KERKUK IS NOT IN KURDISH TERRITORY

Letter to: NBC Middle-East Correspondent Mr. Richard Engel

Dear Sir,

Subject: Misinformation about Kerkuk in your presentation

In your presentation “Fighting for Iraq: A regional power play” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17722026
you state that Kerkuk is in ‘Kurdish territory’, this is false, Kerkuk province is not part of the Kurdish Autonomous Region and Kerkuk city is not and has never been a Kurdish city.

Moreover, you do not mention the Turkmens despite the fact that they are Iraq’s third most important ethnic community together with the Arabs and Kurds and northern Iraq’s second main ethnic community alongside the Kurds.

You have completely ignored the existence of these 3 million Turkmens who represent 12% of the Iraqi population (see text below by Dr. Hassan Aydinli, ITF Europe Representative and President of the Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights).

Please consult reliable sources before making a presentation about Iraq’s ethnic and religious communities. As it is, your presentation is erroneous, incomplete and biased, surely you readers deserve better.

Yours truly,

Merry Fitzgerald
Committee for the Defence of Iraqi Turkmens’ rights – Belgium

THE TURKMENS

The Turkmens are the third main ethnic group in Iraq and the second main ethnic group in the north of Iraq. Their population is estimated at 3 million (12% of the Iraqi population).

Northern Iraq has been the homeland of the Iraqi Turkmens for over a millennium. The Turkmen region TURKMENELI lies between the Arab and Kurdish regions of Iraq, it stretches from Tel Afer in northern Iraq near the Syrian border to Mendeli near the Iranian border. The Turkmen population in Iraq is concentrated in the Provinces of Musul, Erbil, Kerkuk, Salaheddin, Dyala and Baghdad. Their biggest concentration is in Kerkuk, their capital city and main cultural centre since more than 800 years. Turkmens have played a constructive and important role in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where they established states and principalities and governed the region during centuries.

Since the creation of the Iraqi State in 1921 as a consequence of World War One which caused the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the inclusion of the actual north of Iraq (Musul Vilayati) into the Iraqi State, the Turkmens are systematically discriminated, marginalized and oppressed in Iraq for geopolitical and economical reasons as the Turkmen region contains huge oil and gas reserves, concentrated around Kerkuk and Khanaqin. For these economical and geopolitical reasons the successive Iraqi governments have tried to assimilate the Turkmens and purposely underestimated their number and true representation in Iraq, considering them as a small minority.

Since the occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces on 9th April 2003 the situation of the Turkmens has deteriorated even more and more dramatically as a result of the U.S. decision to allow the Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) and their militia to penetrate, occupy and control Kerkuk and all other important Turkmen towns and cities of the Turkmen region, as a reward for their collaboration during the invasion of Iraq. Since then, the Turkmens are subjected to even harsher policies of discrimination, marginalization and oppression, but this time by the Kurdish Parties which are now controlling the entire north of Iraq and for the same economical and geopolitical reasons.

The Kurds claim that Kerkuk is a Kurdish city; they are now actively busy kurdifying it, their aim is to annex Kerkuk to the Kurdish Autonomous Region in order to benefit alone from its oil and gas wealth. To achieve this goal the Kurdish parties have brought over 600.000 Kurds from the Kurdish autonomous region as well as from Syria, Iran and Turkey and settled them in Kerkuk and its surroundings, some of them in the houses vacated by fleeing Arabs, some others in government buildings, military camps, military personnel housing and compounds in and around Kerkuk and the remaining are still waiting in their makeshift houses and slums established on the lands belonging to the Turkmens. All of this is in preparation to annex Kerkuk to the Kurdish region through a referendum at the end of 2007 called for by the infamous Article 140, which was conceived and written by the Kurds and which has been incorporated under the pressure of their lobby in the “New Iraqi Constitution”.

For the above reasons, Turkmens denounce the Kurdish hegemony in the north of Iraq as well as Kurdish influence and manipulations of Iraqi politics since 2003, they reject Article 140, they are against the annexation of Kerkuk and other Turkmen town and cities to the Kurdish Autonomous Region, they demand the revision of the New Iraqi Constitution in order to be recognized as the third main community in Iraq, with rights equal to those obtained by the Arabs and the Kurds.

