Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold

[leftchick]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article548945.ece

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.

Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: "They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later I went back to try to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin.

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.

In Baquba, with a population of 350,000, gunmen last week ordered people off a bus, separated the men from the women and shot dead 11 of them. Not far away police found the mutilated body of a kidnapped six-year-old boy for whom a ransom had already been paid.

:(

[acmavm]

1. What I would like to ask a the freaks at the site that shalt not be named

is do they think that these people somehow deserve this? Do they believe that the bush** administration is not at fault here? Do they think that their children have more of a right to life than that six year old boy?

[leftchick]

2. of course they do

these are brown kids and they are racists.

[acmavm]

4. I have a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that people can be

so (insert word here, I just can't define it) as to not understand that we are responible for this misery and heartache. I can't understand why people would still support the diabolically evil scum that caused this to happen.

I just do not understand.

[Chulanowa]

23. I believe the term you're looking for

is "Fucked in the head".

[acmavm]

26. Yeah, but it's more than that. It's an emtiness that goes deep down into

their very being. I would say soul but I don't thing they have one, it has rotted away, eaten by some cancer-like emotion or mindset.

[NJ_Lib]

5. Don't you know in Freeperville,...

... brown-skinned kids don't count? They would rap off some absurdity about the kids carrying machine guns as well and killing our soldiers... Last night I saw a report about the investigation Murtha is calling for involving an incident of some Marines claiming an IED exploded, followed by a gun fight between the Marines and some "insurgents"... Turning out now that it was nothing but a few families and our guys shot dead 20 of them, for no reason... They were not fired upon, nor is there evidence of an IED... Murtha was saying this is what happens when young, untrained kids are put under this kind of pressure...

Worst of all, this International reporter had the six-year old girl survivor, who's parents were shot dead in front of her... I will NEVER forget what she said... She said: "The Americans, they kill people, and then they say sorry. I hate them"...

Could it get any lower for our country?

[rodeodance]

3. wish this headline was in US of A papers

[Jazzgirl]

6. Haven't the Iraqis been living together for years?

Different sects in the same neighborhood and even intermarrying? This seems so weird. Are these guys hired assasins? <insert Negroponte here>

[Igel]

8. Remember Yugoslavia.

Same sort of background, same sort of problems.

Serbs were convinced they had a god-given right to rule, since they had been ruling, and were used to the perks; nobody else agreed with them.

But most of the complaints were exaggerated and/or fictitious, historical grievances avenged on people that were reasonably innocent. But that didn't keep the butchers from having a field day, and militias and militia-like units forming very, very quickly.

No need to posit US-backed Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi'ite death squads without proof, apart from a suggestive quote here or there; Iraqis are no less and no more moral than Yugoslavians.

[liberalpragmatist]

11. Exactly

In unstable political environments, extremists are the ones who usually gain the upper hand - not because their ideology commands popular support but because they're typically the most well-organized and the least fractious. And as the security situation deterioriates and state authority collapses, people are forced to seek security from alternate power sources. Often ethnic or communal identification is the most obvious affiliation. That too is usually the network in which a person can be easily accepted and in which most of their friends and family are in, so people seek protection from ethnic lobbies.

[liberalpragmatist]

12. See the above post

Most Iraqi-Americans that I've talked to, along with things I've read and documentaries I've seen (not primary sources, I know) indicate that most Iraqis were less concerned with communal identification than is often understood in the West. That's not to say there weren't problems, and the Kurds in particular were pretty alienated, but most Sunnis and Shias got along fine and intermarried frequently. The populations - even of the Kurds - are HIGHLY mixed, which is what makes ethnic division into 3 states difficult.

But when there's instability, communal forces gain the upper hand and people have to start affiliating with those forces when there isn't any state authority.

[brokensymmetry]

7. No doubt the new Iraqi government will solve all this.

Nope, no problems anymore. Peace will reign supreme.
Mission accomplished.

:sarcasm:

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. Saddam was doing a better job - it's that simple

.
.
.

He had his issues, yes. But so does every leader

USA fucked Iraq up big time

But I don't think that was by accident

Having a country out of control makes it more exploitable by the PNACers . .

sumthing to think about . . .

[leftchick]

14. lets compare him to the US leader

torture? check

mass graves? check

propaganda? check

stealing from the country's treasury? double checks!

unprovocked attacks on other countries? check!

oh, and one thing saddam could not do. SHOCKA AND AWE killing thousands of innocents!

I think bushco** far surpases saddam in atrocities...

[ConcernedCanuk]

24. "I think bushco** far surpasses saddam in atrocities..." - I concur

.
.
.

when Hitler died, his killing stopped

The Depleted Uranium that Bush 1 and 2 have spread around the Middle East will be "genociding" for millenniums

And they KNOW that

The Bush Family will be killing people millenniums after they die.

It was a plan

An EVIL plan

That sadly, cannot fail.

There is no undoing of this toxic pollutant that the USA is spreading around.

From poisoned blankets for the natives who BELONG here, to THIS . . .

The USA Administration hasn't changed one bit in 3 centuries . . .

(sigh)

[AnOhioan]

15. You read my mind

As far as the PNAC is concerned....all going according to plan. In Iraq, here in the US, in Iran, etc. etc.

Wait until November....the plan is still unfolding.

[rayofreason]

21. Saddam had "issues"?

Bill Clinton had "issues" - a bit of the wandering wiener syndrome, but nothing too serious.

Saddam was a sadistic mass murderer who orders the gassing of Kurds, ecological genocide against the Marsh Arabs, the slaughter of Shiites - some "issues".

I guess that Pol Pot and the Kymer Rouge had "issues" as well. The same goes for headchopping jihadists who want to impose sharia law. I suspect that if you were in some place controlled by any of those folks you would unfortunately find yourself at the sharp end of their "issues".

[leftchick]

25. see my post number 14

saddam was a lamb compared to the US occupiers.

[Doctor_J]

10. Mission Accomplished!

[DS1]

13. I HATE that phrase

because it implies that those being 'cleansed' are dirty. Just fucking call it Genocide, because that's what it is. "ethnic cleansing" makes me :puke:

[RedSock]

17. amen

it disgusts me too.

one of the more orwellian phrases.

[bemildred]

16. Man, I hope it's not as bad a Bosnia. nt

[Massacure]

18. Bosnia was pretty hairy for minorities the genocide was organized.

Iraq seems to be a lot more chaotic. The way things are going though, who knows what will happen in the future.

[Canuckistanian]

19. The Iraqis themselves hate this situation

I've heard reports again and again how Iraqis said that being Shia or Sunni didn't matter. They considered each other brothers and sisters in the same fight.

Then, in a referendum on the Constitition, people were asked to identify which sect they belonged to.

That was the beginning of the split. All of a sudden it mattered who you were for and who you were aginst.

Now, it's devolved into a civil war.

Now, tell me who the uniters are and who are the dividers?

[Mr_Spock]

20. These stories make me sick

I just can't believe that Bushco has, in many ways, made Iraq have to fail after his idiotic occupation - because under no circumstances do they want to be our puppets. What a clusterfuck this has turned into - thanks * :mad:

[BikeWriter]

22. Democracy is on the march in Iraq.

:sarcasm: