Category: Middle East

I blogged last night that the pending elections have the terrorists fighting not only the American and Iraqi forces but also the clock in Iraq. Today, the terrorists made it quite obvious that they know and fear this.

An Islamic militant group in Iraq warned Muslims to skip the country’s coming elections, and said anyone who runs for office would be branded an infidel and “punished in the name of God.”

….

The militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, said in a statement published on its Web site: “We ask all Muslims to respond to God’s calling and avoid showing up at the election posts.”

The group warned that voting sites would be targeted “because they are infidel posts.”

Iraq’s interim government plans to hold elections for a transitional parliament in January, and the offensive against insurgents in Falluja was meant to restore interim government control over that area ahead of the vote.

“We warn everyone who will run in this election that by doing so, he chose to be an infidel and that he will be punished in the name of God,” Ansar al-Sunna said. “The same will go to the American crusaders and their allies, their collaborators who support these elections.”

The group claimed responsibility for the October killing of a Kurdish police chief in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, calling it a warning to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani. The militants consider Kurdish leaders traitors for cooperating with U.S.-led forces in the invasion of Iraq.

It also claimed responsibility for the killings of three KDP members in September and 12 Nepalese contractors in August.

The group said elections were meant “to deceive the people that they are free and that they can elect their own president and government in a democratic and free approach.” It also denounced efforts to bring democracy to Iraq as an “infidel curriculum.”

The statement said Muslims had a duty to fight U.S. troops and “to work on establishing the rule of God in our country.”

These are not hollow threats, as the terrorists in Iraq are more capable and more internationally supported than their counterparts who could not affect the Afghan elections in October. It should be noted, though, that every suicide attack, every dead terrorist, every bit of arms seized between now and the election is a hit on the impact the Islamists and Saddamists can have immediately prior to and on election day. However, to lay low, bide their time and conserve their assets would be counterproductive to their need to maintain an atmosphere of terror and lawlessness. The coalition’s efforts are against them, time is against them, and the Iraqi people are not for them.

If you’ve ever wondered how Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Fallen felt as the evil spirit Azazel hopped from person to person, each in turn hauntingly serenading Denzel with the Stones’ Time Is On My Side, ask one of the Islamists in Iraq. (Great, now that song’s stuck in my head. Damn you, Azazel!)

Almost as if dismayed that the terrorist activity in Iraq did not cease immediately with the commencement of the Fallujah operation, the Associated Press is taking an oft-dubious look at the American and Iraqi efforts against the radicals.

U.S. commanders in Iraq say the insurgents are on the run. The problem is that when the insurgents are chased from one place, such as Fallujah, they pop up elsewhere, to deadly effect.

It happened in Mosul this week and in Baqubah — with car bombings and attacks on police stations — as well as in Ramadi, a provincial capital just west of Fallujah. The scope of violence in those places is far smaller than in Fallujah. It also shows that the overwhelming technology and firepower of the U.S. military have not broken the back of the insurgency.

It appears unlikely that the Pentagon will send substantially more troops to Iraq than the 140,000 already there. U.S. commanders believe a bigger force would just give the insurgents more targets.

The Pentagon seems likely to stick to its current approach: confront the insurgents wherever they appear, building up the number of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers and other security forces, and hoping the political footings of a democratic Iraq take hold quickly.

In the meantime, the U.S. death toll continues to grow. It now exceeds 1,200 since the war began in March 2003. At midmonth, November ranked as the second deadliest month for U.S. forces, with more than 90 dead.

The central question, many believe, is more political than military. Will support for the resistance grow or shrink as a result of what happened in Fallujah, which was the insurgents’ main base? More broadly, will enough Iraqis accept the Americans’ lead to form a viable government?

I know it’d be extremely difficult to gather and is rather ghoulish of me, but I’d like to see some reasonable estimates of bad guys bagged. I’ll wager it would go far into putting the American deaths into perspective.