Dr. Hassan Aydinli
ITF Europe Representative
President of the Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights - Belgium

Attachments:

1) Map of Iraq showing TURKMENELI, the region where the Turkmens are the majority.
2) “Turkmens, Turkmeneli and the Musul Region” by Orhan Ketene

For further information about the Turkmens please see:

http://turkmenfriendship.blogspot.com/2007/08/appeal-from-iraqi-turkmen-front.html

http://www.turkmen.nl/

http://www.turkmeninstitute.org/

Nermeen Al-Mufti: The privatisation of security in Iraq threatens more than innocent civilians

Nermeen Al-Mufti, Iraqi Journalist

'We'll revoke Al-Maliki's licence first'

The privatisation of security in Iraq threatens more than innocent civilians, reports Nermeen Al-Mufti

The killing of 11 civilians in Baghdad two weeks ago has once again put Blackwater on the spot. The US security firm first came into the public eye in early April 2004, when four of its personnel were killed and mutilated by mobs in Falluja. Although Iraqi religious parties denounced the attacks at the time, Bush gave the town four days to deliver the perpetrators before ordering an all-out attack, one in which thousands of Falluja inhabitants perished.

The Iraqi government would like to see Blackwater brought to account. But that is not going to be easy. The spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Abdul-Karim Khalif, says that the ministry provided Iraqi courts with evidence against Blackwater concerning other shootings over the past seven months.

In one shooting last February, three of the guards of Al-Iraqiya television were killed. On 9 September, five Iraqis were killed when Blackwater personnel fired at them near the municipality building in Baghdad. Three days later, five other citizens were wounded in another shooting on Palestine Street.

Blackwater, the Iraqi Interior Ministry maintains, is also involved in the killing of an Iraqi journalist near the Iraqi Foreign Ministry building in Baghdad in February, as well as the killing of a citizen near the Iraqi Interior Ministry building in Baghdad in May.

"Most of the laws passed by Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq under US occupation, remain in force. Some of these laws violate Iraqi sovereignty, including a law that prevents Iraqis from prosecuting any American or any individual who cooperates with America or the coalition authorities, whether civilian or military," Abu Abdullah, an Iraqi lawyer, told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Following the recent incident in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki threatened to revoke Blackwater's licence. What he later discovered was that the company was working in Iraq without a licence.

The Americans weren't impressed by Al-Maliki's uncharacteristic boldness. "We'll revoke Al-Maliki's licence before he revokes Blackwater's licence," a US official quipped.

Within four days of the incident, Blackwater was back in operation. A spokesman for Operation Imposing Law said that the services of private contractors in Iraq cannot be discontinued without creating a security vacuum.

According to media reports, the Iraqis and Americans have formed an eight-member committee to investigate the Blackwater incident. The committee is co-chaired by a top US diplomat and the Iraqi defence minister.

Blackwater has over 20,000 personnel in Iraq, all well- armed and backed with armoured vehicles and aircraft. The company has military equipment comparable to that used by the US army and its pilots fly reconnaissance missions over Baghdad on a daily basis.

Last April, one of its helicopters was shot down during clashes in Al-Fadl district of Baghdad.

According to press reports, about 34 per cent of the budget the US government initially allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq has been diverted to private security firms.

The "privatisation" of the war in Iraq is well underway, The Los Angeles Times reported. In his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill links the modern security firm to the Knights of Malta, an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Blackwater's employees, he argues, share the same religious zeal of ancient crusaders.

"Private security companies -- whether American, British, or South African -- do not differ much from Iraq's sectarian militias. These companies act as if they were entitled to commit any crime on the pretext of self-defence," Abu Abdullah said.

US federal authorities are currently investigating the involvement of Blackwater employees in smuggling weapons into Iraq.

Meanwhile, US airborne troops shot dead seven Iraqi civilians in the predominantly Sunni town of Al-Mahmoudiya, 20km south of Baghdad. Little else is known about the operation. But US authorities regularly claim that such attacks are part of their offensive against Al-Qaeda. Similar operations take place in Sadr City frequently, the target in that case being the Mahdi Army.

Prime Minister Al-Maliki is in New York for the meetings of the UN General Assembly. He is expected to meet with the foreign ministers of countries neighbouring Iraq as well as with US President George W Bush.

