blackascoal
The Force is With Me
The news from the war capitals isn't good. In Kabul, the Taliban is carrying out attacks at the very center of Afghanistan's capital, rocketing the grounds of the presidential palace, launching suicide bombs at Kabul convoys, and last week setting off huge bombs on the heavily guarded road between the US embassy and the presidential palace.
But today I'm focusing on Iraq, where today bombers set off near-simultaneous truck bombs that devasted the Iraqi foreign ministry and finance ministry, killing 100 people and injuring at least 600, on opposite sides of the Tigris River. The entire heart of the Iraqi capital is in shock. At the foreign ministry, an official told the New York Times, "The whole ministry is destroyed."
It's probably the most significant bombings in Baghdad since the attacks on the Jordanian embassy and the United Nations offices in 2003.
Adds the Washington Post:
Separately, at least six mortars rained down on two heavily transited locations in central Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. Three mortars targeted the Green Zone, the fortified enclave in Baghdad that contains the U.S. Embassy and many Iraqi government offices.
It's impossible to overstate the significance of these attacks. While President Obama and the Pentagon are focused on Afghanistan, the war in Iraq is showing signs of heading south, and fast. It's not unexpected. Iraq's Arabs and Kurds are nearly at war along the long front that separates the Kurdish region from the rest of Iraq, especially in and around Nineveh province, whose capital is Mosul, and over Tamim province, whose capital, Kirkuk, is coveted by the expansionist Kurds.
Meanwhile, the Sunni Arab minority is increasingly alienated from the regime of Prime Minister Maliki, who's staunchly refused to compromise with the demands of the opposition to his increasingly authoritarian rule. For more than a year, I've been warning (along with others) that the Iraqi resistance movement, from its nationalist core to its more perverse, pro-Al Qaeda elements, might explode again. Maybe it's started already. In any case, the Sons of Iraq, or the Awakening movement, are getting the shaft from Maliki, and they are restless.
There's another factor, too: Iran. In the aftermath of the June 12 election, the US and Iran are perched dangerously close to confrontation again, and it's not impossible that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in Tehran might be thinking of ratcheting up violence inside Iraq as part of its resistance to American threats of more sanctions and other pressure. This week, a rocket launcher and with dozen high-powered rockets was captured by Iraqi forces outside Basra, in southern Iraq. (Recently, several US soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a military base in that area.)
Despite Maliki's bravado, it's unlikely that either Iraq's armed forces or its intelligence service, along with the secret Iraqi anti-terrorist unit that reports to Maliki, can handle the sort of violence that is likely to engulf Iraq as the US leaves. (That's not a suggestion that the US remain in place, of course, quite the opposite, but a simple statement of fact.) In fact, in Iraq, everything is up for grabs. It's possible that the Iraqi elections, scheduled for January, won't even take place if violence intensifies. Maliki has suggested a plan to hold a referendum in January on the US-Iraq security accord, putting the agreement up to a vote of Iraq's population; were they to reject the accord, it would force the United States to pull out all of its troops in 2010, not 2011, as planned.
-- more at link
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/464365/iraq_explodes
The lesson: The limits of military power.
But today I'm focusing on Iraq, where today bombers set off near-simultaneous truck bombs that devasted the Iraqi foreign ministry and finance ministry, killing 100 people and injuring at least 600, on opposite sides of the Tigris River. The entire heart of the Iraqi capital is in shock. At the foreign ministry, an official told the New York Times, "The whole ministry is destroyed."
It's probably the most significant bombings in Baghdad since the attacks on the Jordanian embassy and the United Nations offices in 2003.
Adds the Washington Post:
Separately, at least six mortars rained down on two heavily transited locations in central Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. Three mortars targeted the Green Zone, the fortified enclave in Baghdad that contains the U.S. Embassy and many Iraqi government offices.
It's impossible to overstate the significance of these attacks. While President Obama and the Pentagon are focused on Afghanistan, the war in Iraq is showing signs of heading south, and fast. It's not unexpected. Iraq's Arabs and Kurds are nearly at war along the long front that separates the Kurdish region from the rest of Iraq, especially in and around Nineveh province, whose capital is Mosul, and over Tamim province, whose capital, Kirkuk, is coveted by the expansionist Kurds.
Meanwhile, the Sunni Arab minority is increasingly alienated from the regime of Prime Minister Maliki, who's staunchly refused to compromise with the demands of the opposition to his increasingly authoritarian rule. For more than a year, I've been warning (along with others) that the Iraqi resistance movement, from its nationalist core to its more perverse, pro-Al Qaeda elements, might explode again. Maybe it's started already. In any case, the Sons of Iraq, or the Awakening movement, are getting the shaft from Maliki, and they are restless.
There's another factor, too: Iran. In the aftermath of the June 12 election, the US and Iran are perched dangerously close to confrontation again, and it's not impossible that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in Tehran might be thinking of ratcheting up violence inside Iraq as part of its resistance to American threats of more sanctions and other pressure. This week, a rocket launcher and with dozen high-powered rockets was captured by Iraqi forces outside Basra, in southern Iraq. (Recently, several US soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a military base in that area.)
Despite Maliki's bravado, it's unlikely that either Iraq's armed forces or its intelligence service, along with the secret Iraqi anti-terrorist unit that reports to Maliki, can handle the sort of violence that is likely to engulf Iraq as the US leaves. (That's not a suggestion that the US remain in place, of course, quite the opposite, but a simple statement of fact.) In fact, in Iraq, everything is up for grabs. It's possible that the Iraqi elections, scheduled for January, won't even take place if violence intensifies. Maliki has suggested a plan to hold a referendum in January on the US-Iraq security accord, putting the agreement up to a vote of Iraq's population; were they to reject the accord, it would force the United States to pull out all of its troops in 2010, not 2011, as planned.
-- more at link
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/464365/iraq_explodes
The lesson: The limits of military power.
