[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 35

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nine U.S. troops died in Iraq during the weekend, including five killed by roadside bombs, the U.S. military reported Sunday.

Two soldiers were killed and two wounded Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in northern Iraq, U.S. commanders in the northern city of Tikrit announced. The soldiers were assigned to the Army's 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

Two U.S. soldiers and a Marine died from unspecified "enemy action" in western Iraq's Anbar province Saturday, the American command in Baghdad reported, while two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.

Anbar, including the provincial capital Ramadi, has been a hotbed of the mostly Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. troops that emerged after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

And two American soldiers were reported killed in Baghdad -- one slain by a roadside bomb Saturday, another killed in fighting Sunday.

The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 2,900, including including seven civilians working for the Defense Department.

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Vanavond in Tegenlicht: Baghdad E.R.
Uitzending: maandag 4 december 21.00 uur, Nederland 2

In Tegenlicht het aangrijpende verslag van de gang van zaken in het belangrijkste Amerikaanse militair hospitaal in Irak. In de zwaarbewaakte groene zone in Baghdad worden dagelijks tientallen -zwaargewonde - Amerikaanse soldaten binnen gebracht. Artsen, verplegers en priesters proberen een voortdurende stroom van gewonde soldaten te behandelen, in leven te houden en bij te staan.

Maar er lijkt geen einde te komen aan het uitputtende gevecht van doktoren en verplegers tegen de horror van de oorlog. Veel van de ernstige verwondingen worden veroorzaakt door de talloze zelfgemaakte explosieven- IED's :improvised explosive devices- onder meer langs de kant van de 'gevaarlijkste weg ter wereld: Road Irish'.

In Baghdad ER een rauw en ongecensureerd beeld van de wérkelijke schade van de oorlog. Want zoals een verpleegkundige uit de operatiekamer in Baghdad zegt: "zelfs als je het geluk hebt om lichamelijk ongedeerd naar huis terug te gaan, als je niet leert omgaan met ál de aspecten van de oorlog, dan ga je uiteindelijk van binnen kapot.

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Op maandag 4 december 2006 17:53 schreef pberends het volgende:

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http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/31873782/

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Op maandag 4 december 2006 18:14 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Was vorige week nog bij de Belg, geloof ik. Toch maar even kijken misschien.

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More Troops?

By William S. Lind

[The views expressed in this article are those of Mr. Lind, writing in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the opinions or policy positions of the Free Congress Foundation, its officers, board or employees, or those of Kettle Creek Corporation.]

The latest serpent at which a drowning Washington Establishment is grasping is the idea of sending more American troops to Iraq. Would more troops turn the war there in our favor? No.

Why not? First, because nothing can. The war in Iraq is irredeemably lost. Neither we nor, at present, anyone else can create a new Iraqi state to replace the one our invasion destroyed. Maybe that will happen after the Iraqi civil was is resolved, maybe not. It is in any case out of our hands.

Nor could more American troops control the forces driving Iraq’s intensifying civil war. The passions of ethnic and religious hatred unleashed by the disintegration of the Iraqi state will not cool because a few more American patrols pass through the streets. Iraqis are quite capable of fighting us and each other at the same time.

A second reason more troops would make no difference is that the troops we have there now don’t know what to do, or at least their leaders don’t know what they should do. For the most part, American troops in Iraq sit on their Forward Operating Bases; in effect, we are besieging ourselves. Troops under siege are seldom effective at controlling the surrounding countryside, regardless of their number.

When American troops do leave their FOBs, it is almost always to run convoys, which is to say to provide targets; to engage in meaningless patrols, again providing targets; or to do raids, which are downright counterproductive because they turn the people even more strongly against us, where that is possible. Doing more of any of these things would help us not at all.

More troops might make a difference if they were sent as part of a change in strategy, away from raids and “killing bad guys” and toward something like the Vietnam war’s CAP program, where American troops defended villages instead of attacking them. But there is no sign of any such change of strategy on the horizon, so there would be nothing useful for more troops to do.

