Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

E. J. Dionne Jr. - A Culture War Treaty - washingtonpost.com, October 9, 2007

You know the religious right is in trouble when some of its leaders threaten to bolt the Republican Party if it nominates a candidate who supports abortion rights.

But the well-publicized warning directed against Rudy Giuliani this month is decidedly not the most important sign that religious conservatives are facing the disintegration of their movement.

What matters more is that a new generation of evangelical leaders, tired of the rancid partisanship, is breaking away from the culture wars. The reach of this new evangelical politics will be tested with the release tomorrow of a statement under the very biblical title “Come Let Us Reason Together.” The question for the future is how many in the evangelical ranks will embrace this call.

Organized by Third Way, a group that is close to many leading moderate Democrats, the statement calls for “first steps toward bridging the cultural divide between progressives and evangelicals.”

Tom Lasseter, Iranian-Backed Militia Groups Take Control of Much of Southern Iraq, Knight Ridder, May 27, 2006

BASRA, Iraq - Southern Iraq, long touted as a peaceful region that’s likely to be among the first areas returned to Iraqi control, is now dominated by Shiite Muslim warlords and militiamen who are laying the groundwork for an Islamic fundamentalist government, say senior British and Iraqi officials in the area.

The militias appear to be supported by Iranian intelligence or military units that are shipping weapons to the militias in Iraq and providing training for them in Iran….

Iranian influence is evident throughout the area. In one government office, an aide approached a Knight Ridder reporter and, mistaking him for an Iranian, said, “Don’t be afraid to speak Farsi in Basra. We are a branch of Iran.”…

British military officials suspect that the missile that was used to shoot down a British helicopter over Basra on May 6 came from Iran. Five British soldiers died.

“We had intelligence suggesting five surface-to-air missile systems being brought over from Iran only seven days before it went down,” said Maj. Rob Yuill, a British officer based in Basra.

Last month…, at least 200 people were killed in Basra, almost all of them by militia violence, according to an Iraqi Defense Ministry official there.A week with British troops in Maysan and Basra provinces and three additional days of reporting in the city of Basra made it clear that Iraqis here are at the mercy of Shiite militia death squads and Iran-friendly clerics who have imposed an ever-stricter code of de facto Islamic law.

The city of Basra has largely come under the control of Shiite clerics, who have banned alcohol sales. A woman without a headscarf is a rare sight. Record shops have been replaced with stores selling Quranic recordings. It’s difficult to purchase chess or backgammon sets; the games are frowned upon by hard-line clerics….

U.S. forces are dependent on a fragile re-supply line that runs from Kuwait north to Baghdad through southern Iraq. A regional government allied with Iran could pose a risk to that supply line.

The Associated Press: U.S.-Led Iraq Coalition Withering Fast, october 10, 2007

Britain’s decision to bring half of its 5,000 soldiers home from Iraq by spring is the latest blow to the U.S.-led coalition. The alliance is crumbling, and fast: excluding Americans, the multinational force was once 50,000 strong — by mid-2008, it will be down to 7,000.

…defense experts say the shrunken coalition probably won’t make much of a difference because most of the non-U.S. forces have largely stuck to non-combat roles.

“This is a U.S. and Iraqi coalition — nothing more and nothing less,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon and now an analyst with the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“A British withdrawal and that of other countries really doesn’t matter very much. They’re playing a very limited role,” he said Tuesday.

What’s certain is this: The alliance has withered dramatically since its peak in the months after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

At its height, in the months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries — 250,000 from the United States, about 40,000 from Britain and the rest ranging from 2,000 Australians to 70 Albanians.

Basra airport director kidnapped by unknown gunmen, The Times of India, October 10, 2007

BAGHDAD: The director of the international airport of Iraq’s southern port city of Basra was kidnapped by unknown gunmen outside his home on Tuesday night, a security official said.

Abdul Razak Kassem was abducted when he arrived back from work at his home in a residential area close to the airport, the official said.

There were no immediate further details. British troops pulled out of Basra city on September 2-3 but fears of a Shiite turf war remain and sectarian violence continues.

Some 5,250 British troops are now stationed at Basra airport but Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday that Britain would cut these numbers by more than half to 2,500 from early next year.

Insitute of Peace and War Reporting, Climate of Fear Stymies Basra Reporters, (2-Oct-07

Journalists risk death if they try to report candidly about the troubled city.

By Safa al-Mansoor and Dhiya al-Mussa in Basra

As a reporter for a US-backed radio station in the southern city of Basra, Majid al-Brekan had received threats before - but none like this.

One day in late March, as Brekan slipped into the driver’s seat of his car in front of his house, he noticed three masked men riding on a motorcycle behind him. Fearing trouble, Brekan quickly turned on his ignition and slammed on the accelerator. The men shot and damaged his car, but Brekan escaped without injury.

The incident shook the journalist so much that he decided to flee his home city. The press is not free in the southern oil-rich city, said Brekan bitterly, because journalists are in harm’s way.

“We are fearful and cautious about our work,” said Brekan, who works for Radio Sawa - an Arabic language radio station, funded by the United States government and broadcast throughout Iraq. “We can’t report the full story in detail because no one protects us.”

Local journalists who remain describe a climate of fear. They work quietly, not wanting to incite the wrath of the local Shia militias or Islamic parties that have taken control of the city since British forces stationed there handed it back to be governed by locals.

These include Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political wing and Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia; the Shia Fadheela Party, which holds substantial political power in Basra; and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its Badr Organisation, which Iraqi exiles in Iran founded in 1982 to oppose former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regime. Basra’s Sunni citizens have largely been pushed out of the province.

Journalists say that openly criticising political parties or militias is a “red line” not to be crossed