Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

الحياة - اشتباكات متقطعة في البصر April 4, 2008

اشتباكات متقطعة في البصرة والجيش الأميركي يقصف مواقع بالطيران … المالكي يهدد الخارجين عن القانون بـ«صولات فرسان» والصدر يدعو الى تظاهرة مليونية في ذكرى سقوط بغداد

اعتبر رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي مواجهات البصرة مع «جيش المهدي» التابع لرجل الدين الشيعي مقتدى الصدر «بداية المنازلة ضد الخارجين عن القانون»،

الى ذلك، جدد قياديون في تيار الصدر رفضهم تسليم سلاح «جيش المهدي»، فيما دعا الصدر أنصاره الى الاعتصام اليوم بعد صلاة الجمعة للمطالبة بـ «فك الحصار عن مدن شيعية»، وتنظيم تظاهرة «مليونية» في النجف لمناسبة الذكرى الخامسة لسقوط بغداد في قبضة الاحتلال الأميركي، في 9 نيسان ابريل عام 2003.

في غضون ذلك، استمرت الاشتباكات متقطعة بين القوات الحكومية والميليشيا الشيعية في البصرة، وشن الجيش الأميركي غارات جوية على مواقع في المدينة وفي الحلة قُتل خلالها مسلحون وعدد من المدنيين. وأكدت مصادر الشرطة ان قتالاً نشب خلال دخول جنود اميركيين يرتدون ملابس مدنية منطقة الجمعية وسط الحلة، حيث خاضوا اشتباكات مع مجهولين واستدعوا طائرة هيليكوبتر لمساندتهم.

More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight - New York Times, April 4, 2008

BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.

A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed.

Calm in Iraqi Cities After Cleric Calls for Truce - New York Times, March 31, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraqis returned to the streets of Baghdad after a curfew was lifted, and the southern port city of Basra appeared quiet on Monday, a day after the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for his followers to stop fighting and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government.

Mr. Sadr’s statement on Sunday afternoon was released at the end of six days in which his Mahdi Army militia had held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on Basra.No serious clashes were reported in Basra on Monday morning. In Baghdad, which had been virtually brought to a standstill by protests and violence over the past week, life appeared to return to normal with the streets filling with traffic. A succession of mortar shells rocked the Green Zone. But in most neighborhoods, people went back to work and shopped for supplies that they were unable to buy during the curfew.

The strict curfew imposed by the government on Thursday was lifted at 6 a.m., but remained in effect for vehicles in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, where fighting between militiamen and Iraqi and American forces had continued through the day on Sunday, and in some other Shiite neighborhoods of the capital.

The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the preceding days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory. He has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

الحياة - المالكي يعتبر أن «من يقاتل الحكومة أسوأ من القاعدة» … الصدر يأمر أتباعه بعدم تسليم السلاح ووحدات عسكرية عراقية لا تريد القتال
مع تواصل المواجهات بين القوات العراقية و»جيش المهدي»، امس، لليوم الخامس في أنحاء مختلفة في العراق، جدد رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي اصرار حكومته على المضي في معركة البصرة ضد المسلحين الى النهاية، معتبراً ان «من يقاتل الحكومة اسوأ من القاعدة». ونقل عن الزعيم الشيعي الشاب مقتدى الصدر انه طلب من اتباعه عدم القاء سلاحهم، فيما رفضت وحدات في الجيش العراقي في مدينة الصدر مقاتلة «جيش المهدي» في سابقة لا يعرف بعد مدى تأثيرها وامتدادها على المواجهات بين الطرفين.

رجال شرطة يسلمون أمس أسلحتهم إلى رجل دين من أنصار الصدر في مدينة الصدر. ا ف ب

وبعد الغارات الجوية الأميركية لمواقع المسلحين في مدينة الصدر والبصرة تدخلت القوات البريطانية في المدينة الجنوبية، فقصفت بالمدافع مواقع للمسلحين في شمالها دعماً للقوات العراقية، فيما ارتفعت حصيلة المواجهات الى اكثر من 275 قتيلاً و500 جريح، بحسب مصادر رسمية.