In Baghdad, Al-Maliki's government continues to operate with 16 ministers, down from 30, after the resignation of the ministers representing the Sadr Group, the Accordance Front, and the Iraqi List. The latter groups are planning to form a united front and challenge Al-Maliki's government in a parliamentary vote of confidence. Al-Maliki's supporters have asked Ayatollah Al-Sistani to intercede with the withdrawing parties and get them back into the government.
According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, over two million Iraqis have left their homes due to sectarian violence. About 250 Sunni families were forced out of Al-Washwash section of Baghdad in the past two weeks.

Four cholera cases have been reported in Baghdad this week, amid fears of an epidemic. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1,500 cholera cases have been discovered in the country since 20 August. Polluted water supplies and poor sewage facilities are blamed for the spread of the disease.

Iraq has no health minister, its last minister having fled to the US in June after being accused of involvement in sectarian violence.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/864/re71.htm

Dis Mona et parle d'insécurité

26-09-2007
Jeudi dernier à Vienne, les pays arabes ainsi que d’autres pays musulmans ont proposé à la Conférence de l’AIEA une résolution appelant en faveur de la dénucléarisation de tous les pays du Moyen et Proche-Orient.

Elle a été adoptée par 53 contre deux. Les deux contre, faut-il le préciser ayant été les US(a) et Israël, mais cette motion non contraignante a mérité l’abstention de 47 nations- essentiellement occidentales et développées. Parmi les européennes, seule l’Irlande s’est distinguée en sa faveur.

Le jeu de l’ambiguïté sur la possession d’armes nucléaires par Israël n’est plus de mise quand Yahud Olmet a affirmé, comme piqué au vif, à l’automne 2006 lors de sa visite en Allemagne que la dissuasion nucléaire est bien entre les mains de son pays juste au lendemain de son revers militaire infligé par le Hezbollah.

Les Britanniques ont fourni dans les années cinquante le minerai enrichi et les Français ont donné l’assistance technologique pour la construction de la centrale et la mise au point de la bombe atomique. Une partie du personnel du CEA résidant sur le site de Dimona en Israël et Saclay offrant des laboratoires privilégiés à des Israéliens, initiant ainsi le début d’une coopération scientifique franco-israélienne à sens unique, non démenti depuis (voir le budget CNRS INERM en accroissement continu voué à Israël).

Une résolution de ce type a été proposée l’année dernière lors de l’assemblée générale de l’AIEA par les pays du Moyen Orient qui voulait contraindre tous les pays de la région de se soumettre aux principes de sauvegarde du Traité de Non Prolifération des armes atomiques, votée par une majorité écrasante moins les deux, US(a) et Israël.

Deux nouvelles ont été rajoutées cette année, l’une exigeant que le Moyen Orient devienne une zone sans armes nucléaires (nuclear weapons free-zone), c’est-à-dire interdite de fabriquer, tester ou de les déployer sur son sol, l’autre requérant des grandes puissances nucléaires de ne pas déjouer cette démarche.

L’ambassadeur égyptien a plaidé pour que les membres de l’AIEA se rangent autour d’un consensus afin que la compliance vis-à-vis du TNP soit universelle et que le Moyen-Orient ne subisse pas la loi d’airain du double standard.
La Chine, l’Inde, la Russie, le Japon, les pays d’Amérique latine et des pays africains se sont accordés en faveur d’un Moyen-Orient dénucléarisé, ce qui valide une fois de plus que le conflit israélo-palestinien n’existe pas.

Ce qui existe bel et bien, c’est une agression et une mainmise continue de l’Occident sur les pays de la région, Israël ayant été une invention sioniste et une création mises en œuvre par l’Occident.

Encore une fois, une résolution de l’AIEA n’a rien de contraignant, et l’occasion était trop belle pour l’Égypte de Moubarak héritée de Sadate, responsable de la brisure définitive du front arabe en 1979 et factotum d’USraël dans la région, de jouer sans risque au champion de la cause arabe.

Les menaces très activement entretenues contre l’Iran, aux prétextes alternatifs ou concomitants qui lui sont attribués, vouloir développer un armement nucléaire et/ou fournir assistance à la résistance irakienne, tiennent en un seul argument, aucune puissance d’aucune sorte ne doit poindre dans la région qui puisse concurrencer l’hégémonie israélienne.

L’Irak est la preuve agonisante de cette axiomatique sioniste, au travers de la guerre Iran-Irak fournie clés en mains par la stratégie USraélienne, de l’invasion du Koweit d’abord autorisée puis punie par la Tempête du désert et 13 ans d’embargo et maintenant le génocide qui l’anéantit depuis avril 2003.

