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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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December 15th,
2006 - U.S. Confronts Reality of Iraq in 2006 |
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U.S. Confronts Reality of
Iraq in 2006 By Robert H. Reid The Associated Press Friday, December 15, 2006; 2:00 PM Baghdad, Iraq - After years
of optimistic claims from Washington, Iraq is ending 2006 with the American
strategy in shambles and a politically weakened Bush administration
struggling for a way out of the impasse. Sectarian slaughter rages in
Baghdad and religiously mixed areas, carried out by shadowy militias and
death squads believed linked to Shiite and Sunni politicians and clerics.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has done little to curb the militias - some
linked to his fellow Shiite allies. In the dusty towns of Anbar
province, Sunni Arab insurgents ambush American and Iraqi forces daily. An
estimated 100,000 Iraqis flee the country every month to escape the violence,
according to the Washington-based Refugees International. The U.S. death toll
neared 3,000 in December. Gone is talk of
"staying the course," a phrase which President Bush himself has
disowned. Gone too is the hope that the mere establishment of a
democratically elected government of national unity would be enough to stem
the bloodshed. Instead, a bipartisan
commission, led by longtime Bush family friend James Baker, has described the
situation as "grave and deteriorating" and warned that America's
ability to influence events in this turbulent country "is diminishing." Equally damning, the
commission accused the Pentagon of significantly underreporting the level of
violence. After nearly four years of war, the U.S. "still does not
understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the
militias," the commission said. The situation has become so
desperate that some U.S. politicians believe the best course is to give up on
a unified Iraq and partition the country along religious and ethnic lines -
even though the idea finds little support among the majority of Iraqis. That bleak reality is vastly
different from what U.S. officials were hoping for a year ago. With a new constitution
ratified and a freely elected parliament in place, hopes ran high that 2006
would mark a turning point in the U.S. campaign to build a stable democracy
on the wreckage of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. U.S. officials even spoke of
reducing U.S. troop strength in Iraq below 100,000 by the end of 2006, and
Iraq's national security adviser confidently assured reporters of a
"sizable gross reduction" in American forces here. Those hopes were dashed
after Feb. 22 when Sunni Arab extremists blew up a sacred Shiite shrine in
Samarra, a Sunni city north of Baghdad. That brazen attack outraged the
country's long-suffering Shiite majority, which had endured suicide attacks,
car bombings and assassinations by Sunni religious extremists, including
al-Qaida in Iraq. The Samarra blast triggered
a wave of sectarian reprisal killings that has led many scholars and
political analysts to conclude that the country is now in a low-intensity
civil war - with the 140,000 U.S. troops caught in the middle. In the wake of Samarra,
Iraq's leading Shiite clerics, who had cautioned patience during years of
vicious sectarian attacks, could no longer curb the tide of Shiite
retribution. The bombing and the frenzied
vendetta that followed also sabotaged American efforts to promote trust among
Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish politicians at a critical moment. Iraq's
leaders were just beginning the process of forming a government of national
unity after the December parliamentary elections. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad, who had worked tirelessly to promote a political agreement, said
repeatedly that a unity government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds offered the
best chance for Iraq to build a stable democracy on the wreckage of Saddam
Hussein's dictatorship. Although negotiations
continued and a government took office three months later, sectarian
bitterness runs so deep that al-Maliki has been unable to forge an effective
administration and see through a program of national reconciliation. Instead, political momentum
belonged to the sectarian extremists - armed gangs of Shiites and Sunnis who
kidnap, murder and intimidate each other. The United Nations estimated that
by last summer, an average of 100 people were dying each day - most of them
in the Baghdad area. Scores of bodies appear
almost daily in vacant lots and side streets of the capital, often with
horrific signs of torture - holes driven into the skull and eyes gouged out. Iraqis fear the extremist
goal is to divide Baghdad, a religiously and ethnically mixed city, into a
mostly Shiite zone east of the Tigris river and a largely Sunni area to the
west. Al-Maliki promised to
restore order and as one of his first acts, he announced a major crackdown to
rid the capital of the killers. He cited the threat posed by al-Qaida and
other Sunni religious extremists. That angered Sunni leaders,
who complained that the real threat was posed by Shiite militias, including
the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a close al-Maliki
ally. With the Iraqi army and
police riddled with Shiite militiamen, many Sunnis saw the security operation
as a cover to crack down on their community. Many Sunnis who had stayed out
of the insurgency took up arms to protect their neighborhoods. Many Shiites
did the same. But the crackdown faltered,
forcing the U.S. command to send thousands of American soldiers into the
streets, some from flashpoints in the insurgent-ridden Anbar province. That
led to a spike in U.S. casualties - more than 100 dead in October alone - but
failed to stop the violence. U.S. soldiers complained
that the Iraqi troops weren't motivated. Privately, Americans complained that
they simply didn't have enough troops of their own to quell the violence. With casualties rising,
opposition to the war soared in the United States. Congress established the
Baker commission to study ways to reverse the slide, and the Republican loss
of the House and Senate in the October elections fueled cries for a course
change. As the year drew to a close,
the commission released its recommendations: more regional diplomacy,
shifting the U.S. military role from combat to training, and pressing the
Iraqi factions to compromise on the nation's future. But the commission offered
no solution to the core problem - the absence of a genuine political
agreement among Iraq's sectarian and ethnic factions. Instead, the country is
locked in a bitter struggle for power as all sides try to ensure a strong
position for the day when the Americans go home. The Baker commission
recommended that the U.S. reduce economic and military aid if the Iraqis
can't reach such an agreement. "The U.S. effectively
sent a bull in to liberate the china shop," former Pentagon analyst
Anthony Cordesman said. "And the study group now called upon the U.S. to
threaten to remove the bull if the shop doesn't fix the china." © 2006 The Associated Press External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501016.html |