Must Read Interview w/Robert Fisk!: Who's Provoking Civil War in Iraq?

[Clara T]

Robert Fisk: Somebody is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq

<snip>

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I listened to Bush. It made me doubt myself when I heard him say that. I still go along and say what I said before - Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other. It's not a question of having a huge block of people here called Shiites and a huge block of people called Sunnis any more than you can do the same with the United States, saying Blacks are here and Protestants are here and so on. But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad. Something is going wrong with the Administration. Mr Bush says, "Oh, yes, sure, I talk to the Shiites and I talk to the Sunnis." He's talking to a small bunch of people living behind American machine guns inside the so-called Green Zone, the former Republican palace of Saddam Hussein, which is surrounded by massive concrete walls like a crusader castle. These people do not and cannot even leave this crusader castle. If they want to leave to the airport, they're helicoptered to the airport. They can't even travel on the airport road. What we've got at the moment is a little nexus of people all of whom live under American protection and talk on the telephone to George W Bush who says, "I've been talking to them and they have to choose between chaos and unity." These people can't even control the roads 50 metres from the Green Zone in which they work.

<snip>

ROBERT FISK: Well, I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive. You know, al-Zarqawi did exist before the American Anglo-American invasion. He was up in the Kurdish area, which was not actually properly controlled by Saddam. But after that he seems to have disappeared. We know there's an identity card that pops up. We know the Americans say we think we've recognised him on a videotape. Who recognises him on a videotape? How many Americans have ever met al-Zarqawi? Al-Zarqawi's mother died more than 12 months ago and he didn't even send commiserations or say "I'm sorry to hear that". His wife of whom he was very possessive is so poor she has to go out and work in the family town of Zarqa. Hence the name Zarqawi. I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive or exists at the moment. I don't know if he isn't a sort of creature invented in order to fill in the narrative gaps, so to speak. What is going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious. I go to Iraq and I can't crack this story at the moment. Some of my colleagues are still trying to, but can't do it. It's not as simple as it looks. I don't believe we've got all these raving lunatics wandering around blowing up mosques. There's much more to this than meets the eye. All of these death squads that move around are part of the security forces. In some cases they are Shiite security forces or clearly Sunni security forces. When the Iraqi army go into Sunni cities they are Shiite soldiers going in. We are not making this clear. Iraqi troops, we've got an extra battalion. The Iraqi army is building up. The Iraqi army is split apart. Somebody is operating these people. I don't know who they are. It's not as simple as we're making it out to be. What is this thing when Bush says we have to choose between chaos and unity? Who wants to choose chaos? Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians, Shiites and Sunnies together in the long massive murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis - suddenly all want to kill each other? Why because that's something wrong with Iraqis? I don't think so. They are intelligent, educated people. Something is going seriously wrong in Baghdad.

<snip>

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, look, in August, I went into the same mortuary and found out that 1,000 people had died in one month in July. And most of those people who had died were split 50/50 between the Sunnies and the Shiites, but most of them, including women who'd been blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs - I saw the corpses - were both Sunnies and Shiites. Now, I'm not complaining that the Washington Post got it wrong - I'm sure there are massacres going on by Shiites - but I think they are going on by militias on both sides. What I'd like to know is who is running the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the gunmen who work for the Interior Ministry? I go into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men wearing black leather. Who is paying these guys? Well, we are, of course. The money isn't falling out of the sky. It's coming from the occupation powers and Iraqi's Government, which we effectively run because, as we know, they can't even create a constitution without the American and British ambassadors being present. We need to look at this story in a different light. That narrative that we're getting - that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide - is not possible, it's not logical. There is something else going on in Iraq. Don't ask me to...

