Iraq is going form worse to worst denying people every option or hope for rapprochement and reconciliation. The strategy to deal with insurgents was always a subject to question however, no heed has been paid to chisel it or change it otherwise. This seems pretty evident when a US general even differed with US policies to Iraq and deemed it responsible for the total debacle. No respite for the soldiers or Iraqis either from the violence and bloodshed and hopes totally dashing to the ground with each passing day. And one wonders whether there will be another pinnacle of miseries than this. Meanwhile, here are some excerpts that Iraq went through this week.
October 8, 2007
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Altercation on US policy in Iraq grows between Iraqis and US policy makers. For much of this year, the US military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal. Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.
The Blackwater episode doesn’t seem to end as there are new allegations from Iraqi side. The Iraqi government has alleged that shooting in Baghdad last month involving the US security firm, Blackwater, killed 17 people instead of 11. Iraqi investigators also said that Blackwater men did not come under fire and they fired unprovoked.
Kurdish fighters from the separatist group, PKK, have killed 13 Turkish soldiers in an attack close to the country’s border with Iraq. It is one of the heaviest losses the Turkish military has sustained in clashes with the group. Reports say only one PKK fighter was killed.
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All seem to rhyme on the troop withdrawal form Iraq. Now the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, backed a US plan to withdraw 100,000 troops from Iraq. He however, cleared that US will retain three permanent air bases in Iraq. On the other hand, he also backed a US Senate plan to decentralize Iraq along ethnic lines, but the ethnic Kurds opposed him for not supporting an independent Kurdistan.
Roadside and suicide bombings are causing havoc in Iraq now-a-days. In such incidents, a suicide bomber drove his truck into a police station north of Baghdad on Monday, crumbling the squat concrete building in the deadliest of a series of blasts that killed at least 24 people across Iraq. The blast at the police station in Dijla, a village in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of the capital, also tore through a nearby empty school and several stores. At least 13 people were killed that includes 3 officers and 10 civilians and 22 people were wounded seriously.
October 9, 2007
Two suicide truck bombings detonated in the Northern Iraqi city of Baiji, killing at least 18 people and wounding 22. It was a coordinated attack that targeted anti-insurgent Sunni tribal leaders. The first bomb exploded at the home of Col. Saad al-Nufous, a tribal leader and the city’s police chief. While he was unharmed, members of his family were among the casualties. The second attack happened at the al-Rahim mosque, where several tribal leaders were praying, police said. An Interior Ministry official said the bombing targeted the Baiji head of the Salaheddin Awakening Council, a Sunni group that joined in the fight against the al Qaeda in Iraq insurgency.
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The coalition of willing is gradually disappearing from Iraq. Now, Britain will cut its forces in Iraq by about half in the spring, shrinking the commitment of America’s leading military partner to just 2,500 troops whose engagement will be limited mainly to training Iraqi forces. The proposed withdrawal goes much further than the reduction of 1,000 troops that the prime minister announced in Baghdad last week. It also sets the stage for Britain’s exit as an active combat participant in the still-troubled region of southern Iraq where its troops are based.
October 10, 2007
After PKK killed 13 Turkish rebels now the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan confirmed on Wednesday his government was drawing up plans to authorize a military incursion into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels using the region as a base.
October 11, 2007
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others were wounded in an attack on Camp Victory, a large U.S. military base near Baghdad International Airport. The military statement also said two “third-country nationals” were wounded, but did not clarify their nationalities.
Six main Iraqi insurgent groups announced the formation of a ‘political council‘ aimed at ‘liberating’ Iraq from US. The council appeared to be a new attempt to assert the leadership of the groups, which have moved to distance themselves from another coalition of insurgent factions led by al-Qaida in Iraq. In the video aired on Al-Jazeera, a man identified as the council’s spokesman was wearing traditional Iraqi garb, with his face blacked out announced the council’s formation and a ‘political program to liberate Iraq.’
After PKK rebels kill 13 Turkish soldiers now Turkey is preparing for the counter attack. However, the move has been transferred as of now. Turkey’s PM will ask parliament next week to authorize a military push into north Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels amid Turkish anger on Thursday at a US vote branding Ottoman Turk killings of Armenians genocide. Analysts say a large Turkish cross-border incursion remains unlikely, but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government will seek authorization for it after a public holiday which ends on Sunday.
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The United Nations called on the United States government to ensure that any private contractors committing offences in Iraq are prosecuted. The killing of 17 Iraqis in a shooting involving US security firm Blackwater last month has created tensions between Baghdad and Washington and sparked calls for tighter controls on private contractors, who are immune from prosecution in Iraq.
US crackdown on militants continues in Iraq and so does the civilian casualties. A latest US attack killed 19 insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, northwest of the capital, one of the heaviest civilian death tolls in an American operation in recent months. American forces have applied fierce and determined pressure on militants, especially al-Qaida in Iraq, since the full contingent of additional US troops arrived June 15. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently confronted top American commander Gen. David Petraeus about what he sees as overly aggressive U.S. tactics that harm innocent civilians, according to Iraqi officials.
October 12, 2007
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Blackwater row that painted Iraq red with the blood of seventeen people when it fired unprovoked on Sept. 16. Now, a wounded survivor and relatives of three people killed when employees of the private security company Blackwater USA opened fire on Iraqis in Baghdad sued the firm in an American court. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, said it filed the suit, which charges that Blackwater and its affiliates violated US law in committing ‘extrajudicial killings and war crimes.’
A bomb in a parked car went off near a police patrol in Baghdad’s downtown shopping district killing four people including two policemen. The blast around noon wounded 15 people, mostly civilians Narby shops and cars were damaged in the explosion. The suspected bomber had parked his car by some clothing stores in al-Rasheed Street in the heart of Baghdad and pretended to go shopping. The attacker, however, fled the scene.
October 13, 2007
A key Shiite member of Iraq’s ruling coalition called Saturday for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from his country and rejected the possibility of permanent bases. Ammar Hakim, a leading figure of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), told a gathering celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr: He discarded every US claim and said that ‘We will work not to have fixed bases for foreign troops on Iraqi lands.’
A former top US military commander in Iraq said the current White House strategy in Iraq will not achieve victory in the four-and-a-half-year war, which he described as “a nightmare with no end in sight” in a hard-hitting speech. In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official yet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted US political leaders as “incompetent,” “inept,” “derelict in the performance of their duty” and suggested they would have been court-martialed had they been members of the US military.
