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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 9th,
2007 - Patterns of War Shift in Iraq Amid U.S. Buildup 1st news article by the New York
Times |
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Patterns of War Shift in
Iraq Amid U.S. Buildup By Alissa J. Rubin and Edward Wong New York Times April 9, 2007 Baghdad, April 8 - Nearly
two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success
in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets
each day. And while the overall death
rates for all of Iraq have not dropped significantly, largely because of
devastating suicide bombings, a few parts of the capital have become calmer
as some death squads have decided to lie low. But there is little sign
that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island
of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure
out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward
compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power
sharing between Shiites and Sunnis. For American troops, Baghdad
has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to
confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of
American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan
has nearly doubled from the previous period, though it has stayed roughly the
same over all, decreasing in other parts of the country as troops have
focused on the capital. American commanders say it
will be months before they can draw conclusions about the campaign to secure
Baghdad, and just more than half of the so-called surge of nearly 30,000
additional troops into the country have arrived. But at the same time,
political pressure in the United States for quick results and a firm troop
pullout date has become more intense than ever. This snapshot of the early
weeks of the operation, which officially began on Feb. 14, is drawn from
American and Iraqi casualty data and interviews with military commanders and
government officials. Already in that time, the military
and political reality has shifted from what American planners faced when they
prepared the Baghdad operation, continuing a pattern of rapid change that has
become painfully familiar since the 2003 invasion. In the northern and western
provinces where they hold sway, and even in parts of Baghdad, Sunni Arab
insurgents have sharpened their tactics, using more suicide car and vest
bombs and carrying out successive chlorine gas attacks. Even as officials have
sought to dampen the insurgency by trying to deal with Sunni Arab factions,
those groups have become increasingly fractured. There are now at least a
dozen major Sunni insurgent groups - many fighting other Sunnis as well as
the Americans and the Shiite-led government. A deal made with any one or two
would be unlikely to be acceptable to the others. While Shiite militias appear
to have quieted in Baghdad so far, elements of them have been fighting
pitched battles outside the city, sometimes against one another, sometimes
against Sunni Arabs. They are pushing Sunnis out of their homes and attacking
their mosques. And in a new tactic, both
Shiite and Sunni militants have been burning down homes and shops in the
provinces in recent months. One American private in the
First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, who was working the overnight shift at a new
garrison in western Baghdad, described the Americans’ fight this way: “The
insurgents, they see what we’re doing and we see what they’re doing. Then we
get ahead, then they figure out what we’ve done and they get ahead. “It’s like a game of cat and
mouse. It’s just a really, really smart mouse.” A Shift in Deaths The incoming five brigades
as part of the new security plan will bring the total number of American
troops in Iraq to about 173,000 when it is complete, more than at any time
since the war began. Many of the new troops are
joining long-term garrisons along with Iraqi forces in particularly violent
neighborhoods of Baghdad, keeping up frequent patrols and trying to
strengthen relations with Iraqis by meeting with local leaders and residents. That has put the Americans
in the middle of sectarian battlegrounds, and their death rate in the city
has nearly doubled. The number of Americans killed in combat or other
violence rose to 53 in Baghdad in the first seven weeks of the push, from
Feb. 14 to April 2. That is up from 29 in the seven weeks before then. Diyala Province, just
northeast of Baghdad, has also been a trouble spot, bitterly contested by
Sunni and Shiite militants. The United States military added a battalion in
the province, and the fighting has been fierce, with 15 Americans killed
there in the seven weeks starting on Feb. 14. The total from the seven weeks
before then was 10. At the same time, though,
the rate of American deaths throughout the country has stayed about the same,
with 116 killed in hostile incidents, up from 113 in the prior seven weeks. As the focus has intensified
on Baghdad, deaths have fallen in some outlying areas - even in Anbar
Province, the heart of the Sunni rebellion where American marines have long
faced intense violence. In the seven weeks after the start of the Baghdad
operation, 31 Americans were killed in Anbar, down from 46 in the seven weeks
beforehand. While it is difficult to
point to any one reason, in recent months Anbar has been at the center of a
fissure in the insurgency between tribes who support the terrorist group Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia and tribes who reject it because it is seen as inviting
foreign fighters. Roadside bombs were by far
the most common means of killing Americans. Deaths in Baghdad and Diyala from
such explosions more than doubled. In Baghdad, 83 percent of troop deaths
since the plan began have been caused by roadside bombs. In Diyala, all but
one of the 15 soldiers who died in the seven-week period were killed by
roadside bombs. Just four were killed by the bombs in the preceding seven
weeks there. Violence Against Civilians The Iraqi government and the
American military refuse to release overall civilian casualty numbers; both
give numbers only for a few categories of deaths, making it difficult to get
an overall picture. One of the last official reports on civilian casualties
came in January from the United Nations, which, citing morgue and hospital
statistics, said at least 34,452 Iraqis were killed last year, or an average
of nearly 100 per day. Over the past seven weeks,
American commanders say that the security push has had some success so far in
cutting down the number of sectarian execution-style killings - tracked by
