The Al Askariyah shrine in Samarra, Iraq, bombed by anyone’s guess on 22 February 2006.
George Bush and Tony Blair pledged to rebuild and Condoleezza Rice made a “surprise” visit to Lebanon that was not previously scheduled on her sanctions for starvation tour on the day Iraq descended into chaos.
Pictured to the left are “Iraqi counter-terrorism forces” participating in a graduation ceremony that took place on 23 February 2006 at the counter-terrorism training center in Amman, Jordan. There were 77 graduates, the three in the lead wearing the flags of the United States, Jordan and Iraq. 533 have been graduated from the center since it opened in 2003.
At this time, more than 130 people have died since the destruction of the Al Askariyah shrine. In Baghdad, there was a gruesome discovery of 47 bodies in a village ditch. Reuters reports they were Sunni and Shi’ite protesters who’d attended a demonstration on Wednesday, and the checkpoint where they were dragged from their cars and murdered was “makeshift,” set-up as a ploy by the mysterious gunmen.
Who are these “enemies of all faiths and of all humanity,” as Bush called them, that the world and all Iraqis must now unite against, the “evil ones” who can manage to trick Iraqis that for 3 years have been dealing with these military checkpoints. “Guerillas,” who according to an e-mail sent to Juan Cole, managed to penetrate the security of the Al Askariyah shrine. “You see, it was nothing like a hipshot sneaking up bombing by night. It was meticulous, skilful piece of work, taking a lot of time, the guards knowing all about what was going on.”
Would the soldier on routine, daily patrol protecting a bridge on the outskirts of the Sunni town of Sumarra, “a key link on the main route for civilian and U.S. military traffic from the southern port city of Basra to the border with Turkey in the north,” interviewed in June 2005 by SF Chronicle writer Anna Badkhen, fit Bush’s profile?
“He looks at the gilded dome of the Al-Askariya Shrine that dominates the Samarra skyline about a mile away. “I could reach over there,” he says, dreamily, referring to his tank’s 120mm gun, which has a range of almost 2 miles.”
“al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” is now being blamed for the bombing, which is the third major attack against Shi’ite interests in as many days. The council linked to the elusive Zarqawi is denying it. “An Internet statement from the Mujahideen Council, which includes al Qaeda in Iraq, blamed Shi’ite leaders for blowing up the shrine to justify attacks and vowed a ‘shocking response.’”
On Wednesday, “a Sunni politician said 75 mosques were damaged” and “President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, accused the bombers who dressed as policemen of trying to derail talks on a national unity coalition: “We must … work together against … the danger of civil war,” he told Iraqis in a televised address,” as Kurdish commandos are jumping through fiery hoops.
“Three Sunni clerics were among six people killed, police said, at 27 Sunni mosques in Baghdad attacked by militants. Much damage was minor but at least two mosques were burned out.”
Al Hayat reports, according to Juan Cole, that “the Sunni cleric Abdul Ghafur al-Samarra’i led a demonstration of Sunnis in Samarra’ in protest against the “Excommunicators” for having attempted to set off a sectarian civil war in Iraq by bombing the shrine. They also blamed “the Americans”.”
It doesn’t appear that this top official, Tareq al-Hashemi, endorses Bush’s official message.
“The Iraqi Accordance Front, which won most of the minority Sunni vote in December’s parliamentary election, said it would need an apology from the ruling Shi’ites before it would consider rejoining talks on a national unity coalition.”
Does that mean he boycotted this meeting?
Why is he issuing threats instead of reaching out to the Shi’ites and other Sunnis and scouring the countryside for these evildoers? It’s not as if they’d have to look far for guys “dressed like policemen” in uniforms identical to those worn by the most recent graduating class of Jordan’s training camp.
Shock over Iraqi reporter’s death
23 February 2006 BBC
The killing of Atwar Bahjat, who rose to fame reporting from Iraq for both main Arabic satellite news networks, has shocked Arab journalistic circles.
Gunmen kidnapped and killed her and two members of her crew near Samarra where they had gone to cover reaction to Wednesday’s shrine bombing.
A member of the al-Arabiya TV team who escaped described how two gunmen showed up as they stood in a crowd of Iraqis.
They dragged Bahjat and her colleagues away and shot them.
Their bodies were found on the outskirts of Samarra, an area racked by sectarian violence since Wednesday’s explosion that destroyed the revered Shia Muslim al-Askari shrine.
[...]
At least eight employees of al-Arabiya have died in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, some of them killed by US forces and others by suspected militants.
They are among more than 60 journalists who have fallen in the conflict, making Iraq one of the most deadly and hard-to-cover stories.
In September 2004, al-Arabiya’s Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed on camera in Baghdad when a US helicopter opened fire to destroy an abandoned US army vehicle that had been hit by an insurgency attack.
Update: text via IPA, photo via Yahoo:
HADANI DITMARS: Ditmars is the author of the just-released book “Dancing in the No Fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq” and has covered Iraq since 1997. She said today: “Pre-invasion Iraq despite the twin tyrannies of sanctions and Saddam had been a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-lingual society. The people self-identified as Iraqis first, not as Sunnis or Shiites or Christians. It had the most liberal family law in the Arab world. It’s now breaking down into factionalized fiefdoms with death squads and militias. Sharia law is now in the Constitution. Much of what the U.S. occupation did — the way the constitutional process was administered, the manner of the
debathification process, exacerbated sectarianism. The old secular Iraq is a distant memory.”
RAED JARRAR: Jarrar lived in Iraq through the invasion and has been in the U.S. for six months. He just wrote on his blog: “Iraqis never had a civil war, and they’ll never have one unless the occupation troops stay in Iraq. The U.S. troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible so that Iraqis would have the time and space to heal their wounds and deal with their internal issues.” His most recent piece is “The Iraqi RoadMap: An Exit Plan“. Jarrar is currently doing contract work with the United Nations.
JEFF LEYS, MAUREEN FOLTZ: Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Leys has been to Iraq twice. He said today: “I don’t see the U.S. military stopping worse sectarian violence. The U.S. military presence creates the opportunity for people to carry out other violence.”
Leys added: “We need to exert all possible pressure against the upcoming supplemental spending bill for the war in Iraq. Those of us in the anti-war movement need be using all the nonviolent levers — from lobbying to civil disobedience.”
An Oregon native, Foltz is executive director of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity’s Peace and Justice Commission. She is presently working at TASSC, a torture abolition and survivors support coalition.
Voices for Creative Nonviolence is organizing the “Winter of Our Discontent,” a series of vigils against the war, in Washington, D.C., and a fast which will continue until March 20, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
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