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"If
This Is Not Civil War, Then God Knows What Civil War Is"
Death Squads on
the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Irbil, Iraq.
Iraq is a country convulsed by fear.
It is at its worst in Baghdad. Sectarian killings are commonplace.
In the three days after the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra
on February 22 , some 1,300 people, mostly Sunni, were picked
up on the street or dragged from their cars and murdered. The
dead bodies of four suspected suicide bombers were left dangling
from a pylon in the Sadr City slum.
The scale of the violence is
such that most of it is unreported. Iyad Allawi, the former prime
minister, said yesterday that scores were dying every day. "It
is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day,
as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not
more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God
knows what civil war is."
Unseen by the outside world,
silent populations are on the move, frightened people fleeing
neighborhoods where their community is in a minority for safer
districts.
There is also a growing reliance
on militias because of fears that police patrols or checkpoints
are in reality death squads hunting for victims.
Districts where Sunni and Shia
lived together for decades if not centuries are being torn apart
in a few days. In the al-Amel neighbourhood in west Baghdad,
for instance, the two communities lived side by side until a
few days ago, though Shias were in the majority. Then the Sunni
started receiving envelopes pushed under their doors with a Kalashnikov
bullet inside and a letter telling them to leave immediately
or be killed. It added that they must take all of their goods
which they could carry immediately and only return later to sell
their houses.
The reaction was immediate.
The Sunni in al-Amel started barricading their streets. Several
Shia families, believed to belong to the Shia party, the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), were murdered
later the same day the threatening letters were delivered.
"The local Sunni suspected
those Shias of being behind the letters," said an informant.
"Probably they called in the local resistance and asked
them to kill the Sciri people."
One effect of the escalating
sectarian warfare is to strengthen the Sunni insurgency as their
own community desperately looks to its defenses.
It is not as if life was not
already hard enough before the latest escalation in communal
violence. Three years ago, most Iraqis were glad to see the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, even if they did not like the US occupation,
because they wanted normal lives. They had been living in a state
of war since 1980 when the Iraqi leader invaded Iran. They then
had eight years of bloody conflict followed by the invasion of
Kuwait, defeat by the US-led coalition, the Shia and Kurdish
uprisings of 1991 and then 12 years of UN sanctions.
Instead of improving, life
in Baghdad has become far more dangerous than it was under Saddam
Hussein. Every facet of daily living is affected.
In the last few days, temperatures
have started to soar in Iraq and people would normally be buying
summer clothes. But in the shopping district of al-Mansur last
week few people were on the streets. Many shops were closed because
their owners are too frightened to leave their homes.
But even staying in your own
house carries problems. In the torrid heat of the Iraqi summer
people are dependent on air conditioning to make life tolerable.
But Baghdad gets only three or four hours of electricity a day.
Almost everybody has a generator, large or small, depending on
what they can afford. But the price of petrol, still heavily
subsidised by the government, tripled before Christmas. One friend
called Mohammed complained: "Either I wait seven or eight
hours in a queue to buy the fuel or I get it on the black market.
But black market fuel means that I would have to spend $7-8 a
day to run my generator and I simply can't afford that."
Mohammed added that he had just spent 10 hours, 5 am until 3pm,
queuing to buy a bottle of gas which he, like most Iraqis, use
for cooking.
Iraqis have been compelled
to find ways of going on living even in the most testing conditions
but even their resolution is beginning to weaken.
Mohammed's brother had a job
in a company selling air-conditioning units. Since this is the
beginning of the summer on the Mesopotamian plain - one of the
hottest places on earth - it should be a good business, but the
brother has just lost his job. The company he worked for was
owned by a Kurd. His life was threatened and he shut down the
company before moving to Jordan with his family.
Iraqi political parties have
now spent three months since the election on 15 December trying
to form a government. But ask an Iraqi on the street what he
wants from a new government and many reply: "What government?
It never does anything for us." Supply of electricity, clean
water and sewage disposal are all down from 2003. The only improvement
is in electricity supply outside Baghdad but even this is sporadic.
In Kurdistan, the only peaceful part of Iraq, electrical supply
is currently only a few hours a day. Everywhere there are men
beside the road selling black-market petrol smuggled in from
Iran. Turkey has cut off supplies of refined fuel because it
has not been paid.
All Iraq is suffering, but
Baghdad and the central provinces are turning into a slaughter
house. Normal life has long been impossible. The symbol of post-Saddam
Iraq is the blast wall, giant grey concrete blocks placed end
to end to create fortifications of medieval appearance. They
have come to dominate Baghdad and most other Iraqi cities. They
protect US positions, police and Iraqi army posts and all government
buildings. They also strangle streets leading to traffic gridlock
at notorious choke points.
Some Iraqis are living better
than before 2003. Teachers and government officials are earning
$200 a month where they used to earn $10.
There are also Kurds and Shia
inhabiting provinces north and south that they wholly dominate.
But elsewhere, Iraqis live lives of chromic insecurity.
In al-Khadra, a Sunni neighbourhood
in west Baghdad, for instance, the insurgents are waging two
wars at the same time, one against the Americans and the other
against Shia militiamen, some of whom work for the Ministry of
the Interior.
Last week, Sunni guerrillas
attacked a car which they claimed was carrying CIA agents in
a road tunnel and killed those inside. Two days later, they ambushed
a convoy of vehicles of the Badr Group, the Shia militia. Four
of the militiamen were killed and petrol was poured over their
bodies and set alight. Soon afterwards, a bus was spotted abandoned
by a highway. At first it was thought it might contain a bomb.
Instead it had a more grisly cargo, the bodies of 18 Sunni tortured
and killed. In districts such as al-Khadra, the civil war has
already begun.
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Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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