Stinking Hell Hole Without An Answer

[FC]

New York Times

November 16, 2006

 

The 'Stay Or Leave' Debate In The U.S. Finds A Mirror In Baghdad

 

By Sabrina Tavernise

 

BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — While Americans in a faraway land debate their fate, Iraqis have already decided on the cure. The only problem is that there is more than one set of Iraqis. Shiites want their country back. Sunni Arabs want a strongman. They cannot agree.

 

“We don’t want to see them in the streets,” a wiry man named Tariq said of American troops as he measured cloth in a tailor shop.

 

Saad Abdul Razzaq, a Sunni whose brother was killed by Shiite militiamen a week ago, was of the strongman school: “Democracy is not working. Only power can control Iraqis.”

 

As the United States grapples with difficult decisions over the war, Iraqis are also debating. But just when they need to band together, they have never been further apart. Their government has ground to a halt, paralyzed by disagreements between Sunni and Shiite parties. Militias are at the root of the security problem, but as long as the state remains helpless, many consider them its only solution.

 

The landscape is that of a country sliding into war, and Sunnis and Shiites, like Republicans and Democrats, desperately look for ways out.

 

Shiites agree with many Democrats: American soldiers should withdraw to their bases. Sunnis say total control by the Shiite-dominated government could mean massacres.

 

“It’s a disaster if the American forces stay in Iraq, but it’s also a disaster if they go,” said an elderly man named Ayad, who was discussing politics with friends in central Baghdad.

 

Abbas Fadhel, a college professor sitting in a social club in central Baghdad, spoke of the widening division and dim prospects for the future. “The seriousness of this is that the sectarianism has penetrated to the educated people,” he said. “They deny it, but when push comes to shove, you can see that they have become so.”

 

The mass kidnapping at a government ministry on Tuesday by gunmen in Iraqi military uniforms was symbolic of the breakdown. “It was really something humiliating,” said Husham al-Madfai, an architect who was sitting in his garden drinking beer Wednesday afternoon. “They went into a ministry and kidnapped tens of people. That means the government does not exist.”

 

But the kidnapping was interpreted in different ways. Sunnis laid much of the blame with the government. Reflecting a broad shift that has taken place among Shiites, Sunnis had more sympathy for what they saw as the government’s plight. Militias, they said, were like parasites that the government would not be able to get rid of until it gained more control over security tasks now handled by Americans.

 

“It’s like organized crime,” said Tariq, gesturing animatedly with a thimble on one finger. “If the government had sovereignty, it could combat all these things that are going on.”

 

Violence that many see as having been carried out by Sunnis has hardened attitudes. Muhammad Faisal, a Shiite whose brother and seven friends were shot to death in southern Baghdad on Sept. 23 while they were putting up a poster of a Shiite cleric, said the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was like “a surgeon without his instruments.”

 

Meanwhile, militias are seen as a necessary protection against aggression by the other side.

 

As Shiites have risen to power and filled the ranks of the security forces, Sunnis, who used to condemn the American forces, now often see them as a primary safeguard against Shiite violence. They do not trust the government, a concern that was underscored by Tuesday’s kidnapping.

 

The sheer magnitude of the violence since Mr. Maliki took office in the spring has swept away what trust they had. In all, five members of Mr. Abdul Razzaq’s extended family have died in violence since 2003.

 

He would like to see a military coup, to be headed by a strongman, possibly Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister and secular Shiite with a past tied to the Baathists, the ruling party under Saddam Hussein.

 

“He worked with Saddam,” Mr. Abdul Razzaq said. “He knows his way.”

 

Mr. Madfai, the architect, disagreed. A coup would not work. The new government would be besieged. “All those militias will turn to fight against them,” he said, speaking by telephone.

 

He paused as two helicopters thundered overhead. The beer was running out, he said, a problem he blamed on the Americans. All the alcohol sellers in his area, Mansour, have been killed, and most shops are now closed.

 

“Who’s responsible for that? Rumsfeld,” he said. “He should send us some beer.”