I feel it would behoove our efforts to at least publish more information on the prisoners taken to date, information such as breakdowns of nationalities and, among the Iraqi nationals held captive, data on their backgrounds (e.g. prior criminals, Saddamists). This could crush any notion both home and abroad that we’re opposing a popular movement of the Iraqi people fighting occupation and are, in fact, facing the brutal, desperate efforts of thugs and radicals with either selfish or Islamist motivations.

“Whether the sparks (from Fallujah) light other fires all over Iraq or burn out” is still a question, said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The signs so far appear unfavorable.

On Wednesday a suicide car bomb killed 10 Iraqis in the northern city of Beiji, U.S. forces fought insurgents for three hours in Ramadi. In Fallujah, there was sporadic fighting. On Tuesday a prominent Iraqi insurgent claimed the battle for Fallujah was only the start of an uprising.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a senior Central Command officer, said in an AP Radio interview Tuesday that once the Fallujah offensive began, the insurgents attacked in other parts of the country to show “they still were a potent force.” In his view, they lost more than they gained.

To hear him and other American officers tell it, the U.S. plan is working. They do not expect to end the insurgency. Rather, they aim to suppress it enough to permit people throughout the country to elect a national assembly, which would draft a new permanent Iraqi constitution.

Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, said during a visit to Iraq this week that the Fallujah offensive was a major blow to the insurgents. He said the only way the U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies can be defeated is if they lose their will.

“But we are also under no illusions. We know that the enemy will continue to fight,” he told the Pentagon’s internal news service.

Unlike the traditional guerrilla warfare scenario where the insurgents win by not losing and those in power lose by not winning, today’s Iraq stands as an exact reversal of that military rule. The closer the government and the Iraqi people get to representative democracy, the more they grasp self-rule and freedom, the greater the chance of failure for the terrorists. Just as the Americans and the interim government is on the clock to pull off elections, so too are the terrorists up against the wall to prevent public belief in the democratic concept and acceptance of any election results. An elected government that the Iraqi people feel they have a vested interest in would be greatly detrimental to the efforts of the so-called insurgency.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the outcome ultimately rests in the hands of the Iraqi people rather than the U.S. military. He predicted that a “tipping point” will be reached that changes the momentum in favor of those who want democracy to succeed in Iraq.

“More and more of the Iraqis will be angry about the fact that their innocent people are being killed by the extremists … and they won’t like it,” he said recently. “They’ll want elections, and the more they see the extremists acting against that possibility of elections, I think they’ll turn on those people.”

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, made a similar point Wednesday in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

“This ultimately is not going to be won in the kinetic sense — in battle. It’s going to be won in having Iraqis taking ownership and investing their own personal sweat and blood,” he said.

However the AP tries to balance (read spin negatively) the news, progress is being made. We are killing the insurgents. By the freakin’ bushel. The effects of anger in the Arab world over the filmed shooting of a wounded bastard by a US Marine will be tempered by anger within Iraq at the execution of humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan. There is no more reporting of no-go zones for the US military. Every day is a day that the Iraqi national army grows in size and proficiency. Each Iraqi civilian death caused by the terrorists will become a sign of the terrorists’ impotence against those they actually wish to fight.

In short, we are not losing the peace and, because of that, we are winning it.

I’m sorry. On a seemingly slow news day, I can’t let the AP get by with this crap. They’ve thrown in enough to pretend it’s balanced, but one cannot read it, walk away and grab a brew without thinking, “Crap! Weren’t we heading in the right direction this time? What the freakin’ eff happened?!!” Well, not on my watch.

The Iraqi government rushed reinforcements Friday to the country’s third-largest city, Mosul, seeking to quell a deadly militant uprising that U.S. officials suspected may be in support of the resistance in Fallujah — now said to be under 80 percent U.S. control.

Police in Mosul largely disappeared from the streets, residents reported, and gangs of armed men brandishing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers roamed the city, 225 miles north of Baghdad. Responding to the crisis, Iraqi authorities dismissed Mosul’s police chief after local officials reported that officers were abandoning their stations to militants without firing a shot.

Elsewhere, insurgents shot down a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, wounding three crew members, the military said. It was the third downed helicopter this week after two Marine Super Cobras succumbed to ground fire in the Fallujah operation.

Okay, all bad so far. Nice intro, AP.

