the choice is a free society, or a society dictated by evil people who would kill innocents."

In a detailed assessment of the current situation, the nation's top intelligence officials warned Congress that the mounting violence between the majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis would probably continue and could ignite a civil war unless the country's leaders quickly form a government. The leaders were chosen in national elections in December that saw a large turnout of Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish voters, but their efforts have been hobbled by deep divisions.

Lieutenant General Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stressed that the situation has not yet devolved into civil war, but ''I believe that the underlying conditions are present," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

''The level of sectarian violence increased significantly on the ground based on the bombings of the mosque," Maples told lawmakers. ''I think we should take heart in the leaders who have come forward at this point, but we're also at a very tenuous situation right now. I think that more violence, were it to occur, were it to be stimulated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, would have a very significant impact on the situation in Iraq."

John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, also said that the violence between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias would probably continue, with potentially catastrophic implications -- not just for Iraq but for the entire region.

Negroponte, the nation's top intelligence official, said that a civil war -- including the loss of central government control and the disintegration or deterioration of the Iraqi security forces of the country -- could pit the rival Sunni and Shi'ite sects across the Muslim world against one another. Sunnis make up the vast majority of the world's estimated 1.2 billion Muslims.

''If chaos were to descend upon Iraq, or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country, . . . this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world," said Negroponte, who served as US ambassador to Baghdad before taking over as the first director of national intelligence in April 2005. To help avoid a civil war in Iraq, Negroponte said, Iraq's leaders must cobble together a unified government quickly, adding that a delay in establishing an inclusive Iraqi government ''could have the effect of prolonging the insurgency."

The newly elected 275-member Iraqi National Assembly missed the Saturday deadline set by the Iraqi Constitution to begin deliberations. An interim Iraqi government, widely seen as weak and favoring Iraq's Shi'ites, is still overseeing the affairs of state.

''They missed that critical deadline with apparently, and regrettably, no comment from us," said the armed services panel's top Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan. ''The Iraqi leaders are feuding while Baghdad is burning."

Indeed, while trying to accentuate the positive -- including the continued loyalty of Iraqi security forces to a national government and efforts by Sunni and Shi'ite leaders to quell the violence -- Negroponte warned that the opportunity for Iraqis to coalesce around a representative government is fading.

''Although the Kurds and the Shia were accommodating to the underrepresented Sunnis in 2005, their desire to protect core interests, such as regional autonomy . . . could make further compromise more difficult," he said.

Iraq's Sunnis, however, make up the largest part of the insurgency that is targeting US troops and Iraqi Shi'ites. Without their greater political participation, the fighting -- and the sanctuary given to foreign Al Qaeda fighters that are trying to sow civil war -- is bound to continue unabated, the panel was told.

''Iraqi Sunni Arab disaffection is the primary enabler of the insurgency and is likely to remain high in 2006," Negroponte said.

Lawmakers expressed concern that time is running out to find a political settlement that could ease the fighting between Iraqis.

''It is clearer than ever to me that we must act to change the current dynamic in Iraq, and that the only thing that can produce that change is a political settlement that is accepted by all the major groups," said committee chairman Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia.

US Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from South Boston who voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, believes that handing over more duties to the Iraqi government will help build the domestic credibility needed among Iraqis.

''They've got an elected government," said Lynch, who recently returned from his fourth fact-finding trip to Iraq. ''There is a very limited window in which we will have an opportunity to transfer power to that government." He said that opportunity must be seized within the next six months. If it is missed, there is likely to be ''no credible [Iraqi government] entity that will be there."

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...03-013259-7876r

Analysis: Learning lessons from Saddam
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published March 3, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Say this for Saddam Hussein: He ran one of the most sadistic and merciless dictatorships in modern history, but at least he avoided a civil war.

The issue is not a minor one. Great political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, author of "Leviathan," have long argued that dictatorships, however merciless and unjust, were preferable to unleashing the hellish chaos of civil strife. Ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, who usually failed to agree on anything, were as one on that.


Political thinkers in the traditions of the three great monotheistic religions have struggled with the issue of how to deal with an unjust ruler without opening the doors to anarchy and civil strife that usually killed far more people than the dictator at his very worst did.

In general, Catholic and certainly Orthodox Christianity have far preferred autocracy, however harsh, to the miseries and collapse of basic society that anarchy invariably brings. Traditional Muslim respect for established rulers has taken a similar approach.

Even the Protestant Christian world's founding father, Martin Luther, was horrified at the chaotic peasant revolts across 16th century Germany that his teachings originally unleashed. Luther rallied to the support of the German princes in putting them down -- but millions of lives were lost before peace and stability could be reestablished. The Jewish rabbis also taught their followers to pray for the success of even the harsh Roman government since otherwise, they said, people would swallow each other alive.

None of the globally criticized excesses of Tsar Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia, or even of Nicholas I, most ruthless of the century of imperial rulers who preceded him, came close to matching the hideous death toll of the Russian Civil War of 1918-1919, or of the Bolshevik dictatorship of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who succeeded it.

Saddam certainly killed over 100,000 people: The exact figure, while open to dispute, is probably much higher. At least a million people on both sides died in the eight-year war he unleashed on neighboring Iran.

Yet under Saddam, Iraq remained united. And even though it had a 60 percent Shiite majority in its 25 million people, the Iranian Islamic Republic, despite all its efforts at trying to do so, failed to significantly shake loose and provoke any significant part of that population into a military uprising against Saddam.

There was an obvious reason for this. Like Josef Stalin's long communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union, or that of Mao Zedong in China, both of which lasted around 30 years, everyone knew that to rise against Saddam was a death sentence not just for oneself but for one's entire family, and probably neighborhood and tribe as well.

As soon as it appeared after the 1991 Gulf War that Saddam's brutal yoke had weakened sufficiently, the Shiites of southern Iraq and the Kurds of the north wasted no time whatsoever in rising up in revolts. But without U.S. military support, they were ruthlessly repressed and slaughtered in their scores of thousands.

Obviously the ambitious, visionary efforts of the Bush administration to create a stable new democracy in Iraq were not going to rely on the power of repression and blind terror to enforce the peace. But the fact remains that along with his monstrous sticks, Saddam used many carrots to woo the Shiite majority of Iraq and ensure their toleration, if not favor during his 24 years as president of the country.

First, even with his bloody, futile, invariably unsuccessful wars with their huge body counts, Saddam kept the basic services of Iraq running smoothly. The basic necessities of life were met. From the earliest bungles of the U.S.-set-up Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer through the failure to yet get the long-running Sunni insurgency under control in central Iraq and the capital Baghdad, U.S. policymakers and their Iraqi political allies have so far entirely failed to establish the basic conditions for orderly life in key regions of the country.

And even across most of Shiite southern Iraq, where the Sunni insurgency has never managed to take any significant hold, peace has only been purchased by British forces at the price of tacitly allowing independent Shiite militias with close ties to Iran, especially fiercely anti-American Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, to establish de facto control. This development has also strengthened centrifugal secessionist forces and popular passions.

Lastly, as was the case during the first era of popular democracy in the United States from the presidential election of 1828 to the start of the Civil War in 1861, the dynamics of the new democratic political process have not only empowered broad areas of Iraqi society, they have also encouraged them to become more assertive, aggressive and go-it-alone. The Dec. 15 parliamentary elections confirmed this process as strong sectarian parties won big in every one of Iraq's three major ethnic or religious communities -- the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Finally, Saddam skillfully used the proceeds from Iraq's oil exports to buy the peace and loyalty of entire sectors of Iraqi life. By contrast, the consolidation of many fractious political parties into major blocks that was actually encouraged by Bush administration policymakers in their attempts to create Western-style democracy rapidly in Iraq instead converted politics into a winner-take-all process. There has been no effort by any Iraqi government so far to reach out and mollify or bribe large communities outside its own core constituency.

In general, the Kurds and the Shiites have joined forces to lock out the previously dominant Sunnis and this has fed Sunni support for the insurgency. Now, last week's destruction of the dome of the Golden Mosque in Samara has finally unleashed the sectarian passions among both Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. Far from defusing them, the rapid imposition of the democratic process in the almost three years since Saddam was toppled has only fed them. It remains to be seen how bad things are going to get.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1721366,00.html

Abizaid: Iraq Can Expect More Bombings

By JIM KRANE
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 5, 2006; 12:38 AM



DOHA, Qatar -- Iraq can expect more bombings like the one at a Shiite Muslim shrine that set off fighting between Shiites and Sunnis, the chief of the U.S. Central Command said Saturday.

Gen. John Abizaid blamed Al-Qaida terrorists for the blast and said it marked a clear _ and successful _ change in tactics by the group in its campaign to ignite civil war among Iraqis.

"They got more of a reaction from that than they had hoped for," Abizaid told The Associated Press in Qatar after a two-day trip to Iraq, where he discussed the Feb. 22 attack's implications with top U.S. and Iraqi leaders.

"I expect we'll see another attack in the near future on another symbol," he said. "They'll find some other place that's undefended, they'll strike it and they'll hope for more sectarian violence."

Iraqi security forces eventually blunted the killing with a daytime curfew in four flashpoint provinces, followed by driving bans in Baghdad and its outskirts. But as vehicle restrictions lifted Saturday, at least 14 people died from bombs and gunfire across the country.

