Slaughter and ethnic cleansing accelerates in Iraq (click here)
This was Basra about two years ago. A turmoil of killing and murder. It ended and there was quiet when the ceasefire was called six months ago.
Government operations in Basra caused the Sistani Shi'ites concern when members of their communities, supposedly criminals, were being arrested. True to form the Southern Sistani Shi'ites became alarmed at a government that could be the 'shadow return of Saddam' and a government hostile to them again. A warning was issued by the Southern Iraqi Shia and with that the Iraqi military moved against them, targeting specifically the Sistani Shia and Sistani himself.
Iraqi cleric warns of end to ceasefire (click here)
Updated Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:33pm AEDT
The Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, Moqtada al Sadr, is warning he'll call an end to his six month ceasefire order, if operations continue against members of his militia.Our Middle East correspondent, Ben Knight, reports the ceasefire, called last August, has been credited with helping to reduce the level of violence in Iraq.But members of his Mehdi army militia have been growing increasingly angry over the arrest of several of its members in recent weeks. Early on Tuesday, the Iraqi army entered several neighbourhoods in the port city of Basra controlled by the militia. Iraq's government says it's a mission to rout out criminal gangs who've taken hold since British forces left in December. But Moqtada al-Sadr says if it continues, he'll call for civil revolt across the country.
Today, as was predicted, in response to the Iraqi governments RETREAT from peace initiatives with the Southern Sistani Shia, there is a return to violence.
Why?
There is absolutely no reason for the return to killing and escalated violence. The risk of returning to such a state of uncontrolled violence and escalating death of innocent people is senseless, but, Bush simply loves killing people, especially when his media provides the basis of support at home.
The ceasefire was too much good news in the Green Zone and while there was enjoyed quieting across the country and a return to some form of economic awakening; the people that distain the presence of the leadership of the Grand Ayatollah were simply disgruntled and sought to instigate trouble. By sending in police to arrest people in a sensitive area of Basra, those that lust for the oil saw an opportunity to justify killing to achieve dominance over the oil rich region of Iraq.
The violence in Basra is due to oil. There is no other reason. If the Iraqi government under Maliki truly wanted to remove people believed to be criminals it needed to work within the 'ETHNIC' infrastructure that existed to make in roads of cooperation.
It is just too convenient for any 'Green Zone' Iraqi to 'dial up' support for attacks against their own people.
People in responsibility in the central core of "The Western" approved Iraqi Infrastructure such as Hakim are warlords. They lust after wealth, they have their own militias to protect and propagate their interests and they distain an entire populous of people that are peace abiding and seek only to worship Allah in their own puritanical definition of 'wholesomeness.' The central authorities in Baghdad's Green Zone need to realize how delicate 'the quiet' actually is and cooperate in PROTECTING the peace and PROTECTING the lives of the innocent INSTEAD of allowing the innocent to die for some cockamamie idea of 'control.'
US air strike kills five in Sadr City (click here)
Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:42:04
A Hellfire missile fired from a US military helicopter during fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City has killed 5 civilians and wounded 4 others. The attack was conducted early on Friday as US Ground forces called for the air strike after coming under small-arms fire while clearing a main supply route, said the US military. A US military spokesman put the death toll of the attack at four but Iraqi police and hospital officials in Sadr City said five civilians were killed. According to a British military spokesman, coalition jets have also bombed the sites , used by Iraqi fighters, in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Friday. MHE/HAR
The Iraqi Constitution calls for the establishment of three provinces. It would seem as though the 'idea' was a bad one when the reality of the control of Southern Iraq's oil falls into hands of an Entire Provice of Sistani Shi'ites. I can't think of any better people to have control over that province considering they have existed there for millenium and define their presence in methods of peace when they are allowed to live as they do within their own ETHNIC preferences. What exactly was the 'idea' behind the provincial constitutional dictates? To 'eventually' change the ETHNIC content of the provinces and make them homogenous? To eventually make Iraq a 'melting pot' likened to that of the history of the USA? The USA melting pot was achieved through immigration and not forced acceptance of military imposition.
It has been my view and will continue to be my view that the Bush Puppet Government is a false face to an Iraq that is capable of peaceful coexistance among its ethnic constitutents. The attacks into Basra were never necessary. A return to violence in Southern Iraq is completely uncalled for and was triggered by greed and the distain for the ethnicity of the people there.
What have the Southern Sistani Shia, with a longevity and tenacity through the entire country of Iraq unmatched by any other for their entire existance, learned from this experience? They have learned they still have a government willing to kill them. They haven't learned anything else. They have learned they are still the targets of hate without respect for their own ethnic authority. They have learned that 'here again' they have to be willing to die in order to live.
The Holy Men of the Southern Shia have acted in the only way they can and worked within the dictated infrastructure of the 'molded' Iraqi government that began with Bremer. They have acted honorably in negotiations with the Maliki authority including those that have come before him and without hesitation to attempt to stop the killing of their people while maintaining a militia that has protected them from the days of Saddam.
This attack by the Maliki government is reprehensible. It only PROVES the inappropriate presence of the USA military in Iraq and its willingness to kill for the simple request of doing so. The Green Zone Iraqis don't care about their people, but, simply 'the wealth' of their people and the pursuit of their own ethnic ideologies.
The most stable places in Iraq prior to Bush's War were the south and north of that country. Today the Shia of the South are under attack by their own government and the Kurds of the north are under attack by the USA ally, Turkey. People's lives are irrelivant to the oil. If that isn't completely obvious today than I don't know what is.
