Our meddling is accelerating this descent into civil war

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1836821,00.html

The US occupation did not create the sectarian tensions that disfigure Iraq - but its policies entrenched the divisions

Mark Lattimer
Friday August 4, 2006
The Guardian


<snip>But perhaps most damaging of all has been the failure to hold the Iraqi government to account for mass human rights violations, against Sunni civilians in particular. For a long time these were reported in a kind of code: while suicide bombs and roadside attacks were immediately (and generally correctly) ascribed to Sunni insurgents, and justifiably condemned by Washington and London, we would read only that the bodies of another dozen or so civilians had been found dumped in Baghdad, their hands bound and with marks of torture.

It took the UN assistance mission in Iraq to help publicise the existence of alleged Shia death squads operating within the ministry of the interior. Only in a confidential report would the UK government talk of these militias as frankly as Ambassador Patey did: "If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy then preventing the Jaish al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army) from developing into a state within a state, as Hizbullah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority." snip

We must be clear: although the 2003 invasion set the dogs of war running, western governments did not create sectarianism in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurds and Shias left a legacy of inter-community hatred, and Iraq's new government is faced with insurgent groups such as al-Qaida, animated by Sunni supremacism, pursuing a deliberate strategy of sparking inter-community conflict in order to destabilise the country and unite Sunni opposition to the Shia-led government.

Yet time and again the policies of first the coalition authorities and then the multinational force in Iraq, far from promoting reconciliation, have entrenched sectarian divisions. The fear is that their legacy in Iraq will be seen not in Iraq's new multicultural parliament but in districts such as al-Dora, south of Baghdad, where Sunni and Shia have lived side by side for generations, but which are now systematically being emptied of their original population as people flee for the relative safety of their own kind. The bodies of the victims of sectarian killings are left to rot, or be eaten by dogs in the street, because their families are too frightened to collect them.

[Breeze54]

1. That was the neocon's plan all along! n/t

:banghead:

[MadMaddie]

2. You are right!!