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SPECIAL REPORT: How Iraq is Being
Destroyed
"A
weak Iraq suits many." Three years after the US attack,
Iraq is breaking apart. Eyewitness report from Patrick Cockburn
in Irbil. One of the great
left journalists of his time, he was on the front lines in Korea
and Vietnam. Chris Reed on Wilfred Burchett, the man who made
Murdoch foam at the mouth.Katrina
washes whitest. Bill Quigley in New Orleans reports tales of
lunacy and hope. CounterPunch
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A cruel and bloody civil war has started
in Baghdad. A trio of suicide bombers disguised as women, explosives
strapped to their bodies hidden by long black cloaks, killed
74 people and wounded over on Friday when they blew themselves
up in a Shi'ite mosque in the capital.
One bomber came through the
women's security checkpoint at the Buratha mosque in northern
Baghdad and detonated explosives just as worshippers were leaving
at the end of Friday prayers. Two other bombers then took advantage
of the confusion to blow themselves up a few seconds later killing
survivors who were trying to escape from the mosque.
The savage attack, the worst
for months, came almost exactly on the third anniversary of the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein by American and British armies on
April 9, 2003. The war was portrayed at the time as freeing Iraqis
from fear but Iraqi officials have told me that at least 100
people are being killed in and around Baghdad every day.
The slaughter of Shi'ites in
the Buratha mosque will probably lead to revenge attacks against
Sunni Arabs whose community harbors the Salafi and Jihadi fanatics
who see Shia as heretics, as worthy of death as Iraqi Christians
or American or British soldiers. Ever since the bombing of the
al-Askari shrine in Sammara on 22 February the Shia militias
have retaliated whenever Shi'ites are killed.
The bombing of the mosque,
a religious complex linked to the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, pushes Iraq further down the road to outright
civil war between Sunni and Shia Arabs. Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer,
the preacher in the Buratha mosque, declared: "The Shi'ites
are the target and it's a sectarian act. There is nothing to
justify this act but black sectarian hatred."
Men screamed in anger and fear
as they rolled the bodies of the dead onto wooden carts so they
could be loaded into ambulances and white pick-up trucks. "This
is a cowardly act. Every time I see these bloody scenes it tears
apart my heart," said a fireman called Jawwad Kathim.
It was the worst sectarian
bombing for four months. The day before a car bomb exploded near
the Shi'ite shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf killing 13 people. "My
house is opposite to the mosque and when we heard the first huge
blast I ran to make sure that my father, who was praying there,
was safe," said Naba Mohsin. "When I entered the mosque
a second huge blast occurred and I saw a big blast with flames.
I want to know if my father is alive."
I have been covering the war
in Iraq ever since it began three years ago and I have never
seen the situation so grim. I was in the northern city of Mosul
last week protected by 3,000 Kurdish soldiers, but even so it
was considered too dangerous to send out heavily armed patrols
in day time. It is safer at night because of a rigorously enforced
curfew. In March alone the US military said 1,313 people were
killed in sectarian attacks. Many bodies, buried in pits or thrown
in the rivers, are never found. The real figure is probably twice
as high. All over the country people are on the move as Sunni
and Shi'ites flee each other's areas.
I was in Lebanon at the start
of the civil war there in 1975. Baghdad today resembles Beirut
then. People are being hauled from their cars and murdered solely
because of their religious identity. A friend called to say that
he had a problem because his two half brothers had been born
in Fallujah, the Sunni Muslim stronghold, and this was on their
identity cards. If they were picked up by Shiah militiamen or
Interior Ministry troops a glance at their place of birth alone
could get them killed.
Fleeing one danger in Baghdad
it is easy to become victim of another. The same friend had taken
his mother and two sisters to the passport office in central
Baghdad so they could leave the country. While they were there
a large bomb went off killing 25 policemen outside and breaking
his sister's leg. Now the family cannot leave the country because
his sister is in hospital and his mother is too frightened to
return to the passport office to get a new passport.
President George W. Bush and
Tony Blair have for the last three years continually understated
the gravity of what is taking place in Iraq. It has been frustrating
as a journalist to hear them claim that much of Iraq is peaceful
when we could not prove them wrong without being killed or kidnapped.
The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the handover of sovereignty
in 2004, the elections and new constitution in 2005 have all
been spuriously oversold to the outside world as signs of progress.
The formation of national unity
government in Iraq is now being presented as an antidote to the
present surge in violence. "Terrorists love a vacuum",
said the Defence Secretary John Reid yesterday citing his experience
in Northern Ireland. But one Iraqi official remarked caustically
that the three main communites the Sunni, Shia and Kurds
-- do not "hate each other because they do not have a government,
but rather they do not have a government because they already
hate each other."
The coalition of Iraqi religious
parties called the United Iraqi Alliance won almost half the
seats in the 275-member parliament in the election on 15 December
last year. They now fear that the US and Britain are trying to
break up the Shia coalition and deny them the fruits of their
electoral victory. This is why they have resisted demands, open
and covert, from Washington and London for Ibrahim al-Jaafari
to stand down as prime minister.
Even if a national unity government
is formed it will control very little outside the Green Zone.
The army and police take their orders from the leaders of their
own communities and not from the government. The militias are
getting stronger and not weaker because Shia and Sunni want to
be defended by people they know.
Three years ago, when the statue
of Saddam Hussein was famously toppled in central Baghdad were
promised that their lives would get better. Instead Iraq has
become the most dangerous place in the world.
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