"Brutal Ethnic Cleansing", Not Surge, Brought So-Called "Success" In Iraq

One of John McCain's strategies to win the election has been to play up the so-called "success" of the Surge, and Obama's opposition to it. In doing so, he has had to confirm that one of his many "gaffes" on Iraq was no mistake:

In a conference call Wednesday, McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann told reporters that the Arizona senator had not misspoken — that he had intended to tell Katie Couric that the troop surge, which began in 2007, had enabled the success of the “Anbar awakening” of major Sunni sheikhs against Al Qaeda, which began in 2006.

Juan Cole's powerful article reveals that the Myth of the Successful Surge is only that, a myth, subscribed to, logic and reason be damned, by John McCain in his bid to seal the neocon-numbed protoplasm imagined to be the "Republican electorate" and that all important fantasy "swing vote" (the "naaa, I dunno" crowd?). First off, is it really "success"?

"Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain."

Secondly, what is the real reason for the decrease in violence? Brutal ethnic cleansing, a Sunni-Shi'a civil war.

Although the "Sunni Awakening" has been rightly credited by Obama and others for helping reduce the "surge" in violence before the actual troop surge occurred, McCain's advisors and supporters, among others, are claiming that the surge provided on-the-ground support for that "Awakening" as well as implied "moral support", knowing that the U.S. would "be there" for them... But Juan Cole has another crucial point on this voodoo logic:

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation that began in the winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.

And we have another issue:

For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were U.S. troops doing differently from September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought U.S. force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra U.S. troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.

What the "Surge" really did was give the civil war away to the Shi'a. I'm sure Iran is shedding no tears over that, although I doubt anyone but the most callous would condone the way it went down.

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.

CNN's Michael Ware seems to side with this view.

The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad has been — albeit tragic — one of the key elements to the drop in sectarian violence in the capital. […] It’s a very simple concept: Baghdad has been divided; segregated into Sunni and Shia enclaves. The days of mixed neighborhoods are gone. […] If anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not understand Baghdad or they are lying to you.

Does this contribute to Iraq's stability, one measure of real success?

The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.

As usual, non-military means could have been more effective had they been used earlier, more evidence that the "Surge" is and was not the path to success:

In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years, the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join U.S.-sponsored Awakening Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used much earlier than 2006; indeed, it could have been deployed from 2003 and might have forestalled large numbers of deaths.

Other factors also contributed to the reduction in violence:

The Mahdi Army militia of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr concluded a cease-fire with U.S. and Iraqi troops in September 2007. Since the United States had inadvertently enabled the transformation of Baghdad into a largely Shiite city, a prime aim of the Mahdi Army, they could afford to stand down.

This was a huge element in the "success" story. Not to mention economic factors unrelated to the surge.

The vast increase in Iraqi oil revenues in recent years, and the cancellation of much foreign debt, has made the central government more powerful vis-a-vis the society. Al-Maliki can afford to pay, train and equip many more police and soldiers. An Iraq with an unencumbered $75 billion in oil income begins to look more like Kuwait, and to be able to afford to buy off various constituencies. It is a different game than an Iraq with $33 billion in revenues, much of it precommitted to debt servicing.

And by what measure does McCain or anyone else claim that violence is now at "acceptable" levels, enough to be called "success"?

I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since 1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots. That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007, the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month. That is about the rate recently, according to official statistics, for Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a month, or about half this year's average monthly rate in Iraq. Does anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm?

The talk about the Surge is more propaganda exploiting the civil war that the U.S. helped inspire and prosecute, wittingly or unwittingly, than it is anything else, much less a "Success Story". The story of Iraq is a tragedy, and McCain doesn't even get it.

