Deepest Red
08-06-2006, 05:28 AM
From soldiers' view, civil war in Iraq has started (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003176836_civilwar05.html)
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq — While American politicians and generals in Washington discuss the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it already has begun.
Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the past week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and, when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.
"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.
The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road.
Higher-ranking U.S. officers concede that developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.
"There's no plan — we are constantly reacting," said a senior military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."
Two top American generals told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Iraq could slip into civil war, although both stopped well short of saying that one had begun.
The assertions by Johnson and other U.S. soldiers suggest that American efforts are failing to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.
Some Iraqi troops also share that assessment.
"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad. "The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques.
"Iraq is now caught in hell."
U.S. hopes hinge principally on two factors: Iraqi security forces becoming more competent and Iraqi political leaders persuading armed groups to lay down their weapons.
Neither seems to be happening. The violence has increased as Iraqi troops have been added, and feuding among the political leadership is intense. American soldiers, particularly the rank and file who go out on patrols, say they see no end to the bloodshed.
The issue of whether Iraq has descended into civil war was a hot-
button topic even before U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003, when some opponents of the war raised the likelihood that Iraq would fragment along sectarian lines if Saddam's oppressive regime was removed. Bush administration officials consistently rejected such speculation.
Political sensitivity has made some officers hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.
"I hate to use the word 'purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.
Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of intertribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war — the same thing is happening here.
"But it's not called a civil war — there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.
On the other side of Baghdad, Shiites from the eastern slum of Sadr City and Sunnis from the nearby neighborhood of Adhamiyah regularly launch incursions into each other's areas, setting off car bombs and dragging victims into torture chambers.
"The sectarian violence flip-flops back and forth," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, who commands a 101st Airborne Division task force that works with Iraqi soldiers. "We find bodies all the time — bound, tortured, shot."
The idea that U.S. forces have been unable to prevent the nation from sliding into sectarian chaos troubles many American military officials in Iraq.
Lt. Col. Chris Pease, 48, deputy commander for the 101st Airborne's brigade in eastern Baghdad, was asked whether he thought a civil war had begun.
"Civil war," he said, and then paused for several moments.
"You've got to understand," said Pease, of Milton-Freewater, Ore., "you know, the United States Army and most of the people in the United States Army, the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Navy have never really lost at anything."
He paused again.
"Whether it is there or not, I don't know," he said.
Pressed for what term he would use to describe the security situation in Iraq, Pease said: "Right now I would say that it's more of a Kosovo, ethnic-cleansing type thing — not ethnic cleansing, it is a sectarian fight — they are bombing; they are threatening to get them off the land."
A human-rights report released last month by the U.N. mission in Baghdad said 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May, and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June of this year, and 150,000 civilians were forced out of their homes, the report said.
Pointing to a map, 1st Lt. Robert Murray last week highlighted a small Shiite village of 25 homes that was abandoned after a flurry of death threats came to town on small pieces of paper.
"The letters tell them if they don't leave in 48 hours, they'll kill their entire families," said Murray, 29, of Franklin, Mass.
Riding in a Humvee later that day, Capt. Jared Rudacille, Murray's commander in the 4th Infantry Division, noted a town's market. Stalls were all vacant. Nearby homes were empty. No civilian cars were on the road.
"Between 1,500 and 2,000 people have moved out," said Rudacille, 29, of York, Pa. "I now see only 15 or 20 people out during the day."
Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon, 33, of San Antonio, Texas, had a similar assessment while on patrol between the Sunni town of Abu Ghraib and Shula, a Shiite stronghold. The main bridge leading out of Shula was badly damaged recently by four bombs. Military officials think the bombers were Sunnis trying to stanch the flow of Shiite militia gunmen coming out of Shula to kill Sunnis.
"It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down," said Ramon, "and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq — While American politicians and generals in Washington discuss the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it already has begun.
Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the past week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and, when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.
"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.
The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road.
Higher-ranking U.S. officers concede that developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.
"There's no plan — we are constantly reacting," said a senior military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."
Two top American generals told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Iraq could slip into civil war, although both stopped well short of saying that one had begun.
The assertions by Johnson and other U.S. soldiers suggest that American efforts are failing to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.
Some Iraqi troops also share that assessment.
"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad. "The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques.
"Iraq is now caught in hell."
U.S. hopes hinge principally on two factors: Iraqi security forces becoming more competent and Iraqi political leaders persuading armed groups to lay down their weapons.
Neither seems to be happening. The violence has increased as Iraqi troops have been added, and feuding among the political leadership is intense. American soldiers, particularly the rank and file who go out on patrols, say they see no end to the bloodshed.
The issue of whether Iraq has descended into civil war was a hot-
button topic even before U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003, when some opponents of the war raised the likelihood that Iraq would fragment along sectarian lines if Saddam's oppressive regime was removed. Bush administration officials consistently rejected such speculation.
Political sensitivity has made some officers hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.
"I hate to use the word 'purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.
Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of intertribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war — the same thing is happening here.
"But it's not called a civil war — there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.
On the other side of Baghdad, Shiites from the eastern slum of Sadr City and Sunnis from the nearby neighborhood of Adhamiyah regularly launch incursions into each other's areas, setting off car bombs and dragging victims into torture chambers.
"The sectarian violence flip-flops back and forth," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, who commands a 101st Airborne Division task force that works with Iraqi soldiers. "We find bodies all the time — bound, tortured, shot."
The idea that U.S. forces have been unable to prevent the nation from sliding into sectarian chaos troubles many American military officials in Iraq.
Lt. Col. Chris Pease, 48, deputy commander for the 101st Airborne's brigade in eastern Baghdad, was asked whether he thought a civil war had begun.
"Civil war," he said, and then paused for several moments.
"You've got to understand," said Pease, of Milton-Freewater, Ore., "you know, the United States Army and most of the people in the United States Army, the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Navy have never really lost at anything."
He paused again.
"Whether it is there or not, I don't know," he said.
Pressed for what term he would use to describe the security situation in Iraq, Pease said: "Right now I would say that it's more of a Kosovo, ethnic-cleansing type thing — not ethnic cleansing, it is a sectarian fight — they are bombing; they are threatening to get them off the land."
A human-rights report released last month by the U.N. mission in Baghdad said 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May, and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June of this year, and 150,000 civilians were forced out of their homes, the report said.
Pointing to a map, 1st Lt. Robert Murray last week highlighted a small Shiite village of 25 homes that was abandoned after a flurry of death threats came to town on small pieces of paper.
"The letters tell them if they don't leave in 48 hours, they'll kill their entire families," said Murray, 29, of Franklin, Mass.
Riding in a Humvee later that day, Capt. Jared Rudacille, Murray's commander in the 4th Infantry Division, noted a town's market. Stalls were all vacant. Nearby homes were empty. No civilian cars were on the road.
"Between 1,500 and 2,000 people have moved out," said Rudacille, 29, of York, Pa. "I now see only 15 or 20 people out during the day."
Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon, 33, of San Antonio, Texas, had a similar assessment while on patrol between the Sunni town of Abu Ghraib and Shula, a Shiite stronghold. The main bridge leading out of Shula was badly damaged recently by four bombs. Military officials think the bombers were Sunnis trying to stanch the flow of Shiite militia gunmen coming out of Shula to kill Sunnis.
"It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down," said Ramon, "and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company