 

Alcohol, a target of some of the Islamic militias, was not in short supply at the social club, where Shiek Mazin al-Khalaf, an Iraqi Sunni who speaks British-accented English, was enjoying a vodka. Iraqis are destined to fight, he said, because after years of abuse, they are capable only of abusing.

 

“Iraqis have been in prison since 1958,” the year the monarchy was overthrown, he said. “The prisoners got out, they smelled the air, saw cars and cellphones. But they are criminals.”

 

A Shiite sitting on the other side of the table took issue with the description. “Victims, not criminals,” he hissed, after Mr. Khalaf left the table.

 

A Shiite sheik from Amara, Abd al-Karim al-Muhammadawi, offered an extreme prescriptive. He said the only solution would be to ban the major political parties, declare martial law and begin again.

 

The alternative, he said, is for the American military to leave Iraq completely and let the Iraqis begin a full-on civil war. “This is better than the Iraqi condition now,” he said.

 

Faaz, a student in Sadr City, the largest Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, agreed. “I’d prefer to have what they had in Lebanon — a declared civil war,” he said. “There is a lot of killing, but no one confesses what he is really doing.”

 

Sabah, a Shiite whose husband, a Sunni, was killed by Shiites in early September, said a full-scale pullout would be a disaster. “If the American forces leave Iraq, we will walk on bodies,” she said, sitting in her tiny living room in Karada, in central Baghdad. “The war would be face to face.”

 

For Tariq, all this talk of sects was irritating. It is bad manners in Iraqi society to ask somebody’s sect. His response, when asked on Wednesday, was simply, “Muslim.”

 

But the clunky yellow-stone building across the street, the ministry where the employees were kidnapped Tuesday, seemed a looming reminder that in Iraq, more and more often, sects count.

 

He was relieved to know that one of the kidnapped employees, a senior official and a wearer of his suits, had been released. The man, he said, was a Shiite.

 

Qais Mizher contributed reporting.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Los Angeles Times

November 16, 2006

 

Sleuths In Body Armor: Chapter Three

 

U.S. Troops Look For An Inside Man In Iraqi Slayings

 

By Doug Smith, Times Staff Writer

 

The U.S. soldier looked around a crowded Iraqi home and watched as an old man in a green dishdasha robe scooted across to an interpreter and whispered in his ear.

 

"The guy says if you don't take action, they're going" to do it themselves, the interpreter told Capt. Rob Murdough. The threat of vigilante revenge caused Murdough's face to flush.

 

"That's not justice," he said sharply, and turned to a young man sitting on a couch with half a dozen elders.

 

Murdough normally led a mortar platoon, but in a city awash in killings he had become a detective trying to solve a mass kidnapping and slaying that may have been ordered by Iraqi police officials. After two frustrating days, Murdough thought he was finally near a break in the case: The young man he had come to see might be able to lead him to a suspect.

 

At least 22 Iraqi men had been kidnapped from a meatpacking plant, and six who were Sunni Arab Muslims had been shot dead. Investigators were trying to find an inside man — a Shiite Muslim employee at the plant — who they thought had helped the killers.

 

The employee, named Hussein, was believed to have contacts with the Al Mahdi army, the Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr.

 

If Murdough could get the young man to lead him to Hussein's house, the Army would arrest the suspect. But the young man had good reason to be leery. There was a sniper in Hussein's neighborhood, which was filled with Al Mahdi militiamen, he said. When a stranger walks in, they call each other by cellphone, he told the American soldier.

 

Murdough urged the young man to ride in a U.S. armored vehicle, promising he would remain hidden. After a time, he agreed and drew a crude map to Hussein's street, warning that the Al Mahdi army members there didn't want "anything to do with American soldiers."

 

Inside, the young man crouched on one of the vehicle's low benches, next to the interpreter and a soldier. His eyes grew wide as he examined the jumble around him: high-tech communications gear, weapons, an ice chest, a garbage bag. As the vehicle moved down the street, a soldier gave him a helmet and combat shirt and an olive blindfold. He tied it over his nose like a movie outlaw. Only his eyes showed.

