Strife in North Iraq as Sunni Arabs Drive Out Kurds

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

The letter tossed into Mustafa Abu Bakr Muhammad’s front yard got right to the point.

“You will be killed,” it read, for collaborating with the Kurdish militias. Then came the bullet through a window at night.

A cousin had already been gunned down. So Mr. Muhammad and three generations of his family joined tens of thousands of other Kurds who have fled growing ethnic violence by Sunni Arab insurgents here and moved east, to the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“We had our home in Mosul and it was good there, but things are now very bad between Arabs and Kurds,” said Mr. Muhammad, 70, standing outside his new, scorpion-infested cinderblock house in the nearby town of Khabat.

While the American military is trying to tamp down the vicious fighting between rival Arab sects in Baghdad, conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying here, adding another dimension to Iraq’s civil war. Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/world/middleeast/30mosul.html?hp

[TwilightGardener]

1. Aaaaaaand the hits just keep on coming'!

[tridim]

2. Wow, Iraq is just "surging" all over the place now

Thanks Bush.

[pinto]

3. I don't see that we are going to prevent the splintering of Iraq,

surge or no. Our occupation seems increasingly focused on what may be the de facto partition of Iraq.

I'm no fan of partition, but, in my humble opinion, one option is to pressure the Iraq parliament to call for the assistance of their Arab neighbors, Iran and Turkey - under the aegis of the UN - to forge a regional, transparent, above board solution to the sectarian anarchy. And a local, transparent division of oil revenues (which may require multinational oil company assistance - US, European, Middle East and Russian - but not control).

The history of the American and British sabatoge of the Mossadegh democracy in Iran need not be replayed. One thing I agree with is that we are at the last turning point in Iraq for our involvement. There *is* an option to help pull this from the fire of more deaths, American and Iraqi. What it will take, though, is a clear eyed acceptance of the reality, persistent diplomacy, coordinated withdrawal of our troops and a big step back from this administration's insistence on unilateral intervention.

[Rydz777]

4. Out NOW. This is none of our business. eom

[Erika]

6. See the following site

Bush, in his utter stupidity, made it our business at www.icasualties.org

[Erika]

5. What a blanking mess

Our kids die while a Muslim country has civil war.

[Miss Chybil]

7. Genocide unleashed.

Thanks, George.

[roamer65]

8. I see three partitions of former Iraq in the future.

An Iranian occupied one, a Saudi occupied one and a Turkish occupied one.