In Fallujah, U.S. troops pushed insurgents into a narrow corner in the southern end of the city after a four-day assault that has claimed 22 American lives and wounded about 170 others. An estimated 600 insurgents have died, according to the military.

Oops! Something almost positive. Good move to quickly spin it towards casualties. Where were you when we needed you on D-Day?

Despite the apparent success in Fallujah, violence flared elsewhere in the volatile Sunni Muslim areas, including Mosul, where attacks Thursday killed a U.S. soldier. Another soldier was killed in Baghdad as clashes erupted Friday in at least four neighborhoods of the capital. Clashes also broke out from Hawija and Tal Afar in the north to Samarra — where the police chief was also fired — and Ramadi in central Iraq.

The most serious incidents took place in Mosul, a city of about 1 million people, where fighting raged for a second day. Gunmen attacked the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in an hourlong battle that a party official said left six assailants dead.

Militants also assassinated the head of the city’s anti-crime task force, Brig. Gen. Mowaffaq Mohammed Dahham, and set fire to his home.

Good recovery. We wouldn’t want the world to think any progress was being made.

“With the start of operations in Fallujah a few days ago, we expected that there would be some reaction here in Mosul,” Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. forces in the city, told CNN from Mosul.

Ham said he doubted the Mosul attackers were insurgents who fled Fallujah and said most “were from the northern part of Iraq, in and around Mosul and the Tigris River valley that’s south of the city.”

Capt. Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Mosul headquarters, said “some of these attacks are in support of the resistance in Fallujah.”

The AP sneaks in the obvious. No fanfare on anything that is supportive or that doesn’t glorify the terrorists’ efforts.

In a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera television, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the insurgents’ political office, urged militants to fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah.

“I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers from the mujahedeen … to press the American forces outside” Fallujah, al-Baghdadi said.

“We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Ayad Allawi’s government … represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people,” he continued — a reference to the interim Iraqi prime minister, who gave to the go-ahead for the Fallujah invasion.

Modern idea of objectivity: broadcast the propaganda of the enemy. For a further viewpoint on Omaha Beach, we turn to Berlin ….

In addition to firing the Mosul police chief, Iraqi authorities also dispatched four battalions of the Iraqi National Guard from garrisons along the Syrian and Iranian borders.

Most of the reinforcements are ethnic Kurds who fought alongside American forces during the 2003 invasion — a move which could inflame ethnic rivalries with Mosul’s Sunni Arab population. Nevertheless, it appeared Iraqi authorities had no choice given the apparent failure of the city’s police force to maintain order.

Speaks for itself. Goes negative and quickly undermines the Allawi government’s decision by playing the ethnicity card.

At a U.S. camp near Fallujah, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said U.S. and Iraqi forces now occupy about 80 percent of the city, and that clearing operations are continuing to find caches of weapons and ammunition. Army and Marine units moved to tighten their security cordon around Fallujah, backed by FA-18s and AC-130 gunships.

The largest pocket of remaining resistance fighters were cornered Friday in the city’s southwest as airstrikes and strafing runs continued.

“The rout is on,” said a 1st Cavalry Division officer. “It won’t be long now.”

Iraqi forces were charged with searching every building in Fallujah, working from north to south, the military said.

In the city’s north, U.S. forces reported roving squads of three to five militants shooting small-arms fire and moving easily through narrow alleyways. Troops were finding numerous weapons caches, the military said.

Time magazine’s Michael Ware, embedded with U.S. forces, said troops of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment who spearheaded the first push into the city early Monday found entire houses that were booby-trapped.

Tucked down this far, an American look at the Fallujah operation, its current progress and the treacherous nature of the Islamist bastards we’re sending bloodily to Allah.

Fighting was so fierce that, on one occasion, U.S. troops fought insurgents room to room, just a few feet away from each other in the same house.

No spin on this by the AP. War is hell, but better-trained, better-equipped and better-motivated soldiers, our freakin’ soldiers, are winning these encounters.

Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of Fallujah and have turned back hundreds of men trying to flee the city during the assault. Only women, children and the elderly can leave.

