One hundred and fifty Iraqi men kidnapped from a Higher Education Ministry government building in the light of day, by men in Iraqi security uniforms. All I can say is what a sham of a government, where criminals feel secure doing this in the light of day, assured that no one will stop them. One hundred and fifty men.
'3arun 3alaykum ya Iraqi government.
To be able to wake up today still proud of your positions. And all Iraqi PM Maliki can say to defend himself is that this is "not terrorism but the result of a conflict between militias belonging to this side or that." Outrageous.
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Bilal, 21 year old cousin, brother and neighbor, Allah yirhamuh. 3/25/86-4/19/07. In this picture, my daughter and Bilal, the night before we left Baghdad, 12/11/06.
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Born and raised in the States, these are some of my thoughts on having lived in post-Saddam Baghdad from 2003-2006. I currently reside in the US of A.
Our Biggest Iraq War Loss
Bilal, 21 year old cousin, brother and neighbor, Allah yirhamuh. 3/25/86-4/19/07. In this picture, my daughter and Bilal, the night before we left Baghdad, 12/11/06.
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15 comments:
Iraqi resistance will deal with the terrorist kidnappers. They are busy with the Americans but I think they get closer. Then the cia death squads will tremble.
Text and video on the death squads:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m28302
The video is by channel 4 reputed uk tv detailing sectarian us installed rape/death squads.
What we hear on the network channels in the US does not describe how bad the situation is. Still hearing that as soon as enough police are trained Iraq can stand up for itself. No pictures of the tortured dead - just a mention of the numbers. Sanatized. I believe the US will pull out in the next year or two ,maybe 3 at the most. At that time, a fullscale civil war will start for territory and oil. If I were there, I would leave even though it meant leaving everything behind. It may get as bad as Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (25% of the population slaughtered.)I wish that Bush had never lived-he has so messed up America(polarized it) and the world. Wish you the best and keep writing.pete
I confess I am tired of hearing about American responsibility for Iraqi sectarian violence. We certainly should not have invaded Iraq and have paid dearly for that terrible injustice ourselves (along with the Iraqis). On the other hand, we did not create the animosity between Sunnis and Shites that is not belong played out so disasterously. It is true, I suppose, that such violence did not occur during Saddam's time, but that was only because he established a terrifying dictatorship that effectively suppressed the Shites.
I am also very tired of having the Americans or Jews blamed for the actual slaughter in Iraq as if American or Jewish squads were doing the kidnapping and slaughtering. The former is pure stupidity and the latter pure anti-semitism. Sooner, better than latter, the Muslim world must give up the notion that everyone else in the world are their enemies and that everything that goes wrong in Muslim society is the fault of someone else.
CIA death squads indeed!
Joel,go back to your ignorance, fall back to sleep.
Hey Pete,
Thanks for your good wishes. Things look like they are turning for the worst here, unfortunately, though I truly hope that they don't. I'm lucky, leaving isn't too diffficult for me. But for I feel for those who can't leave, the elderly, poor, the settled and those who love their homeland. I don't know what they will do.
Joel, I have to agree with you. Though the US opened the doors to the catastrophe that's occuring here, though they did not plan well for the aftermath, though they did not take into account the Iraqi experience over the past few decades, a large part of what's happening now is definitely the responsibility of the Iraqis who are carrying it out. I'm sure external elements (eg Iran) have something to do with it, but the hatred that is brewing here between Sunni and Shiite is impossible to comprehend.
fatima, but your anamerican imperialist!
Fatima,perhaps you graciously came to teach the barbarians civilization?
Show them the new tricks learned from your masters the white men.
anonymous, you have no right to talk to Fatima that way. Do you even know what she has been through or what she is going through? If you're going to post something on someone's blog, at least have a little respect for that person. Stop being rude and ignorant, please. It is not only unfair to Fatima, but it is unfair to the rest of us who have to read what you write.
For people to judge someone based on the information posted on this blog as an American imperialist shows a shallowness of personality and the depth of problem that we face in Iraq today. I too live in Iraq, I was here for some time during Saddam's days and have been living here since the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The problem is a compounded one.
1. Americans and Iraqis are to blame for the present situation in Iraq. I have personally witnessed the political process since its inception here and was an eye witness to many events including Fallujah 4/2004 and 10/2004. The problem is with the erstwhile Iraqis who gave advice to the US before the war because it was so far removed from reality and reflected more their personal agendas than the interests of Iraq. The US Administration is not itself free from blame because it accepted many of those fallacious notions and went into Iraq without a proper plan.
2. True patriots came out after the fall of Baghdad and informed the American Administration about the mistakes in an effort to save their countrymen but it seemed this was to no avail. The fact that the border with Iran was left open for so long and groups were allowed to infiltrate that border and come into the country to simply wreak havoc is the US' fault. Had the Iraqi army not been disbanded they could have at least served as a border guard on those borders. The CPA then went about ignoring Sunni demands for postponing the elections giving birth to a government that was not truly representative of Iraq and at the same time strengthening those sectarian parties whose interest lies in the division of Iraq along sectarian lines in order for them to continue to have adherents.
3. Part of the problem also lies with the Sunnis. After three years they are still divided and attack one another and have not come together to develop a national agenda that they call their own. They simply respond to the agendas set by others. I have also seen this in the requests by the insurgency/resistance (depending on your viewpoint) if you talk to them about an agenda for the future of a nation they don't have one, they simply want people freed from jails, etc.