 

The armored vehicle made a few turns and stopped. The soldiers got out and moved down a street of low walls and iron gates, taking a few minutes to chat with each man they encountered, just as they would on a routine patrol.

 

"Hi, we're here to help," Murdough said time and again. "Do you have any information about bad guys?"

 

Murdough noticed several men and boys gathered at one of the houses. He told Pfc. Julia Thompson, the team's only woman, to quietly take a photo. Thompson then took the camera back to the armored vehicle. The young man inside studied the image on the camera screen. One of the men was Hussein's father, he said, another his brother.

 

Murdough and his men moved on, casually stopping at several houses and sidewalk shops. Then they strolled back to the group. "Could we take a picture of your family?" he asked.

 

The men looked surprised, but agreed. While they posed, Murdough asked casually about the family. One of the men introduced two sons and said a third was at work. "What's his name?" Murdough asked.

 

"Hussein," the man said.

 

Murdough had located the suspect's home. Now he hoped that he had concealed his purpose enough to avoid scaring Hussein off. In a few days, he would return and try to make an arrest.

 

By now, Murdough and his commanding officer, Lt. Col. John Norris, were making progress in the investigation. They had evidence that pointed to police involvement in the slayings: In the empty lot where six of the kidnapping victims had been found shot to death, U.S. soldiers discovered shell casings that bore the characteristic square indentation made by a Glock handgun, a sidearm rare in Iraq except among the American-armed security forces.

 

Norris already had ordered one Iraqi police unit off the streets and back to its barracks for retraining. But he knew the unit would one day return to patrol, and he was concerned about its leadership.

 

On the fourth day after the kidnappings, Norris went to police headquarters to have what he thought would be a "face to face" with the Iraqi battalion's new commander.

 

Instead, after Norris cooled his heels in a dreary reception room, a large Iraqi man in a brown suit strode in followed by a videographer and a photographer. The man sat regally in the commander's chair and announced himself as Brig. Gen. Najim. Norris was surprised. Najim had been in command of three Iraqi police battalions, but Norris thought he had been dismissed.

 

Najim spoke to the American in a strident voice, keeping his eyes focused on the camera. Speaking through Norris' interpreter, the general insisted that Iraqi media had made up the story of police involvement in the kidnappings. The Iraqi police had conducted their own investigation, he declared.

 

"Everyone knows now we had nothing to do with that."

 

Norris disagreed. "They were Iraqi national police in Iraqi national police vehicles who conducted the kidnapping," he said.

 

"Only one vehicle," the general said.

 

"They carried Motorolas" — the type of portable radio used by Iraqi police — Norris said. "It was an organized Iraqi national police force."

 

Growing agitated, Norris recounted a killing he had witnessed the day before the kidnappings about 200 yards from an Iraqi national police checkpoint.

 

"An Iraqi citizen was murdered on this street in cold blood," he said. "A vehicle stopped. Two individuals stepped out, shot him in the head several times. They got in the car and drove away."

 

Norris grabbed three soda cans to illustrate what he had seen.

 

"Iraqi national police headquarters," he declared, plunking down the first can on a coffee table. "Iraqi national police checkpoint," he said, putting the second down nearby. "Local national murdered in cold blood," he said, banging the third can on the table in front of the second.

 

"I have an Iraqi national police vehicle drive by while I'm standing there. I personally ask him to help. He said, 'It's not my job,' " Norris said. "Does this sound like the performance we want of the Iraqi national police? Is this somebody deserving of the respect of the Iraqi people?"

 

Najim seemed unimpressed. "What kind of vehicle was it?" he asked, sidestepping Norris' question.

 

As if on cue, an Iraqi officer entered the room, interrupting to announce that the battalion had been assembled.

 

"Do you want to see my men?" the general asked.

 

About 200 men came sloppily to attention as Najim and his American visitors walked out to the drill yard behind the building. "At ease," Najim said, displaying his authority. The men squatted on the concrete.

 

"Don't pay attention to the media," he said, as Norris looked on, astonished at the Iraqi's audacity. "They always say the wrong thing. Keep up the good work. You are all patriots."