Surge Success: "There is no one left for them to kill"

The news is full of it: Casualties in Iraq are down, the Surge is a success. Bush/Cheney and Al-Maliki claim that they have "won" a "victory" over the "militants" - whatever that means. They cite recent lower casualty numbers, claiming the "surge" worked, and things are getting better. But people on the ground have a different explanation for the relative calm, which is atypical of the rest of 2007.
"There is no one left for them to kill," 55-year-old retired teacher Nathum Taha told IPS in Baghdad. "The Americans continue to use Arab Shia Iraqi militias to kill Sunnis, but most people have left by now."
Now the city of Baghdad, and much of the nation that was Iraq before we invaded it, is divided along sectarian lines. Where once Shi'a and Sunni families coexisted peacefully, there are ethnic cleansings that have driven many into "safe" neighborhoods, and others are refugees in strange cities, if they can't leave Iraq altogether. And it's not because they're naturally violent or divisive as the Republicans would have you believe...

This assessment from an Iraqi who voiced what people who have to live in the war zone are saying:

"Americans and Iranians have succeeded in realising their old dream of dividing the Iraqi people into sects. That is the only success they can talk about."

"If the situation is good, why are five million Iraqis living in exile," says 55- year-old Abu Mohammadwho was evicted from Shula in West Baghdad to become a refugee in Amiriya, a few miles from his lost home.

"Sectarian killings are less because all the Sunnis have been evicted from mixed areas in Baghdad," Salman Hameed, a teacher who was evicted from the al-Hurriya area west of Baghdad eight months ago told IPS. "All my relatives and Sunni neighbours who survived the killing campaign led by the militias under the eyes of American and Iraqi forces have fled either to Syria or to other Sunni cities."

Over 30 tons of cluster bombs, which are known for their heavy "collateral damage" on civilian populations, were dropped in the first 6 months of 2007. And that's not counting the
"Attacks against U.S. forces are not much less than they were last month, but media coverage has almost disappeared," Muhammad Younis from Mosul, in Baghdad on a business trip, told IPS. "The resistance is moving fast and changing locations in order to avoid intelligence provided by collaborators. Most Iraqis hate the Americans more than ever after the death and destruction caused by their occupation."

"American air raids are increasing in a way that shows a total failure on the ground," a retired general of the dissolved Iraqi army told IPS. "A whole family was killed near Madayin, southeast Baghdad on Saturday (Nov. 3) just after the tragic bombing of houses south of Tikrit (about 100 km north of Baghdad) where more than 10 civilians were killed."

On Nov. 4, Iraqi army personnel backed by U.S. soldiers detained 12 people during a raid on the Sunni Abu Hanifa mosque in the Adhamiyah district of northern Baghad.

"Those American and government forces could not face the resistance fighters, so they arrest innocent people," Aziz Thafir, a lawyer who witnessed the arrests, told IPS. "They started their raid with nasty sectarian words against Sunnis, and then arrested every one who was around in the mosque."
"They are more vicious than they were before," 44-year-old Abu Ahmed told IPS in the capital. "This is a religious war against Sunnis, who would not accept the occupation and division of the country."

Many Iraqis believe the sectarian violence is being perpetrated or orchestrated by the U.S., not prevented or stopped by them, as presented in American public propaganda, aka media blitzes. And they see that reporting is not accurate either - attacks by U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as Iraqi police, against Iraqi civilians, are not being covered. They see the U.S. as working on a "divide and conquer" policy, and the lessening of violence as merely the result of so many people having either been killed or fled as refugees - plus the dividing of their cities into ethnically cleansed "havens".

"I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and
that everything is fine," retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told IPS
in Baghdad. "But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a
dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq."
And as with Baquba and
other violence-hit areas of Iraq, he says a part of the story in Baghdad is that
there is nobody left to tell it. "Most of the honest journalists have
left."
"Baghdad has been torn into two cities and many towns and
neighbourhoods," Ahmad Ali, chief engineer from one of Baghdad's municipalities
told IPS. "There is now the Shia Baghdad and the Sunni Baghdad to start with.
Then, each is divided into little town-like pieces of the hundreds of thousands
who had to leave their homes."

The U.S. has to answer questions about possible complicity.

"The Americans ask (Prime Minister Nouri al) Maliki to stop the sectarian assassinations when they know very well that his ministers are ordering the sectarian cleansing," Mahmood Farhan from the Muslim Scholars Association, a leading Sunni group, told IPS.

At least they could have read

"A UN report released September 2005 held interior ministry forces responsible for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It said special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings were recruited from the Shia Badr and Mehdi militias.
Retired Col. James Steele, who served as advisor to Iraqi security forces under former U.S. ambassador John Negroponte, supervised the training of these forces.

