.Mortars let fly as Iraq draws first front line of civil war
The battle lines of a full-scale civil war in Iraq have been drawn in Baghdad.
Highway 60 has become one of the bloodiest fronts in the war between Sunni and Shia. Known to its frightened inhabitants as the "street of death", the road in the south-east of the capital is a symbol of the sectarian violence that is pushing the country ever closer to the abyss.
A nondescript suburban street containing half a dozen schools, the local hospital and a children's nursery, it has become the dividing line between the Sunnis and Shia, who once lived side by side yet now face each other across a mile-long strip of no man's land.
Members of the once mixed community have been forced to move their homes to what are, in effect, two sectarian enclaves.
In an escalation of the violence which is claiming hundreds of lives in Baghdad each week, the skies above Highway 60 resound, day and night, to the blast of home-made mortars as militiamen shell each other's communities - safe in the knowledge that they will not be harming their own.
Sitting outside the Al Hussein mosque in the centre of Abu Disheer, now an exclusively Shia district, Abu Raad boasts proudly of his precision with a home-made mortar.
"We have watched for three years while the Sunni killed our brothers and now it is time for revenge," said the 26-year-old fighter, a former soldier in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. "All those people in Dora are terrorists. I shot two missiles at them and I feel proud."
The total separation of the two communities was completed last week with the murder of a Shia family in the Sunni stronghold of Dora City, on the northern side of Highway 60.
The incident prompted the last remaining Shia to flee the enclave with their possessions and lit the fuse for an explosion of violence between the two communities.
The execution of the Shia family in their home by militiamen, after they were warned in an anonymous note to leave, prompted a spate of mortar attacks into Dora City from a park in Abu Disheer. Abu Mahmood, the 44-year-old neighbour of the murdered family, said: "It makes me sad because not so long ago we all lived together. Now all the Shia have left."
Mahmood said he had cautioned the family of 12, which included three women and two children, that it was no longer safe to remain. "I told the father, Abu Ali, to leave because the fighters seemed serious. He refused and told me, 'We have a good relationship with all the people in this neighbourhood'," he said. "After a week the fighters came by in four cars and killed them inside the house."
The worsening security crisis has left a growing sense of dread among the new Iraqi government and the American-led coalition forces, with the United States ambassador claiming last week that sectarian violence was now a greater threat to the country's future than the three-year insurgency.
In the past seven days up to 200 have died in the capital alone in Sunni-Shia confrontations. These include a double suicide bombing near the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, a series of car bombs and the ambush on Tuesday of a bus containing Shia mourners returning from a burial.
As Baghdad and surrounding provinces fall apart in a bloodbath of anarchic violence, the Iraqi government and US military have recruited militia leaders to rein in the death squads that now roam many parts of the city, seemingly at will.
More than 40 people lost their lives when Shia gunmen set up checkpoints in a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of west Baghdad and began executing people, leaving their bullet-ridden corpses strewn across the street.
A month-old security clampdown that has flooded the city streets with 50,000 Iraqi troops and police seems to have done little to curb the bloodletting.
An Iraqi journalist who witnessed first-hand the Jihad City death squads told The Sunday Telegraph that the executions took place only half a mile from a manned Iraqi army checkpoint.
The reporter was driving to see his fiancée when he was stopped by a gunmen brandishing an AK47 rifle and ushered out of his car.
"I did not know what to tell them about my background because I did not know where they were from," he said. But he told them he was a Shia after recognising among the vigilantes the green headscarf worn by fighters loyal to the Mahdi army, the Shia militia led by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which has been accused of drilling holes in victims' eyes and limbs before executing them.
Still unconvinced, the gunmen led him down a narrow side street where his identity card was scrutinised by one of the militia heads.
"As they were talking to me I saw a young man dragged out of a BMW car and pushed into the side street," he said.
"He was Sunni, you could tell from his accent. He was forced to kneel on the ground and a Kalashnikov was placed against his head.
"The man was pleading for his life but the fighter, who had his face covered, was shouting 'You are a Sunni, you are a terrorist and you should die. Sit down now'. The next moment I heard the gun go off and there was blood everywhere. It was a few metres away."
After being released he drove to the Iraqi army checkpoint to warn them but his pleas were greeted with indifference by the soldiers on duty.
"I told them the Mahdi army are killing Sunnis in Jihad City. One of the soldiers said 'Oh really' and he was laughing. They didn't move, I couldn't believe it. You could here gunshots as we were talking."
Many of the recruits to Iraq's fledging armed forces are drawn from al-Sadr's militias.
As Iraqi security forces and the US military are accused of turning a blind eye to the slaughter, observers fear that the country has reached a third, even more intractable, phase in the recent conflict, beyond insurgency and beyond even combat between organised armed groups.
"What we're now seeing has no shape whatever," a Western diplomat said. "It's just everyone fighting everyone. Anarchy."
Telegraph
To think that when this all started it was about gays and prostitutes. The simple excess that no one was willing to stand up against. Now look what it's turned into. Smart these people are. They knew us all to well.
