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| Iraq |
| US casualties in Iraq falling steadily since the summer |
| 2006-04-01 |
| Gunmen in police uniform kill and kidnap at electronics shops. A mosque raid draws government charges that U.S. troops run Iraqi forces beyond its control. Bodies turn up on streets as militia death squads roam freely. This week’s violence in Iraq suggests the conflict has entered an ominous new stage where crime gangs, Sunni Arab insurgents and pro-government Shia militias overlap as violence pushes the country closer to sectarian civil war. What began with a murky Sunni revolt against occupation and then the US-backed interim government has exploded into a communal and criminal battlefield where determining who is killing whom -- let alone why -- is getting harder every day. “The Sunni insurgency is now complemented by the Shia militias who are getting very powerful and are able to wreak havoc on the Sunnis,” said Martin Navias, at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College in London. “The various groups are killing each other and kidnapping but not openly doing it. It is a type of ethnic cleansing. But it is not an open civil war.” Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a unity government more than three months after elections, raising concerns that a widening political vacuum will foster ever more violence. Analysts say that while the new trends were alarming, there were no signs that the violence is about to spill over into open warfare with street battles between Iraq’s main Shia, Arab Sunni and ethnic Kurdish groups. A fall in American casualties since last summer suggests that US troops, with growing numbers of Iraqi allies, have made gains over insurgents. March should show one of the lowest monthly US death tolls of the war, possibly the lowest in two years. But measuring success in those terms on that conventional military front is easier than gauging progress in the battle against a complex network of criminals, militias and insurgents -- all of whom can show up in police or army uniforms. Gunmen dressed as police commandos -- precise accounts of the uniforms varied -- killed nine people in an attack on an electronics store in Baghdad on Wednesday, one of a series of raids against lucrative businesses in the capital this week. Workers, including women, were rounded up and then killed. On Monday and Tuesday, a total of 35 people were abducted in four attacks, including two on electronics dealers and one on a money-changer where the attackers also stole $50,000. Determining whether they were criminals or insurgents seeking funds seems impossible in Iraq’s chaos. Police officers in the area where the raids were carried out said they had no idea who was responsible. “Many security groups work in Iraq and nobody knows who they are or what they are doing,” said one police lieutenant colonel, who would give his name only as the familiar Abu Mohammed for fear of reprisals from his shadowy adversaries. “There are now many organised crime groups working under formal cover, as militias or security companies. It’s hard to figure out who they are, let alone who is behind them.” One businessman who said he was familiar with some of the businesses targeted said several belonged to one man, suggesting attacks by racketeers. That could not be confirmed, however. Hazim Al Naimi, a politics professor at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University, said the raids were another disturbing sign that the conflict has been escalating since the bombing of a Shia shrine last month touched off bloody reprisals. Since then, hundreds of bodies have turned up in the streets, many shot or strangled with signs of torture. “The crisis has become very complicated now. We are seeing raids on electronics shops that make no sense. It could be a campaign to wreck the economy so Iraqis don’t set up businesses. It’s hard to tell,” said Naimi. Al Qaeda’s Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the man who has been most predictable in Iraq’s conflict, has been keeping a low profile. His suicide bombers have eased off, leading Interior Minister Bayan Jabor to conclude Zarqawi is no longer a threat. But US officers say he is shifting attacks away from American soldiers and Shia civilians to Iraqi security forces and more targeted killing, raising fears of new violence as the authorities try to grapple with deepening mayhem. Long-term stability ultimately depends on whether Iraqi forces can take on militants and insurgents on their own. US commanders have been praising Iraqi special forces for a raid on a Baghdad mosque compound on Sunday night which left what they said were 16 “terrorists” dead. But as government-run state television showed lengthy footage of the bullet-ridden bodies, Shia leaders accused the Americans of a massacre of unarmed worshippers and directing Iraqi forces without a green light from the Iraqi government. Police and local residents said the compound was a base for the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia. But the US military says it still has no idea who the 16 were despite extensive intelligence work ahead of the raid and the rescue of a tortured hostage. “People ought to be focused on the fact that 50 members of the Iraqi special operations forces planned and conducted this. And it was flawless. Flawless,” US Major General Rick Lynch told a news conference on Thursday. