Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold
Iraq is now descending into a state that resembles Bosnia at the height of it's ethnic cleansing.
"Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.
The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.
The scale of ethnic divisions have escalated since the Shia Al-Askari shrine in Samarra was blown up in February this year. Since that event more than 1,300 Sunni have been killed in retaliation
Kadm Darwish Ali, a policeman from Baquba and now also a refugee, said: "Everything got worse after Samarra. I had been threatened with death before but now I felt every time I appeared in the street I was likely to die."
This is the new Iraq that Bush and Blair have created. A place where people feel every time they appear on the street, that they are likely to die.
Since the destruction of the mosque in Samarra sectarian warfare has broken out in every Iraqi city where there is a mixed population. In many cases the minority is too small to stand and fight. Sunnis have been fleeing Basra after a series of killings. Christians are being eliminated in Mosul in the north. Shias are being killed or driven out of cities and towns north of Baghdad such as Baquba or Samarra itself.
Bush and Blair have failed to carry out the first rule of any occupation: the restoration of order. And that failing has happened because of the size of the forces employed at the insistence of Donald Rumsfeld.
The forces employed are insufficient to carry out the task that is being asked of them. One has to seriously ask - what is being achieved by keeping them in place?
Click title for Cockburn's excellent article.
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