Highway 60 has become one of the bloodiest fronts in the war between Sunni and Shia. Known to its frightened inhabitants as the "street of death", the road in the south-east of the capital is a symbol of the sectarian violence that is pushing the country ever closer to the abyss.
A nondescript suburban street containing half a dozen schools, the local hospital and a children's nursery, it has become the dividing line between the Sunnis and Shia, who once lived side by side yet now face each other across a mile-long strip of no man's land.
Members of the once mixed community have been forced to move their homes to what are, in effect, two sectarian enclaves.
In an escalation of the violence which is claiming hundreds of lives in Baghdad each week, the skies above Highway 60 resound, day and night, to the blast of home-made mortars as militiamen shell each other's communities - safe in the knowledge that they will not be harming their own.
Sitting outside the Al Hussein mosque in the centre of Abu Disheer, now an exclusively Shia district, Abu Raad boasts proudly of his precision with a home-made mortar.
"We have watched for three years while the Sunni killed our brothers and now it is time for revenge," said the 26-year-old fighter, a former soldier in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. "All those people in Dora are terrorists. I shot two missiles at them and I feel proud."
The total separation of the two communities was completed last week with the murder of a Shia family in the Sunni stronghold of Dora City, on the northern side of Highway 60.
The incident prompted the last remaining Shia to flee the enclave with their possessions and lit the fuse for an explosion of violence between the two communities.
The execution of the Shia family in their home by militiamen, after they were warned in an anonymous note to leave, prompted a spate of mortar attacks into Dora City from a park in Abu Disheer. Abu Mahmood, the 44-year-old neighbour of the murdered family, said: "It makes me sad because not so long ago we all lived together. Now all the Shia have left."
Mahmood said he had cautioned the family of 12, which included three women and two children, that it was no longer safe to remain. "I told the father, Abu Ali, to leave because the fighters seemed serious. He refused and told me, 'We have a good relationship with all the people in this neighbourhood'," he said. "After a week the fighters came by in four cars and killed them inside the house."
The worsening security crisis has left a growing sense of dread among the new Iraqi government and the American-led coalition forces, with the United States ambassador claiming last week that sectarian violence was now a greater threat to the country's future than the three-year insurgency.
In the past seven days up to 200 have died in the capital alone in Sunni-Shia confrontations. These include a double suicide bombing near the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, a series of car bombs and the ambush on Tuesday of a bus containing Shia mourners returning from a burial.
As Baghdad and surrounding provinces fall apart in a bloodbath of anarchic violence, the Iraqi government and US military have recruited militia leaders to rein in the death squads that now roam many parts of the city, seemingly at will.
More than 40 people lost their lives when Shia gunmen set up checkpoints in a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of west Baghdad and began executing people, leaving their bullet-ridden corpses strewn across the street.
A month-old security clampdown that has flooded the city streets with 50,000 Iraqi troops and police seems to have done little to curb the bloodletting.
An Iraqi journalist who witnessed first-hand the Jihad City death squads told The Sunday Telegraph that the executions took place only half a mile from a manned Iraqi army checkpoint.
The reporter was driving to see his fiancée when he was stopped by a gunmen brandishing an AK47 rifle and ushered out of his car.
"I did not know what to tell them about my background because I did not know where they were from," he said. But he told them he was a Shia after recognising among the vigilantes the green headscarf worn by fighters loyal to the Mahdi army, the Shia militia led by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which has been accused of drilling holes in victims' eyes and limbs before executing them.
Still unconvinced, the gunmen led him down a narrow side street where his identity card was scrutinised by one of the militia heads.
"As they were talking to me I saw a young man dragged out of a BMW car and pushed into the side street," he said.
"He was Sunni, you could tell from his accent. He was forced to kneel on the ground and a Kalashnikov was placed against his head.
"The man was pleading for his life but the fighter, who had his face covered, was shouting 'You are a Sunni, you are a terrorist and you should die. Sit down now'. The next moment I heard the gun go off and there was blood everywhere. It was a few metres away."
After being released he drove to the Iraqi army checkpoint to warn them but his pleas were greeted with indifference by the soldiers on duty.
"I told them the Mahdi army are killing Sunnis in Jihad City. One of the soldiers said 'Oh really' and he was laughing. They didn't move, I couldn't believe it. You could here gunshots as we were talking."
Many of the recruits to Iraq's fledging armed forces are drawn from al-Sadr's militias.
As Iraqi security forces and the US military are accused of turning a blind eye to the slaughter, observers fear that the country has reached a third, even more intractable, phase in the recent conflict, beyond insurgency and beyond even combat between organised armed groups.
"What we're now seeing has no shape whatever," a Western diplomat said. "It's just everyone fighting everyone. Anarchy."
Telegraph
To think that when this all started it was about gays and prostitutes. The simple excess that no one was willing to stand up against. Now look what it's turned into. Smart these people are. They knew us all to well.
posted by madtom at 7:50 PM
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