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| Iraq |
| The Scotsman on the Iraqi security situation |
| 2005-09-25 |
| SAFE inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the concrete-barricaded headquarters shared by the Iraqi government, foreign diplomats and contractors, the official line is still that the situation in Iraq is one of progress towards democracy and a gradual hand-over from US and allied troops to Iraqi control. But just a few minutes walk away, in what US security jargon describes as the 'Red Zone', the daily reality involves death, random violence and routine deprivations for most people. Meanwhile, across the country, chaos still reigns in most public services. Electricity cuts are common, and the water supply is sporadic. Chronic insecurity means that few new jobs are being created. • THE SUNNI TRIANGLE The focal point of Iraqi resistance to the allied occupation. Nearly two-thirds of insurgent attacks have taken place in this area, where Saddam Hussein's cronies still hold power. Although they make up only about 35% of Iraq's population of 24m, Sunni Arabs dominated Iraq under Saddam. Many bitterly resent their loss of dominance to the Shias and the Kurds. Geographically the triangle extends from Baghdad in the south to Ramadi in the West and Tikrit, Saddam's birth place, in the north. Militarily, it falls partly in the area of the Multinational Division North Centre and Multi-National Force West, both US-led. It includes Fallujah, a city of 300,000 said to have been the headquarters of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a £14m price on his head after his al-Qaeda-linked movement claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages. Al-Zarqawi was not captured in a US/Iraqi operation in Fallujah that killed some 1,500 Iraqis, and he is still issuing bloodthirsty communiques threatening the US and its allies. The insurgency was merely dispersed around the country. When the fighting ended, US Marines attempted to kickstart the ruined city by handing out $6.4m to 32,219 heads of households. Iraqi ministries slowly began to reconnect electricity lines and water, while Iraqi officials handed out basic foodstuffs to the survivors. But today the insurgency still has support in Fallujah. At least four car bombs have exploded in recent months, one of them killing six American troops, including four women. Thousands of American and Iraqi troops still live in crumbling buildings and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10pm curfew. • WESTERN IRAQ A vast tract of desert that stretches to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the US is engaged in a little-reported desert war against an invisible enemy. The US accuses Syria of allowing insurgents to filter across its border with Iraq and providing weapons and aid to the insurgency. US forces last week concluded a three-week operation against Sunni Arab insurgents in the northern town of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border. Predominantly Sunni, Tal Afar was thought to be a base for militants linked to al-Zarqawi; its neighbourhoods were in the grip of insurgents, with deserted streets and boarded-up shop fronts. Iraqi General Abdul Aziz Mohammed has declared the operation a success, with 157 insurgents killed and 683 captured. However, after previous offensives insurgents have later sneaked back into towns and resumed their attacks. Other insurgent groups in the area include the Islamic Army in Iraq, which last week offered $100,000 for the killing of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, $50,000 for Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and $30,000 for Defence Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimial • BASRA Has been viewed, from afar at least, as a relatively safe and peaceful sector. Last week's images of crowds firebombing British armoured vehicles, and demands by local authorities to try two captured special forces soldiers, exposed that as a false view. Britain has spent the past two and a half years trying to secure the city and its surrounding area, building up local security forces in the expectation that Iraqi forces could take over and allow British troops to withdraw. £391m has been spent by the UK on reconstruction and humanitarian assistance in Iraq, most of it in the Basra region. But today, electricity production is no higher than it was just before the 2003 invasion, according to the Department for International Development. People in Basra receive only five to eight hours electricity a day. Water is also an issue, with the completion of a reliable water supply still many months away. Last week's incidents also revealed the extent to which power has shifted into the hands of extremist Shiite clerics, who have set about the Islamification of Basra. The Shia mullahs work in close coordination with their counterparts in Iran, with British troops unable to prevent Islamic insurgents, supplies of weapons and other smuggling goods from entering Iraq. • KURDISTAN The only area of Iraq where the benefits of the post-Saddam Hussein era are clear - partly because the area was a safe haven for a decade before the invasion thanks to the Allied no-fly zone. Not only do the Kurds have their own regional government, but their two main political parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, formed an alliance for this year's elections and emerged as the second biggest party in the new Iraqi parliament. Kurdistan also provides Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani. The Kurdish language, banned under Saddam, now flourishes in schools and the arts - and the small Assyrian and Turkmen minorities are allowed use their own languages. Kurdistan was devastated by Saddam's campaign to destroy the rural power bases of the Kurdish resistance and a principal aim of the Regional Ministry of Regional Construction and Development is to repopulate all 3,800 rural communities that were depopulated, starting with installing water supplies. More than 250 foreign companies, many too scared to do business elsewhere in Iraq, are operating in Kurdistan. The new airport at Irbid has just received its first flights from Dubai, Beirut and Amman. But it is the Kurdish, not the Iraqi, flag that flies at Irbid International Airport, and the greatest hope of many Kurds is eventually to secede from Iraq. That prospect is profoundly disturbing for Iraq's immediate neighbours - Turkey, Iran, Russia and Syria - who all have Kurdish minorities who harbour similar aspirations. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 A vast tract of desert that stretches to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the US is engaged in a little-reported desert war against an invisible enemy. It is "little-reported" in the MSM, but well covered at billroggio.com and a few others. So who's fault is it that MSM coverage is so poor? |
| Posted by: VRWconspiracy 2005-09-25 13:56 |