Civil War in Iraq : How and Why?
Isn't it about time we started calling a spade a spade? The current conflict in Iraq has been a chaotic quagmire for some time now, and with the release of The Pentagon's quarterly report on the war it is becomingly increasingly clear that the situation will only get worse. Despite the acknowledgement by the Pentagon that the number of attacks and deaths continue to rise(over the last four months Iraqi casualties have risen 51%) , the language being used belies the facts on the ground. While many major media outlets continue to refer to the "chance" or "likelihood" of civil war, the Pentagon report states that "conditions that could lead to civil war exist."
Isn't it time the Pentagon and the major media outlets admit that "civil war" is going on in Iraq as we speak? A civil war that America incited and continues to fuel by their illegal occupation. While Webster's (1999) defines "civil war" as a war between political factions or regimes within the same country, the online Free Dictionary is less specific, defining the term as a war between factions or regions of the same country. Wikipedia's tells us that some historians say that for "civil war" to exist, there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not).
If we look at Prime Minister Maliki's definition of militia's as organized armed groups who are acting outside the state and outside the law, then the criteria for the Free Dictionary definition as well as at least one of the Wikipedia versions of "civil war" are clearly met. Although the term "prolonged" is open to interpretation, it is a fact that the sectarian violence and violence perpetrated by organized militia's has been going on for some time now (at least since the Samarra mosque bombing back in February).
In an L.A. Times cover story from yesterday Julian E.Barnes ( Pentagon Issues Grim Iraq Report) quotes assistant secretary of Defense for international security Peter Rodman as saying that "the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing." Barnes also notes that according to the Pentagon report the Al Mahdi militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, while having achieved "a measure of tolerance from Iraq's new government" has frequent violent clashes with the Iraqi army. The nature of the "organized factions" referred to in the definitions above are not specified, but religious factions are not ruled out.
Barnes' story also notes that the report describes the "unprofessional, and at times criminal behavior" of the Iraqi national police, who are said to have in some instances aligned with militias. It should be clear from this, as well as reports of the violence perpetrated by sectarian death squads, that we have seen, and continue to see "prolonged violence by organized factions."
One might ask, "why is it important how the current conflict is defined or labelled?" Well, one reasonable interpretation is that by admitting to the presence of a "civil war," U.S. leadership would acknowledge not only their own failure, but the fact that an ongoing occupation would be useless. It could be argued that if a "risk" or "likelihood" of civil war exists, then appropriate U.S. intervention could lessen or eliminate this possibility. If however, civil war is already going on, U.S. actions would certainly have to be part of the problem, especially since this horrible sectarian violence was essentially non-existent prior to the U.S. invasion in March, 2003. This is why the Pentagon report holds to previous Bush administration claims that Iraq is not in an all-out civil war, but in a situation where "conditions that could lead to civil war exist." U.S. leadership can thus justify an ongoing occupation to prevent the looming civil war.
It is significant that many voices within Iraq are calling for an end to sectarian bloodshed and the unification of all Iraqi people against the U.S. occupation. In another L.A. Times article from Saturday (Questions Echo Amid the Din of Explosions) Patrick J. McDonnell and Raheem Salman quote a young Iraqi man who said that "they want us to fight eachother," referring to the U.S powers that be. A man named Mahmoud Sumaidaie was quoted at the Umm Qura Mosque as saying that "all Iraqis must come together and be united."(L.A. Times ,9/2/06)
It seems that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki shares this sentiment that the Iraqi people need to unite. On June 25 he presented a national reconciliation plan to the parliament, in which he sought to establish peace by eliminating militias from the streets, opening dialogue with rebels and reviewing the status of purged Ba'ath party members. Maliki has also criticized coalition forces for deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians and indiscriminate destruction of Iraqi property.
Muqtada al-Sadr in his Feb. 26 speech in Al-Basrah spoke about the need to push U.S. military and foreign military forces out of Iraq. He has made it clear that it is imperative for the Iraqi people to put their religious differences aside in order to achieve the ultimate goal : expelling the American military and American corporate hyenas from their country.
In the aftermath of the bombing of Samarra's Golden Mosque Iraqi President Jalal Talabani stated the need for Iraqi citizens to work together to avoid the danger of civil war and in a separate statement from around this time Talabani stated that one aim of the perpetrators was to interfere with the political process and disrupt formation of a national-unity government.
Some, including the Supreme Leader of Iran Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the United States and Israel for the bombing of the Golden Mosque. Muqtada al-Sadr also made statements to this effect while repeating his plea for Iraqi unification:
My message to the Iraqi people is to stand united and bonded, and not to fall into the Western trap. The West is trying to divide the Iraqi people ( . )
(http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/48/18107)
Dahr Jamail highlighted the former role of current U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte who served as ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005, and who has made a career of promoting sectarian and ethnic violence, widespread human rights abuses, as well overseeing the torture and execution of thousands of people (most notably by his "death squads" in Honduras in the eighties under the Reagan administration).
Jamail also points out that "in the middle of Negroponte's tenure in Iraq, the Pentagon openly considered using assassination and kidnapping teams ... led by the Special Forces." He also quotes John Pace, who is the Human Rights Chief for the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, who said (on the radio program Democracy Now!) in response to an interview question about "death squads" in Iraq that "I would say yes, there are death squads," and added that "my obser-vations would confirm that at least at a certain point last year and in 2005, we saw numerous instances where the behavior of death squads was very similar, uncannily similar to that we had observed in other countries, including El Salvador."
Jamail concludes in the same article in which he quotes Pace, that "what we're witnessing in Iraq now with these death squads and escalating sectarian violence is the product of policies implemented by Negroponte when he was the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq."
Could it be that the most brutal aspects of the "civil war" we're now seeing in Iraq are not primarily the work of radical Islamic elements? Could it be that it was not as stated by most Western media outlets, "Sunni insurgents" who bombed the Golden Mosque and supposedly set off the escalating carnage between rival religious factions in Iraq?
Is it not odd that in the immediate aftermath of the Samarra bombing in February, that despite the outrage of the majority of the Shiite population, top Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr called for restraint and unity, asking that the Shi'a population not retaliate by bombing Sunni Mosques? Not if Sunni insurgents were not behind the bombing.
So, while it is difficult to argue that the Iraqis are not currently immersed in a conflict tantamount to "civil war," the causes and incendiary forces involved are not necessarily all clearly visible, or what we have been told they are. In examining this case it seems to make the most sense to look for the Cui bono, and ask ourselves the question, "Who benefits the most here.?"
