.AP Blog: Iraq Violence Claims Many Lives
Wednesday, May 24, 2006, 11:40 p.m. local
BAGHDAD, Iraq
A university professor. Two young men hustling black market gasoline on a sidewalk. A college student taking the bus to class. A top tennis player and two of his friends. All were gunned down Wednesday in Iraq's roiling violence.
Not so long ago, it was mostly uniformed police, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, government officials and former Saddam Hussein loyalists who were at risk of assassination. True, anybody could die in the random mortar blast or in a roadside bombing intended for passing American convoys or Iraqi police patrols. Tragic as they were, those deaths often seemed the result of bad luck as much as anything else.
Now, however, the victims of drive-by shootings, bombings and assassination range so broadly throughout Iraqi society that almost everyone seems to be at risk. It's as if every Iraqi is somebody's enemy - and somebody's potential victim. The pain of the victims' families are lost in the numbing statistics - a dozen bodies found here, five people gunned down there.
The grim change stems from the evolving nature of the Iraq conflict. What began as a fight by Saddam loyalists, religious fanatics and Sunni Arab nationalists against foreign military occupation has now morphed into a killing free-for-all in Baghdad and other religiously mixed areas.
With Shiite-Sunni tensions running high, much of the killing in Baghdad is deemed sectarian - tit-for-tat slaughter as the two rival religious groups fight for power in the post-Saddam Iraq. Sunni Arabs, the once privileged minority, fear domination by Shiites, still bitter over the oppression they suffered under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and angry over attacks by al-Qaida and others who consider Shiites as heretics.
If anything, the sectarian conflict may intensify if the Americans and their coalition partners pull out too quickly. Fear of just such an eventuality is one of the most compelling reasons for American and other foreign troops to remain here longer.
Often, however, it's hard to tell the motivation for the killings. Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs are indistinguishable physically, and who knows whether the sidewalk gasoline vendor who dies in a hail of bullets prayed in a Sunni or a Shiite mosque.
Most neighborhoods in Baghdad are religiously mixed, and a bomb detonated anywhere in the city is likely to kill or maim someone from either sect.
Some of the killings are probably criminal. Bombs that explode in grocery stores could be part of an extortion campaign. No one knows how many single victim deaths could be due to an armed robbery gone bad.
The tradition of vendetta killing runs deep in Iraqi tribal society. Kill someone, and his brothers and cousins will come after you.
In the final analysis, it almost doesn't matter what the motivation. What's important is for the new national unity government to stop it. And many veteran Iraq experts are skeptical at best over the new government's chances, no matter the sincerity of its intentions.
"Frankly, I think the tasks and difficulties are so great that expectations of improvement, if any, should be modest," said Phebe Marr, one of the foremost American scholars on Iraq. "The security situation will take time, effort, and in my view, resources which do not seem to be forthcoming from the U.S. and the international community."
The White House is pinning its hopes on the new Iraqi army and police to measure up to the challenge. Training both forces is a top priority, as well as bringing more Sunni Arabs into the ranks to win the confidence of that community.
As President Bush has said, when the Iraqis stand up, the coalition will stand down.
Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, seems committed to restoring order. He told Al-Arabiya television that he's ordered Iraqi forces to draw up a plan to protect Baghdad with "well-trained units" and to make sure that people who fled their homes due to sectarian threats can return in safety.
But that's a tall order in a country where loyalties to sect and ethnic group are sometimes stronger than to the nation. National loyalty is tough to develop when your fellow countrymen are out to get you purely on the basis of where you pray.
"The rank and file of both forces are neither well enough trained to be fully effective on their own, nor sufficiently loyal to the national government to remain above the sectarian struggles," said John Chipman, director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's doubtful that a collective sense of Iraqi nationalism can survive in a context of increasing sectarian violence."
---
Saturday, May 20, 9:30 p.m. local time
BAGHDAD, Iraq
The much-heralded Iraqi government of national unity took office Saturday - inside a 4-square-mile enclave of central Baghdad surrounded by blast walls and crash barriers and guarded by heavily armed American and Iraqi troops. It was the only place in town safe enough for the lawmakers to meet.
Many of the 275 parliament members, Cabinet officials, staff assistants and journalists arrived for the historic session in armored cars, accompanied by armed bodyguards. The guards, known here as PSDs or personal security details, were required to remain outside the meeting hall to avoid any bust-ups between rival political groups.
To discourage any would-be suicide attackers from ramming into a VIP's convoy, streets around the Green Zone were swarming with Iraqi police and soldiers. Extra checkpoints were set up along highways linking the area to insurgent-infested neighborhoods to the west.