Abizaid said he and Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, discussed the potential for a withdrawal of some U.S. troops this summer, but he declined to say what he would recommend to President Bush when they meet next week.

Pentagon officials have said they are sticking to plans to send additional units to Iraq to replace troops scheduled to depart, but are waiting to see whether the clashes between Shiites and Sunnis escalate or slacken.

After meeting with Abizaid in Baghdad, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he had been assured that U.S. troops will remain in Iraq as long as needed _ "no matter what the period."

Abizaid described the bombing of the gold-domed shrine in Samarra as a "wake up call" that demands the attention of Iraq's government, U.S. forces and the Iraqi public to be on guard for attempts on new symbolic targets.

"Al-Qaida clearly wants to cause civil war in Iraq," he said.

Stressing that the bombers failed to spark an all-out civil conflict, the general praised Iraqi troops for largely following orders from Iraq's civilian government by setting up security in the streets. He said he was "very, very pleased with the reaction of the Iraqi armed forces."

It was a more upbeat assessment than presented by Casey, who told reporters Thursday that Iraqi police and army units had performed "generally well, not uniformly well."

Casey said that in some instances, the mostly Shiite security forces gave armed Shiites free rein in Baghdad and Basra, where reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics took days to contain.

Others complained that Iraqi police and troops were slow to react and said much of the heat had gone out of the sectarian violence by the time security forces did take action.

Nevertheless, U.S. and Iraqi leaders were heartened that Iraq's fledgling military held together through a week of bitter clashes that killed hundreds, most of them civilians.

Tensions between Sunnis and Shiites are still too high, though, Abizaid said in an interview at a military airport terminal where he paused on his return from Iraq.

Abizaid and other U.S. military commanders also worry that the violence has hurt efforts to put together a new, broad-based government. The blast came as current Iraqi leaders are being viewed as lame ducks, whose authority to govern and control the security services is dwindling.

Some top American officers in Baghdad fear the blast's true damage could be a hardening of sectarian attitudes among Iraqi politicians negotiating the next prime minister and government. Any unwillingness to compromise could block Washington's hopes for a government that includes all three chief groups _ Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

"The shrine bombing exposed a lot of sectarian fissures that have been apparent for a while, but it was the first time I've seen it move in a direction that was unhelpful to the political process," Abizaid said.

"It shows that we need a government of national unity to emerge in Iraq. Too many delays in the formation of a national unity government will negatively affect the security situation."

© 2006 The Associated Press

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0306/dailyUpdate.html
World > Terrorism & Security
posted March 6, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Two different Paces in Iraq

Gen. Peter Pace says things are going 'very well' in Iraq; John Pace, former UN-Iraq human rights chief, say abuses are as bad now as under Saddam Hussein.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that Iraq is not on the verge of civil war. The Associated Press reports that, despite polls that show Americans are increasingly worried about how the war in Iraq is going, "much progress is being made toward training Iraqi forces to take over security of the country," which would allow more US troops to return home.
"I do not believe it has deep roots," Pace said of the insurgency. "I do not believe that they're on the verge of civil war." ...
Asked how things are going, Pace said: "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I'd say they're going well."

Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, General Pace did admit that "anything could happen" in Iraq but he felt that over the past 10 days, the Iraqi people had shown that they do not want civil war.
CNN reported recently that the only battalion rated capable of fighting without US support was downgraded recently. While the downgrade means that there are no Iraqi untis that can fight without help from the US, "there are 53 Iraqi battalions at level two status [needs help from US], up from 36 in October. There are 45 battalions at level three."



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03/01/06

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But the other Pace talking about Iraq, John Pace, the former UN human rights chief in Iraq, tells a markedly different story about the situation. Mr. Pace, who stepped down from his post in mid-February, says human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad now as they were under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK," Pace said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone."
Mr. Pace, who was born in Malta but now resides in Australia, said that while the scale of atrocity under Saddam was "daunting," now nobody is safe from abuse. "It is certainly as bad," he said. "It extends over a much wider section of the population than it did under Saddam."

Mr. Pace specifically named Shiite militias as a major source of the problem. He cited in particular the Badr Brigade, linked to the the Interior Ministry, run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. During his time in Iraq, Mr. Pace would visit the morgue in Baghdad once a week, and used what he saw there as a barometer of the situation in the country.

He said about three-quarters of the several hundred bodies brought to the morgue each month were categorised "gunshot wound" as the cause of death. "Nearly all were executed and tortured," Mr Pace said.
Mr. Pace said both the government-backed militias and the insurgents warned morgue workers not to properly investigate deaths. He told The Guardian that Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, had to flee Iraq for fear of his life after he reported that more than 7,000 people had been killed by death squads in recent months.
Mr. Pace's view on the role Shiite militias play in the possibility of civil war in Iraq was echoed Saturday by Gen. George Casey, commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq. The Washington Post reports that General Casey said that "disarming the groups of sectarian fighters is vital to US success in the long run."

Reports cited by Casey said that Iraqi security forces allowed Shiite militias through checkpoints to attack Sunni mosques last week.

"I do not believe that we will ultimately succeed until the Iraqi security forces, the police and the military, are the only ones in Iraq with guns," he told a Pentagon news briefing via teleconference from Iraq.
In the same press briefing, Casey said he had not stopped the practice of paying Iraqi media to print positive stories about Iraq.
Mr. Pace also had harsh words for the US in Iraq. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, he said he believes the US had violated the Geneva conventions and "is fueling the violence through its raids on Iraqi homes and is holding thousands of detainees that are for the most part innocent of any crimes."

March 6, 2006
Iraqi Leader Details Next Step to New Government
By JOHN O'NEIL
The president of Iraq today called the country's new Parliament into session next Sunday. The session will be the first time that all the representatives who were elected in mid-December will come together.

A string of a half-dozen car bombs rippled across Baghdad this morning, killing three people and wounding at least 28, while at least 6 people died and 23 were wounded in a blast in the city of Baquba, northeast of the capital.

Also today, the American military announced that one soldier was killed on Sunday by insurgents in Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold.

The president, Jalal Talabani, had said over the weekend that he planned to move to convene the new Parliament, despite the roadblocks that had arisen in negotiations for forming a new government.

The original deadline for Parliament to meet had been Feb. 28, two weeks after the results of the Dec. 15 election were formally certified. But talks got off to a slow start, and then ground to a halt when the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra threw the country into turmoil, and the country's presidential council granted a two-week extension.

Negotiations were complicated further last week by a push by Mr. Talabani and other Kurdish leaders, together with Sunni groups and a secular party, to block Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari from being appointed to a new term.

Mr. Jaafari, a Shiite, was chosen by Parliament's largest bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, but by only one vote. In theory, the coalition of Kurds, Sunnis and secular parties could muster more votes than the Shiite coalition, but neither side has enough to reach the two-thirds needed to form a new government. Many observers see the move as an effort to persuade the Shiite alliance to dump Mr. Jaafari as the price of the other groups' cooperation, or simply as part of the haggling over other cabinet posts.

Ahmed Chalabi, the deputy prime minister and former American favorite, suggested as much today after meeting in Najaf with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric, and with Moktada al-Sadr, the Baghdad firebrand who is one of Mr. Jaafari's biggest backers.

"I think it is essential to reach an agreement on the formation of the government soon, and as you know the government is not just a prime minister, there is the leadership of the republic, the speaker and members of the cabinet," Mr. Chalabi said.

Mr. al-Sadr told reporters he expected "a fast solution."

"It seems as if the media is working on increasing the gap between the two sides, pro- and anti-Jaafari," he said. "The premiership is not the important thing, the important thing is Iraqi people and anyone who is approved by the people will be approved by the Parliament."

Mr. Talabani had sent a delegation to Mr. Sistani on Sunday, but the ayatollah had stressed the importance of Shiite unity, Mr. Chalabi said.

Most of the attacks today were aimed at police officers, but most of the casualties were civilians. The most deadly took place in Baquba, a mixed Sunni-Shiite city about 40 miles northeast of Baghdad that has been the scene of many insurgent attacks. A car bomb went off in a market there at about 8:20 this morning as a police patrol passed by, killing six, two of whom were children, a member of the Baquba police force said.

Wailing parents gathered around the scene to watch the search for children, the Reuters news agency reported, as dazed survivors, some helped by rescue workers, emerged from near the mangled wreckage of the car bomb.

"They are targeting innocent civilians," one distraught survivor said, according to the news service. "What have these people done to be killed by a car bomb?"

While witnesses said the target was a police patrol, the American military noted that the bomb blast took place near the mayor's office. "The attack was believed to be an anti-Iraqi forces' effort to incite sectarian violence within the community," the military said.

In Baghdad, the first blast rang out just after midnight, as a car bomb went off near a police convoy passing Mustansiriya University, killing one civilian and wounding nine people, including one police recruit, according to the Interior Ministry.

At 9:35, a car bomb went off near a police patrol on the city's north side, injuring two police recruits and three civilians. About 15 minutes later, a roadside bomb went off near a Shiite mosque, also on the city's north side, but no injuries were reported.

