Iraqi army agrees truce with Shiite militia after deadly clash

[maddezmom]

DIWANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi authorities have agreed a truce with a Shiite militia and calm has been restored in the town of Diwaniyah after a battle which left at least 28 people dead, military officials said.

Under the deal brokered by local Iraqi political leaders, the army will pull back reinforcements which came from outside the city, while the Mahdi Army militia will evacuate a district it took control of during the fighting.

"We are now watching the militia withdrawing. They started pulling out early this morning and they're still going," an Iraq army captain told AFP.

Shops began to reopen in Diwaniyah on Tuesday and water and electricity supplies were turned back on, as a tense calm returned to the town that lies 180 kilometres (110 miles) south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060829/wl_afp/iraqunrestshiite_060829080355

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[acmavm]

2. AGAIN

edit: They need to quit screwing with this guy. He's the real power in Iraq now.

[Igel]

9. Tell that to the Kurds and Sunnis.

Long live the theocracy, and woe to anybody that dares to actually think anything should be done to stop it.

We progressives like theocratic militias, and are opposed, on principle, to anybody that takes them on.

I must have slipped dimensions while sleeping.

[plasticsundance]

11. Ah ... if only it was so simple.

Difficult to place the genie back in the bottle (no pun originally intended).

Iraq ... and Iran for that matter ... were moving towards democratic and somewhat secular societies ... until the UK and then the US wanted to do otherwise to spare the oil from becoming nationalized. For the UK and US to achieve this, they used the fear of the cold war and convinced the fundamentalist Islamists, although nationalistic in fervor, to reject any socialistic parties arising in those countries new political restructuring. For example, in Iraq, some of these fundamentalists took part in the persecution of left wing parties.

However, in the vacuum of power the Ba'athist Sunnis took charge of Iraq by brutal means, seeing that they were not a majority over the Shi'ites. The Ba'athists Sunnis persecuted and terrorized the Shi'ites. It would be too in depth for this posting to get into the Kurdish equation. Suffice it to say, that after the first Gulf War Bush H. W. Bush did not come through with his promises to assist the Kurds and Shi'ites with an overthrow of Saddam and Ba'athist power.

Now, after 2003 the entire Iraq population faced the "shock and awe" of an invading army. Both Shi'ite and Sunni experienced this too, seeing their children die horrendously, their women raped, and their men tortured and dehumanized in prison ... some even dying from the result of that torture.

So who is the good guy. What makes you think after this long history that began even as far back as the turn of the century, we can come in with our liberal and progressive pins on our lapels and convince them that we want a democratic society with all the benefits of a free thinking and secular society?

What do you propose as the first step?

Otherwise, the reality is that Western meddling in the ME that in many cases went beyond exploitation even to involve cruelty, has created the reactionary power structure of someone like Sadr and his militia. It nows appears that these same Western influences want to control, dominate, and exploit the ME populations like never before. Sadr is fighting an Iraqi army that is financed and trained by the invading and occupying US and UK forces ... the same ones that bombed, raped, and tortured their population.

Ah ... if only it was so easy as a liberal minded stump speech. This is why liberals, peace minded intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, and wiser military brass warned not to invade Iraq.

Mission control ... we have a problem.




BTW, Sadr belongs to the nation of Iraq. It's his country he feels he's defending. Do you feel you have the progressive minded authority to take that away from him? If so ... how?

[Igel]

12. I see the problem.

You think Sadr is defending Iraq.

He's defending his Iraq.

To the extent it's his, he's justified.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, a certain price has to be paid. One can try to outwit the genie; one can try to overpower the genie. But genies are not, by and large, benevolent folk, and must be restored to the bottle or at the very least neutralized. It may be that the US isn't the right group of people to pay; in that case it will have to be the Iraqi forces, such as they are. But having a central government with no control over much of the territory because of independent theocratic militias is an intolerable, unstable situation.

Moreover, a Sadrist regime would be imposed only with more bloodshed; it would be unpleasant. We saw what his father managed to help produce in Lebanon: Amal. The son is more thuggist and less of a thinker than his father.

