"Anatomy of a Civil War--Iraq’s descent into chaos," is the best first person account I've seen, and I've been looking hard for credible information. This gripping expose by a wonderful writer, Nir Rosen, is what has been missing to date: published in the Nov/Dec Boston Review... For those with an intense interest in what America has unleashed in Iraq, this is a must-read.
Rosen, journeyed as a Muslim through the mosques and gritty neighborhoods of Iraq in the company of those who are intimately familiar with the sects and their history, the militias and killings, grief and allegiances that shape the raging civil war.
"Boston Review operates at a level of literacy and responsibility which is all too rare in our time.” —John Kenneth Galbraith. 'nough said?
Rosen's riviting account of the US invasion, the role of the sects, and the growth of the insurgency provide the best inside analysis of the roots of civil war, something I've not seen or heard of elsewhere.
The stories he relates explain how early misteps by Americans, with the catalyst of sectarian animosities, spawned this civil war in 2004 that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and tore apart a precarious Iraqi state.
Below are some choice quotes, tidbits really, the limits of fair use. Read at least parts, or all of the whole lengthy article. It should be read by all in Congress and especially by the unitary executive, even if it needs to be read aloud to him or force-fed.
From Nir Rosen's article:
I returned to the Mustafa Husseiniya for the Friday prayers five days after the attack, and much of the neighborhood was shut down. Roads were blocked with tree trunks, trucks, or motorcycles. Mahdi Army militiamen sat on chairs on the main road east to the husseiniya asking for IDs as men walked slowly in the sun to the noon prayer. The soldiers of the Mahdi Army were mostly in their 20s and 30s, sporting carefully groomed clipped beards, shaved under the chin and neck, and wearing all black, sometimes with cotton shirts that said “Mahdi Army” and their unit’s name. Many carried Iraqi police–issue Glock pistols and handcuffs at their sides. They were off-duty policemen. The Mahdi Army had become the police, and the police were the Madhi Army.
Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally intervening, and in the end only making things worse. Iraqis’ hopes for a better future after Saddam had been betrayed.
So what we've been reading and saying here ...Diary: Iraq on the Brink of Chaos... about how militias have been in part, armed and trained by the US military is true. Militias are Iraqi troops and police who have a murderous avocation.
More from Rosen's article in Boston Review (link above):
As Sunni refugees from the bombed-out Fallujah settled in west Baghdad, the cleansing of Shias began. The neighborhoods there were Sunni strongholds, with a formidable presence of both insurgents and Salafis, people who practice a strict, reactionary form of Sunni Islam that in its most extreme form even sanctions the killing of all who disagree with its tenets. Shia families started getting threats urging them to leave. If they ignored the threats, their homes were attacked or their men murdered by Sunni militias (women were rarely targeted).
It was in the al Amriya neighborhood of Baghdad in the last months of 2004 that violence by Sunnis against Shias became widespread. Hundreds of families were brutally forced out. Vacated homes were seized by Sunni refugees. Not only insurgents but relatives of refugees who merely needed housing conducted attacks. In the months leading up to the January 2005 elections, Amriya’s streets were littered with leaflets, and walls were covered with graffiti calling for “death for those who betray what they have promised God,” meaning death for those who participate in the election.
Rosen on the militias:
The meaning of the "Mahdi" name of Sadr's militia. The ninth century Shia leader, Mahdi who disappeared down a hole, is expected to reappear, perhaps very soon, as a messiah coming to provide justice to the Shia. Some believe Americans came to kill him, and Muqtada al-Sadr actually has told his people that our military will meet Mahdi when he returns, but they believe the Mahdi will win.
Sadr started his Mahdi Militia in 2003, and they fought by the thousands against our troops. But the civil war had begun toward the end of 2004. Shias and Sunnis fought for Fallujah together in April, but by November of that year the American forces again fought insurgents there, destroying that Sunni city.
Shias, Rosen explains, began to think that perhaps this was not so bad--that what goes around comes around and Sunnis were getting payback. Then the Sunni insurgents fought against the Iraqi police and soldiers (comprised mostly of Shias). This was the beginning of sectarian strife and drive toward vengence, a never-ending cycle of atrocities.
This is merely a small taste of the article.
Here are a few questions:
- Is there any way the Iraqi Army or the Iraqi Police, no matter how many are trained, could be counted on to fight against random sections of the population?
- Is there any way that Iraq can be stabilized as a unified country? Can the civil war, grief and revenge be put aside and the Shia and Sunni sects reconcile in the near future?
- Is there any way our son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother or friend should be fighting and dying in this Iraqi Civil War? [Even though without the US invasion it would not be happening.]
- Is it right for an occupying force to promote or fight for one side in a civil war?
Rosen ends with the comment that the Sunnis who had been very confident and aggressive are now very afraid, as are all Iraqis.