In the Kerada district, one car bomb went off at 10:20, injuring five civilians, another at 11:10, killing one person and injured five others and a third at about 2 p.m., killing one police officer and wounding three.



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Majority of Americans Believe Iraq Civil War is Likely

By Richard Morin

An overwhelming majority of the public believes fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war and half says the United States should begin withdrawing its forces from that violence-torn country, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

In Case of Civil War, What?

By Dan Froomkin

If sectarian violence continues to increase in Iraq, what will President Bush do?

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/thedebate/..._civil_war.html
Taking on the Week's Big Issue: Sectarian Violence In Iraq
This Week's Debate: A Civil War in Iraq?
As sectarian violence continues -- with three mosques attacked over the weekend -- The Debate turns once again to the situation in Iraq.

Following the Feb. 22 bombing in Samarra of the Askariya mosque, which is of particular significance to Shiite Muslims, violence between Sunnis and Shiites spiked, prompting cliché-filled speculation that the country is "spiraling into civil war." The Baghdad Burning blog offers readers a portrait of the beginnings of the crisis. Within a week, the violence had claimed the lives of more than 1,300 Iraqis.

Just two days after the Samarra attack, the New York Times (subscription required for articles more than a week old) reported in the second sentence of a page one story that the "threat of full-scale civil war loomed over the country." Two days after that, in the Sunday Times's Week in Review section, Steven R. Weisman was already imagining what a civil war might look like.

Over at the iraqpundit blog, the Times takes a beating for having "already decided that what's happening now is an open civil war." The Times wasn't alone in rushing to judgment; plenty of media outlets ran similar stories. Iraqpundit says, "I see a media that are determined to find a civil war in Iraq at any cost."

Does former-AP-reporter-turned-pro-blogger Christopher Allbritton count as part of the media? I'd say he does, but either way, he's reporting the inevitability of a civil war, too. "For the last 18 months, we’ve been in a low-grade civil war," he writes. "The Askariya bombing kicked us up to 'medium-grade,' I guess you might call it. Both Sunnis and Shi'a I’ve spoken with are waiting and preparing for it, and that very preparation might make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. For too many Iraqis, it’s only a matter of time."

Gwynne Dyer believes "Iraq may never go the full distance, because it is hard to hold a proper civil war unless the different ethnic or religious groups hold separate territories." But as Sunni areas and Shiite areas purge members of the opposing sect -- through evictions backed by threats or by other means -- those territories could become much more defined.

So far, though, the division is far from total. "There’s so much talk of civil war and yet, with the people I know -- Sunnis and Shia alike -- I can hardly believe it is a possibility," writes River, the Baghdad Burning blogger. "Educated, sophisticated Iraqis are horrified with the idea of turning against each other."

This jibes with what my Iraqi friends (who reside in Baghdad) have said when asked about the chances of a civil war. A year ago, one said he thought it was impossible; a few weeks ago, another said that while it was possible, most Iraqis didn't want a civil war. He explained that although Iraq is an amalgamation of three major ethnic groups, there has been much intermarriage, creating plenty of mixed families -- including his own, which is made up of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.*

River mentions the outrage felt by her neighbors, Sunni and Shiite alike, at the sectarian violence that surrounds (but hasn't yet infiltrated) their little enclave. Still, she wonders whether this is a turning point for the country. "I’m reading, and hearing, about the possibility of civil war," she says. "The possibility. Yet I’m sitting here wondering if this is actually what civil war is like. Has it become a reality? Will we look back at this in one year, two years ... ten ... and say, 'It began in February 2006 ...'?"

In the Mar. 13 issue of The New Republic (subscription required), Larry Diamond contends the civil war is already in progress, just as River fears. Indeed, Diamond believes the civil war started long ago, noting that "by one common social science definition -- at least 1,000 dead (with at least 100 on each side) from internal hostilities in which one side tries violently to change the state or its policies -- Iraq's civil war began in the first year of the 'postwar' era and has been particularly bloody."

At the moment, the situation appears to have cooled somewhat, thanks in part to a ban on vehicle traffic in the capital that helped ensure there were no attacks on mosques during Friday prayers. But with attacks, kidnappings and murders happening daily -- and the formation of an official Iraqi government still many difficult compromises away -- the country's situation remains precarious.

Debaters, what's your take? According to some polls, most Americans now think Iraq headed for civil war. Do you agree? Is the civil war already in progress, and if so, by what criteria do you make that judgment? Or have the media gotten way ahead of themselves, anticipating a civil war that isn't likely to happen?

* Clarification: The Kurds are in fact mostly Sunni Muslims, but usually when Shiite vs. Sunni violence is being discussed, the Kurds are not included as part of the Sunni group. That will hold true throughout this debate; "Sunnis" will generally refer to Sunni Arabs, while Kurds will be identified specifically as Kurds.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC07Ak01.html
A 'white coup' in Baghdad
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - What happened in Iraq over the weekend was a neatly planned "white" coup, carried out by the Americans, Kurds, secular Shi'ites and Sunnis, on the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) and its candidate for the premiership, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

After much bickering, they came out and asked Jaafari to step down, demanding that the UIA nominate another Shi'ite politician for the job. For its part, the UIA has insisted on maintaining Jaafari, but is bound to give in to the mounting pressure practiced by practically everybody in Iraq.

Jaafari's flaws apparently outnumber his positive attributes. The coalition wanting to bring him down complained that he had failed, as the previous premier, to bring security to Iraq, failed to combat unemployment, failed to advance infrastructure, failed to crush the insurgency, and failed to protect Sunnis and their places of worship during the bloody events that followed the terrorist attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra on February 22.

Jaafari, known to be a democrat, a patriot and a wise man, now has to decide whether to admit defeat and respect the collective decision of Iraqi politicians by stepping down and making room for someone whom they believe to be more able and qualified.

The Americans complain that Jaafari's tenure in power has been a security nightmare for the Iraqis and the 133,000 troops stationed in the country. He has been unable to disarm either the al-Qaeda militias of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or the Ba'athist renegades of Saddam Hussein. In fact, far from being defeated, the insurgency seem to be winning in Iraq.

Of all the Shi'ite candidates for the job of premier, Jaafari was the least allied to Iran, but the fact that he was the product of an Islamic party (Da'wa) raised eyebrows in the United States. Many fear that he wants an Islamic democracy, influenced by the theocracy in Iran, but not necessarily dependent on it.

The UIA is a Shi'ite coalition of Iran-backed politicians who have articulated demands for carving up Iraq and creating a Shi'ite region in the south, similar to the Kurdish one in the north.

Jaafari himself prefers to see Iraq united, never allowing himself to utter such a demand (even if he personally supports it) because it would destroy his credentials as an Iraqi nationalist. Jaafari's victory in the 2005 polls and the terrible security situation in Iraq, along with the rising death toll of US soldiers, has in turn damaged President George W Bush's ratings at home, sending his popularity to an all-time low.

Also alarming to America was the fact that his victory in securing the UIA's vote for the premiership in February was only made possible through the ardent backing of Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shi'ite rebel who has led two insurgencies against the US Army since the fall of Saddam in 2003.

The Jaafari-Muqtada alliance was frowned on by Washington and its Iraqi ally, former prime minister Iyad Allawi. The ex-premier, a secular Shi'ite, accuses the UIA of making Iraq a satellite to the Islamic Republic in Iran. Allawi wants to destroy Jaafari because he had replaced him as prime minister, and because Jaafari is allied to Muqtada, who launched two rebellions against Allawi's regime in 2004.

The Sunnis complain that Jaafari turned a blind eye to grand abuse carried out by former interior minister Bayan Jabr, where the Shi'ite minister used the ministry to settle old scores with Sunni politicians. Many are arrested without warrant, beaten and tortured in jail.

Jaafari has condemned the abuse, but done nothing to punish the culprits. Adding fuel to Sunni anger was the bloodbath that ensued after the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week, one of the holiest shrines in Shi'ite Islam. In five days of violence, the death toll exceeded 1,300.

Without any evidence as to the perpetrators of the mosque attack, Shi'ites retaliated by attacking Sunni clerics, and burned Sunni mosques throughout Iraq. The Sunnis cried foul play, accusing Jaafari of failing to protect them and their places of worship.

These attacks, the Sunnis claim, were orchestrated by the Badr Organization of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the militiamen of Muqtada, who is Jaafari's newfound ally in Shi'ite politics.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, a senior Sunni leader in the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) who survived an assassination on March 2, has also sent a letter to Jaafari, asking him to step down because of "failures in running the country".

Recently added to Jaafari's enemies is Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, who said on March 4 that he had joined Sunnis, Kurds and secular Shi'ites in wanting to bring down the prime minister.

Since coming to power in 2005, the two men have quarreled politically, although they remain friends. Talabani said, "With all our respect to Dr al-Jaafari, we asked them [the UIA] to choose another candidate who is unanimously agreed upon by the Iraqis." Talabani (a ceremonial president) and the Kurds have conditioned that they will support Jaafari only if serious amendments are made to the distribution of power in Iraq, reducing the power of the Shi'ite prime minister and increasing those of the Kurdish president.

