Talabani, Hakim Reject Int'l Conference
9 GIs Killed
The US military announced that Sunni Arab guerrillas have killed 9 GIs in Baghdad and al-Anbar over the weekend.
AP says that 71 bodies were found in Baghdad and other cities on Sunday.
AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have all rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani said, "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation . . ."
If Talabani can decide the fate of Iraq, he should please go ahead and do it. It looks pretty out of control to the rest of us, and we don't think he's in a position to turn down Annan's offer of help. In fact there is something sinister about the top Kurdish and Shiite leaders rejecting an international conference that might help stop the Night of the Living Dead. Basically, they seem to be saying that they've come out on top and are happy with the status quo, and aren't interested in compromise or negotiation.
Consider the first item in today's entry. It is the lives of those 9 American GI's that give Talabani and al-Hakim the option of rejecting the international conference.
Here is the exchange of the BBC interviewer with Annan::
' BBC: Is it civil war?
Kofi Annan: I think, given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other. A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse. '
Annan is right, of course. Historians think that between 80,000 and 100,000 Lebanese were killed in the Civil War of 1975-1989, 20,000 of them during Israel's 1982 invasion. The death toll in Iraq since March, 2003, has likely been at least 420,000. Even the recent figure announced by the Ministry of Health in Iraq, of 150,000 Iraqis killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas or "insurgents," is larger than that for Lebanon (and it does not count those killed by the US military and by the Shiite militias).
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that secular Sunni politician Salih Mutlak, leader of the National Dialogue Front (11 seats in parliament) supports Annan's proposal for an international conference. Al-Zaman reports that Mutlak has formed a new coalition in parliament that will include the Shiite Sadr Movement. It will stand for the unity of Iraq and a withdrawal of US troops. It excludes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Da`wa Party, the two mainstays of the current government. The bloc will be announced in the coming days. Gunmen had attempted to assassinate Mutlak on Saturday.
Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday. Major attacks include:
' MOSUL - Six bodies were found in and around Mosul . . . All had gunshot wounds.
MOSUL - A suicide car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul, killing two and wounding four . . .
BAGHDAD - A mortar round landed on a secondary school, wounding 10 students in Bab al-Muadham district in north-central Baghdad . . .
NEAR KIRKUK - A suicide bomber blew up a car near the convoy of a senior police officer, killing three of his guards and wounding two others near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police said. The police officer was wounded in the incident. . . '
There were also significant battles in Baquba and Ramadi between US forces and Sunni Arab guerrillas.
Iraq's reconstituted Baath Party, led by Izzat Ibrahim Duri from the Mosul area, is rejecting pressure from Arab states to negotiate with the Americans. The Baath is probably a majority of the effective resistance in Sunni Arab Iraq. The foreign jihadis or "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," are a relatively minor part of it all, though they can be destructive. That is, the refusal of the Baathis to talk is bad news indeed.
Hamza Hendawi of AP reports on the way that Baghdad's neighborhoods are de facto being ethnically cleansed. Shiites are leaving majority-Sunni districts like Dora in droves. The Tigris, which runs through the capital, is becoming the de facto Sunni-Shiite border. (One big problem is that Shiite Kadhimiya and Sunni Adhamiya are on the wrong sides of the river and so are being left high and dry.)
My NPR interview on Sunni and Shiite Islam in history and in Iraq can be listened to at the Weekend Edition site.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Iraq has become a major smuggling route for drugs coming from Afghanistan and elsewhere in Asia. They go from there to the Gulf and thence to Europe. Iraqi officials say that they lack the capability of blocking the smuggling or controlling their borders. Being a smuggling route can be a hazard to a population. Pakistan ended up with over a million heroin addicts after it became a favored such route.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad pledged to support Iraq's national unity.
11 Comments:
The Ba'ath party has splitered in a whole range of groups.
The people doing the fighting reject the old Baath hierarchy, although they happily accept their help. In fact they put a large share of the blame for the Iraq catastrophe on those old Baath leaders.
A lot of the fighters have nothing to do with politics anyway. They are avenging the death and destruction heaped on the Sunni areas by the Americans and their allied militias. Others are just Iraqi patriots who are fed up with the occupation and the death and misery it brought with it.
It is, therefore, wrong to think that the old Baath leaders have much following or influence in Iraq, not even on the neo-Baath groups springing up as they see the Iraqi and US governments sink deeper into trouble.
The Azzaman piece ties the nationalist-front movement with the idea of an international conference, and says some opponents of the international-conference idea fear Brussels criminal proceedings. I have a summary here
The Oxford English Dictionary is a dictionary based on "historical principles". Which is by way of saying, one of the aims of the dictionary is to pinpoint the first - the earliest - use in the language of any given word.
Huh?
Well, yes, there is a connection. In short, I've just come across for the first time - and I read fairly widely about this fiasco - the mention of Stalingrad (Battle of, destruction of the German 6th Army, etc.) in connection with the American military "predicament" in Iraq.
I think what drew the writer to make the comparison was, amongst other things, those long supply lines. 800 miles, apparently, for the Americans in Iraq. Don't know how long they were for Von Paulus, but they were anything but short.
And none of that is to gainsay the huge, glaringly obvious differences: General Winter of course springs to mind but there were/are any number of other ones as well.
And a general point? Well, the historical post-mortem is going to be a very interesting - and profoundly depressing - matter. One way of charting it - it seems to me, is precisely this: linguistic creep...or perception creep, if you prefer. From Mission Accomplished, so to speak, to Stalingrad.