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #13 Nobody is f'ing with the Kurds. You know why? They will take the fight to the bastards who are bankrolling all this incitement to civil war: Iran (and Syria to a lesser extent). They have organization and clandestine operations cells there from decades of dealing with opression. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-04-01 22:37 |
| #12 I wouldn't be surprised to read "the cumulative death toll has gone down" if it could be spun to hurt W. The utter impossibility would evade our MSM geniuses just like the fact that life has a 100% fatality rate (oooohhh!! Global warming?) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-04-01 22:19 |
| #11 I think somebody missed the humor in Jackal's MSM impersonation. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2006-04-01 21:52 |
| #10 And the cumulative total would still increase if one American was killed every two months. In fact, someone who didn't want you to notice that the RATE has gone down to practically nothing would call attention to that fact. Considering that we're counting deaths, the cumulative total is hardly expected to decrease. in fact, I'd sorta think that if I went out there and resurrected 100 people, you'd complain that the cumulative total has gone down "a piddling fraction of the total." |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-04-01 21:48 |
| #9 Cumulative death toll rising....good one Jackal! Its a bear-doing-what-in-the-woods moment, heh. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2006-04-01 10:42 |
| #8 But the cumulative death toll keeps rising. :> |
| Posted by: 6 2006-04-01 10:04 |
| #7 i say just arm the kueds better and klet the shias and sunnis kill each other off |
| Posted by: Greamp Elmavinter1163 2006-04-01 09:46 |
| #6 But the cumulative death toll keeps rising. So? It continues to raise on the highways, in the cities, and everywhere people live. Senseless, far less than being done in by some rectal orifice of an excuse driving DUI for the umpteenth time. Given the choice between during 24 in Iraq or traveling some of our roads on Friday or Saturday night, I'd say you have a better chance of survival in the former. |
| Posted by: Whomotle Ebbise1474 2006-04-01 09:27 |
| #5 Most news reports emphasize body count rather than the fact that it's Iraqi-on-Iraqi. I suspect that's because if Americans were more aware that these casualties are mostly Iraqi internicene violence, we'd take the view widely expressed during the Iran/Iraq war: "I hope they both lose." Now that I think of it, considering the factions involved this may be in fact another Iran/Iraq War. |
| Posted by: regular joe 2006-04-01 09:19 |
| #4 But the cumulative death toll keeps rising. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2006-04-01 09:02 |
| #3 Here's the newsy part: March should show one of the lowest monthly US death tolls of the war, possibly the lowest in two years. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-04-01 06:27 |
| #2 Re-read the first few paragraphs of this - a classic of the distorted self-parody of reporting that is now common. Every few weeks there's a new "alarming" turn in the war, every time portending - you guessed it - a step closer to "civil war". The distortion here is really quite dramatic. Criminality centered on money has been at the heart of most of the so-called "insurgency" among most Sunnis, not to mention being at the root of almost all kidnapping and much of the other misbehavior. But it would be unseemly to portray the vicious quasi-fascist mercenary thugs behind the "insurgency" as, well, vicious quasi-fascist mercenary thugs. I say "quasi-fascist" because like other Arabs these particular losers can't really even get the twisted, evil, malevolent European-invented models of statecraft that they've tried to imitate quite right. Scan "news" reports out of Iraq and behold words you'll hardly find in any other hard news stories on any other topic: "raging, exploding, wave of violence (means 2 small attacks in city the size of LA), chaos, teetering on brink of civil war, blah blah blah". Someone with the patience and time really oughta carefully document this - it would be striking. |
| Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq 2006-04-01 03:51 |
| #1 Electronics shops make sense if they are out of electronics kits for IEDs. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-04-01 00:57 |