 

As he moved to leave, police officers approached and kissed his cheek.

 

About this series

 

Times staff writer Doug Smith spent seven days in October on patrols in Baghdad with two platoons of the 4th (Tomahawk) Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The platoons were investigating the kidnapping of at least 22 Iraqi men from a meatpacking plant in southwest Baghdad.

 

The incidents reported were either observed directly by Smith or reconstructed from interviews with those involved. Three Iraqi witnesses to the kidnappings have been identified with fictitious names for their protection. All other names are real.

 

For additional material, including audio interviews with some battalion members, go to latimes.com/iraq.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Washington Post

November 16, 2006

Pg. 23

 

In Iraqi Colleges, Fear For An Already Shrunken Realm

 

Mass Kidnapping Seen Likely to Boost Educators' Exodus

 

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service

 

BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 -- Over the past six months, Professor Amir Hassan's world has been shrinking. Two colleagues were assassinated, one with his family. Another was kidnapped. Two received death threats, forcing one to flee to Jordan. And since September, six other senior members of his political science department at Baghdad University have left Iraq.

 

Now, Hassan, a slim, carefully groomed man with a snowy mustache and owlish glasses, expects his world to condense even more. On Wednesday, in words filled with deep foreboding, he said the mass abduction of scores of people from a government educational agency a day earlier would persuade more academics to flee, further weakening a crucial, if fragile, pillar of Iraq.

 

"We are living in the killing stage," Hassan said, seated behind a neat desk in a spare, dimly lit office. "We know that our chance of dying is now greater than our chance of staying alive."

 

The emotions unleashed by one of the biggest mass kidnappings since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reverberated across Iraq on Wednesday, splitting the cabinet along sectarian lines and spawning a heated dispute over how many men were abducted. But the most profound effect of what many Iraqis view as a national calamity was felt in university halls and campuses across Iraq. Here, the abductions highlighted the plight of academics and an educational system besieged by sectarian tensions, lawlessness and government ineffectiveness.

 

"What happened in Baghdad yesterday was a catastrophe that could destroy the entire educational process," said Fikret Mahmoud Omar, an instructor at a technical college in the northern city of Kirkuk. "It shows that the process in Iraq is on the verge of collapse and confirms that terrorists and militias are the ones who are in control of events."

 

By late Wednesday night, it was still unclear how many Iraqis remained captive after Tuesday's brazen daylight raid on a Ministry of Higher Education building in Baghdad's upscale Karrada neighborhood. About 80 gunmen, dressed in blue police commando uniforms and driving police vehicles with no license plates, handcuffed, blindfolded and carried off male employees and visitors. They locked women up in rooms before driving away in their official-looking convoy.

 

Less than 24 hours later, captives were being freed, an unusual development in a nation where kidnap victims are often held for months or killed. A Ministry of Higher Education spokesman, Bilal al-Khatib, said about 70 of as many as 150 kidnap victims had been released. But Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said about 40 had been set free and only a few remained captive. Higher Education Minister Abed Thiyab, a prominent Sunni Muslim, declared he would suspend his "membership in the Maliki government until all hostages are released."

 

Even as politicians bickered, they voiced a common belief that the assault could have serious repercussions in educational institutions across the country. Already, Khatib said, at least 160 professors have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion and more than 1,500 have fled the country, part of the growing exodus of middle-class professionals. Hassan, the professor, said he believes the kidnappers targeted the agency Tuesday because it granted scholarships to Iraqi professors and students applying to study abroad.

 

"This was the means to have contact with other countries. So if they cut this, they cut life," said Hassan, who said he himself had no plans to flee Iraq.

 

On Wednesday, Maliki visited Baghdad University, one of Iraq's most prestigious academic institutions, to show his commitment to bolstering security and stopping sectarian strife.

 

Addressing students and professors, he described the kidnappers as "worse than extremists" and said the attack was a product of militia rivalries. Although no group has asserted responsibility, many people say they believe Shiite Muslim militias -- especially the Mahdi Army, linked to cleric and political kingmaker Moqtada al-Sadr -- were behind the abductions. Shiite groups have staged previous mass kidnappings and are widely believed to have infiltrated Iraq's security forces.