Even a CAP program would be likely to fail at this stage of the Iraq war, which points to the third reason more troops would not help us: more troops cannot turn back the clock. For the CAP or “ink blot” strategy to work, there has to be some level of acceptance of the foreign troops by the local people. When we first invaded Iraq, that was present in much of the country.

But we squandered that good will with blunder upon blunder. How many troops would it take to undo all those errors? The answer is either zero or an infinite number, because no quantity of troops can erase history. The argument that more troops in the beginning, combined with an ink blot strategy, might have made the Iraq venture a success does not mean that more troops could do the same thing now.

The clinching argument against more troops also relates to time: sending more troops would mean nothing to our opponents on the ground, because those opponents know we could not sustain a significantly larger occupation force for any length of time. So what if a few tens of thousands more Americans come for a few months? The U.S. military is strained to the breaking point to sustain the force there now. Where is the rotation base for a much larger deployment to come from?

The fact that Washington is seriously considering sending more American troops to Iraq illustrates a common phenomenon in war. As the certainty of defeat looms ever more clearly, the scrabbling about for a miracle cure, a deus ex machina, becomes ever more desperate - and more silly. Cavalry charges, Zeppelins, V-2 missiles, kamikazes, the list is endless. In the end, someone finally has to face facts and admit defeat. The sooner someone in Washington is willing to do that, the sooner the troops we already have in Iraq will come home – alive.

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Bagdad door de ogen van een arts
In Netwerk een reportage die in zijn geheel is gefilmd door de Iraakse arts Omer. Hij werkt op de eerste hulp afdeling van het al Yarmoukziekenhuis in Bagdad. Dagelijks wordt hij geconfronteerd met slachtoffers van aanslagen en schietpartijen.

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Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 18:19 schreef pberends het volgende:
Vanavond een item in Netwerk:
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Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 18:19 schreef pberends het volgende:
Vanavond een item in Netwerk:
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Op woensdag 6 december 2006 13:26 schreef pberends het volgende:

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Netwerk: Bagdad door de ogen van een arts

Hier online terug te zien.

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Op donderdag 7 december 2006 01:22 schreef popolon het volgende:
Read the Iraq group's full report (.pdf)

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In addition, there is significant underreporting of the vio-
lence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter
to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an
Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot deter-
mine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not
make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mor-
tar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For
example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or sig-
nificant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the re-
ports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.
Good policy is difficult to make when information is systemati-
cally collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with pol-
icy goals.

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Every single thing that a person does--not just prayer or the time spent in a mosque but every action--is in fact an act of veneration. So yes, many things are different here. Yet we all have become friends--good friends--in part because I am here; I honor them and their religion by going out of my way to show them respect. Not all Americans act this way.

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Doden door aanslag bij sjiitisch heiligdom Irak

KARBALA - Een krachtige autobom heeft zaterdag dood en verderf gezaaid vlakbij een van de belangrijkste heiligdommen van de sjiitische islam in Irak.

De explosie vond plaats op een markt, enkele honderden meters van het Imam al-Abbas-mausoleum in Karbala. Zeker acht mensen kwamen om het leven, aldus de politie van de stad ten zuiden van de hoofdstad Bagdad.

Een aantal winkels en auto's vlogen door de ontploffing in brand. Het Imam al-Abbas mausoleum is de laatste rustplaats van de zoon van de oprichter van de sjiitische islam, imam Ali.

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 13:38 schreef JohannesPaulus het volgende:
Tijdens het Baath-regime van uncle Saddam gebeurde dat ook op grote schaal door onze soennietische vrienden.

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 13:53 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Tijdens opstanden, ja. Niet omdat ze sji'ietisch zijn, maar vanwege die opstanden.