The military says keeping men aged 15 to 55 from leaving is key to the mission’s success.

“If they’re not carrying a weapon, you can’t tell who’s who,” said an officer with the 1st Cavalry Division.

Yo, AP, work a little harder on finding a way to spin this badly.

The Fallujah operation threatens to enflame passions within the Sunni community, not only against the American presence but against the Shiite majority, whose clerical leaders have by and large remained silent over the killings of Muslims in the city.

An audiotape purportedly made by al-Qaida-linked terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi encouraged his fighters in Fallujah and said victory was near. He accused Kurds and Shiites in the Iraqi forces of abandoning their religion and said the offensive had been blessed by “the infidel’s imam,” Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq.

Good job, AP. One problem, though. Didn’t al-Zarqawi promise infidels couldn’t take Fallujah? And didn’t he apparently run away from the anticipated Fallujah showdown like a little bitch? Don’t try to save face for his little weak self.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities launched the Fallujah operation to restore government control so that national elections can go ahead by the end of January as planned. However, hardline Sunni clerics are calling for a boycott to protest the Fallujah attacks.

In Baghdad, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. troops, arrested one of those clerics, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, and about two dozen other people after a raid of his Baghdad mosque uncovered weapons and photographs of recent attacks on American troops, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

Mosul area deputy Gov. Khissrou Gouran said gunmen tried to storm a food distribution center in the city’s Yarmouk area but were forced back by National Guardsmen and security guards. The gunmen were trying to destroy election registration cards held at the center, Gouran said.

In Washington, President Bush met with his top ally in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and warned that with Iraqi elections approaching, “the desperation of the killers will grow and the violence could escalate.” But he said victory in Iraq would be a blow to terrorists everywhere.

Fallujah militants fought Marines to a standstill last April during a three-week siege, which the Bush administration called off amid public criticism over civilian casualties.

Fought to a standstill?!! The Islamists were getting shredded and the Americans were called off only as a means of showing the legitimacy of the Allawi interim government. That the Islamists chose to misinterpret this is why they’re bleeding so much now. I have an idea: if they are such badasses, how ’bout they do one of the following:

• Relieve their fellow maggots in Fallujah, or
• Affect the US elections. Oh, sorry, too late. They already failed in this endeavour.

Wasn’t there a time when the AP was, if not pro-American, at least neutral?

Not much to say to this other than “Yikes!”

About 660 soldiers were found to have contracted the leishmaniasis parasite since US troops launched operations in Iraq in March 2003, said Colonel Naomi Arenson, an expert on the disease at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The cases found in Iraq are all of cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is seldom lethal, and usually heals over time but can leave significant scarring.

If left untreated, simple skin sores in rare cases can spread to the nose and mouth.

The number of victims is likely to rise in coming weeks, she told AFP on the sidelines of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s annual conference.

“This is about the season when we start seeing cases,” she said.

She nevertheless expects the number of new cases to drop as a result of better troop facilities, including air-conditioned barracks sealed to keep out flies, as well as education on the risks of diseases.

Since the parasite causes open sores the main risk is that victims could suffer secondary infections, said Arenson.

Caution was particularly important in the field, where troops often can’t bathe regularly.

She said the parasite’s presence also affects morale, with soldiers worried at “the concept of having parasites in their bodies.”

The most severe cases from Iraq are sent to the Walter Reed hospital, located just outside Washington, for treatment. But US forces have recently set up facilities for basic treatment in Baghdad and Kuwait.

….

Leishmaniasis is spread by infected sand-flies, and is endemic in some tropical and subtropical areas including Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan (news – web sites).

Arenson said fewer than 10 cases have been recorded among US troops in Afghanistan.

So far there have been no reports of US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan being infected with visceral leishmaniasis, which can cause severe damage to some of the body’s internal organs, including the spleen, liver and bone marrow.

On the bright side, I guess, is the fact that this is relatively minor compared to malaria, the “leading cause of casualties among U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War and in the Pacific region during World War II” [source]. Don’t bother to tell that so-called bright side to those suffering this affliction, however. Our troops courageously go into theater willingly knowing they may have to sacrifice; few envision this kind of crap. War is hell, even on the microbial level.

