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Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category

Bombings and mass-casualty attacks have killed at least 270 people across Iraq since late December, according to tallies compiled by Western news agencies. The attacks have coincided with an Iraqi political crisis that has exposed deep sectarian divisions within the government.

Middle East analysts say that political tensions have created an unstable security situation making Iraqis more vulnerable to violence.

The Iraqi government vows to track down the killers, but there have been few claims of responsibility, save for an al-Qaida splinter group saying it was behind two of the attacks.

Ranj Alaaldin, a London-based Iraq expert at research institute Certus Intelligence, said gaps in security grow during political divisions.

“Iraq’s security is dependent on Iraqis presenting a united front and being sympathetic to each other,” he said. “The existing political climate of extreme divisions and uncertainty leads to the opposite.”

Alaaldin said these security gaps have helped Iraq’s main Sunni militant group, the al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, carry out sophisticated mass-casualty attacks on Iraqi government targets in recent years.

Al-Qaida link

The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings in mostly Shi’ite areas of Baghdad that killed about 70 people on December 22. It also said it carried out a January 15 raid on a Shi’ite-dominated government security compound in the western town of Ramadi, where seven policemen were killed.

Alaaldin said the group targeted majority Shi’ites because it wanted to provoke them into carrying out revenge attacks on Sunnis and push the country back to the brink of civil war.

But al-Qaida does not appear to be responsible for much of the other violence that has happened in Iraq since December.

Maria Fantappie, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said al-Qaida is no longer a significant force in Iraq because it has not been able to smuggle as many fighters into the country as in previous years.

Alaaldin said no terrorist group has a dominant foothold in the country.  

“Iraq is flooded with ammunition and explosives,” he said. “It requires very little skill and planning for bandits to use these weapons to attack vulnerable civilian targets like markets or other crowded sites.”

Alaaldin said attacks also have been carried out by Shi’ite groups, including those who broke away from the former militia of Iraq’s radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and others backed by Iran, such as the Hezbollah Brigades.

He said some militants also collaborate with Iraqi government “insiders” who help them to penetrate rigid security checks around official buildings.

Security forces vulnerable

Iraq analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said the involvement of Iraqi security forces in the attacks cannot be ruled out.

“There are almost 600,000 Iraqi security personnel. Some of them almost certainly are tied to extremist groups,” he said.

But Cordesman, a former U.S. Defense and State Department official, said it’s unlikely that the Iraqi government is complicit in the violence.

“It has not served anybody’s interest,” he said. “It has not helped the Shi’ites, the Sunnis or the Kurds in the government. It has made them look weak and ineffective. And that seems to be another goal of the attacks.”

Analyst Fantappie said Iraqi troops and police have improved their ability to prevent attacks with the help of U.S. military training in the years leading up to last December’s U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

But she said the effectiveness of Iraq’s security system has been undermined by the political rivalries that have spread from the government to the highest ranks of the armed forces.

Shaky politics undermine security

Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has exercised control over those forces since December 2010, when he formed a unity government and appointed himself as the acting head of Iraq’s three security ministries – defense, interior and national security.

Maliki has used those powers to appoint top-ranking military officials. Cordesman said the Maliki government’s awarding of security posts to its political allies has undermined the quality of Iraqi commanders and contributed to the country’s endemic corruption.

Fantappie said the prime minister’s consolidation of power also has fueled a sense of alienation among minority Sunnis and other Iraqis who support his main political rival – the Iraqiya alliance.

Iraqiya won the most parliamentary seats in Iraq’s 2010 elections but failed to form a coalition and joined a unity government led by Maliki’s National Alliance, the main Shi’ite bloc. In recent weeks, Iraqiya has been boycotting the Cabinet in protest at being kept out of key government positions.

It also objected to Maliki’s December decision to order the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on suspicion of running a death squad, a charge many Sunnis say is clearly politically motivated.

“You have Iraqi people who feel they have been completely pushed out of government, who have an increasing sense of non-representation,” Fantappie said. “This also can trigger some of Iraq’s sectarian violence.”

The Iraqi political bloc led by anti-American Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has issued a call to dissolve Iraq’s parliament and hold early elections, in a move that could escalate the country’s growing sectarian crisis.