À cet Occident qui usurpe le titre de l’universel pour dominer le reste du monde, Ahmadinajad a raison de dire que le point de vue de l’Occident n’est pas celui du Monde.

Le régime sioniste fondé sur la discrimination ethnique, l’occupation et la spoliation des terres, la menace et l’agression constante sur ses voisins en vue d’un expansionnisme dont le but avoué est l’annexion de toute la zone entre le Nil et l’Euphrate n’a pas à être le standard imposé à l’humanité.

La campagne électorale présidentielle aux US(a) toujours en cours en raison d’un mandat de brève durée est l’occasion d’une surenchère des candidats à propos du seul sujet qui ne les divise pas, leur soutien inconditionnel au régime sioniste. Cette exceptionnalité va jusqu’au point de modeler la quasi entièreté de la politique étrangère étasunienne.

C’est dire que le monde est de moins en moins sûr, de plus en plus exposé aux guerres, aux bains de sang, à l’injustice et à l’insécurité.

Convergence des Causes 26 septembre 2007
http://www.convergencedescauses.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1022

Security Company Death Squads Timeline

Italian Squadristi

There is an uncanny resemblance between the the WW2 Italian Squadristi [1], Blackwater and the thousands of other “security” forces.

By Dirk Adriaensens and Sarah Meyer

BRussells Tribunal - Index Research
25 September 2007
[ More relevant articles about the "Salvador option and Iraq's death squads... ]
*Read also part 1: "Iraq: Security Companies and Training Camps" (Sarah Meyer, 17 May 2006)
* Sarah Meyer articles and researches published by the BRussells Tribunal.

SECURITY, OED. "The condition of being protected from or not exposed to danger; freedom from doubt; Now, chiefly, well-founded confidence, certainty; freedom from care, anxiety or apprehension."

There is no such thing as "security". "Security" companies were formed to make money on our anxieties, just as pharmaceutical companies financially thrive on anxiety about health and have a vested interest in illness.

Dirk Adriaensens has been involved with Iraq for 17 years. He is on the executive committee of the BRussels Tribunal and is the coordinator of SOS Iraq.

He writes:"Security guys and gals don't have to abide by the Geneva Conventions. They do as they wish. No rules, no regulations. They can operate with impunity.

As such these "security companies" can be called "death squads". Not "Angels of Death" but "Devils of Death". For this, they make a lot of money. Privatization of war is big, big business."

The documentation by The BRussells Tribunal in The Salvador Option Exposed asks "Who is Blowing up Iraq?"

There is a full list of articles concerning death squads published on The BRussells Tribunal website.We have to ask what is the motive for violent occupation, for violence in one's own country as well as in another's country. Security Company Death Squads Timeline is a follow - up to Sarah Meyer's original article, Iraq Security Companies and Training Camps (17.05.06).

This first research contained the history with lists of security companies.

The present article is resource material which has been collected since May 2006.

Please see BRussells Tribunal website to read complete article:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/

Many Iraqi Arabs paid to leave Kerkuk

Around 2,000 Arabs agree to leave current homes after receiving compensation of $15,000 each.

KIRKUK, Iraq - Thousands of Iraqi Arabs have accepted financial compensation to leave the northern city of Kirkuk, which leaders of the autonomous Kurdish region are seeking to control, a minister said Thursday.

Around 2,000 Arabs living there had agreed to leave their homes and return to their original provinces under an initiative launched by the committee in charge of overseeing relations in Kirkuk, Environment Minister Nermeen Othman said.

"The supreme committee... finished approving 2,000 applications submitted by Arab residents in Kirkuk who want to receive compensation of 15,000 dollars (10,600 euros) to return to their original residence places," she said.

Technical problems related to changing ID registers had prevented the payment of cheques so far, but the applicants had been approved and would be paid in the next few days, she said.

According to Othman, herself a Kurd, a budget of 200 million dollars has been allocated by the Iraq government to pay the compensation packages of those willing to leave the city.

Many of the Arabs have been subjected to violence by Kurds in order to force them to leave the oil-rich city.

Tensions between Kirkuk's Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmen communities have risen ahead of a constitutionally mandated popular referendum on the oil-rich city's future, which is supposed to be held this year.

One million Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens live in Kirkuk although the exact split between the communities is not officially known.