 

"We will chase those who did this ugly criminal act," Maliki promised.

 

But his audience was more interested about his plans for Iraq's universities. Several students and professors stood up to ask him questions about how he would shield them from the chaos infecting Iraq. Maliki said he would ban pictures, leaflets, placards or other politically inspired materials from campuses "because the universities shall remain outside partisan politics or sectarian affiliation." He also promised that the government would "allocate funds to support students" and that professors and students would be protected.

 

"I hope you will continue your studies vigorously and not bow in front of those who want to paralyze our universities," Maliki told the gathering. "We regret what happened yesterday, but the government's reaction was strong."

 

In Kirkuk, Essam Muhedeen Arzad, a student at the College of Education, said Maliki's words calmed him. "I feel very sad for what has happened, particularly since we are in Iraq, which is the land of civilization and learning," Arzad said. "We need to capture those who are responsible for this act and bring them to justice to show the world that we are a nation of civilized people and will not accept such terrorist acts."

 

But for other college students, the abductions were a tipping point. For months, Faiha Abdul Jabar, in her second year studying science at Diyala University, said she was thinking of quitting her studies and staying home. A few hours after the assault, she was convinced.

 

"As a girl, I have a lot of fears from what happened yesterday," Abdul Jabar said. "Those armed men were able to storm into a governmental office and kidnap all the employees, and no one was able to save them or protect them. So what will happen to us if armed men stormed our college and kidnapped us?"

 

"The government is responsible for what is happening, and the government is responsible for making me lose this year," she added.

 

Zaman Adam Ali, who is studying English at Diyala University, also quit her studies on Tuesday, along with her two sisters, Eman and Hanan. "The government is responsible for destroying our future," Ali said.

 

Like almost every upheaval nowadays in Iraq, the kidnappings are being viewed through a prism of sectarianism. Muhammad Jamal, a law student at Tikrit University, sees the political disputes as an attempt by Shiite officials, hardened by sectarian divisions, to "lessen the importance" of the assaults. "This action is proof that we have a sectarian government," he said.

 

In a parking lot at Baghdad University on Wednesday, Lena Sadhi and Fatima Salim were standing next to a white car. Two hours earlier, they and other students had staged a protest. They heard that the Ministry of Higher Education was considering shutting down universities in the capital in the wake of the abductions, citing poor security. But they were hungry for education.

 

"The government doesn't want to continue our studies. That's why we protested," said Salim, who wore an aquamarine head scarf. "Why can people in the north and in the south be able to finish their studies and we can't?"

 

But Salim was also angry at the kidnappers. "They want our life to collapse," she said. "The only life we have is the university."

 

Special correspondents Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Hasan Shammari in Diyala and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.

 

 

 

[Doble Troble]

Thanks, Tony. Very interesting. Iraq needs patriots like we had 230 years ago. I hope they're there and can be found, because they're not something that we can manufacture or buy for them.

[flaco]

Tony-

 

I'm impressed that you would post these stories from three of the much maligned liberal media.

 

All three perhaps a little to the left, but nonetheless good newspapers.

 

I have no reason to doubt the veracity of these stories--do you?--and they give us an idea of the magnitude of the problem our policy makers now face.

 

Not to mention our troops in the field!!!

 

In general, I think it's a good policy to avoid placing blame: It takes our attention away from solving existing problems.

 

And I guess that at least to some degree, the American people have expressed their displeasure with those who got us into this jam.

 

Mainly, the bad guys are long gone. Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld.

 

My view (ironically) is that knowing what we do now, we should have had Saddam on the payroll.

 

No doubt he was a bad guy, but not as threatening as the current leaders of North Korea and Iran.

 

Thanks for posting these, Tony.

 

flaco

 

 

[Guest Guest_karlunity_*]

The view used to be held that self-rule was not something that could be given "to the lesser breeds with out the law".