counting the number of bodies found with gunshot or knife wounds. Military
officials say that such killings have dropped 26 percent nationwide and even
more in Baghdad. But other kinds of attacks,
like car bombings, have kept the overall civilian death rate high, and in
recent days there are anecdotal reports that sectarian executions may be on
the rise again. “We’ve not seen the overall
same significant amount of decline in the overall number of casualties” as in
execution killings, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the
American military command, said in a news conference last week. The American military
believes that much of the drop in executions has come because of decreased
activity by Shiite militias and death squads, especially the powerful Mahdi
Army militia that claims allegiance to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Many militia leaders have
been detained in raids by the American military, according to the Iraqi
government, and despite some major car bomb attacks on Shiite areas, the
militias appear to have decided to refrain from carrying out revenge
killings. “The cycle of violence is
not as predictable,” a senior American military official said. “Iraqi people
are showing restraint, and the ability of death squads to retaliate is being
circumscribed.” However, it appears that not
all Shiite cells, Mahdi Army or otherwise, are so patient. American soldiers
in sections of western Baghdad, as well as Sunni Arabs living there and in
Sunni enclaves south of Baghdad in Babil Province, are reporting that
sectarian killings and threats against Sunni Arab families have begun to rise
again, after a brief hiatus at the start of the security plan. “There’s been spray paint on
walls: ‘Get out or you’ll pay with your blood,’” said Capt. Benjamin Morales,
28, commander of a company of the 82nd Airborne that oversees a
Shiite-dominated section of western Baghdad. There were eight Sunni
households in the area at the start of March; three had left by its end. The Iraqi government has
been encouraging displaced families to return to their abandoned homes and
offering $200 as an incentive. The government said that 2,000 families had
returned by mid-March, but there is no way to verify the numbers. In Fadhil, a Sunni enclave
in eastern Baghdad surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods, residents say Shiite
militias have been attacking with mortar shells and sniper fire. They accuse
the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of taking part, which Iraqi
military officials deny. “The situation was quiet
when the militias left the country, but when they came back, the tension
returned,” said Wamid Salah Hameed, a community leader in Fadhil. “The
military is attacking us and firing at the neighborhood randomly. There is a
sectarian feeling among the soldiers in the army.” Meanwhile, Shiite militias
have burned shops in a Sunni enclave of Babil Province, and Sunni militias
burned Sunni and Shiite homes in Diyala last month. Sunni militias have been
active in Baghdad, too. The number of bodies of their presumed victims that
turn up, tortured and shot, appears to have declined, but not halted, in
recent weeks. In the past three weeks in some mostly Sunni neighborhoods of
western Baghdad, Shiites bringing supplies to displaced families - even
displaced Sunni families - have been kidnapped and killed, their bodies left
in corner lots. “We used to see sometimes
eight bodies a day,” said Sgt. Michael Brosch, of the First Battalion, Fifth
Cavalry. “Sometimes they were all beheaded. Then right at the beginning of
the security plan, we didn’t see any. Now we’re seeing them again.” At the same time, deaths and
injuries nationwide from vehicle bombs, which are typically associated with
Sunni insurgents, particularly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, have continued at a
rapid pace. January and February were
particularly bad months for car bombing deaths; nearly 1,100 were killed in
February alone. That number dropped to 783 in March, still high compared with
months earlier in the war, according to an American military official. But
the overall number of bombings actually increased: there were 108 car bombs
that either detonated or were disarmed in March, a record for the war. Outside of Baghdad, several
huge bombings have been responsible for many of the deaths. The worst, last
month in Tal Afar, killed 152. In Anbar, at least six
bombings involved a terrifying new weapon: truck bombs that spread chlorine
gas, burning victims’ lungs and skin. The deadliest of those attacks, in
Ramadi on Friday, killed at least 30 people. A Fractured Government Most American and Iraqi
officials say that the key to Iraq’s security is a political agreement that
gives Sunni Arabs more power in the government. But the near-term prognosis
for that looks grim, as the calm necessary to negotiate such a deal remains
elusive. Some Shiite leaders have
publicly said they are prepared to reconcile with the minority Sunnis, who
generally prospered under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government. But the
Shiites are still loath to give Sunnis any additional power and risk
returning to the oppressed status they held for centuries. Meanwhile, the Kurds in the
north are pushing policies that will maximize the powers of their autonomous
region, including trying to get control of the ethnically mixed oil-rich city
of Kirkuk. The Sunni Arabs seek several
changes in the government’s structure. They want Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, to make good on his promise to replace
ineffective or corrupt ministers. Mr. Maliki promised the shake-up months ago,
but the proposal now appears moribund. The Sunni Arabs also want
the Constitution amended to bring power back to Baghdad and reduce the chance
that areas in the oil-rich, Shiite-dominated south will follow the model of
Kurdistan and create an autonomous state. In addition, the Sunni Arabs
continue to push for a rollback of purges of Sunni Arabs from government that
began after the Shiites came to power in national elections. But to stop the violence,
the ruling Shiites must deal with Sunnis outside the government, in the
factionalized insurgency, who can offer few guarantees on any promises to
stop bombings against Shiites. “We talk to people who say
they represent the insurgents and they all say the same thing: ‘We oppose the
occupation, but we don’t believe in killing civilians, in killing women and
children,’ ” a senior adviser to Mr. Maliki said. “But our people are dying
in bombs every day. Who is killing them?” Reporting was contributed by
Kirk Semple, Hosham Hussein and Khalid al-Ansary in Baghdad, and Andrew W.
