On Sunday, the New York Times ran a large piece by Dexter Filkins called "Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm." It's certainly a very positive portrayal of recent events in Iraq. Writes Filkins:
When
I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too
shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power
to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by
the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring,
too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or
victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis? |
According to Filkins' account, "al Qaeda" has been largely defeated in Iraq, thanks to the US policy of buying off insurgents.
Meanwhile, the following was taken from today's edition of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole's Informed Content:
8 Killed, 82 Wounded in Bombings, Attacks;
Benchmark Laws Still Stalled
The
guerrilla war continues in Iraq. On Sunday, guerrillas blew up the
general manager of the Ministry of Finance, Ihsan Ridha, and a
Brigadier General, Adel Abbas, who was a manager of the ministry of the
interior (which has FBI-like functions in Iraq). Ridha was injured;
Abbas was killed. Police and army patrols were bombed in Baghdad, and
police stations were bombed in the major northern cities of Mosul and
Kirkuk. One of the police patrols in Baghdad was attacked in the Sunni
enclave of al-Adhamiya (the police are mostly Shiites), suggesting that
the sectarian war is still going on.
There is no point in targeting high ministry officials and security
forces on the ground like that unless you are trying to cause the
government to collapse. The pattern of the attacks shows that the
guerrillas have by no means given up and that they are still engaged in
a concerted and effective attack on the institutions of the Iraqi
government.
CNN Arabic says that 8 persons were killed and 82 persons were wounded in these various attacks (see below).
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the parliamentary session scheduled for Sunday
on the enabling law for provincial elections had to be cancelled
because the Arab and Turkmen members of the committee set up to
reconcile the wording of the law walked out. Kurdish MP Fu'ad Ma'sum
complained bitterly that the walkout was an insult given all the
extensive concessions the Kurds have made. Monday is seen as a last
chance for parliament to pass the law if the elections are to be held
this year.
The law has been held up because parliamentarians cannot
agree on how to treat the disputed oil province of Kirkuk.
Al-Zaman also reports that Oil Minister Husain Shahrastani
is complaining that the independent deals struck by the Kurdistan
Regional Government with a Norwegian firm have impeded the passage in
the federal parliament of an oil law.
Al-Zaman says that former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi
says he insists that any security agreement between the Bush
administration and the al-Maliki government be submitted to 'public
opinion' in Iraq (presumably via a national referendum). He added that
when he was in Washington 2 months ago he had told the Americans that
they had as well give up on getting a bilateral security agreement
passed. He also said he was considering pulling his party out of the
Iraqi national security council, on which all major parties have seats,
since it had utterly failed to deal with Iraq's problems.
McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:
'Baghdad
- A bomb was planted under the car of the general manager of the
Ministry of Finance, in Kindi street in Harthiya neighborhood on Sunday
morning. Ihsan Ridha, the manager was injured in that incident.
- Gunmen assassinated Brigadier General Adel Abass, a manager in the
ministry of interior in Adel neighborhood around 7:30 am. He was killed
with his driver.
- Gunmen opened fire on an officer in the general inspector office in
New Baghdad neighborhood. Raad Amar, the officer, was wounded and he
was transferred to hospital to be treated.
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at the Maghrib intersection
of Waziriyah in north Baghdad. Five people were injured, including one
policeman.
- A roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in Waziriyah neighborhood in
northern Baghdad near the Turkish Embassy. Seven people were injured
including three soldiers.
- A bomb was planted under a car in Tahriyat intersection in Karrada
neighborhood in downtown Baghdad. Four people were wounded, including
one policeman.
- A roadside bomb targeted the Bayna newspaper building in Nidhal
street(downtown Baghdad). Two people were injured.
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Zafarniyah neighborhood
(east Baghdad). Six people were wounded including three policemen.
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near the in downtown
Baghdad. Seven people were wounded, including three policemen.
- Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods today: two
were found in Karkh bank; one in Dora and the other was in Amil. While
the third one was found in Fudhailiyah on Risafa bank.
Mosul
- A bomb planted under an oil tanker detonated near an army check point
in Arabi neighborhood in Mosul city around 3 pm. Two people were
wounded including one soldier.
- A suicide truck bomber targeted the emergency police headquarter in
New Mosul neighborhood in Mosul city around 6:15 pm. Two policemen were
killed and 45 others wounded, including 15 policemen. Also 50 houses
got damaged in that explosion.
Kirkuk
- A suicide car bomber targeted a police check point near the fourth
bridge in Ghazala neighborhood in downtown Kirkuk. Five policemen were
killed and twenty three were wounded.
Salahuddin
- A bomb planted under a parked car detonated near a restaurant in Tikrit. Three people were injured.
|
Goodness-are these two people even writing about the same country?
Filkins
also seems to credit the 'surge' with restraining violence in Iraq, and
sounds a note of concern regarding the reduction of American troops in
the country.
There
are plenty of reasons why this peace may only amount to a cease-fire,
fragile and reversible. The “surge” of American troops is over. The
Iraqis are moving to take their country back, yet they wonder what
might happen when the Americans’ restraining presence is gone. |
Cole
and others, meanwhile, have often argued that the reduction in violence
has more to do with the accomplished fact of ethnic cleansing in Iraq,
rather than the 'surge.'
Satellite imaging that shows Sunni Arab neighborhoods in Baghdad dark
gives evidence that the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis by Shiite
militias accounts for the fall in violence in Baghdad, not the extra
troops Bush sent, called the 'surge.'