Spin proof got it right as stated in comment here. There is no way for the U.S. to make it in Iraq or Lebanon. They blew it in Baghdad and Beirut and so as the whole Middle East.
CNN's Nic Robertson from Baghdad hasn't got a clue, and neither do the growing cohort of his colleagues proclaiming al-Hakim's visit to BushVille as the opening move in dumping al-Sadr and al-Maliki. As if the US could engineer a "new unity" puppet now and send Muqtada packing.
What is it with these people? How can they remain so abysmally ignorant of the situation in Iraq after more than 3 years?
Kofi Annan proposes an international conference on Iraq? This might be less likely than a charity ball or bake sale.
Who would present credentials to represent the insurgents and militias? Would they care a whit for the positions of Saudis or Jordanians? Tukey to judge on the Kurds? The US to cede command and control to a UN committee? Penalties for non-compliance? The insurgents would immediatly nullify any resolutions. If people are trying to kill conference advocate Salih Mutlak, what does that say?
I think your reading the rejection of the international conference the wrong way. Shia leaders are likely mistrustful and wary of "Western powers" coming in to save the day, and are unlikely to respond to Middle Eastern powers - who are controlling/funding the insurgency - offering tainted support of "peace", rather it would be blackmail.
In the end, they just want people who aren't known for their tendency of stabbing Iraq in the back.
Hakim to Bush: Kill More Sunnis More Quickly Please
We should all know by now that this unforced geostrategic error will end, as T. S. Elliot said: "Not with a bang but a whimper."
Empires have lost entire armies before, usually through arrogance, negligence, or just the wooden-headed stupidity of amateur "leaders" who confuse linguistic mixed metaphors and flawed figures of speech -- like "ink stains," "dominoes," and "flypaper" -- for grand strategy and logistics. Usually, though, the mundane Law of Diminishing Returns proves the real killer of hugely-expensive imperial legions mismatched against relatively "cheap" local native guerrillas far, far away from the imperial capital and near, near to the sewers and rubble that the natives know best and use to their inexpensive advantage. Historical examples multiply themselves effortlessly. In Southeast Asia four decades ago, America sent aircraft carrrier battle groups halfway around the world to destroy bamboo bridges. In Iraq and Afghanistan today, America does the equivalent to destroy "safe houses" and "bad weddings." Even more so than most misguided empires, America seems nearly impervious to learning the simple, bad economics of its untenable situation.
Speaking of "Enemy at the Gates," though, I remember a scene in the movie where the German commander with complete land and air superiority over the ruined remains of Stalingrad complains that he has destroyed everything of value that an army can destroy and yet still Der Fuhrer insists that he keep at it for "symbolic" reasons while pathetic, rag-tag Russian snipers continue decimating his officer corps one bullet at a time. The Russian winter did cause the fuel in German tanks to freeze, of course, somewhat in the way that the desert sands of Iraq grind American armored machinery into increasing uselessness; but the addled and isolated strategic idiot in his bubble/bunker back home babbling about "staying the course" and "standing up" (while staying the curse and falling down) illustrates the whole sorry saga just as revealingly from the other end of the supply line now stretched to the breaking point from noplace to nowhere for nothing.
America had its own little mini-Dunkirk in Saigon thirty years ago. Unedified by national near-death experiences, however, Der Fruitcake seems taken with the notion of going after the Iranian-backed Shiites who only have to set up toll booths on the Kuwaiti border to maroon his precariously over-extended American expeditionary force, leaving them like so many Christian crusaders out of food and water with no choice but to desperately "go for it" at the Horns of Hattin. Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu, or Dunkirk: pick your debacle and pick apart the distinctions-without-a-difference (like snow vs sand) between them, but if the Shiite puppet Nuri al-Maliki really wants to gain street credibility (i.e., political legitimacy) among his occupied and humiliated people, he'll see to it that America goes the Dunkirk route (the Sunnis have already done the Russian Stalingrad sniper thing well enough) only I don't see where America can round up all the necessary boats for the evacuation of our foreign legionaires, their carpetbagging corporate camp followers, and their captive dependent puppets inside the Baghdad Green Zone Castle. You just never can find enough unused yachts floating around nearby when you really need them. No "graceful" exit, indeed.
John McCutchen - I was just reading this Hakim to Bush report on Reuters.
I wonder why Hakim thinks that "hitting them harder" will work for his side, when it hasn't worked for the Israelis (hit the Shi'ites of Lebanon harder, hit the Palestinians harder).
Dumb, dumb and dumber.
Everybody ought to read Jared Diamond's "Collapse." IT's the only book that explains the mass insanity overtaking the world. Unfortunately, it doesn't lead one to draw optimistic conclusions.
I don't think it is exactly correct to say that the war in Lebanon was less serious than what's going on in Iraq. According to their relative populations, 2.6% of Lebanon's population died in that war and only 1.6% of Iraq's population has died in Iraq's war. (I am using rounded up population figures - 4 million for Lebanon and 27 million for Iraq - and I am also using the 420,000 figure for Iraq's deaths as it sounds much more realistic.)
Of course, Iraq's war is just getting started - if you posit that it will continue as long as Lebanon's, your statement that it is worse makes sense.
I just point this out because you often point out similar issues when people compare homicide rates in Iraq to cities in the US. I agree with all of your points on how serious it is, and I certainly hope it does not go on as long as the Lebanese Civil War.
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