[Marxism] Merip Report: The Reawakened Specter of Iraqi Civil War

["Paul Flewers" <rfls12802@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A fascinating report.

Paul F

++++++++++++++++++

Michael Wahid Hanna, 'The Reawakened Specter of Iraqi Civil War', Middle
East Report Online:

'April has already been a cruel month in Iraq. A spate of bombings aimed at
Shi'i civilians in Baghdad has raised fears that the grim sectarian logic
that led the capital to civil war in 2005-2007 will reassert itself. On
April 6, a string of six car bombs killed at least 37 people; the next day,
shortly after President Barack Obama landed in Baghdad, another car bomb
killed eight; and on the morrow, still another bomb blew up close to the
historic Shi'i shrine in Kadhimiyya just northwest of the capital's central
districts, taking an additional seven civilian lives. Worryingly for Iraqis,
the bombings occurred following gun battles between the security forces of
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shi'i-led government and Sunni Arab
militiamen, fueling rumors that the disgruntled militiamen have spearheaded
the violent campaign. 

'The crackdown by Iraqi security forces on the Sunni Arab militiamen, known
as the Awakenings (sahwat) in Arabic and referred to as the Sons of Iraq by
the US military, pitted two ostensible US allies against one another.
Together with arrests of other prominent militia leaders and the concrete
timeline for the drawdown of US troops, the confrontations have raised
questions as to whether some among these armed Sunni Arab factions are ready
to return to insurgency in response to their treatment by Maliki's
government. The fate of the sahwat is but one aspect of a larger struggle
over the nature of the Iraqi state and its component parts -- a struggle in
which the United States is increasingly relegated to a subsidiary role. This
latest phase of the intra-Iraqi wrangling that dates back almost to the fall
of Saddam Hussein's regime, could tip the country back into sectarian civil
war and complicate Obama's efforts to extricate the US military from Iraq.'

Read the remainder at < http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041709.html >.





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