<snip>

ROBERT FISK: Well, you could say the same about Syria, too, couldn't you? And, of course the Americans are also accusing Syria of supporting the insurgents or letting them cross the border. But I think it it's much more complicated than that. For example, my sources in this area, who are pretty good, tell me that the Americans have already talked to the Syrians and are trying to do a deal with them to try and get the Syrians to help them over the insurgency and the price of Syria's help, I'm told, is that the Americans will ease off on the UN committee of inquiry into the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, here in Beirut, only a few hundred metres from here, on the 14th February last year. You know, if the Americans are going to get out of Iraq - and they must get out, they will - they need the help of Iran and Syria. And I think you'll find that certain elements within the State Department are already trying to work on that. Now, we hear the rhetoric coming from Bush. I mean, he's got an absolute black-hole chaos in Iraq, he's got Afghanistan - not an inspiration to the world, it's been taken over effectively by narco warlords, many who work for Karzai, the man who's just been making jokes about the Afghan welcome for Bush - and Bush wants another conflict with Iran? I don't think the Americans are in any footing or any ability, military or otherwise, to have another war or to have another crisis in that region. They're in the deepest hole politically, militarily and economically in Iraq. The fact that the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department seem to be in a state of denial doesn't change that. We had Condoleezza Rice here - literally in that building behind me - a few days ago saying that there are great changes taking place in the Middle East - optimistically. Well, sure, there is a mosque war going on in Iraq with the Americans up to their feet in the sand, there's an Iranian crisis, or so we're told, the Saudis are frightened the Iraq war will spill over into Saudi Arabia, the Egyptians don't know how to reconcile Syria and Lebanon, there are increasing sectarian tensions here in Lebanon. You would think that someone is building what used to be called Potemkin villages, you know, these extraordinary things that Catherine the Great's court favourites use to build, facades of villages, so that everything looked nice in Russia even though things were barbarous behind the facades. I mean, this is a barbarous world we're living in now in the Middle East. It's never been so dangerous here, either for journalists or soldiers but most of all for Arabs. Hence the thousands of people in the mortuary.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12137.htm

[Clara T]

1. To summarize what Fisk is saying:

To summarize what Fisk is saying:
1. The Golden Mosque blowup is most likely not the work of Al Qaeda or the Sunnis. (I have found several accounts locally that suggest US troops were stationed at the mosque for the entire day and night before the demolition - could it be another controlled demolition like the World Trade Center?)
2. The case for a massive increase in sectarian violence and the beginning of civil war in Iraq seem to be the invention more of the US press and their handlers in the Bush Administration than the actual situation. (This story seems to have a life of its own, with all data on any deaths, attacks or even roadside bombings now lumped together in Corporate Media accounts as "The Start of Civil War and Sectarian Reprisal with a figure of over 1300 killed or some such figure - be most skeptical.)
3. The Iraqis have shown little interest in civil war and sectarian violence, as has been their history since the time of the British takeover after WWI. Why would they suddenly like it so much? And what could they possibly gain thereby when they have so many far more fashionable targets available?
4. Does the US have anything to gain from the constant civil unrest, infighting, and murders on the street? (It sure keeps the various parties from agreeing to kick us out right away. Many of those now holding big jobs in Baghdad would be without their cover if we did pull out - similar to those generals we abandoned in Saigon in 1974.)
5. A united, independent and maybe even democratic Iraq would not likely support our long term plan for four big military bases, oil sell-off or continuing hegemony in the region.
6. The Shi'ites that have effectively taken control of the government are far more closely aligned with the Iranians than we have been told - at least in Fisk's view. This may be another reason for the US to attack Iran at this point. I have no other sources of data to support this notion.
Thank you Robert Fisk!!
Jim Houle

[malaise]

6. Great interview

Loved his take on al-Zarqawi. An honest assessment.

[Emit]

2. Thanks for the link -- listened to the interview at your link

All in all, he is definitely hinting at something here throughout the interview.

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.

And I have noticed that many insightful DUers are also thinking there is something more happening here -- something that doesn't seem quite right (well, okay, we usually perceive that, but specifically about this "civil war" thing and how it's being portrayed) -- a disconnect -- an incomplete or even illogical synopsis that we get from our teevees and weekly rags specifically about this dancing around the term "civil war." Fisk seems frustrated that he, too, even despite his good sources, can't get to it.