No wonder Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had so much to say about security when he delivered his first speech after he and his Cabinet took their oaths of office.
"The first challenge we face is security and how to deal with the terrorist killers who are destroying the country," al-Maliki said, staring directly into the television cameras without even a hint of a smile. "Those people should know that this government is designed in a way to effectively face this challenge."
Tough words from a tough man who once supervised Shiite guerrillas battling Saddam Hussein's regime while in exile in Syria. But al-Maliki faces a tough task, and success is by no means assured.
U.S. officials have a lot riding on al-Maliki's government, put together during five-months of tortuous negotiations among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political parties. American officials hope a government more broadly based than the last one will be able to win the trust of all Iraqi communities so that the U.S. and its partners can begin withdrawing.
"It is our wish that, as the government strengthens in its governing, Iraqis can protect themselves and American troops can come home," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement.
Ironically, the Pentagon actually plans to increase the number of troops in Iraq, at least in the short term, to help the new government get on its feet. Several hundred additional American soldiers from the 1st Armored Division will be coming into the country from Kuwait, according to a Defense Department official.
Still, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the new government moves Iraq closer to providing for its own defense. But he avoided any specific date for a major withdrawal of American forces. Privately, American diplomats and military officers say it will take six to nine months before they can tell whether al-Maliki will fare better than his predecessors.
"Although there may be tactical increases here and there, strategically we're going to be moving in the direction of downsizing our forces," Khalilzad said.
Khalilzad cautioned that any talk of troop cuts is "always dependent on the conditions."
And conditions don't look so good. At least 51 American service members have already died in Iraq this month. Even before the ceremony, a bomb hidden in a paper bag exploded in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding 58, according to police.
Out west in Qaim near the Syrian border, a suicide car bomber killed five people and wounded 10 in an attack on a police station. In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber apparently trying to target a U.S. military convoy instead killed three Iraqi civilians, police Brig. Abdul-Hamid al-Jibouri said.
And police found the bodies of 22 people who had been kidnapped, tortured and slain. Fifteen of them were found in Musayyib, a mixed Shiite-Sunni town which has long been a center of sectarian violence.
That has been life in the "red zone," the part of Iraq that lies outside the 4-square mile "green zone" enclave. And such is the challenge Nouri al-Maliki and his American backers face.
MyWay ~ AP Blog
BAGHDAD, Iraq
A university professor. Two young men hustling black market gasoline on a sidewalk. A college student taking the bus to class. A top tennis player and two of his friends. All were gunned down Wednesday in Iraq's roiling violence.
Not so long ago, it was mostly uniformed police, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, government officials and former Saddam Hussein loyalists who were at risk of assassination. True, anybody could die in the random mortar blast or in a roadside bombing intended for passing American convoys or Iraqi police patrols. Tragic as they were, those deaths often seemed the result of bad luck as much as anything else.
Now, however, the victims of drive-by shootings, bombings and assassination range so broadly throughout Iraqi society that almost everyone seems to be at risk. It's as if every Iraqi is somebody's enemy - and somebody's potential victim. The pain of the victims' families are lost in the numbing statistics - a dozen bodies found here, five people gunned down there.
The grim change stems from the evolving nature of the Iraq conflict. What began as a fight by Saddam loyalists, religious fanatics and Sunni Arab nationalists against foreign military occupation has now morphed into a killing free-for-all in Baghdad and other religiously mixed areas.
With Shiite-Sunni tensions running high, much of the killing in Baghdad is deemed sectarian - tit-for-tat slaughter as the two rival religious groups fight for power in the post-Saddam Iraq. Sunni Arabs, the once privileged minority, fear domination by Shiites, still bitter over the oppression they suffered under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and angry over attacks by al-Qaida and others who consider Shiites as heretics.
If anything, the sectarian conflict may intensify if the Americans and their coalition partners pull out too quickly. Fear of just such an eventuality is one of the most compelling reasons for American and other foreign troops to remain here longer.
Often, however, it's hard to tell the motivation for the killings. Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs are indistinguishable physically, and who knows whether the sidewalk gasoline vendor who dies in a hail of bullets prayed in a Sunni or a Shiite mosque.
Most neighborhoods in Baghdad are religiously mixed, and a bomb detonated anywhere in the city is likely to kill or maim someone from either sect.
Some of the killings are probably criminal. Bombs that explode in grocery stores could be part of an extortion campaign. No one knows how many single victim deaths could be due to an armed robbery gone bad.
The tradition of vendetta killing runs deep in Iraqi tribal society. Kill someone, and his brothers and cousins will come after you.