The Sadrists said Monday that new elections are the only way to resolve Iraq’s deepening political problems because the current government “cannot find solutions” for the issues that “threaten to divide” the country.

Tensions are rising after Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on suspicion of running a death squad. Hashemi denies the charge and fled to northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region to avoid detention. Maliki also asked parliament to fire Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.

The political crisis comes amid a wave of attacks on the capital, Baghdad, by suspected al-Qaida-linked Sunni extremists.

Al-Qaida’s front group in the country, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility Monday for a series of bombings that killed about 70 people Thursday – the deadliest day in Iraq for months.

The violence continued Monday as a suicide bomber set off a car bomb outside the Interior ministry. The blast killed seven people and wounded more than 30. Officials said five policemen were among the dead.

The recent violence has raised concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to secure the country as it tries to resolve a political crisis that erupted as the U.S. military completed a troop pullout earlier this month.

Maliki has threatened to form a government without Hashemi’s mainly Sunni-backed political party, Iraqiya, which is boycotting parliament and considering whether to pull out of the national unity government.

The leaders of Iraq’s Sunni minority have complained the Iraqi prime minister is monopolizing power in the hands of majority Shi’ites and excluding Sunnis from decision-making.

Related video from Iraq
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Support from the Sadrist bloc helped Maliki to a second term following nine months of political infighting after an inconclusive election in March 2010. The latest turmoil threatens to wreck Iraq’s fragile power-sharing deal that divides positions among the Shi’ite National Alliance, Iraqiya and the Kurdish bloc.

On Sunday, Iraq moved closer to defusing a standoff between the government and 3,400 Iranian dissidents living in a camp northeast of Baghdad. The United Nations and the Iraqi government signed a deal to relocate the residents of Camp Ashraf to a temporary location while their refugee status is determined.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the residents will be moved to Camp Liberty, the former U.S. military base near the Baghdad International Airport. She welcomed the arrangement, saying it represents “significant progress on this issue.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also welcomed the deal, which he said is the beginning of a peaceful and durable solution that respects both Iraq and its human rights obligations.

The exiles are members of a paramilitary group that has tried to topple Iran’s government and is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.

Women in Iraq often bear the brunt of war.  After three wars since 1980, sectarian conflicts and terrorist attacks, many have lost at least one close relative. Women are concerned about their future under the current government.

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By Iraqi traditions, women are considered the glue that holds society together. They are expected to take care of their families, no matter the difficulties.

Sadia Jabar is the widowed mother of six children. Terrorists in 2004 killed one of her sons because he worked for an American company. She was left with little money and a traumatized family.

“I don’t know what to do, the world is collapsing in front of me. I don’t know what to do. We started to sell furniture to buy medicine for my sick child. No schools. Everything is bad. And my child is sick. It is worse than death,” said Jabar.

Jabar now sells her sewing with the help of a group set up to help women. But she is pessimistic about the future.

“I’m expecting it’s going to get worse,” Jaba added.  “Some of them fear the Americans, but I think it will get worse because of the fighting and the government is not united.”

Teacher Wameed Marhoon has no faith in the government and is not optimistic about what the future holds for her children.

“The biggest problems are religious conflict, corruption and politics,” said Marhoon.  “It’s everything: politics, destruction, instability, lack of security. All of this together, plus anyone who comes to the country wants to take the money. Nobody is thinking of the people, nobody is thinking of us.”

Women often are the ones taking care of their own families as well as the children of their dead relatives.

Human rights activist Sundus Abass says at the same time, religious groups are eroding women’s freedoms.

“First of all they are talking about our personal freedoms, what we should wear, if we can work or not, if we can study or not, women should not go to university, women shouldn’t drive the cars – these things are something which is anti-nature in our society,” said Abass.

Abass’s brother was shot dead in the sectarian killings of 2006. She fears a repeat of that violence.

“I think there will be more violence in Iraq, at least I am talking about the near future,” added Abass.

It is the future that worries many Iraqis. They question if the government is capable of avoiding the sectarian tensions that brought the country to the brink of civil war five years ago.