Posted on 01/06/2007 9:04:11 AM PST by jmc1969
Iraq's prime minister promised a new crackdown on Saturday on sectarian gunmen who kill hundreds of people a week in Baghdad but has yet to endorse any proposal from President George W. Bush to send in more American troops.
In a pugnacious speech for Army Day, Nuri al-Maliki said a plan was in place for Iraqi forces to crush illegal armed groups "regardless of sect or politics" -- suggesting he may be ready to tackle militias loyal to his fellow Shi'ites, a key demand of Washington and of Saddam Hussein's once dominant Sunni minority.
His announcement, along with a defiant response to critics of his decision to hang Saddam a week ago, came as Bush conducts a major reshuffle of his commanders and diplomats in Iraq and prepares to unveil a new strategy next week that officials say may include a proposal to add 20,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad.
"There will be no refuge from this plan for anyone who is operating beyond the law, regardless of their sect or their political affiliation," Maliki told Iraqi soldiers gathered on a vast Baghdad parade ground built by Saddam in the 1980s.
"We will come down hard on anyone who does not carry out their orders and who does their job according to his political or sectarian background," he added, underlining concern over the loyalties of 300,000 new, U.S.-trained Iraqi troops and police.
(Excerpt) Read more at kget.com ...
Heard this one before...
Bet Mookie Sadr and his gang are exempt.
You keep SAYING it, Maliki....when are you going to DO it?
Just had to slide that little twist in there, eh, Reuters?
What are we on? Like the 3rd or 4th "crackdown on militias?"
In a pugnacious speech...
What is that suppose to mean?
Actually, we haven't. He is coming down a lot harder on his own this time.
More talk, no action.
I'm about ready to say if they care this little about their own safety and liberty, forget about em.
He may be able to DO it when we provide a short term troop surge to support Iraqi govt operations, as a blocking force to prevent Iranian meddling and Iranian reinforcement and the escape of militant Shia fighters into safe harbor in Iran.
Also as a buffer and retsraining force to prevent overly brutal and counterproductive clean up operations by minimally civilized and still poorly trained Iraqi national military forces. Although reverting to traditional arab cultural ways of cleaning up an enemy- these type of operations by the Iraqi national army would be very damaging to all our preceding years of laying the groundwork for national unity.
Of course, Generals Pelosi and Reid have already vetoed our support of this phase of Iraqi operations by fresh US troops.
"Like the 3rd or 4th crackdown on militias?" At least!! And why in the world is Maliki publicizing this?!? That's real good - let the militias know what's about to happen.
If he really means it, this announcement will induce the least-enthusiastic militia members to desert and go home. If he doesn't mean it, nothing will happen.
This is easy. Simply split the country up the way it was before the British went in. Give the leaders of Iraq a time frame to put their 300,000 troops into action and tell them we are done. Handle it!!!!! We're outta here.
I'll believe it when I see it!
Who is going to enforce such a split to keep the Medhi Army from moving into the Sunni areas or the Sunnis from trying to take over the Shia areas.
Biden's plan for Iraq is massively dumb and would actually require more US troops to enforce such a split.
The Medhi Army and the Sunni insurgents want conquest they don't want their own portion of land where they can live in peace.
This is a basic political error. The Chief Exec should shut up and do. Let Parliament and journalists talk themselves blue.
Iraqi PM: Iraqis lead security effort
Al-Maliki says Iraqi forces to lead new effort to tame Baghdad violence
(Baghdad, Iraq - AP, January 6, 2007) - Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that Iraqi forces will lead a new effort - with U.S. help - to wrest control of Baghdad's neighborhoods from militias and other sectarian killers.
"The Baghdad security plan is now ready, and we will depend on our armed forces to implement it with multinational forces behind them. Field leaders will ask for help from these forces if needed," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a speech at the 85th anniversary celebration of the Iraqi army.
Iraqi forces will begin a neighborhood-by-neighborhood assault on militants in the capital this weekend, as a first step in the new White House strategy to contain Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads, key advisers to the prime minister said.
"The Baghdad security plan will not offer a safe shelter for outlaws regardless of their ethnic and political affiliations, and we will punish anyone who hesitates to implement orders because of his ethnic and political background," al-Maliki said Saturday.
The first details of the new plan - a fresh bid to pacify the capital - emerged Friday, a day after President Bush and al-Maliki spoke for nearly two hours by video conference. Bush was also expected to detail his vision of a new strategy in the coming days.
It was unknown whether the new effort had begun by Saturday afternoon. There was no evidence of elevated American or Iraqi troop levels on Baghdad's streets, and there were only routine levels of violence.
Police said two car bombs killed four civilians in separate attacks in the Iraqi capital on Saturday. A parked car exploded near a fuel station in the southern neighborhood of Dora at midday, killing three people and wounding four others, police said.
Another car bomb targeted the convoy of a high-ranking Iraqi police officer in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, killing a pedestrian and wounding six. The head of emergency police in the Iraqi capital, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Yassiri, survived the attack on his convoy in a commercial area of the Karradah neighborhood, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorize to talk to media. Three of his bodyguards were hurt.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said this past week that any new effort to stabilize Baghdad would likely involve traditional, large-scale U.S. operations as well as nighttime raids by smaller, more mobile forces.
"We're going to go after anyone who operates outside the law," Caldwell said.
On Saturday, al-Maliki asked residents of the Iraqi capital for patience during the new security operation.
"We are fully aware that implementing the plan will lead to some harassment to all of beloved Baghdad's residents, but we are confident that they fully understand the brutal terrorist attacks Iraq faces," the prime minister said.