 

The English-speaking people,it was said, had over the ages after much pain and error, developed self government as a system suited to our race.

 

After WW ll, this view went out of favor and "democracy" was seen as the goal of the inner man of the third world. "Every gook has an American inside hoping to get out".

 

This became the enlightened view of the best and the brightest".

 

Perhaps the old view is making a comeback?

 

Karl

[flaco]

DT-

 

I appreciate your use of the word "Patriots."

 

And wonder if it applies?

 

I guess what we'll find out is whether loyalty to tribe, or religious faction, outweighs loyalty to Iraq.

 

Which is basically a cobbled together nation.

 

I'm thinking of the violent differences among our Founding Fathers.

 

I'm not certain whether it was their hate for George III, love for the concept of Democracy, or a vision of a new, better nation that resulted in the United States of America.

 

Because the differences were profound.

 

Didn't some delegates abstain from voting on important early issues--was this the Continental Congress, Karl?--so a few important measures could be passed unanimously?

 

flaco

[karlunity]

Once the fighting with England started any one who was not active in the service of America was damned as a "Tory".

 

After the war, it was never the goal of the Founding Fathers to set up a democracy.

What they created and what we still have is a republic.

 

Only after victory was political debate allowed and yes, it got very nasty.

 

Even Washington, by the end of his second administration, was being called bad names.

 

Still the people have spoken and the voice of the people is the voice of God...as the British judge said before he ordered you to hang. : )

 

Perhaps the people are right, yet I don't think so. I think that the foe has been emboldened and we may yet pay a very very bloody price in several 9/11s, before we wake up and teach a very hard lesson to the sons of the prophet.

 

Karl

[Doble Troble]

I'm not certain whether it was their hate for George III, love for the concept of Democracy, or a vision of a new, better nation that resulted in the United States of America.

 

I think it was a sense of responsibility. Hate in good men isn't ever very strong, and no one who is realistic can put much faith in their vision of the future.

 

We can all do what we think is the right thing. The problem is that the right thing to do is often not in our best short-term interest.

[RGRWJB]

I'm still waiting for two things:

 

1) What is the Demo plan for Iraq? The Americans voted them into power with no plan.

 

2) What did Rumsfeld do wrong? You never really hear that in the Media.... just that he is not respected. Why

 

 

"The Emperor Has no Clothes"

 

[Horsefly]

"HATE IN GOOD MEN ISN'T VERY STRONG"!!! That's one I'll never forget. Thanks for that Doble.Jerry

[FC]

Every one of these stories was in the Army Earlybird News. They sure sound right to me.

 

There really is something different in their Iraqi minds. They just think different. They don't have much hesitation to use lethal force. Power (esp. power) and money are even more important in their minds than ours, if you can believe it! Intimidation is a frequent tool.

 

I heard, but can't say this for a certainty, that Don Rumsfeld isn't liked by the people that work for him. I had a really hard time with troops being told they were going home, then kept in Iraq, or just sent back. That is a terrible morale killer.

 

 

 

 

[FC]

Here's my gut feeling- I don't believe in the Iraqi's. We can keep doing their job for them and keep dying, hoping somehow they'll get their act together. Will they? They sure don't act like it. There's something to be said for having Christian principles, because without that, this will probably fall into mob rule and all out civil war. The Iraqi's seem to believe in their family and their sect, but beyond that, not much else beyond self interest seems to prevail. Guess who pays for it? Our GI's.

[Guest Uncle Claiborne]

Leave or Stay

 

It always boils down to two choices..... kill all their leaders and leave......or...we can kill all their leaders and stay......either way works.

 

The statement "Overkill" is not a valid word or concept......ever hear anyone speak of "Underkill"?

In war, you cannot kill too many......but you can kill too few, so.....it is logical to kill all.

If this seems harsh.......try being the loser in a war with extremists of any kind.......you will die attaining the knowledge I teach.....which will gain neither of us comfort.

As long as the citizens of this country are misled by it's media, this country travels closer to the brink of extermination. Awake America! your enemy is not in Iraq.....it is on your television.