Kirkuk's Kurds would like to see it join the Kurdish Regional Government.
The new Iraqi constitution adopted after the US-led invasion in March 2003 stipulates that Kirkuk's status must be sorted out before the end of 2007 by a referendum.

No date has been fixed for the referendum, which the Kurds have been strongly encouraging as they are confident of winning a majority, but which Baghdad says cannot be held until after a proper census.

Kirkuk's Sunni Arabs and its centuries-old Turkmen community want to postpone the vote until the dust of war clears.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22389

The U.S. imperialist plan to divide Iraq

The neo-con Zionists Senate in the U.S. planning to carve up Iraq in three semi-autonomous regions.

Senate Endorses Plan to Divide Iraq
By Shailagh Murray
The Washington Post
Wednesday 26 September 2007
(Excerpt)
Action shows rare bipartisan consensus.
Showing rare bipartisan consensus over war policy, the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions.

The plan, conceived by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), was approved 75-23 as a non-binding resolution, with 26 Republican votes. It would not force President Bush to take any action, but it represents a significant milestone in the Iraq debate, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy.

The Biden plan envisions a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations. The structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.

"This has genuine bipartisan support, and I think that's a very hopeful sign," Biden said.

Juan Cole on causes for Cholera outbreak throughout Iraq

A frightening spread of cholera and cholera-like symptoms up and down Iraq is now being reported, with cases in Basra in the deep south and also in the north.

The outbreak is rooted in the breakdown of water purification plants and possibly in an interdiction of chlorine trucks by the US military, for fear the guerrillas will take them over and use them for truck bombings (it has happened).

But at some point the US military will have to choose between the risk of chlorine truck bombs and the deaths or illness of thousands of Iraqis.

Little relief in sight for millions of displaced Iraqis by Nir Rosen

http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1296/135/

If you would like a glimpse of the raging, death-clotted hell that George W. Bush and his willing executioners in the bipartisan American Establishment have created in Iraq, then steel yourself and plunge into Nir Rosen's shattering report in the latest issue of Boston Review: No Going Back.

Rosen, long one of the most dogged and fearless truth-tellers about Iraq, portrays a reality light-years away from the obscenely mendacious and ignorant American "debate" over Bush's rapine and its consequences. He takes as his theme the millions of Iraqis driven from their homes by the invasion and occupation – and by the Iraqi "government's" own "security forces." These ruthless militias – armed, trained, funded and empowered by the United States – are, as Rosen rightly terms them, death squads, carrying out a savage ethnic cleansing – with American connivance – while waging a multi-sided civil war, again with the eager assistance of the White House and its myrmidons.

You should read the whole piece – a deftly-woven tapestry of individual stories of the actual human beings whose lives and families have been ravaged by this war crime carried out in your name – but below are some excerpts, mostly drawn from Rosen's devastating conclusion:

For the U.S. to acknowledge the size and seriousness of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq would be to admit that the recent troop “surge” is not working. According to a senior UN official, “the U.S. government doesn’t want to admit there is a refugee problem because it is a sign of failure.” It would also mean acknowledging that a massive process of ethnic cleansing has taken place under the watch of the U.S.-backed government—indeed, that it has been perpetrated by the Iraqi government’s own security forces....
What will happen to Iraq?
Think Mogadishu, small warlords controlling various neighborhoods, militias preying on those left behind, more powerful warlords controlling areas with resources, such as oil fields, ports, and lucrative pilgrimage routes and shrines. Irredentist Sunni militias will attempt to retake their lost land, but they will be pushed into the Anbar Province, Jordan, and Syria, where they may link up with local Islamist militants to destabilize Amman and Damascus. Some will look to fight elsewhere; unable to continue the jihad in Iraq they will find common cause with Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and others alienated from their societies and hateful of Shias. The new rump Shia statelet, including Baghdad and the South, will be quarantined by the Sunni states in the region and pushed inexorably into Iranian hands whether Shia Iraqis want this or not. It will be isolated and radicalized, and Shia militias loyal to Muqtada al Sadr, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, Muhamad al Yaqubi, and others will battle for power.