Steele had been commander of the U.S. military advisors group in El Salvador in 1984-86; Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to neighbouring Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers.
The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA, according to a CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S. role in Honduras.
The CIA records document that "special intelligence units", better known as "death squads", comprised CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of people suspected of supporting leftist guerrillas.
Negroponte was ambassador to Iraq for close to a year from June 2004. "

Makes you wonder what those in Iraq were really trained to do. Why then don't the Democrats put up a stronger fight to stop this disastrous war?

Ye Shall Know Them by Their Detainees

Bridgethought of the Day: Every person has intuition planted in his heart, allowing him to distinguish truth from falsehood. It's the politician's job to black that out. That's why war should never be waged by politicians. Like Bush, Cheney, and their DOD appointees. Military leaders do better when they follow their "gut feeling", aka intuition. Too bad they have to follow a lying, conniving, & not-very-intuitive Vice Commander-in-Chief. (The CiC is just a pen-wielder.)

Here is an important report from Dahr Jamail's website:

The number of detainees held by the U.S. military has increased by more than 50 percent since the U.S. administration announced the surge six months ago, bringing the detainee population to at least 24,500, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq. The officers have said the detainee population was 16,000 in February of this year.



John Sifton, researcher for Human Rights Watch, told reporters Aug. 24 that "the allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems."
Sifton said Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations "have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture."
Sifton added that there are no reliable numbers provided by the Iraqi government on the number of detainees, and that the U.S. military will not provide the numbers either.
"My three sons were selling vegetables in Baghdad at the wholesale market when Americans took them away over a year ago," 55-year-old Saadiya from the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad told IPS. "We learned three months later that they were taken to Bucca prison near Basra. They were only farmers, and now they are listed as terrorists just because they are Sunni."
Stories like this are recounted all over the western areas of Iraq, where Sunni Arabs are the dominant population.
"A roadside bomb exploded near our house and killed three Americans," Sumaya, a woman from the Dora area of southwest Baghdad told IPS. "Then American tanks came with hundreds of soldiers and arrested over 30 men from the neighbourhood, including my husband. We were asleep when the blast occurred at 5 am, and it was curfew hours, but they still wanted us to tell them who did it. Now I have to work and feed my four children."

"A force from the Ministry of Interior took 45 men from our village nine months ago and we still do not know their whereabouts," Farhan Abbas told IPS. Abbas is from Youssufiya, 25 km south of Baghdad, and was visiting Baghdad in hope of finding information about the people detained from his neighbourhood.
"We lost hope for them because when we went to the ministry to ask about them, they denied their arrest and told us it must be the militias dressed in uniform," said Abbas. "We argued that the force came in the ministry's vehicles, but they told us to get lost or else they would arrest us too."
Two vice-presidents of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and Tariq al-Hashimi of the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, recently visited Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention centre near Baghdad International airport.
Al-Sharqiya television reported that while Mehdi did not talk to detainees, Hashimi talked with several of them at length and promised that their cases would be looked into shortly.
"You are better off here than outside," Hashimi said to the detainees. "It is much safer here than outside, believe me."
"What a wonderful deputy president we have," Ahmad Ali from Ramadi who was visiting Baghdad told IPS. "He thinks people are better off in jail than at home."
The Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from Maliki's government Aug. 1 because several of their demands had not been met. The first was release of at least 80 percent of the detainees who are believed to be innocent.
(*Ali, a correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, a U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

With this kind of "surge side effect", what does it say about our purposes there? We are trying to round up Sunnis, then complain because Iraq is being dominated by Iran-friendly Shi'aa.

We keep hearing that the Maliki government is not handling their nation properly, that the alienation of the Sunnis is due to his weakness. But it is the Americans who are causing the failure of the Maliki government - and no one else! They are detaining people without due process, and yet they talk about how they are creating and promoting democracy. Pure hypocrisy. This is the biggest load of BS ever shoveled on our nation, the nation of sheep.

But don't worry... Remember, Cheney is watching over you... that sheep may safely graze...

Religious War Images

Let's see, we have the Protestant Orangemen vs. the Catholic Irish; the Orthodox vs. Reformed Jews now revving up for battle; the Shi'a vs. Sunni in Iraq and elsewhere; and ... now the Hamas vs. Fattah in Palestine, where religion was previously not the issue.

So, fellow Americans, let's all join the fun and make it the Western Pop Capitalists vs. the Eastern Religious Totalitarians. Sounds like a good Freedom Fight, and who doesn't love to die for freedom? Let's surge, to watch him spin faster and faster!

Bridging the "Unbridgeable Chasm"

Bridgethought of the Day: In the ultimate power struggle, love always trumps hate. But the trick is, you can't have lost that capability to love.

Bobby Ghosh, in his cover piece in Time magazine about the Shi'a vs. Sunni conflict, especially as it plays out now in Iraq, and spread through the rest of the middle east, called that "religious" enmity an "unbridgeable chasm". He lays blame for the bloodshed on Bush's ill-conceived and disastrously-implemented invasion of Iraq. And he describes in details how the conflict grew from mutual cooperation, where Sunni & Shi'a Muslims peacefully coexisted, to incomprehensible brutality and cruelty, to hate without measure, a downwardly spiraling plunge into the anti-human, the anti-moral, the anti-faith. Civil war? Ethnic cleansing? Unconscionable slaughter...

And then there's this solution. It comes off almost like some peace march from the 60's. We'll sign petitions, we'll arrange sensitivity sessions between rivals, we'll all hold hands, Sunnis on one side, Shi'as on the other, and we'll give peace a chance, and everybody will get together and love one another right now. But ... in another country ... where there is no invasion, no reason to hate each other, no economic implosion-gone-blackhole (exempted: Big Oil).

Here it is, though, and the argument is true, and pretty well-put, I might add. I particularly liked these points:

• Dialog allows parties to understand each other better by allowing
  participants to acquire direct knowledge about beliefs instead of relying on
  propaganda and stereotypical images. (Quran 49:6-12)
• Dialog will isolate the extremist fringe. It is a major sin to kill a human being. Killing a human being is like killing the whole of humanity. By talking to each other, Shias and
  Sunnis will be able to save lives, which is like saving the whole of humanity.
  (Quran 5:32)
• Revenge is not justice. Killing in revenge is unjust, inhuman,
  and un-Islamic. Retribution through the state, which the Quran sanctions via
  capital punishment does not amount to individuals taking the law in their hands
  or killing an innocent person in revenge. The call for, "an eye for an eye,"
  does not mean an innocent eye for an innocent eye.
• Even if some Shias and Sunnis consider each other enemies, the Quran asks us to be just even toward one's enemy "O you who believe! Stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and
  depart from justice. Be just: that is next to Piety: and fear Allah. For Allah
  is well-acquainted with all that you do." [Quran 5:8]

This is great advice for resolving any conflict, I think. The first point, about how dialog allows people to get away from stereotypes - that cartooning thing - and have genuine understanding, is one I'm practically obsessed with. Dialog, diplomacy, communication, understanding ... things the "Superpower to the World" is running mighty short on, banking heavily on the "me Tarzan grab biggest stick" theory of how to run this planet. Wouldn't it be great if they would finally get out of the socio-political stone age and discover things like ... agriculture? language? diplomacy? trade? discussion? give-n-take? infrastructure rebuilding? bridges?

Right now, we're focusing all the blood, sweat, and resources of The United States on bludgeoning populations whenever we feel "a threat", which, on our bludgeoning path, is with ever-increasing frequency. Instead of sending in more guns, why not "surge" diplomacy? Send in the best minds, the best plans, the best resources, the best bridge-builders? What is wrong with that?

What's wrong is it would involve admission of a mistake. It would involve some kind of humility. It would also be a complete reversal of MO. Nobody believes in it. We believe in force, guns, and power. Typical humans. The very power they believe in is what will ultimately destroy them. Not by terrorists. But by their own hands. We're all worried about the Shia-Sunni conflict. But we're not worried about how this empire-building is destroying what the U.S. was supposed to stand for. That is, freedom, justice, and democracy... yeah, right...