Talabani said that the Sunnis and Kurds "want to be real partners in the coming government and not ministers without opinions. They want Iraq to be ruled through a partnership where everyone participates." He continued, "I want to be clear. It is not against Dr al-Jaafari as a person. He has been my friend for 25 years. What we want is consensus."

The Kurds are also angry because they accuse Jaafari of preventing them from annexing Kirkuk, an oilfield, to Iraqi Kurdistan. Another reason for Kurdish anger is a recent visit made by Jaafari to Turkey, without informing Talabani or Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Mahmud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament, commented, "The visit to Turkey showed that he [Jaafari] makes decisions without consulting anybody. This has ignited a new dissatisfaction." He described it as "infuriating and a blunder".

It has been reported in Iraq that Jaafari promised the Turks he firmly opposed the strengthening of the Kurds by giving them Kirkuk. He also promised to strengthen the Iraqi Turkmen at the expense of the Kurds in Kirkuk.

The Turks fear that greater autonomy for Iraqi Kurds will encourage Turkish Kurds to make similar demands. It is also believed that the Turks promised Jaafari to speak in his favor with the Americans and change the image cemented in Washington that portrays him as a Shi'ite nationalist rather than an Iraqi nationalist who wants to obstruct Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs.

As the chances of Jaafari's collapse are heightened, ambitious candidates are once again setting their hopes on the premiership. The most likely candidate is Adel Abdul-Mehdi, the current vice president who was defeated by one vote in the internal UIA elections in February.

Although he is well connected to Iran, much more than Jaafari, he is a strong-minded politician reported to be politically able and financially honest. It is doubtful, however, if other parties will accept him as prime minister, precisely because of his Iranian connection.

He is very loyal to the Iranians and belongs to SCIRI, the group created and funded by the mullahs of Tehran since the 1980s. His immediate asset is that he is an opponent of Muqtada, which scores him immediate points with the Americans. Muqtada, after all, is challenging SCIRI and its leaders, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Adel Abdul-Mehdi, for leadership of the Shi'ite community.

Muqtada is unhappy with the degree of Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs, promoted by SCIRI. He is also opposed to their desire to create an autonomous Shi'ite region. The Americans find themselves in a dilemma. Although they do not want an Iran-backed politician like Abdul-Mehdi running Iraq, they also do not want one manipulated or backed by Muqtada, as Jaafari would be.

They would have preferred someone secular like Allawi, but he is not in the UIA and although he would be backed by the Sunnis and Kurds, the religious Shi'ite politicians would veto his candidacy.

The Iraqis have no choice but to choose their new prime minister from within the UIA, or with its blessing, as it is the only party, due to its numeric superiority in the National Assembly, with the power and authority to do so. Nevertheless, it still needs its candidate approved by other parties, as the UIA does not have the two-third majority that would allow it to pick its own candidate without worrying what other parties wanted.

With Jaafari almost down and Abdul-Mehdi crossed off due to his Iranian connection, two other names would automatically resurface. One is the scientist Husayn Shahristani, the other is Nadim al-Jabiri, of the Muqtada-backed al-Fadila al-Islamiyya Party.

Both would be compromised candidates and both were suggested names for the job before it was given to Jaafari. But both are weak, and do not have a powerbase in the Shi'ite community. Likewise, both would be vetoed by the Kurds, Sunnis, secular Shi'ites and Americans, for their Iranian connection.

The solution, therefore, to this stalemate would be to bring someone in from outside the UIA, but backed by the UIA. This would downplay US fears and appease all disgruntled groups in the political arena, including Iran and the Americans.

It would mean a political independent having the will to throw in his lot with the UIA and walk a tightrope between the rival parties in Iraq.

The best person would be none other than Allawi, who is acceptable to the Sunnis, Kurds, Americans and Arab community surrounding Iraq. He is experienced, having worked in politics since the 1970s. He is well connected to the Arabs and the West. He is secular. He is opposed to the carving up of Iraq. He has the will to crush the insurgency of Zarqawi and the former Ba'athists.

All he needs is the backing of his Shi'ite community, and to secure some kind of alliance with the UIA and Muqtada. The game is just beginning.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools...ast/4778380.stm
No reason for optimism in Iraq

By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor


Last Friday afternoon my BBC colleagues and I filmed at the Baghdad city mortuary.
A few months ago we would have done it as a matter of course. But now the security situation in Baghdad is so bad that we had to plan our trip with some care.

The mortuary has been the subject of a good deal of controversy.

The Washington Post reported that 1,300 bodies had been taken there since the upsurge in sectarian violence which followed the bombing of the Shia shrine at Samarra on 22 February.

A former UN official said that many of these bodies showed signs of torture and summary execution.

By contrast the US commander in Iraq, Gen George W Casey Jr, insisted that there had been no great increase in the amount of communal violence and that the number of deaths was probably around 350.

'More bodies'

At the mortuary itself, the guards showed us a large refrigerator truck, parked alongside the building, which they said had been provided by the Americans because of the overflow of bodies from the mortuary itself.


Today the situation in Iraq is worse than at any time since the fall of Saddam


And during the 20 minutes we filmed there, three more bodies were brought in.

This is purely anecdotal evidence, of course. Journalism is an art, not a science, and everyone knows how inaccurate it can often be.

Yet the big advantage of being a journalist is that you can go out and see things for yourself.

That's not easy in Baghdad nowadays - though this in itself is evidence of the way things are deteriorating here. But experience has encouraged me to believe the journalists, not government officials, at times of trouble like this.

Doom and gloom

In 1978, as the revolution in Iran unfolded, it was clear to those of us who spent our days out in the streets, seeing the mounting violence for ourselves, that the demonstrators were losing their fear of the Shah and his forces.


At the time I often used to visit the highly intelligent and generous British ambassador in Tehran at the time, Sir Anthony Parsons. He insisted that the Shah would survive, and he assured the British government that this would happen.

Afterwards, with characteristic honesty, he wrote a book about why he got it wrong. The main reason was that his information came from the Shah's own ministers. It was too dangerous for his own diplomats to spend much time in the streets, finding out what was happening.

But the journalists could see for themselves that the revolutionaries were building up an unstoppable momentum.

It gives me no pleasure today to forecast further doom and gloom here in Iraq. But, as in Iran in 1978, the facts on the street contradict the assertions of the generals, the politicians and the diplomats.

Slow progress

Ever since the invasion in 2003, you have been more likely to turn out right if you were pessimistic than if you were an optimist. At the end of 2003 a well-known columnist wrote with immense assurance that there might be a spike of violence until early 2004, but that afterwards the trouble would die away. He could not have been more wrong.


Coalition officials assured us that the elections in January and December last year would result in a down-turn in the number of killings and bombings. They were wrong, too. Today the situation in Iraq is worse than at any time since the fall of Saddam.

It might be different if the politicians who were elected in the December election could agree to form a government. So far, though, they haven't made much progress.

The caretaker prime minister, Dr Jaafari, is increasingly unacceptable to the Kurds and to most of the Sunnis, as well as to the Americans. So far, though, no likely candidate has emerged from the Shia majority to take his place.

Now some senior Iraqi politicians are saying it could be June or July before a government is formed.

It matters, because the absence of effective government is a real encouragement to the insurgency.

Worshippers targeted

Just over a year ago, in the wake of the January election, the level of violence dropped noticeably, and the generals and politicians in London and Washington allowed themselves to think that the insurgency might have been defeated.


Not so: the insurgent leaders were worried that the Iraqi people had been mobilised against them by the success of the election, and they were waiting to see what was going to happen.

But it took three months before a government was formed. Public opinion was alienated, and the insurgency was soon more effective than ever.

This time, the politicians are taking even longer to get their act together. And in the meantime the worst of the violence is directed, not at the Americans or the British, nor even at the Iraqi police and army, but at ordinary worshippers at Sunni and Shia mosques.

The level of sectarian violence has dropped off a little in recent days. But Iraq hasn't turned a corner, and it doesn't even look like turning one.

If there is a good reason to be a bit more optimistic, I haven't spotted it yet.


Do you agree with John Simpson's views? Send us your comments.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/midd...ast/4778380.stm

Published: 2006/03/06 13:37:22 GMT

© BBC MMVI

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunes.php?articleid=8668

March 7, 2006
The US Role in Iraq's Sectarian Violence

by Stephen Zunes
The sectarian violence that has swept across Iraq following last month's terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara is yet another example of the tragic consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Until the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation, Iraq had maintained a long-standing history of secularism and a strong national identity among its Arab population despite its sectarian differences.

Not only has the United States failed to bring a functional democracy to Iraq, neither U.S. forces nor the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad have been able to provide the Iraqi people with basic security. This has led many ordinary citizens to turn to extremist sectarian groups for protection, further undermining the Bush administration's insistence that American forces must remain in Iraq in order to prevent a civil war.

Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war's intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to "expedite" such a collapse anyway.

As a result, the tendency in the United States to blame "sectarian conflict" and "long-simmering hatreds" for the Sunni-Shi'ite violence in Iraq is, in effect, blaming the victim.