Lehren and Archie Tse in New York. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html Radical Shiite
Cleric Calls on Iraqi Forces to Unite Against the U.S. Military By Edward Wong New York Times April 9, 2007 Baghdad, April 8 - Moktada
al-Sadr, the rebellious Shiite cleric and power broker, exhorted Iraqi
security forces on Sunday to unite with his militiamen against the American
military in Diwaniya, an embattled southern city in Iraq where fighting has
raged for three days. Mr. Sadr’s statement did not
explicitly call for armed struggle against the Americans, but it still
represented his most forceful condemnation of the American-led occupation
since he went underground after the start of an intensified Baghdad security
crackdown nearly two months ago. It also came as his followers streamed out
of Baghdad and other cities to join a mass protest in southern Iraq organized
by Mr. Sadr’s aides to denounce the American occupation of Iraq on Monday,
the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The arteries winding to Najaf,
the holy city where Mr. Sadr has his headquarters, were clogged with vehicles
carrying protesters. Mr. Sadr’s call for
resistance came as the American military announced the deaths of 10 soldiers
in five attacks over the weekend, the highest two-day total for American
fatalities since the new security plan began Feb. 14. Five soldiers were
wounded. Violence against Iraqis continued unabated on Sunday, with at least
43 people killed or found dead. Seventeen were killed and 26 wounded in a car
bombing near a hospital and mosque in the insurgent enclave of Mahmudiya,
south of Baghdad. Mr. Sadr’s statement on
Sunday indicated he might be ready to resume steering his militia, the Mahdi
Army, toward more open confrontation with the American military. The Mahdi Army has generally
been lying low during the Baghdad security plan, but intense fighting broke
out in Diwaniya on Friday between militiamen and American-led forces. The
battles erupted when American and Iraqi soldiers isolated neighborhoods in
Diwaniya to search for militiamen. Fighter jets hit militia positions on
Saturday, and one police official said at least seven Iraqis had been killed
and 15 wounded in the fighting. Residents reported American soldiers
scampering across rooftops on Saturday evening. The battles in Diwaniya have
been the most violent in months between the Mahdi Army and the Americans, and
could portend violence in other strongholds of the Sadr militia. Mahdi Army
fighters began moving to Diwaniya and other southern cities when the Baghdad
crackdown began. “The strife that is taking
place in Diwaniya was planned by the occupier to drag down the brothers and
make them quarrel, fight and even kill each other,” Mr. Sadr said in a
written statement. “Oh my brothers in the Mahdi Army and my brothers in the
security forces, stop fighting and killing because that is what our enemy and
your enemy and even God’s enemy hope for.” Mr. Sadr added: “God ordered
you to be patient and to unite your efforts against the enemy and not against
the sons of Iraq. They want to drag you into a war that ends Shiitism and
Islam, but they cannot.” Mr. Sadr’s influence over
the security forces in Diwaniya is unclear. Many Iraqi Army commanders and
police officials there take orders from the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is the main rival to Mr.
Sadr’s organization. The American military said
Sunday that at least 39 people suspected of being militiamen had been
detained during the weekend fighting, and soldiers had uncovered caches of
particularly deadly explosives that American officials contended came from
Iran. Mr. Sadr led two rebellions
against the Americans in 2004 and emerged more powerful from each, even
though thousands of his fighters were killed. He entered mainstream politics,
and his followers now hold at least 30 seats in Parliament and critical
cabinet postings. He also has a powerful protector in Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite who gained the top job because of Mr.
Sadr’s support. Although Mr. Sadr has a home
in Najaf, his current whereabouts are a mystery. American military officials
say he is in Iran, but supporters insist he is still in Iraq. There have been
explosions of violence involving the Mahdi Army before the fighting at
Diwaniya. On March 30, a battle erupted in a Baghdad neighborhood between
Mahdi Army fighters and Kurdish soldiers brought in from the north as part of
the security plan. The Iraqi government said
Sunday that it would ban all traffic in Baghdad on Monday as an extra
security precaution on the anniversary of the fall of the capital to the
Americans. Security officials in Najaf
said they had prepared for the Sadr rally by blocking any arriving vehicle
not locally registered. Residents said they feared bombings by Sunni
insurgents. “The thing that worries me about the demonstration are possible
attacks by takfiris,” said Salam Hussein, a 35-year-old teacher, using a
Shiite term for Sunni militants. “Some people might try to make security
problems. Other than that, the protest is a good sign of freedom.” An Iraqi employee of The New
York Times contributed reporting from Najaf. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html |