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 14:22 schreef JohannesPaulus het volgende:

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Dat maak jij en alle andere baathistjes ervan Het is een feit dat soennieten sjiieten maar al te graag willen uitroeien. Zie Pakistan for example. Heb jij soms een sjiietische opstand geconstateerd in Pakistan? In Afghanistan onder de Talibab? Nee hé?

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 13:38 schreef JohannesPaulus het volgende:
'Islamic Army in Iraq' vecht onder het mom van de Islam tegen de Amerikanen. Het zijn allemaal soennieten c.q ex-baathisten. Ze kunnen natuurlijk niet toegeven dat het ex-Baathisten zijn want de Baath-partij komt niet meer terug. Dat weten ze zelf ook wel dus zijn ze nu jihadisten ipv baathisten. Ze vermoorden de sjiieten niet alleen omdat het collaborateurs zijn maar ook omdat ze 'ongelovigen' zijn, althans in hun ogen. Het vermoorden van sjiieten is niet iets wat spontaan in 2003 is begonnen. Tijdens het Baath-regime van uncle Saddam gebeurde dat ook op grote schaal door onze soennietische vrienden.

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 14:22 schreef JohannesPaulus het volgende:

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Dat maak jij en alle andere baathistjes ervan Het is een feit dat soennieten sjiieten maar al te graag willen uitroeien. Zie Pakistan for example. Heb jij soms een sjiietische opstand geconstateerd in Pakistan? In Afghanistan onder de Taliban? Nee hé?

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Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 16:50 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:

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Logisch het Sjiietische ongeloof en nep geloof wat de al Sadr aanhangers en hun voorbeelden in Iran dus niet de normaal shia's is na het Zionisme en de Amerikaanse bezetting het grootste probleem in de regio.

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President Irak levert kritiek op VS-rapport
AP
BAGDAD - President Jalal Talabani van Irak heeft zondag zware kritiek geleverd op het rapport dat de Studiegroep voor Irak van het Amerikaanse Congres afgelopen week heeft uitgebracht. Hij zei dat het rapport gevaarlijke aanbevelingen bevat die de soevereiniteit en de grondwet van Irak zouden ondermijnen.

Vooral een oproep van de studiegroep om duizenden leden van de Baath-partij van Saddam Hussein weer in hun oude functie te herstellen is gevaarlijk volgens Talabani, die behoort tot de Koerdische minderheid die onder Saddam zwaar werd onderdrukt. De president sprak met verslaggevers in zijn kantoor in Bagdad.

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Roadside bombs kill 4 U.S. soldiers in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military said Monday that four U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded by two roadside bombs in Baghdad on Sunday, as suspected sectarian violence cost another 51 Iraqis their lives.

A roadside bomb exploded near a late-night combat patrol in northern Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding two others, the military said

Earlier Sunday, a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. Army patrol was completing a security mission west of the city, killing one soldier and wounding another, the military said.

The deaths brought to 2,925 the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war. Seven American civilian contractors of the military also have died in the conflict.

Fifty-one bullet-riddled bodies were collected across the Iraqi capital Sunday, victims of what an official with Iraq's Interior Ministry said was sectarian retribution between Sunnis and Shiites.

The official also said gunmen killed Iraqi Army Col. Yaarub Khazaal, who worked on the security detail for Ahmed Chalabi. The killing happened Sunday in western Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood, the official said.

Chalabi is a former Iraqi exile who was instrumental in building the U.S. case during the lead-up to the war, and who later fell out of favor with the Bush administration.

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Op vrijdag 8 december 2006 14:55 schreef Disorder het volgende:
Hier nog een soort van best of van de Iraqi insurgency.

