Beyond The Green Zone, Bush's Surge Is Failing

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51469

Beyond the Green Zone's 'Gated Community,' Bush's Surge Is Failing

By Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch. Posted May 5, 2007.

Bush's "surge" has put army and police checkpoints everywhere in Baghdad but Iraqis are terrified approaching them because they do not know if the men in uniform they see are in fact death squads.

- snip -

Now the sectarian body count is on the rise again. Some 30 bodies, each shot in the head, were found on Wednesday alone. The main new American tactic is proving counter-productive. This is the sealing off entire neighbourhoods either by concrete walls or barriers of rubbish so there is only a single entrance and exit. Speaking of Sunni districts like al-Adhamiyah a government official said: "We are creating mini- Islamic republics."

This is born out by anecdotal evidence. The uncle of a friend called Mohammed ­ it is in the nature of Baghdad that nobody wants their full name published ­ died of natural causes. The family, all Sunni, wanted to bury him but they were unable to reach the nearest cemetery in Abu Ghraib. Instead they went to one in Adhamiyah. As they entered the cemetery armed civilians, whom they took to be al Qaida from their way of speaking, asked directly: "Are any of you Shia?" Only when reassured that they were all Sunni were they allowed to bury their relative.

The failure of the 'surge' comes because it is not accompanied by any political reconciliation. On the contrary the government is wholly factionalised. For instance the two vice presidents, the Sunni Tariq al- Hashimi, and the Shia Adel Abdel Mehdi, may make conciliatory statements in public but one Iraqi observer notes that "Tariq only employs Sunni and Adel only Shia."

- snip -

So many areas are now sealed off in Baghdad that there are continuous traffic jams. This presents a problem for drivers. If they try to avoid the jam by driving off the main road they may enter an area where militiamen rule who may kill them. One friend who got back from Syria found that, because of an attack on a government patrol, his neighbourhood was closed off to traffic. "I had to walk for 40 minutes with my heavy suitcase," he lamented.

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[Lasher]

1. This is so stupid

In Vietnam, surging to win (then it was called escalation) was tried again and again for 12 years. Each time, US pro-war extremists thought it was the path to victory.

[Swamp Rat]

2. Proof of insanity

[unhappycamper]

3. "Beyond The Green Zone"??????

I wonder: what is the acceptable benchmark for incoming in the Green Zone? Less than three a week? Can we declare victory if we can get it down to two a month?

I've been under the impression that rocket and mortar attacks were bad since my Vietnam days. Anecdotally speaking, we haven't had any mortar attacks in Boston for a while now.