'Night
light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents
declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never
returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have
been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the
U.S. military has claimed credit, the team reports in a new study based
on publicly available satellite imagery. "Essentially, our
interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of
intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was
beginning," said lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography
and authority on ethnic conflict. "By the launch of the surge, many of
the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and
they turned off the lights when they left." The night-light signature
in four other large Iraqi cities — Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala —
held steady or increased between the spring of 2006 and the winter of
2007, the UCLA team found. None of these cities were targets of the
surge. Baghdad's decreases were centered in the southwestern Sunni
strongholds of East and West Rashid, where the light signature dropped
57 percent and 80 percent, respectively, during the same period.'
|
The
two also have conflicting opinions on the likelihood of Iraqi refugees
returning to their homes. Filkins sounds hopeful, writing that Iraqis
"are beginning to return." Cole takes a different tack:
I've been saying this for some time.
US officials more or less admitted it to Karen DeYoung of the
Washington Post last December (and reading between the lines they also
seem not to have been so disturbed by the ethnic cleansing and seemed
to have hoped that those people would just find someplace else to live.
I visited some of these displaced Iraqis in one of the 'some
place elses,' i.e. Amman, in August; 50,000 of them are considered
'vulnerable' by the aid agencies and their situation is desperate. Some
Iraqis in exile told me that they could never return. They were Sunni
and their own neighborhoods were now 100% Shiite. Or their spouse was a
Shiite and they were Sunni, and there was no mixed neighborhood left
where they would feel comfortable. Some 25% had had a child kidnapped.
Many had received personal threats from militias that they are
convinced are still in their old neighborhood.(E.g. 'If Ahmad Adib
shows his face in this neighborhood again he will be shot on sight ..
.') Indeed, sometimes the militias track them down in Amman and
threaten them there again. A lot of Iraqis in Jordan move from
apartment to apartment frequently so as to avoid the long arm of the
militias.
|
Filkins'
depiction of how American soldiers interacted with Iraqis also
converges sharply with what others are saying. Reporting that he had
viewed American marines "walking about without helmets or flak jackets
or even guns," he quotes an Iraqi woman who professes to "love"
American soldiers.
In
the 24 months that her sons were gone, Ms. Salman said she rarely
ventured outside. The exception, she said, was when she saw American
soldiers.
“Oh, I love them,” Ms. Salman said, brightening in her darkened house. “I always knew I was safe with them.” |
The mayor of Baghdad seems to have other views, also reprinted in Informed Content.
Baghdad Mayor Criticizes US Troops' Insensitiveness, Human Rights Abuses
Interview with Baghdad Mayor Sabir al-Isawi by Teodor Marjanovic in
Prague; date not given: "'I Have Survived Four Assassination Attempts:'
Baghdad Mayor Says Americans Are Often Hard To Deal With and Explains
What Has Calmed Down Sectarian Killing in His Country"
iDnes.cz
Saturday, September 20, 2008
OSC Translated Excerpt
(Marjanovic) When you look back, do you think that the Iraqis should be grateful to the Americans for something?
(Al-Isawi) Yes and no. As Iraqis, we should feel gratitude that the
Americans brought down the hated Saddam regime for us. But — and I
wish to say it very strongly — so long as the Americans continue to be
stuck in their ruts, the last remainder of gratitude will evaporate.
They ought to be able to be liberators and not act as occupiers.
(Marjanovic) Be concrete.
(Al-Isawi) During detentions, they do not heed human rights. They carry
out raids without reason. They shoot more than necessary. They shrink
from quickly determining the exact relations between the two states so
that the situation no longer is that one occupies while the other obeys.
(Marjanovic) And how do they complicate the life for you,as the City Hall?
(Al-Isawi) They are driving their heavy vehicles and tanks
insensitively, through people's gardens. They crush sidewalks. They
demolish lampposts. They are driving, there is a post, but they will
not go around it.
(Marjanovic) Can you complain?
(Al-Isawi) Yes, we call them and sometimes they pay for repairs. But
this is not just the question of money. One example: it took us six
months to build an orchard. Then arrived a tank, and the six months'
efforts were destroyed within a moment.
(Marjanovic) But you are aware of the thousands of Americans who perished in Iraq.
(Al-Isawi) Of course, they must not be forgotten.
(Marjanovic) Can you imagine a street or a square in Baghdad being named after George W Bush one day?
(Al-Isawi) No. (passage omitted on Baghdad citizens' daily troubles)
(Description of Source: Prague iDnes.cz in Czech — Website of
best-selling, independent, center-right daily; most popular print
source among decisionmakers; URL: idnes.cz |
Al-Isawi also disagrees with the view that the 'surge' was primarily responsible for the reduction in violence in Iraq.
. . . (Marjanovic) What has caused the improvement of the situation in Iraq?
(Al-Isawi) There are two reasons. The uprising of the Sunnite tribes
against Al-Qa'ida as a result of its unending bomb attacks. Initially,
Al-Qa'ida had enjoyed those tribes' support. The other cause is Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki's resolve with which he crushed the Shiite
militias in Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City. Even without the help and,
at the beginning, knowledge of the United States.
(Marjanovic) They used to say that Al-Maliki was in cahoots with these militias.
(Al-Isawi) Yes, and he proved that it was not true. The political
parties, then, finally began to approach the government. It became
evident that the prime minister did not want to have anything in common
with these Iran-supported armed groups.
(Marjanovic) Here in the West, the reports go that the crucial role was
played by the increase of American soldiers last spring.
(Al-Isawi) This was a partial reason for the calming down. Another such
partial reason was that the Iraqi armed forces are now working much
better. But the two things I mentioned are certainly the most important. | |
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