The many faces of Iraq's war
upi: There is no longer one war raging in Iraq. There are now at least three different, though overlapping ones, and very soon their number could rise to four.
The first war, of course, is the already nearly three-year-old Sunni Muslim insurrection against both U.S. forces and the democratically elected Iraqi government in Baghdad. This is the war that understandably has preoccupied the American public, Congress and Bush administration policymakers.
But since the Feb. 22 bombing of the al-Askariya, or Golden Mosque, in Samara, the Sunni insurgents have succeed in provoking a massive and far-ranging grassroots Shiite reaction against them. This has been flaring on a far vaster scale on both sides than the Sunni insurgents -- originally led by a combination of former Saddam Hussein Baath party loyalists and al-Qaida extreme Islamists -- wanted to achieve.
And in the north, largely overlooked, the Kurds supported and protected by U.S. power, have been forcibly exerted their own control over resentful Assyrian and Turkoman minority communities. The Kurd-Turkoman conflict, almost totally ignored in the U.S. media, is particularly significant because Turkey, a key U.S. ally and NATO member and traditionally hostile to Kurdish independence, feels strong ethnic loyalty to the Turkomans from the days of the old Ottoman Empire.
As Chaim Kaufmann wrote in the New York Jewish newspaper the Forward Friday, "Not one but two full-scale communal conflicts are raging in Iraq. In the north of the country, the Kurds are fighting several other communities for the oil-rich Kirkuk Province. Further south, Sunnis and Shiites are struggling for control of a roughly 100-mile-deep band of mixed settlement that runs across central Iraq, including Baghdad."
And there is a fourth potential war that would likely prove the most bloody and devastating of all. That would explode if the Shiite militias of southern and central Iraq rose up against U.S. and British forces in the region and sought to deny the U.S armed forces its vital land supply artery from Kuwait up to Baghdad. Read more
The first war, of course, is the already nearly three-year-old Sunni Muslim insurrection against both U.S. forces and the democratically elected Iraqi government in Baghdad. This is the war that understandably has preoccupied the American public, Congress and Bush administration policymakers.
But since the Feb. 22 bombing of the al-Askariya, or Golden Mosque, in Samara, the Sunni insurgents have succeed in provoking a massive and far-ranging grassroots Shiite reaction against them. This has been flaring on a far vaster scale on both sides than the Sunni insurgents -- originally led by a combination of former Saddam Hussein Baath party loyalists and al-Qaida extreme Islamists -- wanted to achieve.
And in the north, largely overlooked, the Kurds supported and protected by U.S. power, have been forcibly exerted their own control over resentful Assyrian and Turkoman minority communities. The Kurd-Turkoman conflict, almost totally ignored in the U.S. media, is particularly significant because Turkey, a key U.S. ally and NATO member and traditionally hostile to Kurdish independence, feels strong ethnic loyalty to the Turkomans from the days of the old Ottoman Empire.
As Chaim Kaufmann wrote in the New York Jewish newspaper the Forward Friday, "Not one but two full-scale communal conflicts are raging in Iraq. In the north of the country, the Kurds are fighting several other communities for the oil-rich Kirkuk Province. Further south, Sunnis and Shiites are struggling for control of a roughly 100-mile-deep band of mixed settlement that runs across central Iraq, including Baghdad."
And there is a fourth potential war that would likely prove the most bloody and devastating of all. That would explode if the Shiite militias of southern and central Iraq rose up against U.S. and British forces in the region and sought to deny the U.S armed forces its vital land supply artery from Kuwait up to Baghdad. Read more
posted by exoplanet at 11:07 AM
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