Al-Maliki also defended his government's execution of Saddam Hussein, amid speculations that the former leader's execution chamber was infiltrated by militiamen who taunted Saddam in his final moments of life.
"The execution of the tyrant was not a political decision, as the enemies of the Iraqi people say. The verdict was implemented after a fair and transparent trial, which the dictator never deserved," al-Maliki said.
He also accused other governments, without naming them, of meddling in Iraqi affairs with their criticism of Saddam's hanging.
"We consider the execution of the dictator an internal issue, and we reject and condemn all acts of some governments," al-Maliki said. "The Iraqi government could be forced to reconsider its relations with any government that doesn't respect the will of the Iraqi people."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has condemned the conduct of Saddam's execution and its timing at the start of a Muslim religious festival, saying in an interview published Friday that the hanging made the deposed leader "a martyr."
"It was disgraceful and very painful," Mubarak told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot in an interview Thursday.
Al-Maliki's aides said Friday that disagreement remained between Bush and Iraqi officials on key issues.
The Iraqi leader is uneasy about the possible introduction of more U.S. troops, they said, and he has repeatedly refused U.S. demands to crush the militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the prime minister's most powerful backers.
Any serious drive to curb the extreme chaos and violence in the capital would put not only American forces but al-Maliki's Iraqi army in direct confrontation with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Sami al-Askari, an al-Maliki political adviser, told The Associated Press on Friday that the prime minister continues to press for a rapid U.S. withdrawal from the capital to bases "on the outskirts of Baghdad."
Al-Askari and Hassan al-Suneid, another top al-Maliki aide and lawmaker from his Dawa Party, said the fresh security push would be open-ended once initiated this weekend.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=nation_world&id=4907959
Can't remember the talking head show I heard this on last night, but one analyst said the same thing. Makes good sense to me.
This approach takes as its basis the assumption that Iraq naturally falls into three parts. Supporters of it usually point to one of two mutually contradictory facts: Iraq has three main social groups (Sunni Arabs, Shiites, and Kurds), and the Iraqi state was formed in 1921 from three Ottoman vilayets or administrative districts. Iraq, advocates of this view say, is an artificial creation that would be more stable if we allowed it to fall back into its natural, trinary form.
To begin with, the fact that the Ottoman Empire chose to rule what is now Iraq via three administrative districts does not make the present Iraqi state an artificial creation. On the contrary, from prehistoric times the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the land between them have formed a single community, often composed of multiple ethnicities and religions but functioning as an economic and often political unit.
Ottoman administrative practice should not convince modern observers that Iraq is by nature a tripartite state. The Ottomans did not align territory according to modern concepts of national selfdetermination. They divided and conquered, as did most other empires. The notion of some preindependence Iraqi system in which each social group controlled its own area in peace is a myth. Any such tripartite structure would itself be an artificial innovation with no historical basis. The Ottoman vilayets (of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra) were not themselves homogeneous ethnic or sectarian groupings. Mosul, Baghdad, Baquba, and Kirkuk, four of Iraq’s principal cities, have long been mixed at both the metropolitan and the neighborhood level.
Even now, a high proportion of Iraqis live in mixed communities. Partitioning the country could only result from the migration of millions of people.
Many would resist. Bloodbaths would ensue. When this process occurred in the Balkans in the 1990s the international community called it “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” It is difficult to imagine how the United States and the international community could now accept and even propose a solution that they rightly condemned not a decade ago.
These principled considerations parallel practical concerns. Who would get Baghdad? The capital is now mixed between Sunni and Shia. Depriving one group of that city and giving it to another would create an obvious sense of victory and defeat between the groups—not something that bodes well for subsequent stability. If the international community sought to divide Baghdad, where would it draw the
line? The Tigris seems an obvious choice, but it has already become impossible. There are many Sunnis living east of the river and many Shiites living to the west. Jaysh al Mahdi fighters are working hard to seize more territory on the west bank and drive the Sunnis farther out. If the United States allows this process to continue, as advocates of partition suggest, America will de facto be giving Baghdad to the Shiites at the cost of the dislocation of 2 or 3 million Sunnis. Again, this is a process that can only come at the price of hideous suffering and death. Last, there is the problem of oil. The Kurds have oil fields. The Shiites have oil fields. The Sunni Arabs do not. Fear of the loss of oil revenue is one factor driving the Sunni insurgency now. Partitioning Iraq would make that fear a permanent reality. Why would the Sunnis stop fighting? They would not. Partition is not only a historical abomination and an invitation for sectarian
cleansing and genocide on a vast scale—it is also a recipe for perpetual conflict in Mesopotamia.
Iraq does not break down cleanly into Kurdish, Shia, or Sunni Arab areas either demographically or historically. Rather, within these broad categories there are serious fissures and rivalries which have been exploited by overlords (Ottoman, British, and Iraqi) to maintain central control. These rivalries will not disappear by a simple ethnic or sectarian realignment or oil sharing scheme. Shia factions will war with each other, and Shia violence could spill into other Arab Shia tribes in the region. Sunni tribal forces, urban Baathists, Islamic radicals, and other
interested states will not allow a peaceful Sunni heartland to be established, even if they could somehow be reconciled to a strip of the upper Euphrates and the Anbar desert. The integration of Kurds into this realignment, and the minority populations that live in Kurdish areas, is far more complicated than most observers recognize, starting with the fact that there are two rival Kurdish parties now, reflecting important linguistic and tribal distinctions. Considering the presence of large numbers of Turkmen,
Yazidi, and other minority groups in the lands that a partition would give to Kurdistan presents another set of problems that partitioning will only exacerbate.
From:
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20070105_ChoosingVictoryFINALcc.pdf
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