Battle of the mosques in Iraq
Eighteen people were killed in a Shiite mosque bombing in Iraq today, according to AFP in a recent spate of mosque bombings. Two weeks ago, a Sunni mosque was bombed claiming 39 souls. The Sunni bombing happened when a bomb hidden in the air conditioning system detonated during a packed service. Today’s bombing wasn’t the only action in Iraq;
The blasts came a day after the bodies of 10 young men who had been shot dead were found in Baghdad, another reminder of the sectarian conflict, during which militants frequently carried out summary executions.
Also on Friday, mortar rounds killed a young girl west of Samarra and wounded two members of her family.
And gunmen kidnapped and killed a soldier in the northern province of Kirkuk, while a roadside bomb north of the city of Baquba killed one person and wounded three.
The United Nation’s deputy special representative for Iraq, Gyorgy Busztin, expressed “extreme concern” this week about sectarian-based displacement of Sunnis and members of the small Shabak minority, and the killing of Sunnis in the country’s south.
The New York Times reports on Muqdadiya, a Balkanized town near Baghdad, where the Sunni-Shiite civil war is a part of daily life;
It started in mid-July, when a fragile tranquillity was shattered after a teenage boy, in a baggy T-shirt concealing a vest of explosives, walked into a Shiite funeral tent and detonated himself while mourners ate a dinner of lamb, rice and tomato soup.
A resurgent Al Qaeda in Iraq was blamed for the bombing, and the bomber, it emerged, was a member of the local Sunni tribe, inflaming not just sectarian hatreds but local tribal rivalries.
In the days after, locals say, Shiite gunmen, some with ties to militias, others out for tribal justice, terrorized Sunni neighborhoods, killing some and demanding that others leave.
“It’s worse than anything that ever happened before,” said Ali Jassim, another displaced resident, who, like others interviewed for this article, gave only an informal name, withholding his full name for safety reasons. “It was people attacking at night with machine guns, not considering if there were kids or women or old men.”
But, as I said before, we were told that the killing would stop when the American troops left.
Category: Terror War
“But, as I said before, we were told that the killing would stop when the American troops left.”
I’ll see if I can track down the link, but the other day in the comments section of the Guardian, someone made this same argument. The response was a moving of the goal posts. The claim is now that no one ever said anything about Iraqi’s killing Iraqi’s, but that Iraqi’s would stop killing American’s (not that they ever had prior to our invasion of course) once we left, and that rightwing rethugilicans were just too dumb to catch that nuance.
We left.. they should all be signing Kumbayah, holding hands, and living in the blissful paradise.
And I wondered long ago what the consequence would be of ‘getting’ Saddam Hussein.
We were also told that the Mosque’s were sacred and should not be fired on in only a last resort. I guess we valued their Mosques more than they do.
Secondly if we were allowed to demo the shit out of the people hiding in the Mosques Al Sadir would be dead and his is one of the main players in this.
@ CBSenior (#4) – Exactly this. Extend it a bit further though. Given our (American) respect for religion and the right of people to worship as they please, following the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq we refused to monkey stomp the hell out of any individual or group that advocated violence and resistance to CF and LN forces, as long as they appeared to be a “religious”.
Sure we’d go after them if they were taking an active role (picking up a weapon, directly financing, etc) but as long as they were simply shouting “Death to America! Down with LN-government-leader-name-here because Allah says so!” we’d just sit there and watch.
I remember patrols in Mosul where the “call to prayer” would go off at unusual times. My terp would look at me and go “this ain’t good”. The mosques were anouncing that we were there and urging attacks on us.
Iraq will only change when the people want (demand?) change. What I’ve seen in the past several years is they don’t. As a matter of fact, I’m not convinced they wanted change while we were there, either.
@7 Did not see much desire for change when I was there. Maybe some of the real poo folks in the BFE regions but the people in the Major cities all looked at you like if they had a RPG they would use it. If you gave them the I am going to F-ing kill you look most did not have the balls.
So how are Cowards really going to effect change.
@5 and 6: Monitoring the Friday prayers was part of the routine, and in an odd way entertaining. I didn’t know what they were saying, but it was easy to figure when the imam was going off-message. Muslim prayers can be calming with the way they are sung, but then the dude finishes and just starts yelling at the crowd.
We tried to warn them this would happen. They were too concerned with these petty issues and didn’t take the training and efforts we gave them seriously. Even after they insisted on making the big-boy decisions and getting rid of us they weren’t prepared for this.
Are they still storing their weapons in the mosques? Those idiots blow themselves up accidentally too.
When the golden dome mosque was destroyed I heard it was our Compass Call EW birds that triggered the cell phone frequencies they were using for their IEDs. Breaks my heart… F’n animals
Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll all start concentrating on bumping each other off in every part of the Middle East, including Afghagistan and Stupidlittlepakigitistan, until there’s nothing left buy goats, donkeys and apricot trees.
Let’s just get our people out of that pisshole and hope it all stays centered over there.
I recall some calls to prayer from the minarettes that were pretty good. Then one week some child was the guest prayer caller and it was absolutely ear splitting to endure. I mean every US, CF and LN just grimaced when it started. I was so thankful when we had the ‘regular’ back.
Muqdadiyah was (is) not a very fun place. Was there in the summer of 2007 with the 9th Cav. Route Marie was knee deep in 1920 Revolutionary Brigade’s and deep buried IED’s. I can imagine those palm groves are still flooded with AQIZ. The pickin’s were good though on some long range SKT’s.