Fostering Fragmentation and Conflict

One of the long-standing goals of such neoconservative intellectuals has been to see the Middle East broken up into smaller ethnic or sectarian mini-states, which would include not only large stateless nationalities like the Kurds, but Maronite Christians, Druze, Arab Shi'ites, and others. Such a policy comes not out of respect for the right of self-determination – indeed, the neocons have been steadfast opponents of the Palestinians' desire for statehood, even alongside a secure Israel – but out of an imperial quest for divide-and-rule. The division of the Middle East has long been seen as a means of countering the threat of pan-Arab nationalism and, more recently, pan-Islamist movements. Given the mosaic of ethnicities and sects in the Middle East, with various groupings having mixed together within both urban and rural settings for many generations, the establishment of such ethnic or sectarian mini-states would almost certainly result in forced population transfers, ethnic cleansing, and other human suffering.

The risk of Iraq breaking up into a Sunni Kurdish state, a Sunni Arab state, and a Shi'ite Arab state is now very real. And, given the intermixing of these populations in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, and scores of other cities, the potential exists for the most violent breakup of a country since the partition of India 60 years ago. Recent weeks have shown ominous signs of what may be yet to come on a massive scale, as scores of Shi'ite families were forced to flee what were once mixed neighborhoods in and around Baghdad.

Even barring a formal breakup of the country, the prospects of a stable unified country look bleak. As the Los Angeles Times reported on Feb. 26, "The outlines of a future Iraq are emerging: a nation where power is scattered among clerics turned warlords; control over schools, hospitals, railroads, and roads is divided along sectarian lines; graft and corruption subvert good governance; and foreign powers exert influence only over a weak central government."

Much of Iraq's current divisions can be traced to the decision of U.S. occupation authorities immediately following the conquest to abolish the Iraqi army and purge the government bureaucracy – both bastions of secularism – thereby creating a vacuum that was soon filled by sectarian parties and militias. In addition, the U.S. occupation authorities – in an apparent effort of divide-and-rule – encouraged sectarianism by dividing up authority based not on technical skills or ideological affiliation but ethnic and religious identity. As with Lebanon, however, such efforts have actually exacerbated divisions, with virtually every political question debated not on its merits, but on which group it potentially benefits or harms. This has led to great instability, with political parties, parliamentary blocs, and government ministries breaking down along sectarian lines.

Even army divisions are separated, with parts of western Baghdad being patrolled by army units dominated by Sunnis while eastern Baghdad is being patrolled by Shi'ite-dominated units. Without unifying national institutions, the breakup of the country remains a real possibility.

Sectarian Conflicts

Theologically, there are fewer differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites than there are between Catholics and Protestants. In small Iraqi towns of mixed populations with only one mosque, Sunnis and Shi'ites worship together. Intermarriage is not uncommon. This harmony is now threatening to unravel.

Shi'ite Muslims, unlike the Sunni Muslims, have a clear hierarchy. (Ayatollahs, for example, are essentially the equivalent of Catholic cardinals.) As a result, the already existing clerical-based social structures in the Shi'ite community were among the few organizations to survive Saddam's totalitarian regime and were therefore more easily capable of organizing themselves politically when U.S. forces overthrew the government in Baghdad in 2003. Sunni and secular groupings, then, found themselves at a relative disadvantage when they suddenly found themselves free to organize.

As a result, the United States initially insisted on indefinite rule by Iraqis picked directly or indirectly by Washington. However, when hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites took to the streets in January 2004 demanding the right to choose their country's leaders, the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to hold direct elections. Having been dominated by Sunnis under the Ba'athists, the Hashemites, and the Ottomans, the Shi'ite majority was eager to rule. Not surprisingly, elections have brought Shi'ite religious parties to power which have since marginalized other groups and imposed their repressive and misogynist version of Islamic law in parts of Iraq where they dominate, particularly in the south of the country.

Sunni opposition to Shi'ite dominance does not just stem from resentment at losing their privileged position in Iraqi political life under the former dictatorship. Indeed, Saddam Hussein suppressed his fellow Sunni Arabs along with Sunni Kurds and Shi'ite Arabs.

What U.S. officials have failed to recognize is that Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, regardless of its feelings about Saddam Hussein's regime, has long identified with Arab nationalism. Not surprisingly, the armed resistance that emerged following Saddam's removal from power three years ago by U.S. forces has come largely from the Sunni Arab community. The insurgency has also targeted the U.S.-backed Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government, which came to power as a result of the U.S. invasion and which many see as being puppets of the U.S. occupation. They also fear that the Iraqi government may identify more with their fellow Shi'ites of Iran than with other Arabs. More radical Sunni chauvinists, many of whom are foreign Salafi extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have engaged in widespread terrorist attacks again Shi'ite civilians and their holy places.

Despite its dependence on the United States and ties to Iran, however, the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government has its own agenda. Culturally and linguistically, Iraq's Shi'ites are every bit as Arab as the Sunnis. Yet while the vast majority of the country's Shi'ite Arab majority has no desire to be pawns of either Iran or the United States, the response by the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government and Shi'ite militias has done little to lessen Sunni fears and hostility. Seeing their government faced with a growing insurgency and their community falling victim to terrorist violence, the Shi'ites have responded with aggressive counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations against the Sunni community. Human rights abuses by Shi'ites against the Sunni minority have increased dramatically, polarizing the country still further.

Even before the latest upsurge in sectarian violence, the Baghdad morgue was reporting that dozens of bodies of Sunni men with gunshot wounds to the back of the head would arrive at the same time every week, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs.

Death Squads

John Pace, the outgoing head of the United Nations' human rights monitoring group in Iraq, has reported that hundreds of Sunnis are being subjected to summary execution and death from torture every month by Iraqi government death squads, primarily controlled by the Ministry of the Interior.

High-ranking American officers have reported that radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army maintains a strong presence in the regular police force, including up to 90 percent of the 35,000 officers currently working in the northeastern part of Baghdad. In addition, the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade dominates police commando units. A police unit known as the Punishment Committee goes after civilians believed to be flouting Islamic laws or the authority of Shi'ite militia leaders, particularly Sunnis.

The Shi'ite government of Iran, long cited for its human rights abuses by both the Bush administration and reputable human rights organizations, has actively supported Shi'ite militias within the Iraqi government and security forces. (Despite this, the Bush administration and its supporters – including many prominent Democrats – have been putting forth the ludicrous theory that Iran is actually supporting the anti-Shi'ite and anti-American Sunni insurgency.) Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was trained by Iran's infamous Revolutionary Guards and later served as a leader of the Badr Brigade, the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Americans have also trained Interior Ministry police and commandoes, though – unlike some notorious cases in recent Latin American history – there is little evidence to suggest that U.S. trainers have actively encouraged death squad activity. Still, there is little question that actions by U.S. occupation troops over the past three years – such as the torture of detainees, the hair-trigger response at checkpoints, the liberal use of force in heavily populated civilian neighborhoods, and the targeted assassinations of suspected insurgent leaders – have contributed to the climate of impunity exhibited by forces of the Iraqi government.

Mr. Pace has also observed how U.S. troops are making things worse by rounding up large numbers of innocent young Sunni men and detaining them for months. Noting how such "military intervention causes serious human rights and humanitarian problems to large numbers of innocent civilians," he lamented at the fact that many of these detainees, in reaction to their maltreatment, later joined Sunni terrorist groups following their release.

Despite last month's terrorist bombing of the Shi'ite shrine and the tragic killings that followed, however, there were also impressive signs of unity. In cities throughout Iraq, Sunnis and Shi'ites mobilized to protect each other's mosques and neighborhoods.

Even the young firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr emphasized to his followers, "It was not the Sunnis who attacked the shrine … but rather the occupation [forces] and Ba'athists." He called on his followers not to attack Sunni mosques and ordered his Mahdi Army to "protect both Shia and Sunni shrines." He went on to say, "My message to the Iraqi people is to stand united and bonded, and not to fall into the Western trap. The West is trying to divide the Iraqi people." In a later interview, Sadr claimed, "We say that the occupiers are responsible for such crisis [Golden Mosque bombing] … there is only one enemy. The occupier."

Similarly, Sunnis were quick to express their solidarity with Shias in a series of demonstrations in Samara and elsewhere. Anti-American signs and slogans permeated these marches. Indeed, there is a widespread belief that it was the United States, not fellow Muslims or Iraqis, that bears responsibility for the tragedy. Even Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi claimed the United States was responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque, "especially since occupation forces did not comply with curfew orders imposed by the Iraqi government." He added, "Evidence indicates that the occupation may be trying to undermine and weaken the Iraqi government."

Though charges of a U.S. conspiracy are presumably groundless, it does underscore the growing opposition by both communities to the ongoing U.S. military presence in their country and how the United States has little credibility left with either community as a mediator, peacekeeper, overseer, or anything else.

And it underscores the urgency for the United States to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

March 7, 2006
Shiites Try to Block Start of Parliament Amid New Violence
By KIRK SEMPLE
and JOHN O'NEIL
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 7 — The struggle to get the country's sclerotic political process inching forward ran into a new complication today, as Shiite politicians sought to block the new parliament from holding its first meeting on Sunday.

The maneuvering came as a fresh round of insurgent attacks killed 2 and wounded at least 19 around Baghdad, following the deaths of 11 people on Monday, including an Iraqi general.

