Friday 4 July

Pakistan will Abolish Death Penalty

The Asian Human Rights Commission appreciates and welcomes the announcement by the new government of Pakistan to commute death sentences to life imprisonment. The AHRC hopes that the government of Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani will abolish the law which allows capital punishment by hanging...

World Refugee Day

Marking World Refugee Day on Friday 20 June, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said that providing protection for refugees today is vastly more challenging than when his office began work in 1951 trying to find solutions for Europeans uprooted in the aftermath of World War II. ...

Boumediene v.Bush

On the 12 June 2008 the US Supreme Court recognized, in the case of Boumediene v.Bush, the right of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. Amnesty International described the ruling as an essential step towards restoring the rule of law to the USA’...

Impeachment Effort Against Bush

By Gore Vidal On June 10, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberti...

Communist China kicks Journalists

Reporters Without Borders is worried about the kidnapping of leading cyber-dissident Huang Qi, the founder of the human rights website 64Tianwang (http://www.64tianwang.com). He and two other activists were forced to get into a car by three unidentified men at around 7 p.m. on 10 June in Chengdu, th...

Take Action: MakePovertyHistory.org

RSS-Syndicate

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Move

Display 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 Stories

Stories

Topics

Top Story

Thonglin's Story

Thonglin was 13 years old when she was sold into prostitution. "My aunt asked if I would like to come with her to Thailand to find a job so that I could earn money for her family, and I agreed,"...

Alfredo's Story

“I've been living away from home for three years," says Alfredo, a boy in prostitution who was working as a dancer in a club in Acapulco, Mexico. "I had many problems because my dad drank a lot...

Test for Politicians and Media

Two guys were taking chemistry at the University of Louisville. They did pretty well on all of the quizzes, midterms, and labs, and had a solid "A" going into the final. They were so confident...

Move

Display 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 Stories

Editorials

Topics

Top Story

Return of the Censors in Canada

By Pat Buchanan Freedom of the press is on trial in Canada. The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean's magazine...

France Arrests Terror Suspects

In its effort to fight terrorism, France routinely arrests and prosecutes people for being associated with possible terror suspects, undermining international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said...

Canada Twisted

We have put together the most awesome video about Canada. We show the world what kind of country we have become and you will love the stunning color. Please take 1 minutes and 30 seonds to have...

Time to Stop Iran Now

As a person who has spent his lifetime in advocating peace and civil rights it is time to write. The subject of Iran needs to be addressed in a definitive way. In order to put this in some order,...

Germany to Send more Troops

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung confirmed on Tuesday that Germany is planning on increasing the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan by 1,000, later this year.

Iraq is all about Oil

Residential School money Pit

Canadian Television Fund Fraud

Be Greeen and Get a Horse

Geography of Iran-Iraq

America Groveling to Israel

Obama's Fatal Mis-Take

Online communities still Limited

The NuclearThreat

Jimmy Carter Charter

Move

Display 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 Stories

Features

Topics

Top Story

Pakistan will Abolish Death Penalty

World Refugee Day

Boumediene v.Bush

Impeachment Effort Against Bush

Communist China kicks Journalists

Search on for Kidnapped Iranians

German NPD Quadruples

Oil prices steady near US $133

Oil Rich Alberta joins China in deal

Facebook sets Porn safeguards

Radical Censorship Measures

Expulsion And Dispossession

Investigation Into Death Squads

Afghan 'health link' to Uranium

Police abuse Allegations

Bush Surge and Hidden Costs

Written by News Networks Service

Thursday, 28 February 2008

By Chris Hedges

The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq—the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a cauldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.

The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S. casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.

The United States cut a deal with its Sunni Arab enemies. It would pay the former insurgents. It would allow them to arm and form military units and give them control of their ethnic enclaves. The Sunni Arabs, in exchange, would halt attacks on U.S. troops. The Sunni Arabs agreed.

The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters—Shiite, Kurd and Sunni Arab—are not only antagonistic but deeply unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban.

The Sunni Arab militias are known by a variety of names: the Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias call themselves “sahwas" ("sahwa" being the Arabic word for awakening). There are now 80,000 militia fighters, nearly all Sunni Arabs, paid by the United States to control their squalid patches of Iraq. They are expected to reach 100,000. The Sunni Arab militias have more fighters under arms than the Shiite Mahdi Army and are about half the size of the feeble Iraqi army. The Sunni Awakening groups, which fly a yellow satin flag, are forming a political party.

The Sunni Arab militias, though they have ended attacks on U.S. forces, detest the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and abhor the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They take the money and the support with clenched teeth because with it they are able to build a renegade Sunni army, a third force inside Iraq, which they believe will make it possible to overthrow the central government. The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein. They dominated Iraq’s old officer corps. They made up its elite units, including the Republic Guard divisions and the Special Forces regiments. They controlled the intelligence agencies. There are several hundred thousand well-trained Sunni Arabs who lack only an organizational structure. We have now made the formation of this structure possible. These militias are the foundation for a deadlier insurgent force, one that will dwarf anything the United States faced in the past. The U.S. is arming, funding and equipping its own assassins.

Comments

Add New

RSS

Only registered users can write comments!