There is no “surge.” At best it can be called an ooze, a slow increase of American occupying forces by a mere 15 percent, consisting of few new soldiers and many whose terms of service have been merely extended. Yet the U.S. has doubled the size of its mission, announcing it will also take on the Shia militias as well as the Sunni ones. On the ground, that means American soldiers secure areas and then hand them over to Iraqi security forces who impose a reign of terror on the inhabitants. In the Iraqi civil war the army and police are not the solution; they are combatants, fighting on behalf of Shia-sectarian Islamist parties. The vaunted efforts to train Iraqi security forces have merely trained better death squads.

The Americans continue to imprison thousands of Iraqis, and kill many others. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations that would normally demand that the United States comply with international law and hand over imprisoned Iraqis to the “sovereign” Iraqi government are not doing so, knowing that their treatment at the hands of the government would be far worse than anything they would endure while in American captivity.

The occupation is not benign. It is profoundly painful, humiliating, and lethal.

An American withdrawal would certainly lead other countries in the region, whether Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia, to increase their involvement in Iraq. It would also mean an expedited removal of Sunnis in Baghdad. But all this is happening anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference in terms of the fate of Iraq whether American military forces stay or leave.

The truth is that the American military will remain in Iraq for a long time. The large bases in Anbar Province, such as al Assad and Taqaddum are built to last, “an enduring presence,” as one Marine officer told me. Located in the remote desert, impregnable and only occasionally targeted by mortars, these bases will remain for decades.

The Americans may eventually withdraw from the urban areas of Iraq, but full withdrawal, through the treacherous roads of the Anbar to Jordan, through the south past Shia militias on the way to Kuwait or even through the so-called Sunni Triangle, Samarra, and Tikrit or through Mosul to Kurdistan or Turkey, would be a withdrawal under fire and involve slaughter for the Iraqis.

The American occupation has been more disastrous than the Mongols’ sack of Baghdad in the 13th century. Iraq’s human capital has fled, its intellectuals and professionals, the educated, the moneyed classes, the political elite. They will not return. And the government is nonexistent at best.

After finally succumbing to Iraqi pressure, the Americans submitted to elections but deliberately emasculated the central government and the office of the prime minister. Now Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki is the scapegoat for American failure in Iraq, and there are calls to remove him or overthrow him. But talk of a coup to replace Maliki fails to understand that he is irrelevant.

Gone are the days when Baghdad was the only major city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled the country. The continued focus on the theater in the Green Zone ignores the reality that events there have never determined what happens outside of it. Iraq is a collection of city states such as Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, Ramadi, Erbil, and others, each controlled by various warlords with their own militias. And the villages are entirely unprotected.

Maliki will be the last prime minister of Iraq. When he is run out there will be no new elections, since they can’t be run safely and fairly anymore, and the pretense of an Iraqi state will be over.

It has become popular with former supporters of the war to blame the Iraqis for the Americans’ failure. The Iraqis did not choose democracy or the Iraqis did not choose freedom, Americans like to say, or the Iraqis have to decide to stop killing each other or Iraqis have to “step up.” But such complaints misplace the blame. Sunni and Shia Iraqis protested the American occupation as soon as it began, and demanded elections and sovereignty. The U.S. ignored their demands and instead imposed a dictator on them, Paul Bremer, hoping he would pave the way for an Iraqi strongman to rule in our stead.

Other former supporters of the war, echoing the simplistic sentiments heard during the Balkan wars, now blame the alleged “ancient hatred” between Sunnis and Shias, who have been fighting each other for “thousands of years.” But Iraq had no history of civil war or sectarian violence even approaching this scale until the Americans arrived.

Iraq is not Rwanda, where Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered each other and America could pretend it had no role.
We did this to Iraq. And it is time the U.S and the international community “step up” to the resulting humanitarian nightmare.

***One follow-up note. As Arthur Silber has noted, Hillary Clinton is prominent among those "former supporters of the war [who] blame the Iraqis for the Americans’ failure." As Arthur puts it:
Consider the unforgivable inhumanity of Hillary Clinton proclaiming:
Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

Inhumanity indeed. This astonishing statement bespeaks a depraved and dangerous mind, addled by long exposure to imperial power and privilege.

Read the stories that Rosen tells of ordinary people being chewed to pieces by the engine that Clinton helped set in motion, then see if you too, like the honorable senator from New York, believe they are just ungrateful wretches "who have failed to take advantage" of the wonderful opportunity Bush and Clinton have given them:

No Going Back
Little relief in sight for millions of displaced Iraqis Nir Rosen
Please click on link below:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR32.5/rosen.php