The American military also announced Monday that an American soldier had been killed in Anbar Province, the western desert region that has become a wellspring of the insurgency, and said today that a 36-year old detainee had died of natural causes in Camp Bucca, a prison.

And today a new video was broadcast on Arab television showing three of four members of a group called Christian Peacemakers who had been taken hostage last November. The one American captive, Tom Fox, was not shown.

The latest round of political jockeying is focused on the choice of a prime minister, the government's most powerful executive. The main Shiite bloc is backing Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who has held the post since a transitional government was formed last April. But he is opposed by a coalition of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and some secular politicians.

Although the Shiite bloc won 130 of the 275 parliamentary seats, the Iraqi Constitution effectively requires a two-thirds majority to choose the prime minister, giving the Kurdish, Sunni and secular parties, with about 140 seats among them, a de facto veto.

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called Monday for Parliament to meet on Sunday. He described the move as necessary to meet a deadline set by the country's constitution, that had already been extended by two weeks because of the tumult that followed an attack on a major Shiite shrine on Feb. 22.

But Shiite politicians today asked Mr. Talabani to postpone the session until agreement is reached on who will fill the government's top positions. Among those opposing the Sunday meeting is Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a vice president who is a leader of the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council on Islamic Revolution.

Mr. Abdul-Mehdi, who was passed over in favor of Mr. Jaafari by one ballot in an internal vote by the Shiite coalition, had been mentioned by many opponents of Mr. Jaafari as a better choice. But so far, the Kurdish-led effort to oust him has met nothing but Shiite solidarity.

American officials have been putting pressure on their Iraqi counterparts to pull together a broad-based coalition in the hope that widespread political representation would help unify the country and defuse the insurgency.

According to the Iraqi Constitution, the legislature must first approve a president by a two-thirds vote. The president must then pick a prime minister within 15 days. The prime minister has another 15 days to select a cabinet.

The selection of the prime minister and cabinet must be approved by a majority of Parliament, or the cycle is renewed with a new 15-day deadline for the president to choose a new prime minister.

But the expectation is that the politicians will have negotiated the package of president, prime minister and cabinet before the legislature announces its presidential choice.

The violence in Baghdad today began with a shootout between insurgents and Iraqi police officers about 8 a.m., an official in the Interior Ministry said. Five officers and a security guard for the mosque were wounded, and one of the attackers was killed.

A car bomb targeting an American convoy went off in western Baghdad about an hour later, killing one civilian and wounding a woman at the scene. Three other explosions in various parts of the city wounded 12 people, including two police officers who were trying to defuse a bomb on a busy street in Hilla in southern Baghdad, officials said.

On Monday, insurgents took the life of the highest-ranking military officer to be killed since the American-led invasion in 2003. Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya al-Duleimi, the commander of the Sixth Division of the Iraqi Army, was fatally shot by a sniper on Monday afternoon while driving in western Baghdad, according to American and Iraqi officials.

For more than a year the Sixth Division has been gradually assuming control of sectors of the capital from American forces.

In Monday's deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in Baquba, just north of the capital, killing 7 people, including 2 young girls, and wounding 23, including 5 children, Diyala Province officials and hospital workers in Baquba said. The attack was one of at least seven on Monday involving car bombs.

The American military offered no further information on the American casualty in Anbar, except to say the soldier was killed Sunday and had been assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, which is under Marine command.

Kirk Semple reported from Baghdad for this article, and John O'Neil from New York. Edward Wong and Mona Mahmoud contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.



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March 7, 2006
U.S. Takes Steps to Reduce Shiite Domination in Iraqi Military
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 — As the threat of full-scale sectarian strife looms, the American military is scrambling to try to weed out ethnic or religious partisans from the Iraqi security forces.

The United States faces the possibility that it has been arming one side in a prospective civil war. Early on, Americans ceded operational control of the police to the Iraqi government. Now, the police forces are overseen at the highest levels by religious Shiite parties with militias, and reports of uniformed death squads have risen sharply in the past year.

The American military is trying an array of possible solutions, including quotas to increase the number of Sunni Arab recruits in police academies, firing Shiite police commanders who appear to tolerate militias, and sending 200 training teams composed of military police officers or former civilian police officers to Iraqi stations, even in remote and risky locations.


There is no quick or painless fix. The efforts risk alienating Shiite politicians, who have fiercely resisted attempts to wrest away their control of the security forces. The moves may appeal, though, to recalcitrant Sunni Arabs, whom the Americans want to draw into the political process.

Trying to reform the police forces could take years, because sectarian loyalties have become entrenched, and police officers are rooted in their communities, senior military officials acknowledge. Critics say American efforts to train the Iraqi police also continue to be hampered by a shortage of troops and civilian advisers.

Several of the initiatives, such as enrolling more Sunni Arab students in police academies, have been going on for months. Others, such as the deployment of the new police training teams, are just beginning on a large scale. The wave of sectarian violence that followed the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22 has heightened the urgency of the measures.

After the bombing, mobs led by Shiite militiamen attacked dozens of Sunni mosques and left hundreds dead. Many police units stood aside, either out of confusion or sectarian loyalties, according to Iraqi witnesses. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said Friday that police officers had allowed militiamen through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad, where much of the violence occurred.

The Iraqi Army poses less of a problem than the police, because the American military has direct operational control over it, and because the Americans took more care in building it up. Kurdish militiamen, though, make up a significant part of it.

The military's efforts to revamp the police are taking place alongside a strong push by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, to press Iraqi politicians who are forming the new government to appoint a nonsectarian figure as head of the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.

"When you're forming a government, you can't form it with any kind of sectarian element," said Maj. Gen. J. D. Thurman, commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad. "That's got to be put aside, particularly with military forces." The attempts to erase sectarianism dovetail with a broader American initiative to strengthen police training this year by diverting more resources away from mentoring the Iraqi Army. The military hopes to have 200,000 Iraqi police officers in place by early 2007.

The development of the police is in some ways more crucial than that of the army, because the Americans want the police to handle all security inside Iraq.

The units believed to be most plagued by militia recruitment and sectarian loyalties are the police paramilitary forces, which have a total of 17,500 members, the American military says. The regular blue-uniformed police force numbers 89,000, and the border force totals 20,000. But there are serious doubts about whether anyone has an accurate overall tally.

The paramilitary forces are divided three ways — the commandos, the public order brigades and a mechanized brigade that will soon be shifted to the army. Matthew Sherman, a former Interior Ministry adviser, said Shiite parties were especially keen to seize control of those forces because they can operate anywhere in the country and have great autonomy.

The Interior Ministry is accused of sponsoring death squads in police or paramilitary uniforms. Mr. Khalilzad has been outspoken in his criticism of the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, and hinted last month that the Americans may withhold financing if sectarianism continues to dominate the security forces.

Officials at the most powerful Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which oversees the Interior Ministry, have lashed out at the Americans, arguing that the majority Shiites had every right to control security, because Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government had used the army and the police to abduct, torture and kill Shiites.

"The Shiites were beheaded by the security forces before, and we are not ready to be beheaded again," said Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Organization, the Supreme Council's Iranian-trained militia. "We can relinquish any part of the government except for the security forces."

American commanders say they have recently learned that virtually all the members of the 7,700-member public order brigades, which do light infantry duty, were Shiites. The brigades were founded in 2004, and were expanded after the Supreme Council took control of the Interior Ministry in early 2005.

"When we stood them up, we didn't ask, 'Are you Sunni or are you Shia?' " Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson, in charge of police training, said in an interview at a base in Taji, north of Baghdad, as he was visiting soldiers newly assigned to the Iraqi police. "They ended up being 99 percent Shia. Now, when we look at that, we say, 'They do not reflect the population of Iraq.' "

No accurate census of Iraq exists, but the country is believed to be about 60 percent Shiite Arab, 20 percent Sunni Arab and 20 percent Kurdish (most Kurds are Sunni.)

Americans officials have pushed the Interior Ministry to diversify the forces. All recruits in the public order brigades have to go through a six- or seven-week training course, with 1,200 in each class.

The Americans ensured that the last three classes enrolled greater numbers of Sunni Arabs: The first of those was 42 percent Sunni Arab, the second 92 percent Sunni and the third, just starting, was virtually all Sunni, General Peterson said.


American officers say that when they try to talk to Iraqi commanders about the religious or ethnic breakdown of the forces, the commanders tend to shy away from those conversations, as most Iraqis do, saying they prefer to think of themselves as one people rather than in terms of sect.

Col. Gordon B. Davis, the top adviser to the public order brigades, said the senior commander of that force, a Shiite Arab from the old Iraqi Army, addressed the issue only with much reluctance. " 'You shouldn't be talking like this,' he tells us," the colonel said in an interview at the Iraqi command base in Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood.

Colonel Davis said his advisers had no qualms about removing Iraqi commanders if it became evident they have sectarian loyalties.

For much of last year, the Second Public Order Brigade had a particularly bad reputation. It was accused by many Iraqis, especially Sunni Arabs, of detainee torture and illegal killings. Its ranks were filled with men recruited from eastern Baghdad who were loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric who had led two rebellions against the Americans.