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Op maandag 11 december 2006 12:07 schreef Zero2Nine het volgende:
Ik vraag me trouwens af op basis van wat mensen die hier reageren in staat zijn te beoordelen wie er "gelijk heeft" de soennieten of de sjiieten? Als je een van de twee bent kun je sowieso niet meer opbjectief reageren, en Nederlanders (zoals ik) zijn in deze al helemaal geen deskundigen? wie weet wat beide partijen allemaal uitvreten en waar wij geen weet van hebben.
Het is i.m.o. net als Joegoslavie, daar kan je eigenlijk ook helemaal niks zinnings over zeggen als westerling. We staan er compleet buiten. Maar toch hebben mensen snel hun mening klaar, zelfs in zulke complexe zaken.

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Syria and Iraq re-open embassies

Syria and Iraq have re-opened their embassies in each other's capitals ending a diplomatic boycott which has lasted more than 20 years.

The two missions opened in simultaneous flag-raising ceremonies.

The two neighbours severed ties during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, but Syria has adopted a friendlier approach in the last few months, analysts say.

Officials in Damascus say they want to stop an Iraqi civil war and prevent the disintegration of the country.

No ambassadors have been appointed so far. The ceremonies were conducted by visiting deputy foreign ministers from each side.

"We look forward to a Syrian role in helping the Iraqi people in these conditions and to support the political process in Iraq," Iraq's Labid Abawi said in Damascus.

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Sunni Militants Issue Religious Edicts in Mosul

Terrified residents are forced to comply with puritanical Islamic laws as insurgents tighten their grip on the city.

By Yasmin Ahmed in Mosul (ICR No. 205, 9-Dec-06)
Scattered stones are the only remnants of a famous statue that stood in a Mosul square, in the northeastern part of the city. The sculpture in the al-Zihour area used to show a group of women carrying jars on their shoulders, before insurgents reduced it to dust last month.

The campaign against the public display of what they see as non-Islamic art is part of a wider operation by Sunni insurgents to try to establish an Islamic state in Iraq. As a stronghold of Sunni insurgents, about 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, Mosul is the intended capital of this so-called Islamic Emirate, comprising the provinces of Salahaddin, Anbar, Diyala, Baghdad and parts of Wasit and Babel.

To implement their agenda, the extremists have set up what they describe as a ministry of war that issues leaflets and announces campaigns, such as the one launched in November against public statues, which they claim were symbols of paganism.

Over the past few months, Mosul has been one of the most volatile cities in Iraq. Militants have conducted suicide attacks, planted roadside bombs against Iraqi and US troops and assassinated police officers, translators and journalists. Local authorities have been forced to impose a curfew.

The statues under threat were erected in the city during the 1970s and include those of ancient artists such as the Arab poet Abi Tammam and the singer of religious songs Mullah Othman al-Mosulli.

Colonel Ahmed al-Juburi, a spokesman for Mosul police, told IWPR that “a group of foreign terrorists” had planted bombs under the destroyed statue during the curfew.

He says he’s dumbfounded by the destruction. “Do these statues work with police? Were they translators for the Americans or members of the dissolved Ba’ath party?” he asked. “Those terrorists are a bunch of idiots.”

Extremists have started to interfere in all aspects of daily life in Mosul. A recent leaflet called upon owners of clothes shops to cover the heads of manikins on display.

Many have complied with the demands, covering the figures with plastic bags. Shopkeeper Mutaz Ahmed, 30, protested, “I don’t know where these groups came from. They want to take us back 1400 years. But if you want to stay alive, you have to obey their orders.”

Several public baths have been forced to close after extremists banned the use of soap, claiming that it didn’t exist under the reign of the Prophet Mohammed 1400 years ago.

The leaflets prescribe in detail how to live, eat and behave, according to ultra-conservative Islamic principles. Some orders seem rather absurd, such as banning restaurants from preparing a mixed salad of cucumbers and tomatoes because one is male and the other female.

But people are taking them seriously out of fear. Khalaf Khalid, who runs a restaurant, has started to serve tomatoes and cucumbers in separate dishes. “We obey them because they threatened to blow up the restaurant and kill us if we didn't,” he said.

“They dictate even the way we eat. Tomorrow, they will even dictate how we sleep with our wives. It’s unbearable and the government should do something about Mosul.”