Tomgram: Mark Danner, Generals Bin Laden and Bush, March 25, 2008

To contemplate a prewar map of Baghdad — as I do the one before me, with sectarian neighborhoods traced out in blue and red and yellow — is to look back on a lost Baghdad, a Baghdad of our dreams. My map of 2003 is colored mostly a rather neutral yellow, indicating the “mixed” neighborhoods of the city, predominant just five years ago. To take up a contemporary map after this is to be confronted by a riot of bright color: Shia blue has moved in irrevocably from the East of the Tigris; Sunni red has fled before it, as Shia militias pushed the Sunnis inexorably west toward Abu Ghraib and Anbar province, and nearly out of the capital itself. And everywhere, it seems, the pale yellow of those mixed neighborhoods is gone, obliterated in the months and years of sectarian war.

I start with those maps out of a lust for something concrete, as I grope about in the abstract, struggling to quantify the unquantifiable. How indeed to “take stock” of the War on Terror? Such a strange beast it is, like one of those mythological creatures that is part goat, part lion, part man. Let us take a moment and identify each of these parts.

Heavy fighting in southern Iraqi oil hub | World | Reuters, March 25, 2008

BASRA, Iraq Reuters - Heavy fighting erupted on Tuesday in the southern oil city of Basra where Iraqi security forces launched a major operation at dawn against powerful militias, military officials and witnesses said.

A Reuters witness in the city reported seeing black smoke over northern districts and hearing explosions and machinegun fire. A hospital source said “tens of wounded” were arriving at hospitals with some too busy to accept more casualties.

Television pictures showed Iraqi troops running through empty streets and helicopters flying overhead.

“There are clashes in the streets. Bullets are coming from everywhere and we can hear the sound of rocket explosions. This has been going on since dawn,” resident Jamil told Reuters by telephone as he cowered in his home.

Military officials said “many outlaws” had been killed.

Two powerful factions of Iraqs Shiite majority, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Mehdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, are fighting for power in Basra along with a smaller Shiite party, Fadhila.

Basra is Iraq’s second city and gateway to the Gulf. Its oil fields are the source of most government revenues.

Bin Laden in Palestinian call, BBC, March 21, 2008

“The nearest jihad battlefield to support our people in Palestine is the battlefield of Iraq,” the speaker said.

The message, aired on al-Jazeera TV, comes a day after the al-Qaeda leader threatened the EU over the reprint of a cartoon deemed offensive to Muslims.

The messages coincide with the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says they follow a familiar pattern, with Bin Laden touching on an issue he knows resonates with many Muslims

‘Fire and iron’

In the second message in two days, the speaker dismissed attempts at reconciliation in the Middle East.

“Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron,” he said.

New Bin Laden tape threatens EU, BBC, March 20, 2008

In a new audio message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader threatens the EU over the re-printing of a cartoon offensive to Muslims.

The voice on it says the cartoon, re-published recently in all major Danish newspapers, was part of a crusade involving Pope Benedict XVI.

The drawing, first published in 2005, depicts the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

The voice on the audio has not yet been verified as belonging to Bin Laden.

The message comes on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

But the BBC’s Jonathan Beale in Washington says that the message was probably released to not to mark that anniversary, but rather the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, which Sunni Muslims mark on Thursday.

It appeared on a Islamist website that has carried al-Qaeda messages in the past.

Over the audio is a graphic with a still image of Bin Laden holding an AK-47 and bearing the logo of al-Sahab, the media wing of al-Qaeda. There is a written translation of the message in English.

‘Crowd pleaser’

John Pike, director of the defence think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said bin Laden had chosen to talk about the cartoon in an effort to remain relevant and provide direction to followers.

“His judgement is that it’s a consistent crowd-pleaser, and that if he has any hope of getting people stirred up, this is probably a good way to try to do it.”

Last month, Denmark’s leading newspapers reprinted one of 12 cartoons that first angered many Muslims when they were originally published in September 2005.

Anger in the Muslim world peaked in 2006 as newspapers in other countries published the cartoons.

McClatchy Washington Bureau, 03/17/2008, Cheney cites phenomenal Iraqi security progress as bombing kills 40

BAGHDAD — Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday made a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he pledged that U.S. forces would “not quit before the job is done” and said that a massive troop buildup had achieved “phenomenal” improvements in security.

At sunset Monday, however, a female suicide bomber killed at least 40 people and injured more than 50 when she blew herself up in a crowded pedestrian area near a Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, according to government and hospital officials. Among the victims were several Iranian pilgrims whod come to worship at the Imam Hussein shrine, one of Islams most sacred sites.

And the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers who were killed Monday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, bringing the number of American troop deaths to at least 3,990 since the war began.

Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad that the invasion of Iraq five years ago this week was a “difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor.” However, he said that obstacles remain and that the decision on whether to begin reducing forces depends on political reconciliation and the ability to preserve the hard-won security gains of the past year.

Nir Rosen, The Myth of the Surge : Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008

It’s a cold, gray day in December, and I’m walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city’s no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what “victory” looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush’s much-heralded “surge,” Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.

AP, Iran Says God Protects Nuclear Program - washingtonpost.com, Feb. 17, 2008

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday that God would punish Iranians if they do not support the country’s disputed nuclear program, state radio reported.

“The Iranian people openly announce that they will defend their rights… God will reprimand them if they do not do so,” state radio quoted Khamenei as saying.

The 68-year-old ayatollah, who has final say on all state matters, said Washington’s claim that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon is false. The Iranian government has long insisted its nuclear activities are only for peaceful generation of fuel.

Carolyn Drake for the New York Times

In Turkey, Is Tension About Religion? Class Rivalry? Or Both? - New York Times, Feb. 19, 2008

ISTANBUL — When two women in Islamic head scarves were spotted in an Italian restaurant in this citys posh new shopping mall this month, Gulbin Simitcioglu did a double take.Covered women, long seen as backward peasants from the countryside, “have started to be everywhere,” said Ms. Simitcioglu, a sales clerk in an Italian clothing store, and it is making women like her more than a little uncomfortable. “We are Turkeys image. They are ruining it.”

As Turkey lurches toward a repeal of a ban on head scarves at universities, the countrys secular upper middle class is feeling increasingly threatened.

Religious Turks, once the underclass of society here, have become educated and middle class, and are moving into urban spaces that were once the exclusive domain of the elite. Now the repeal of the scarf ban — pressed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, passed by Parliament and now just awaiting an official signature — is again setting the two groups against each other, unleashing fears that have as much to do with class rivalry as with the growing influence of Islam.

Heba Saleh, Pleas for condemned Saudi ‘witch’, BBC, February 14, 2008

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

‘Undefined’ crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih’s conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

European Pressphoto Agency

Tens of thousands of secular Turks demonstrated in Ankara against the lifting of a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves at Turkey’s universities.

Turkey’s Parliament Votes to Lift Head Scarf Ban - New York Times, Feb. 9, 2008

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s parliament took a major step toward lifting a ban against women’s head scarves in universities on Saturday, setting the stage for a final showdown with the country’s secular elite over where Islam fits in the building of an open society.

Turkish lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure supported by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to change two articles in Turkey’s Constitution that they say would guarantee every citizen the right to go to college regardless of how they dress. Turkish authorities imposed the ban in the late 1990’s, arguing that the growing numbers of covered women in colleges threatened secularism, one of the founding principles of modern Turkey.

Secular opposition lawmakers voted against the change, with about a fifth of all ballots cast. Large crowds of secular Turks backed them on the streets of Turkey’s capital, Ankara, chanting that secularism, and women’s right to resist being forced to wear head scarves by family members or religious authorities, was under threat and demanding that the government step down.

AFP: Afghanistan may plunge into ‘failed state,’ experts warn, January 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Insurgency-wracked Afghanistan will become a failed state if urgent steps are not taken to tackle a deteriorating security situation and lackluster reconstruction and governance efforts, experts warned in separate reports Wednesday.

The reports came amid new concerns over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s commitment to providing more troops to fight a resurgent Taliban militia, with Canada’s prime minister warning in talks with US President George W. Bush that it might pull troops from Afghanistan unless NATO boosts support.

“Urgent changes are required now to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failing or failed state,” cautioned one report from the Atlantic Council of the United States, led by retired Marine Corps general James Jones.

Taliban control of the sparsely populated parts of Afghanistan was “increasing” and civil reforms, reconstruction, and development work “have not gained traction” across the country, especially in the south, it said.

“To add insult to injury, of every dollar of aid spent on Afghanistan, less than ten percent goes directly to Afghans, further compounding reform and reconstruction problems,” the report said.

Southern Afghanistan has seen the worst violence since the Taliban were ousted from power in the US-led invasion in 2001 following the September 11 terror attacks masterminded by Al-Qaeda, whose leaders were given sanctuary by the Taliban.

As US and NATO-led troops wage an uphill battle now to keep the Taliban at bay, civil sector reform “is in serious trouble” despite immense resources poured into the country and nearly seven years of efforts, the report said.