[plasticsundance]

13. Yes ... he's defending his Iraq

It's his country more than yours. You didn't even attempt to respond to the specifics of my last post. Instead, you characterize and deflect. I'm not defending or supporting anyone. I'm telling you the reality through the history of the rise of the Islamists and Western meddling in the ME that helped cause this impetus. Now ... specifically ... what is your plan ... in dealing with Sadr? How do you stop his increasing militia ... by ridiculing him?

You also simply ignore what I posted about the US/UK boming innocent civilians ... the rapes ... the tortures in Iraq. The horrific manipulations of the ME by the Western powers played a large role in causing this problem, and the only solutions we hear from Western leaders is more meddling. Pl-ueez. That dog just won't hunt no more.

[Barrett808]

3. Iraq strikes peace deal with militia after scores killed (Mahdi Army)

Iraq strikes peace deal with militia after scores killed
by Jay Deshmukh

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Government forces struck a truce with Shiite militia fighters after violent clashes in a town south of Baghdad left at least 81 dead and as Iraq reeled from a three-day bout of bloodshed.

...

Scores of Iraqi troops and civilians have been killed, along with 10 US soldiers, and government forces had to battle to retain control of the mainly Shiite city of Diwaniyah, 180 kilometres (112 miles) south of the capital Tuesday.

"We reached a settlement with Mahdi Army forces to end the confrontation," town councillor Sheikh Ghanim Abid said, as shops in Diwaniyah reopened and water and electricity supplies were turned back on.

"We killed 50 gunmen in the clashes and this incident resulted in the deaths of 23 of our soldiers and injuries to 30 of them," Maliki said.

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060829/wl_mideast_afp/iraq

[sabra]

4. Iraqi paper: residents described the deal as “fragile.”

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2006-08-29\kurd1.htm

<snip>

On Tuesday, Sadr’s group was said to have reached a ceasefire arrangement with U.S. and Iraqi troops but residents described the deal as “fragile.”

The fighting erupted when foreign troops arrested a Sadr militia leader.

Diwaniya, a major Sadr stronghold, was until recently relatively quiet.

It is not clear why the Shiite-dominated government has decided to move against Sadr at a time his deputies are active in parliament and is part of the ruling Shiite collation.

An Iraqi army captain, who did not want to reveal his name for security reasons, said Sadr’s militiamen from villages and towns across the province were pouring into the city.

He also said the government was sending “more reinforcements” to the city in a show of force

“If fighting erupts again, and this is very likely, we will have a very bad situation,” he said.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Battle of Najaf, part 2

The highest casualty months of the war thus far for US troops was when they were fighting both the Sunni insurgents and the Shia militias. Why they would want to antagonize the Shia militia again is fairly obvious, but the consequences are too nasty to contemplate. They basically ceded southern Iraq to the Shia militias in order to stem the bleeding ahead of the 2004 elections, and now they want to get their goat again? Bad to worse, bad to worse...

[saigon68]

8. The US would probably get its ass kicked

If it went after Al Sadr in force

[warrens]

5. Truce does not equal peace

But I guess they're so desperate for good news from Iraq, they'll say anything. A ceasefire only lasts until one guy fires.

[psychopomp]

7. RIP to the dead

War is senseless and a tragic waste of the youth.

[bemildred]

10. Iraq strikes peace deal with militia as 155 killed

So who is controlling the agenda in Iraq? Let's hope maliki doesn't host anymore "peace" conferences.

DIWANIYAH - Hard-pressed Iraqi government forces were forced to strike a truce with Shiite militia fighters on Tuesday, as fierce fighting followed by a pipeline explosion left 155 people dead.

Officials said that 81 people died in Diwaniyah in Monday's clashes between security forces and militiamen and that on Tuesday, a few hours after a peace deal was reached, a fire on a fuel pipeline outside town killed 74 more.

---

Since Saturday, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hosted a peace conference for tribal leaders, Iraq has been battered by firefights, murders and bombings, in one of the most violent periods of recent months.

Scores of Iraqi troops and civilians have been killed along with 12 US soldiers, and government forces had to battle to retain control of the mainly Shiite city of Diwaniyah, 180 kilometres (112 miles) south of the capital.

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=139761