3. There is not one party responsible for all of the chaos that Iraq has become today, but if there is one party that has a moral responsibility to fix it, it is the United States and the United Kingdom as they put in motion the events leading to what Iraq has become today. Please keep in mind that there are 4 million mixed family Iraqis, that is one sixth of the Iraqi population and not a small number. These people truly did live in harmony for years, but the sectarian agendas unleashed by Iraqi and non-Iraqi parties led to the hatred that exists today. Normal Iraqis today do not habor hatred for one another they are simply stuck between the warring sectarian factions. The thousands fleeing and displaced Iraqis bear witness to that.
4. With all of that in mind, how do you resolve this problem? I believe it will take a few bold steps:
1. Close the border with Iran and Syria and literally threaten Iran with extreme military retaliation if the situation in Iraq does not improve.
2. Clamp down militarily on the most problematic militia (Jaysh Al-Mehdi) kill or arrest the field commanders and senior leadership. Once that happens the other militias will take heed. This will require US and Iraqi lives but it must happen.
3. Change the present government. The problem is when parties are above the law because of their militias they are not prone to compromise, force them to when they no longer have their militias and Iraq will be a different place today.
4. Threaten immediate US withdrawal and the parties will all compromise because the Sunnis have more to gain from a civil war than the Shia do.
5. Give Sunnis a reason to go against Alqaeda and other extremists. Presently they are seen as the only solution to US and Shia agression against them.
6. Change the posture in Anbar, let the Sunnis feel that the US is not against them.
These are just a few ideas. Please be respectful when posting on people's blogs, and don't make adhomonym attacks on people.
Also anonymous from Iraq
Locals Accuse U.S. of Massacre in Ramadi
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily, Inter Press Service
RAMADI, Nov 17 (IPS) - U.S. military tank fire killed scores of civilians in Ramadi, capital of Al-Anbar province, late Monday night, according to witnesses and doctors. Anger and frustration were evident at the hospitals and during the funerals in the following days.
Iraqi doctors and witnesses at the scene of the attack said U.S. tanks killed 35 civilians when they shelled several homes in the Al-Dhubat area of the city.
Ramadi, located 110 km west of Baghdad, has been beset with sporadic but intense violence between occupation forces and insurgents for several months.
On Tuesday, hundreds of people carried the 35 coffins of the dead to a graveyard in a funeral procession which closely resembled an angry demonstration.
"We heard the bombing and we thought it was the usual fighting between resistance fighters and the Americans, but we soon realised it was bombing by large cannons," 60-year-old Haji Jassim explained to IPS at the burial. "We weren't allowed by the Americans to reach the destroyed houses to try to rescue those who were buried, so certainly many of them bled to death."
Jassim claimed that everyone killed was innocent, that they were not fighters. He said that when he and others attempted to reach the rubble of the destroyed homes, located near mosques whose minaret's loudspeakers had broadcast pleas for help, "There was a big American force that stopped us and told us the usual ugly phrases we hear from them every day."
Jassim, speaking with IPS while several other witnesses listened while nodding their heads, said that ambulances did not appear on the scene for hours because "we realised that the Americans did not allow them to move," and that as a result, "there were people buried under the rubble who were bleeding to death while there was still a chance to rescue them."
Jassim then burst into tears and walked away saying prayers to Allah to bless the souls of the dead.
A doctor at Ramadi's main hospital, Abdullah Salih, told reporters that 35 bodies had been brought in and he also believed that others had not been retrieved since access had been limited by ongoing U.S. military operations.
Another doctor, Kamal al-Ani, said that in addition to the dead, another 17 wounded had been brought into the hospital.
The scene at the hospital was tragic as doctors confirmed the reason of death for many as severe bleeding that had gone on for several hours. Most of the doctors were unwilling to discuss too many details for fear of U.S. military reprisals.
"You can notice the number of dead is at least twice as high as the number of wounded," one of the doctors, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. A local Iraqi policeman who identified himself as Khalif Obeidi told IPS that tanks had destroyed several houses in the area during the U.S. raid, killing more than 30 civilians.
"We know that those killed were innocent," said Obeidi, "although there have been attacks on the Americans from near that area in the past."
Residents of the city and relatives of the dead who were at the funeral were furious.
"There is no other way for the Sunnis than to fight," Ali Khudher, a 25-year-old carpenter who lost a relative in the attack told IPS. "It is a religious war and no one can deny that now."
Others who attended the mass funeral chanted anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Iranian and even slogans against the Islamic Party which is now part of the Iraqi government.
Tempers run high in Ramadi also because the city has often been the scene of large-scale U.S. military operations and their inherent forms of collective punishment.
Last June, thousands of residents were forced from their homes due to military operations, according to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman, Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq.
At that time, Mascia told IPS, "The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time in Ramadi."
Mirroring a complaint heard often from residents of Ramadi, Mascia said, "The main dangers for the population are the MNF (multi-national force) at the checkpoints and the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous -- causing many victims among civilians."
In a phone conversation with IPS, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad said he had no specific details of the incident and that "the U.S. military has been conducting ongoing patrols and security details in Al-Anbar for months now. Our efforts are always to attack the terrorists and protect the civilian population."
I wonder why anonymous doesn't want to reveal their identity. I wonder if they realize perhaps yes, the Iraqis were so afraid of Saddam that they did live in peace, but they lived in peace with each other before then as well. Sunnis and Shi'ites intermarried like there was no difference at all. Why now suddenly are Shi'ites being kicked out of their homes, and Sunni's kicked out of their homes b/c they are living in a district that is one majority or another? Perhaps anonymous should walk a mile in Fatima's shoes before making such crude and condescending comments.
Hi liked reading your blog.you have a nice blog.Let's hope Iraq will stand on her legs soon.And things can go babk to norm.
Wish you well
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