The head of the brigade was the former police chief of Nasiriya, a southern city under the sway of hard-line Shiite parties, and was "rumored to tolerate" militias, Colonel Davis said. The Americans replaced him with a Sunni Arab commander in December, who then fired 160 people below him, presumably because those men had suspected militia ties, the colonel said. Since then, he added, officers have removed images of Mr. Sadr from gunstocks and vehicles.

In contrast to the public order brigades, the police commandos, an 8,300-member force that was founded in 2004 under a Sunni-led Interior Ministry, are more diverse, American commanders said. Many came from the old Iraqi Army, which had an officer corps dominated by Sunni Arabs, and from the domestic security services, which Saddam Hussein used to terrorize the population.

The commandos and the public order brigades essentially perform the same job, and will soon be combined as members of the "national police."

Mr. Sherman, though, said the commandos also have significant numbers of Shiites loyal to the Supreme Council. Maj. Gen. Adnan Thabit, a Sunni Arab, is the head of the commandos in name only, he said, having ceded control to Shiite partisans. "They've just taken a more kind of political bent over the past 10 months or so," said Mr. Sherman, the former Interior Ministry adviser.

The Americans hope that new mentorship programs this year will result in greater oversight of the police. For the last year, the police paramilitary units have had 11-member American military adviser teams assigned to them at the division, brigade and battalion command levels. That program will soon be bolstered by sending regular American troops into the field with the police.

"It's a huge difference, because now you've got a battalion partnering with another battalion," General Peterson said. "Instead of just 11 guys, you have that entire battalion, 500 or 600 guys."

In addition, the American command is reorganizing thousands of members of the American military police and former civilian police officers who are currently working with the Iraqi police in Iraq. Most are now based at police academies or high-level headquarters.

Under the new plan, they will be sent across the country to smaller police stations, some in remote areas. There are a total of 200 teams, with the first already dispatched to more volatile areas like Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.

A senior American officer, who works with the Iraqi police and army units, said that, in handling the surge in violence after the shrine bombing, Iraqi units with American trainers attached generally performed better than those without. But many police units still lack American advisers, in part because finding experienced trainers willing to spend long periods attached to police units has been hard.

"It should be obvious that the presence of our embedded advisory teams in the army and police forces were an important stabilizing influence," said the officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly on this matter. "The question becomes how long that stabilizing influence is necessary."

David S. Cloud contributed reporting from Washington for this article.



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From Monsters and Critics.com

US News
US envoy: Iraq war opened \'Pandora\'s box,\' civil war threat
By DPA
Mar 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT



Washington - The 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein opened a \'Pandora\'s box\' of ethnic and sectarian strife that has created the threat of civil war, the US ambassador to Iraq said in an interview published Tuesday.

Zalmay Khalilzad\'s remarks to the Los Angeles Times were one of the gloomiest and most outspoken public assessments yet of the US campaign in Iraq, contrasting with generally upbeat statements by President George W Bush and military officials.

Iraq has pulled back from the brink for now after a deadly surge of sectarian violence after the February 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, Khalilzad told the paper.

But Iraq would be \'really vulnerable\' if a similar incident occurs again and the \'potential is there\' for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war, he was quoted as saying.

Khalilzad\'s remarks come as US military officials consider possible troop reductions in Iraq. Without commenting on that issue, he said the US must keep a strong presence in Iraq to avoid risks to Gulf energy supplies and the threat that parts of Iraq would become a base for religious extremists.

\'That would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child\'s play,\' Khalilzad, an American of Afghan descent, told the paper.

He expressed confidence that the threat of civil war in Iraq would subside once Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds form a national unity government.

\'Right now there\'s a vacuum of authority, and there\'s a lot of distrust,\' Khalilzad was quoted as saying.


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Envoy to Iraq Sees Threat of Wider War
--------------------

He supports the White House view that an early pullout would backfire, but he is bleak about the Sunni-Shiite conflict and says it could spread.

By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

March 7 2006

BAGHDAD; The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20edito...s%20J%20Ali.htm

Poisonous Rhetoric in Baghdad

By Abbas J. Ali

Al-Jazeerah, March 5, 2006



The deliberate attack on the Imam al-Hadi Shrine in Samarra and the instantaneous violent protests that followed are a potent reminder that the American enterprise in Iraq is built on a shaky foundation. The events evidence that miscalculations have been the hallmark of the Iraqi venture and that the civilian American leaders, residing in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, have failed miserably to grasp the depth of the populace’s resentment toward the political calamity that has been imposed on them.

Indeed, the widespread uproars have manifested not only a dismay for the destruction of religious and cultural symbols but also a deep dissatisfaction with the slow progress toward political normalcy and the establishment of a credible and independent central government capable of ensuring the safety and security of the ordinary citizens.

While ordinary Iraqis have long voiced concerns regarding how Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad conducts his business, increasing numbers of Iraqi politicians and civil leaders have questioned the wisdom of his intrusive style and his unusual repeated references to sectarian division within the country. Ambassador Khalilzad shows indifference to these concerns and since early February has accelerated his divisive sectarian message.

Ambassador Khalilzad has an extensive experience in foreign affairs. More importantly, long before the invasion of Iraq he worked closely with the opposition groups and served on the team that was responsible for planning the invasion of 2003. In fact, he was instrumental in coaxing the diverse Iraqi oppositions in their London 2002 conference to adopt a political blueprint in line with the Bush administration’s projection for Iraq.

Since his arrival in Baghdad in early 2005 as Ambassador, Khalilzad has been personally involved in Iraqi politics and has sought to steer political events to closely fit his design for Iraq. To his surprise, he finds that most politicians who accommodated his demands and instructions while living in exile now have their own independent agenda and are reluctant to go along with his agenda as they previously did.

In particular, Khalilzad has publicly shown displeasure with the failure of Ibrahim al-Jafari, the transitional prime minister, to comply with the Embassy guidelines. Jafari is often irritated by Khalilzad’s blunt and forceful intervention in the government affairs. Jafari’s inclusive and transparent manners do not recommend themselves to Khalilzad’s aggressive approaches.

It is possible that in playing hardball in managing Iraqi politics, Khalilzad thinks that he is lending Iraqis a helping hand. Nevertheless, his overemphasis on secrecy and arm twisting and his public warning to government and its representatives to behave in accordance with his instructions infuriate and alarm even ordinary Iraqis.

For example, Reuters reported that when Vice President, Dick Cheney, visited Baghdad in late 2005, Ambassador Khalilzad summoned the Iraqi President and Prime Minister to his office. They were taken by surprise to find that a meeting had been scheduled with Cheney without their prior knowledge. This highhandedness on the part of Khalilzad has seriously challenged Washington’s highly promoted notion of a sovereign Iraq.

Khalilzad prefers to have the final say when it comes to security in Iraq. When the American military announced the transfer of the security control to the Iraqi army in one center in Baghdad, the transfer did not take place, as the Iraqi commander appointed by the Defense Ministry was rejected. The American Embassy insisted that the transfer would be completed only when an Iraqi officer appointed by the Embassy, not the Ministry of Defense, was in control.

Likewise, in matters closely related to Iraqi sovereignty, Ambassador Khlilzad insisted that the selection of the Prime Minister and the program of his government must correspond to his wishes. Otherwise, he warned, "I would not exclude the possibility that if they don't agree on programs and people, there may be a new candidate for prime minister.”

In terms of defense and interior ministries, Khalilzad was in uncompromising mood. He plainly threatened to look for other means to prevent any nominee he deems unacceptable stating, “if they are not run by people who are nonsectarian, not tied to militias, not moderate, not broadly accepted, the forces would not be effective, and, therefore, we are advising them to do the right thing, and if they don't, we will take a look at what we do.”

The events that have occurred since the elections have both frustrated and disappointed Khalilzad. The outcome of the elections gave the United Iraqi Alliance the largest block of seats in the national assembly and the populace Sadrist movement positioned itself as a champion for Iraqi patriotism. Their programs and agenda may set Iraq on a conflict course with Khalilzad’s vision for Iraq.

Subsequently, Ambassador Khalilzad has engaged in a discourse perceived by various Iraqi groups as overtly sectarian and that his public pronouncements show an insensitivity to Iraqi pride and their deep seated aversion to sectarian division. These groups have come to view Khalilzad more often than not as the instigator rather than solver of their problems.

Ambassador Khalilzad seems not to appreciate the fact that some Iraqi political groups who come to power, through open elections, have to answer to their constituencies and that their national programs will not necessarily resemble his own design. So he has proposed the establishment of a non elected council to plan government policies and supervise its activities. Iraqi experts have perceived this proposal as a plot to circumvent the result of the elections and obstruct the democratic process.

Strategically, Khalilzad made a fatal mistake when he treated Iraq as Afghanistan. The latter is essentially a tribal society with no clear national or cultural identity. Whether unintentional or deliberate, he ignored the fact that the Iraqi society was mainly secular with a vibrant tradition of skepticism and a strong inclination to question foreign schemes.

An increasing number of Iraqis question the wisdom of Khalilzad’s repeated sectarian message and believe that Iraq is facing the most painful period in its history. This situation calls for profound rethinking, avoidance of sectarian rhetoric and leaving Iraqis to settle their own national priorities and navigate a road map for a unified democratic Iraq free of terror and foreign domination. The alternative is a continuance of the turmoil that has plagued Iraq since the invasion.