In the final analysis, it almost doesn't matter what the motivation. What's important is for the new national unity government to stop it. And many veteran Iraq experts are skeptical at best over the new government's chances, no matter the sincerity of its intentions.
"Frankly, I think the tasks and difficulties are so great that expectations of improvement, if any, should be modest," said Phebe Marr, one of the foremost American scholars on Iraq. "The security situation will take time, effort, and in my view, resources which do not seem to be forthcoming from the U.S. and the international community."
The White House is pinning its hopes on the new Iraqi army and police to measure up to the challenge. Training both forces is a top priority, as well as bringing more Sunni Arabs into the ranks to win the confidence of that community.
As President Bush has said, when the Iraqis stand up, the coalition will stand down.
Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, seems committed to restoring order. He told Al-Arabiya television that he's ordered Iraqi forces to draw up a plan to protect Baghdad with "well-trained units" and to make sure that people who fled their homes due to sectarian threats can return in safety.
But that's a tall order in a country where loyalties to sect and ethnic group are sometimes stronger than to the nation. National loyalty is tough to develop when your fellow countrymen are out to get you purely on the basis of where you pray.
"The rank and file of both forces are neither well enough trained to be fully effective on their own, nor sufficiently loyal to the national government to remain above the sectarian struggles," said John Chipman, director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's doubtful that a collective sense of Iraqi nationalism can survive in a context of increasing sectarian violence."
---
Saturday, May 20, 9:30 p.m. local time
BAGHDAD, Iraq
The much-heralded Iraqi government of national unity took office Saturday - inside a 4-square-mile enclave of central Baghdad surrounded by blast walls and crash barriers and guarded by heavily armed American and Iraqi troops. It was the only place in town safe enough for the lawmakers to meet.
Many of the 275 parliament members, Cabinet officials, staff assistants and journalists arrived for the historic session in armored cars, accompanied by armed bodyguards. The guards, known here as PSDs or personal security details, were required to remain outside the meeting hall to avoid any bust-ups between rival political groups.
To discourage any would-be suicide attackers from ramming into a VIP's convoy, streets around the Green Zone were swarming with Iraqi police and soldiers. Extra checkpoints were set up along highways linking the area to insurgent-infested neighborhoods to the west.
No wonder Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had so much to say about security when he delivered his first speech after he and his Cabinet took their oaths of office.
"The first challenge we face is security and how to deal with the terrorist killers who are destroying the country," al-Maliki said, staring directly into the television cameras without even a hint of a smile. "Those people should know that this government is designed in a way to effectively face this challenge."
Tough words from a tough man who once supervised Shiite guerrillas battling Saddam Hussein's regime while in exile in Syria. But al-Maliki faces a tough task, and success is by no means assured.
U.S. officials have a lot riding on al-Maliki's government, put together during five-months of tortuous negotiations among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political parties. American officials hope a government more broadly based than the last one will be able to win the trust of all Iraqi communities so that the U.S. and its partners can begin withdrawing.
"It is our wish that, as the government strengthens in its governing, Iraqis can protect themselves and American troops can come home," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement.
Ironically, the Pentagon actually plans to increase the number of troops in Iraq, at least in the short term, to help the new government get on its feet. Several hundred additional American soldiers from the 1st Armored Division will be coming into the country from Kuwait, according to a Defense Department official.
Still, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the new government moves Iraq closer to providing for its own defense. But he avoided any specific date for a major withdrawal of American forces. Privately, American diplomats and military officers say it will take six to nine months before they can tell whether al-Maliki will fare better than his predecessors.
"Although there may be tactical increases here and there, strategically we're going to be moving in the direction of downsizing our forces," Khalilzad said.
Khalilzad cautioned that any talk of troop cuts is "always dependent on the conditions."
And conditions don't look so good. At least 51 American service members have already died in Iraq this month. Even before the ceremony, a bomb hidden in a paper bag exploded in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding 58, according to police.
Out west in Qaim near the Syrian border, a suicide car bomber killed five people and wounded 10 in an attack on a police station. In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber apparently trying to target a U.S. military convoy instead killed three Iraqi civilians, police Brig. Abdul-Hamid al-Jibouri said.
And police found the bodies of 22 people who had been kidnapped, tortured and slain. Fifteen of them were found in Musayyib, a mixed Shiite-Sunni town which has long been a center of sectarian violence.
That has been life in the "red zone," the part of Iraq that lies outside the 4-square mile "green zone" enclave. And such is the challenge Nouri al-Maliki and his American backers face.
MyWay ~ AP Blog
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