scarletwoman
09-28-2005, 02:49 PM
against the opposition.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050927/reverse_baathism.php
<excerpt>
A leading Iraqi voice in favor of a negotiated power-sharing arrangement between Sunni and Shiite forces in Iraq charged this weekend that militias in the service of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad tried to kill him, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and other secular Iraqi nationalists by planting a car bomb in the Baghdad neighborhood where they live.
Aiham Al Sammarae, a former minister of electricity in Allawi's government, says that the bomb was discovered and defused. "I live next door to Allawi," says Sammarae, who returned to Iraq from a conference of leading Iraqi Sunnis in Amman, Jordan, on Sunday. "We found a car bomb behind Allawi's house. It would have destroyed the entire neighborhood."
According to Sammarae, who spoke to me in a lengthy telephone interview from a hotel in Amman, militias tied to the Iraqi government are conducting death squad-style attacks against Sunnis who oppose the Iraqi regime, which is controlled by a pair of ultra-religious, sectarian parties. "A lot of our guys are being killed," he says. The attacks are being carried out "by the government, by militias that are part of the government." (my emphasis)
<snip>
You'd think the fact the government created and installed by the United States is using tactics associated with the dictator who was toppled by the March 2003, U.S. invasion would be news. (my emphasis) But you'd be wrong. The fundamentalist-led regime is portrayed as the victim of terrorist attacks in one-sided coverage, while the regime's brutal methods go mostly unmentioned.
So dangerous is the situation in Iraq for anti-government activists that Sunni leaders who wanted to map out their campaign to vote down the draft Iraqi constitution on Oct. 15 had to meet in Amman, Jordan, for security reasons. Not only did this extraordinary fact by and large escape the notice of U.S. newspapers, but not a single major U.S. news outlet bothered to cover the three-day opposition meeting in Amman.
Despite lip service in Washington for a policy to include Sunni oppositionists in a broad coalition government in Baghdad, U.S. policy is having precisely the opposite effect: driving Sunnis into a more hard-line stance against the government and destroying any possibility of a national accord. U.S. military operations, such as the recent assault on Tal Afar in northern Iraq, are intensifying just two weeks before the country is to go to the polls.
"How," asks Sammarae, "can the United States attack Sunni cities so heavily now, and the election is in a few weeks? What message are you sending? People I talk to tell me, 'Shut up. How can we participate in talks? They are attacking us.'" Operations like the Tal Afar are increasingly carried out not just by U.S. troops but by thug-like armed forces comprised of Shiite and Kurdish militiamen armed and trained by the United States—a policy almost calculated to enrage and alienate the Sunni population.
(more at link)
My comment:
Considering the growing evidence that it is coalition forces themselves, Britain and U.S., who are planting bombs and killing civilians, it certainly seems that a clear pattern is emerging. The invaders are deliberately supporting and fomenting sectarian strife.
My question is, why? What do the authors of this chaos intend to gain?
sw
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050927/reverse_baathism.php
<excerpt>
A leading Iraqi voice in favor of a negotiated power-sharing arrangement between Sunni and Shiite forces in Iraq charged this weekend that militias in the service of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad tried to kill him, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and other secular Iraqi nationalists by planting a car bomb in the Baghdad neighborhood where they live.
Aiham Al Sammarae, a former minister of electricity in Allawi's government, says that the bomb was discovered and defused. "I live next door to Allawi," says Sammarae, who returned to Iraq from a conference of leading Iraqi Sunnis in Amman, Jordan, on Sunday. "We found a car bomb behind Allawi's house. It would have destroyed the entire neighborhood."
According to Sammarae, who spoke to me in a lengthy telephone interview from a hotel in Amman, militias tied to the Iraqi government are conducting death squad-style attacks against Sunnis who oppose the Iraqi regime, which is controlled by a pair of ultra-religious, sectarian parties. "A lot of our guys are being killed," he says. The attacks are being carried out "by the government, by militias that are part of the government." (my emphasis)
<snip>
You'd think the fact the government created and installed by the United States is using tactics associated with the dictator who was toppled by the March 2003, U.S. invasion would be news. (my emphasis) But you'd be wrong. The fundamentalist-led regime is portrayed as the victim of terrorist attacks in one-sided coverage, while the regime's brutal methods go mostly unmentioned.
So dangerous is the situation in Iraq for anti-government activists that Sunni leaders who wanted to map out their campaign to vote down the draft Iraqi constitution on Oct. 15 had to meet in Amman, Jordan, for security reasons. Not only did this extraordinary fact by and large escape the notice of U.S. newspapers, but not a single major U.S. news outlet bothered to cover the three-day opposition meeting in Amman.
Despite lip service in Washington for a policy to include Sunni oppositionists in a broad coalition government in Baghdad, U.S. policy is having precisely the opposite effect: driving Sunnis into a more hard-line stance against the government and destroying any possibility of a national accord. U.S. military operations, such as the recent assault on Tal Afar in northern Iraq, are intensifying just two weeks before the country is to go to the polls.
"How," asks Sammarae, "can the United States attack Sunni cities so heavily now, and the election is in a few weeks? What message are you sending? People I talk to tell me, 'Shut up. How can we participate in talks? They are attacking us.'" Operations like the Tal Afar are increasingly carried out not just by U.S. troops but by thug-like armed forces comprised of Shiite and Kurdish militiamen armed and trained by the United States—a policy almost calculated to enrage and alienate the Sunni population.
(more at link)
My comment:
Considering the growing evidence that it is coalition forces themselves, Britain and U.S., who are planting bombs and killing civilians, it certainly seems that a clear pattern is emerging. The invaders are deliberately supporting and fomenting sectarian strife.
My question is, why? What do the authors of this chaos intend to gain?
sw