And there's been some Iraqi bloggers giving some interesting details:

The Iraqi Rabita website reports an interview with a Mahdi militia leader today, quoted as saying: "Strange things are happening these days. It's true that our guys often act as a bunch of spiteful, criminal thieves going on sprees of sabotage, murder and plundering. But the people who were running the act were clean young men, elegantly dressed, in modern vehicles, carrying the latest weapons, unlike our guys who are usually unkempt ruffians. No one knows were they are now." from Saturday, February 25, 2006
Curfew Extended, Situation Still Tense

Lot's of pictures of the "Men in Black" here at the link:

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com /


Also, on a related note is something I noticed from last Sunday's news shows. At least three people interviewed on three different shows used the comment "staring into the abyss" in refererence to the Iraqis and the situation over there: Congressman Pete King (NY-R) on Meet the Press, Charles Krauthammer on Fox, and Stephen Hadley on Shieffer’s show. Later, Perle was talking about how 'calm' things were as far as the Shiite and Sunni leaders were concerned and he was 'praising' them for not 'overreacting.' Even Newsweek used this "staring into the abyss" comment in one of their recent articles:

Iraq could be on the verge of degenerating from a barely managed quagmire into... something worse. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad says the nation seemed as close to civil war as it had ever been. "We're not completely out of danger yet," he said on Saturday. Rising to the crisis, President Bush on that same day telephoned seven key Iraqi leaders, including interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Shiite alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, as well as two influential Sunni politicians. The president urged them all to continue trying to form a government of national unity. But even Bush, who tends to put the best gloss on things, declared that "the coming days will be intense."

Iraq's brief reign of terror was further proof that the nation's 200,000-odd security forces—which witnesses said did little or nothing to stop the violence—are simply not ready to maintain stability...

~snip~

Still, after a day of reprisals, everyone seemed to pull back from the brink...The prime minister and Hakim also called for unity, as did the powerful radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr (although his Mahdi Army militia was believed to be responsible for the worst of the reprisal attacks). Jaafari said all damaged mosques, Shiite and Sunni, would be rebuilt with government money. Hakim, probably the most powerful politician in Iraq, pointed a finger at the likely culprit in the Askariya bombing, the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "This is what al-Zarqawi is working for, that is, to ignite sectarian strife in the country," Hakim said in a statement broadcast by Iraqi television stations. "We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged down by the plots of the enemy."

~snip~

Why the change in tone? In part because Iraqi party leaders who had been cavalierly indulging in sectarian politics suddenly found themselves "staring into the abyss, and they were recoiling," says a U.S. official in Baghdad who would speak only if he were not identified. "You looked into the eyes of these officials, and it looked like they had been scared straight." Those feelings were summed up at a meeting that Khalilzad attended a day after the attack with some 60 of Iraq's leaders. The meeting was boycotted by the dominant Sunni alliance, the Iraqi Accordance Front. But one Sunni leader who did show up, cleric Ahmed al Samarrai, was almost moved to tears, says the U.S. official, who was there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11570947/site/newsweek/

And then we had Fox running stories about "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"
and more recently "Iraq Civil War: Made Up By The Media?”


I find this curious, as I generally only watch some of these folks to find out what they are up to -- what kind of spin are they trying to go for. We know they are pinning the bombing of the Golden mosque on Al Qaeda, they're downplaying the "civil war" and "chaos," and want us to think that all of the leaders are "staring into the abyss" and "recoiling" and we have Bush saying, choose between "Chaos or unity" as bigtree points out on his thread.

Fisk says:

Now, if the Shiites and Sunnies come together, as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united.

And he's talking about Shiites and Sunnies uniting against American forces, while these talking heads noted above are implying that they are coming together against Al Qaeda, or at least that is what they want us to believe, IMO.

I have no conclusion; these were just things I've noted and have been following. Thanks for the link. I'll be curious to find out what Fisk has to say further about this and I will try to find his subsequent interview.

[joanski0]

3. Thanks for posting this.

What a mess.

[leftchick]

4. Negroponte

I bet he knows what is going on in Iraq.

[Citrene]

5. I always had problems with Negroponte replacing Bremer.

I'm so not surprised by what is happening and so thankful for Robert Fisk for calling it along with Dahr J.

Why should we expect anything less of a pardoned criminal than that which he was pardoned for oh so many years ago. He took a private vacation and perfected his game.

It is just a damned shame we let all these criminals come back. Iran-Contra just wasn't enough, we needed an update, I guess?

Sorry world, some of us knew and tried to stop it, please forgive.

[NNN0LHI]

7. I bet you are right n/t