Here’s two little tidbits for y’all, in case you were doubting the efforts of the US and its allies to date.

Arab League head demands weapons free Middle East

Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa called for all Middle East leaders to commit their nations to a WMD- and nuclear-free future.

“Security in the Middle East depends on an agreement among all members of that region to build a zone free of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), nuclear weapons, as well as other types of those destructive weapons,” Mussa said during a visit to Madrid.

“If there is an exception to the rule, the whole work would be useless. All countries should adhere to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and the only country in the region that has not joined is Israel.

“All countries should commit themselves not to develop nuclear weapons. All countries with no exception should be party to this,” Mussa insisted.

“If one country is allowed to have those weapons … it won’t work, because we feel threatened by all WMD coming from whatever direction. We find no reason, no logic, for us to accept that all countries join the NPT with the exception of one,” Mussa said.

“One exception will open the doors for an arms race. If not today, it will be tomorrow,” Mussa concluded, explicitly including North Africa, Iran and Turkey in his vision for a weapons-free region.

This move is assuredly a result of the recent diplomacy by Libya and the subsequent rewards the country has gained. Libya’s move was just as assuredly a response to the demise of Saddam Hussein’s dastardly hold on Iraq.

Much good could come from this call to the Arab League, but it could all be made worthless if a similar move by Israel ever becomes a stipulation.

Al Qaeda ‘To Disintegrate’ in 2 Years – UK Adviser

Al Qaeda will begin to disintegrate within two years as its various factions start to squabble and militants return to their local roots, a senior British parliamentary adviser predicted on Wednesday.

Professor Michael Clarke, a specialist adviser to lawmakers on the House of Commons defense committee, said the consequence would be that the security services would be able to win the “war on terror” as the group’s structure fell apart.

“I think (cracks) are going to start to appear in the next 12 months to two years,” he told Reuters at a security conference in London.

“It’s going to start to fragment and split up,” he said.

Clarke said he envisaged the network breaking down into smaller, disparate cells which would be more easily infiltrated and dealt with, bringing an end to the group’s ability to carry out major attacks along the lines of the Sept. 11 attacks

“Terrorism will go back to being about more local issues. It will be reduced to a level which people can live with,” he said.

Al Qaeda’s pyramid structure — with Osama bin Laden and about 30 associates at its head spreading out to a loose franchise of affiliated networks — would begin to prove a major weakness when it was once a strength, he said.

Groups associated with al Qaeda across the world, such as those in southeast Asia, would start to pursue their local agendas, he added.

Clarke pointed to Iraq, where Baathist supporters of deposed president Saddam Hussein were fighting alongside foreign Jihadists linked to al Qaeda although the groups had nothing in common.

Ultimately the Baathists would go their own way and pyramid would be weakened.

Clarke noted that even association with bin Laden’s network had proved damaging to the cause of other militants such as Chechen separatists.

Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at London’s King’s College, said this would be fueled further as the “glamour” surrounding bin Laden started to wear off and political in-fighting took hold.

“Whenever you get a general movement, people will vie for prominence and that’s what I think is the next stage,” he said.

He said a major failing of al Qaeda was its complete misunderstanding of western society and the belief it could terrorize governments into achieving their aims.

“They are not going to frighten Western society out of policies, they are not going to bring down the House of Saud, their first real objective, by terrorism,” he said.

“They can cause great inconvenience but they can’t damage them in the way they think they can.”

While I agree with and find hope in much of this assessment, I have a fundamental problem with the following portion:

“Terrorism will go back to being about more local issues. It will be reduced to a level which people can live with,” he said.

The war against Islamist terror is not a war against al Qaeda exclusively, nor has it ever been. For it to be so would be folly. The disintegration of al Qaeda would truly be a great victory, and it may lead to eventual success, but the war against the Islamist bastards ain’t over until the atmosphere that allowed the likes of Osama bin Laden to gather such a following is gone. That will not happen until the world of Islam sees a major cultural shift. That is the hope of President Bush’s shining Arab city on the hill that Iraq could become.