Inside
Baghdad: A City
Paralysed By Fear
By Patrick Cockburn
26 January 2007
The
Independent
Baghdad is paralysed by fear.
Iraqi drivers are terrified of running into impromptu checkpoints where
heavily armed men in civilian clothes may drag them out of their cars
and kill them for being the wrong religion. Some districts exchange
mortar fire every night. This is mayhem beyond the comprehension of
George Bush and Tony Blair.
Black smoke was rising over
the city centre yesterday as American and Iraqi army troops tried to
fight their way into the insurgent district of Haifa Street only a mile
north of the Green Zone, home to the government and the US and British
embassies. Helicopters flew fast and low past tower blocks, hunting
snipers, and armoured vehicles manoeuvred in the streets below.
Many Iraqis who watched the
State of the Union address shrugged it off as an irrelevance. "An
extra 16,000 US soldiers are not going to be enough to restore order
to Baghdad," said Ismail, a Sunni who fled his house in the west
of the city, fearing he would be arrested and tortured by the much-feared
Shia police commandos.
It is extraordinary that,
almost four years after US forces captured Baghdad, they control so
little of it. The outlook for Mr Bush's strategy of driving out insurgents
from strongholds and preventing them coming back does not look good.
On Monday, a helicopter belonging
to the US security company Blackwater was shot down as it flew over
the Sunni neighbourhood of al-Fadhil, close to the central markets of
Baghdad. Several of the five American crew members may have survived
the crash but they were later found with gunshot wounds to their heads,
as if they had been executed on the ground.
Baghdad has broken up into
hostile townships, Sunni and Shia, where strangers are treated with
suspicion and shot if they cannot explain what they are doing. In the
militant Sunni district of al-Amariyah in west Baghdad the Shia have
been driven out and a resurgent Baath party has taken over. One slogan
in red paint on a wall reads: "Saddam Hussein will live for ever,
the symbol of the Arab nation." Another says: "Death to Muqtada
[Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shia cleric] and his army of fools."
Restaurants in districts
of Baghdad like the embassy quarter in al-Mansur, where I once used
to have lunch, are now far too dangerous to visit. Any foreigner on
the streets is likely to be kidnapped or killed. In any case, most of
the restaurants closed long ago.
It is difficult for Iraqis
to avoid joining one side or the other in the conflict. Many districts,
such as al-Hurriya in west Baghdad, have seen the minority - in this
case the Sunni - driven out.
A Sunni friend called Adnan,
living in the neighbouring district of al-Adel, was visited by Sunni
militiamen. They said: "You must help us to protect you from the
Shia in Hurriya by going on patrol with us. Otherwise, we will give
your house to somebody who will help us." He patrolled with the
militiamen for several nights, clutching a Kalashnikov, and then fled
the area.
The fear in Baghdad is so
intense that rumours of even bloodier battles sweep through the city.
Two weeks ago, many Sunni believed that the Shia Mehdi Army was going
to launch a final "battle of Baghdad" aimed at killing or
expelling the Sunni minority in the capital. The Sunni insurgents stored
weapons and ammunition in order to make a last-ditch effort to defend
their districts. In the event, they believe the ultimate battle was
postponed at the last minute. Mr Bush insisted that the Iraqi government,
with US military support, "must stop the sectarian violence in
the capital". Quite how they are going to do this is not clear.
American reinforcements might limit the ability of death squads to roam
at will for a few months, but this will not provide a long-term solution.
Mr Bush's speech is likely
to deepen sectarianism in Iraq by identifying the Shia militias with
Iran. In fact, the most powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, is traditionally
anti-Iranian. It is the Badr Organisation, now co-operating with US
forces, which was formed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
In the Arab world as a whole, Mr Bush seems to be trying to rally the
Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to support him in Iraq
by exaggerating the Iranian threat.
Iraqis also wonder what will
happen in the rest of Iraq while the US concentrates on trying to secure
Baghdad. The degree of violence in the countryside is often underestimated
because it is less reported than in the capital. In Baquba, the capital
of Diyala province north-east of Baghdad, US and Iraqi army commanders
were lauding their achievements at a press conference last weekend,
claiming: "The situation in Baquba is reassuring and under control
but there are some rumours circulated by bad people." Within hours,
Sunni insurgents kidnapped the mayor and blew up his office.
The situation in the south
of Iraq is no more reassuring. Five American soldiers were killed in
the Shia holy city of Karbala last Saturday by gunmen wearing American
and Iraqi uniforms, carrying American weapons and driving vehicles used
by US or Iraqi government forces. A licence plate belonging to a car
registered to Iraq's Minister of Trade was found on one of the vehicles
used in the attack. It is a measure of the chaos in Iraq today that
US officials do not know if their men were killed by Sunni or Shia guerrillas.
US commanders and the Mehdi
Army seem to be edging away from all-out confrontation in Baghdad. Neither
the US nor Iraqi government has the resources to eliminate the Shia
militias. Even Kurdish units in the capital have a high number of desertions.
The Mehdi Army, if under pressure in the capital, could probably take
over much of southern Iraq.
Mr Bush's supposedly new
strategy is less of a strategy than a collection of tactics unlikely
to change dramatically the situation on the ground. But if his systematic
demonising of Iran is a precursor to air strikes or other military action
against Iran, then Iraqis will once more pay a heavy price.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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