Even the city’s Christian minority is not spared the Islamists edicts, with women compelled to wear long Islamic dresses and headscarves.

Christian lawyer Elizabeth Ramon, 30, recalls how Islamists stopped a relative of hers and poured burning acid on her skirt. They pulled her by her hair and threatened to behead her next time they caught her without a long skirt.

“It is going from bad to worse,” said Ramon. “All my relatives have left Iraq, and we will join them before we lose our lives at the hands of these extremists.”

Speaking from his prison cell, Mohammed Taha, one of 68 militants arrested in October for an attempt to overthrow the local authorities, told IWPR that the main aims of his group was ending the US occupation; bringing down the current government; and implementing Sharia law.

Azhar Abdul-Hamid, assistant professor of education at Mosul University, believes that the extremists are largely poorly educated, ignorant people who don’t understand Islam or the Koran.

“They never read a book and use Islam to denounce good Muslim people, ” said Abdul-Hamid.

In a city seemingly ruled by extremists, the University of Mosul has emerged as a rare enclave of freedom. There, female and male students talk freely to each other, and no violence or threatening behaviour has been reported.

Mayada Akram, a student at the College of Economics and Administration, calls the extremists “stone-headed Islamists” who want women to wear the hijab, stay at home and raise children. “We are going backward hundreds of steps a day.”

For Salim Abdul-Baqi, a social researcher at a women’s centre in Mosul, the extremists “believe in the Islam of an era when people were living in caves” and cannot cope with modern life. He accuses them of double standards, “Why do they drive new cars instead of riding camels used [at the time of the Prophet Mohammad]?”

Khalid Ahmed, a police officer investigating the militants’ actions, says that they intend to blow up the famous Al-Hadba minaret, one of Mosul’s ancient landmarks. On a recent visit to Mosul, the Iraqi deputy prime minister Salam al-Zawbai warned them not to touch the landmark. He promised residents that the government would use “an iron fist” against those who tried to destabilise Iraq.

Yasmin Ahmed is an IWPR reporter in Mosul.

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Iraqis Seek Coalition to Curb Cleric

BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 — Following discussions with the Bush administration, several of Iraq’s major political parties are in talks to form a coalition whose aim is to break the powerful influence of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr within the government, senior Iraqi officials say.

The talks are taking place among the two main Kurdish groups, the most influential Sunni Arab party and an Iranian-backed Shiite party that has long sought to lead the government. They have invited Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to join them. But Mr. Maliki, a conservative Shiite who has close ties to Mr. Sadr, has held back for fear that the parties might be seeking to oust him, a Shiite legislator close to Mr. Maliki said.

Officials involved in the talks say their aim is not to undermine Mr. Maliki, but to isolate both Mr. Sadr and firebrand Sunni Arab politicians inside the government. Mr. Sadr controls a militia, the Mahdi Army, with an estimated 60,000 fighters that has rebelled twice against the American military and is accused of widening the sectarian war with reprisal killings of Sunni Arabs.

The Americans, frustrated with Mr. Maliki’s political dependence on Mr. Sadr, appear to be working hard to help build the new coalition. President Bush met last week in the White House with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Iranian-backed Shiite party, and is meeting this week with Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Sunni Arab party.

In late November, Mr. Bush and his top aides met with leaders from Sunni countries in the Middle East to urge them to press moderate Sunni Arab Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki.

Mr. Hakim’s and Mr. Hashemi’s White House visits are directly related to their effort to form a new alliance, a senior Iraqi official said.

Last month, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, wrote in a classified memo that the Americans should press Sunni Arab and Shiite leaders, especially Mr. Hakim, to support Mr. Maliki if he sought to build “an alternative political base.” The memo noted that Americans could provide “monetary support to moderate groups.”

Iraqi officials involved in the talks said they had conceived of the coalition themselves after growing frustrated with militant politicians.