Battle for Baghdad 'has already started'

[grytpype]

More of that naughty bad news from Iraq...

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article353501.ece

By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 25 March 2006

The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

Also from the article:

• The new Iraqi Army will fall apart once intercommunal fighting begins in earnest.
• "A senior Arab minister, who asked not to be named, said: 'The government could end up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone.'"
• "The mood among Iraqi leaders, both Arabs and Kurds, is far gloomier in private than the public declarations of the US and British government."

No word on how many schools were painted this week, but I bet it was a lot.

[babylonsister]

1. But wait! I thought there were going to be elections next month

that would fix everything! :shrug:

[Roland99]

2. And remember the story a few mos. ago about the Kurdish resistance forces?

Kurds in Iraqi army proclaim loyalty to militia
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13495329.htm

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga - the Kurdish militia - and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

"It doesn't matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own battalion," said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. "Kirkuk will be ours."

[Auntie Bush]

3. The press forgot to report about that school up north that just reopened

after our bombs flattened it three years ago. What the hell is the matter with the dumb negative reporting press?

[IndianaGreen]

4. This is a very pessimistic and troubling report from the reporter in Arbil

Already Baghdad resembles Beirut at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when Christians and Muslims fought each other for control of the city.

Lebanon's civil war lasted for 10 years! If Bush won't pull the troops out, and if the Democrats are too chicken shit to pull out if they win the White House, we are looking at 2016 for the civil war to end (assuming it follows Lebanon's model).

[Stanchetalarooni]

5. Bury My Heart at Babylon.

Those guys have it down to a science. Perfected on the Great American Plains. From Sea to Shining Sea.

[Mind_your_head]

9. Interesting assertion.....I'll have to think about that

thanks :-)

[CatholicEdHead]

6. ABC Radio National talked about this Friday morning

down in Austalia with their podcast.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/breakfast_20060324.mp3

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/stories/s1599608.htm
"But given the quagmire that is Iraq, is it possible that life for most Iraqis was measurably better under Saddam Hussein?

According to the British charity Christian Aid, quality of life indicators – including infant mortality, malnutrition and water supply – are even lower than the sanctions period just before the coalition invasion in 2003.

Prime Minister John Howard says he thinks the situation in Iraq is getting better, not worse, while US President George W Bush denies that Iraq is in a state of civil war.

So to get a bit closer to the truth on the ground we're joined by Paul McGeough, a journalist who knows Iraq better than most. He's been covering the conflict on and off ever since invasion began three years ago."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/default.htm

[IndianaGreen]

7. This entire thread - kicked and nominated

Those that speak of "good news" never bothered to ask the Iraqis that live outside the Green Zone!

[Hissyspit]

8. The light at the end of the tunnel is just around the corner.

Or something like that. You people are way too cynical.

/sarcasm

[msongs]

10. will they execute all converts to opposing brands of Islam?

oooooops. they're already doing that. turning christian is not gonna save anyone that's for sure.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/impeachbush.htm

[Ouabache]

11. just like Vietnam, our asses hanging out in middle of a civil war

All thanks to George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the ignorant mouth-breathers who voted for them/

[saigon68]

12. MORE LIKE --- all the ignorant GILL-breathers who voted for them

[DLnyc]

13. Am I reading this wrong, or is this one more "North/South" war coming

I refer to Vietnam (where the resistance was tricked into withdrawing to the North, IIRC, and then called "invaders" when they didn't accept the proposed division) and Korea (where, I believe, the country was artificially divided to provide a semblance of 'victory' for the US).
Sure sounds like the fallback plan is to use the Kurds (who poll as being much happier with the US presence, since they are finally getting an independent state) as a proxy army to hold the oil-rich North when the South falls.
Is this obvious, paranoid or what?

[rodeodance]

14. "the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities" and NOT

to the government!

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. There are big differences between vietnam and iraq.

If there was a civil war in Vietnam, it was between the vastly outnumbered catholic minority and the buddhist majority. But the religious characterization is misleading. The Catholic minority were Catholic because they were the 'frenchified' urban elites that helped run the country while it was a French colony. We took over the remnants of the French colonial regime, convinced ourselves that we were fighting the red army in eastern europe, and fooled ourselves into thinking that there was a 'north/south' division in vietnam. It was, as the marxist terminology put it correctly, primarily a war of national liberation against a colonial regime. Our refusal to accept that reality both prolonged and doomed our efforts. It might have been possible to re-establish the colonial system abandoned by the French, it was never possible to establish a south vietnamese state with the broad support of the vast buddhist peasantry. Neither alternative was likely to be successful and the re-establishment of colonial rule would of course have been at least as repressive as the communist regime that eventually took over.

Oddly enough, the ethnic sunnis would be the logical replacement for the urban catholic vietnamese if one were to draw parallels. They were the designated minority ensconced by the post WW-I British colonial regime to help rule the ungovernable tribes of mesopotamia. The sunni dominated Baath regime was a holdover from the colonial period, representing the sunni faction's effort to retain the hold on power given to them by the Brits.

We have at least aligned ourselves with the largest group this time. The problem with our alignment with the shiite faction is that they hate us almost as much as they hate the former sunni baathists, and while they are a plurality, each of the other major ethnic groups is large enough to make the situation unsustainable. The hornet's nest of Iraq is further complicated by Iran sitting next door and being the natural local ally of the same shiite faction we are nominally aligned with and the sworn enemy of our demented regime. Add into this the Kurds who tolerate the fiction of a post-saddam Iraqi state only as long as their ambitions for an oil rich Kurdistan are not compromised. (Of course north of the de facto Kurdistan is Turkey, with its own Kurdish problem, who views the establishment of Kurdistan as against it national interests.) Stability and peace do not seem to be in the forecast.

Unlike Vietnam, which never really was a civil war, Iraq's breakup has all the necessary ingredients that characterized the bloody ethnic divisions of Lebanon, of the former Yugoslavia, of northern ireland, of our own carnage of 145 years ago. It is a breakup that has been in the making since the collapse of the Ottoman empire after WW-I. World leaders with vision would mediate the breakup to assure equity and a peaceful transition. Our leaders will maximize the carnage.

[MGKrebs]

17. France and Vietnam had a peace treaty, but...

the US didn't support it because it gave too much power to the communists. Eisenhower and the Repubs wanted to fight instead. They always have to have an enemy.

Republican motto: Snatching violence from the jaws of Peace.

[Milspec]

20. My, My Warren

That was an intelligent and well put post. Thanks

[Warren Stupidity]

22. I try. nt.

[rfkrfk]

15. I give up, who wants Bagdhad?

who wants,,,slums, impoverished cvilians, etc?

I'm kinda surprised that control of the
oil fields is not considered more important

[grytpype]

21. seriously

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. It started the day we illegally invaded Iraq...too few understood that.

[RedEarth]

19. Good article....