Abbas J. Ali, Professor and Director School of International Management, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA.

A Civil Question

By Dan Froomkin

President Bush won't talk about the prospect of civil war in Iraq and what it would mean to the U.S. troop presence. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he needs to. Amid all sorts of legitimate questions about timing -- and skepticism about his true budget-cutting fervor -- the...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

March 7, 2006
Shiites May Block Start of Iraq's Parliament on Sunday
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 7 — Shiite officials said today that they may block a meeting of the new Parliament that the Iraqi president has called for on Sunday, further delaying the process of forming a full, four-year government.

The main Shiite political bloc, which has 130 seats in the 275-member Parliament, is incensed that the president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has demanded that the Shiite prime ministerial nominee back down. That nominee, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the current prime minister, was selected last month in a closely contested vote among the Shiites.

Mr. Talabani called on Monday for the Parliament to convene Sunday. He has to get approval from his two vice presidents, though. One of them, Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a senior official in a powerful Shiite party, has so far declined to sign off on the order. One of Mr. Abdul-Mehdi's aides said today that the Shiites would continue discussions until Thursday, then decide what to do about convening the Parliament.

Talks to form a new government have reached an impasse. Political parties representing the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and secularists have all called for the Shiites to withdraw Mr. Jaafari as their nominee and put forward another candidate, possibly Mr. Abdul-Mehdi. Otherwise, the parties say, an opposition bloc in Parliament may try to present its own candidate for prime minister.

Together, the parties have about 140 seats. A two-thirds vote of Parliament is essentially needed to approve the new government, so the opposition bloc would have veto power over any move by the Shiites to form a government.

Many Iraqis have lost confidence in Mr. Jaafari, accusing him of having failed to quell the Sunni-led insurgency or improve services, like electricity, since he took power almost a year ago. Mr. Talabani became furious over Mr. Jaafari's visit to Turkey last week. The Kurds have long been wary of Turkish threats of invasion from the north, and often accuse the Turks of trying to undermine Kurdish political goals.

American officials fear that a bitter, protracted battle over the formation of the new government will strengthen the insurgency and heighten sectarian strife. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Monday that the bombing of a Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 and sectarian killings that followed pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

At a Pentagon briefing in Washington today, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged that "there's always the potential for a civil war," but he and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but said they thought Iraq had moved away from the brink of civil war.

"The Iraqi people, Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, have walked up to that possibility — I believe they've looked into the abyss — and have said, 'This is not where we want to go,' " General Pace said.

The political negotiations in Iraq took place as violence claimed the lives of at least seven people in Baghdad and the north. Three Western hostages taken last November in Baghdad appeared on a new videotape shown by Al Jazeera. The Defense Ministry said it was investigating an ambush on Monday that resulted in the death of Maj. Gen. Mobdir Hatim al-Dulaimi, the commander of Iraqi Army forces in Baghdad. General Dulaimi was the highest ranking Iraqi military officer to be killed since the Americans first invaded.

The hostage videotape was dated Feb. 28 and showed three men: James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, of Canada; and Norman Kember, 74, of Great Britain. The three work for Christian Peacemakers Teams. A fourth man abducted with them, Tom Fox, an American did not appear on the tape.

The men were shown talking, but the video was silent. Before this, the hostages, along with Mr. Fox, were last seen on a video that was released Jan. 28. The Swords of Righteousness Brigade has said it is holding them.

No word has emerged recently of Jill Carroll, 28, an American freelance reporter who was abducted in early January. The interior minister, Bayan Jabar, recently said he knew where Ms. Carroll had first been taken, and who her initial captor was. Ms. Carroll's current captors have threatened her with death unless the Americans and Iraqi government release all Iraqi women who are being held.

Ms. Carroll's interpreter, a Christian man, was killed during her abduction in Al Adel, a violent neighborhood of western Baghdad.

This morning, a car bomb exploded near an American convoy in western Baghdad, killing at least one civilian and injuring a woman. Police officials in the northern oil-city of Kirkuk said insurgents had ambushed a police patrol, killing one officer and seriously injuring another. The police also said Iraqi and American forces found two completely mutilated bodies north of the city.

Four Iraqi officers were killed in two separate assaults on police patrols in Baquba and Bayji, both towns north of Baghdad, The Associated Press reported. In the capital, gunmen shot dead an employee of Baghdad International Airport as he was driving through the city. A gun battle erupted between guerrillas and police officers near a Shiite mosque in the Sunni-dominated neighborhood of Ghazaliya, leaving one insurgent dead and five police officers wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A mosque guard was also injured.

In Baghdad, the family and co-workers of General Dulaimi attended his funeral. The general had headed the Sixth Iraqi Army Division and had worked closely with American commanders. A Sunni Arab, he was friendly with Sunni politicians — last Thursday, he visited the office of Adnan Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni leader and fellow tribesman, right after Mr. Dulaimi's convoy was ambushed and one of his guards killed. (Ms. Carroll was kidnapped on the street outside Mr. Dulaimi's home.)

Brig. Gen. Jalil Khalaf Shwayel, commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Division, said in a telephone interview that he believed General Dulaimi was killed in an ambush rather than by a sniper, as first reported.

On Monday, the general had inspected security measures in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in the afternoon, then driven off at 4 p.m., General Shwayel said. Fifteen minutes later, his convoy came under a barrage of gunfire on a highway in the Khadra neighborhood of western Baghdad. Four bullets slammed into General Dulaimi's car, and one of them pierced the armoring and hit the general in the head, General Shwayel said.

General Dulaimi's son, only in his early teens, was sitting in the seat next to him. The general often traveled with his son, who carried a pistol clipped to a carabiner on his jeans. "We lost a very good man," General Shwayel said, his voice somber.

Last Thursday, before stopping at Adnan Dulaimi's house, General Dulaimi had attended a ceremony at a base in Abu Ghraib where the American military was handing over control of battle space to an Iraqi unit under the general's command.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and John O'Neil from New York.



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Rumsfeld sees potential for Iraq civil war
Tue Mar 7, 2006 01:51 PM ET


By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday there has always been a risk Iraq could plunge into civil war but he accused the news media of exaggerating the gravity of the current situation.

Rumsfeld, during a Pentagon briefing, also accused Iran of sending Revolutionary Guards forces into Iraq, his latest accusation of Iranian meddling in the war, adding, "I don't think we could consider them religious pilgrims."

"I do not believe they're in a civil war today," Rumsfeld said of Iraq, but added "terrorists" want to foment one. "There's always been a potential for a civil war. That country was held together through a repressive regime that put hundreds of thousands of human beings into mass graves."

Hundreds of people were killed in sectarian violence that flared after the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of Iraq's four holiest Shi'ite shrines, and some experts said Iraq appeared to be on a verge of civil war.

The top U.S. envoy to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday saying the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that ousted President Saddam Hussein opened a "Pandora's box" of ethnic and sectarian tensions. Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for an all-out Iraqi civil war.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 80 percent of Americans believe that recent sectarian violence makes civil war in Iraq "likely" and more than a third thought it was "very likely."

Asked whether a civil war was possible, Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters on Friday it was unlikely but, "Anything can happen."

Rumsfeld said the recent violence had delayed efforts to form a "unity government" distributing power among Iraq's Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.

'EXAGGERATIONS'

Rumsfeld, citing information from Casey, said the news media has exaggerated the number of attacks on mosques and the number of Iraqi deaths, and has mischaracterized the actions of government security forces.

"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said.

"The steady stream of errors all seem to be of the nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq," he added. Asked whether these "exaggerations" were intentional, he added, "Oh, I can't go into people's minds."

Rumsfeld and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were not specific on the number of Revolutionary Guards they said were sent by Iran.

"They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. And we know it. And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said "of course" Iran's central government was responsible. "The Revolutionary Guard doesn't go milling around willy-nilly, one would think."

Pace reiterated previous accusations about Iran funneling roadside bombs and other weapons across the border.

Experts have said tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The United States has 132,000 troops in Iraq. There have been more than 2,300 U.S. military deaths in the war, with about 17,000 troops wounded in action.

Shi'ite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population, are ascending to political power after being oppressed under Saddam. Minority Sunni Muslims find themselves losing power after dominating the nation for decades, and Sunnis are driving the insurgency. Minority Kurds are also accruing power.



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Majority in U.S. Fears Iraq Civil War

By Richard Morin

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war, and half say the United States should begin withdrawing its forces from that violence-torn country, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0306-21.htm

Published on Monday, March 6, 2006 by the Boston Globe
Did US Know Iraq Had No WMDs?
by Kevin McKiernan

What if the Bush administration wasn't entirely convinced before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but simply invoked those ''mushroom cloud" images to rally necessary public support? One source of such speculation lies in the administration's puzzling prewar failure to supply Iraqi Kurds, Hussein's closest and most likely targets, with gas masks and other promised protection.

While the White House has publicly maintained that the decision to go to war was not made until early 2003 -- and only as a last resort after the failure of both inspections and diplomacy -- I knew a full year before that Kurdish leaders were quietly tipped off to war plans just weeks after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Washington, D.C., representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdis