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As I hung up the phone, I wondered if I would ever see my friend Ali alive again. Ali, The Times translator for the past three years, lives in west Baghdad, an area that is now in meltdown as a bitter civil war rages between Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. It is, quite simply, out of control.

I returned to Baghdad on Monday after a break of several months, during which I too was guilty of glazing over every time I read another story of Iraqi violence. But two nights on the telephone, listening to my lost and frightened Iraqi staff facing death at any moment, persuaded me that Baghdad is now verging on total collapse.

Ali phoned me on Tuesday night, about 10.30pm. There were cars full of gunmen prowling his mixed neighbourhood, he said. He and his neighbours were frantically exchanging information, trying to identify the gunmen.

Were they the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia blamed for drilling holes in their victims’ eyes and limbs before executing them by the dozen? Or were they Sunni insurgents hunting down Shias to avenge last Sunday’s massacre, when Shia gunmen rampaged through an area called Jihad, pulling people from their cars and homes and shooting them in the streets?

.....

The previous night I had had a similar conversation with my driver, a Shia who lives in another part of west Baghdad. He phoned at 11pm to say that there was a battle raging outside his house and that his family were sheltering in the windowless bathroom.

Marauding Mahdi gunmen, seeking to drive all Sunnis from the area, were fighting Sunni Mujahidin for control of a nearby strategic position. I could hear the gunfire blazing over the phone.

We phoned the US military trainer attached to Iraqi security forces in the area. He said there was nothing to be done.

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The whole story merits attention. Particularly interesting were the facts about the increasing number of Iraqis leaving the country entirely:

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Muhammad al-Ani, who runs fleets of Suburban cars to Jordan, said that the service to Amman was so oversubscribed that that prices had rocketed from $200 (£108) to $750 per trip in the past two weeks.

Despite the huge risks of driving through the Sunni Triangle, the number of buses to Jordan has mushroomed from 2 a day to as many as 40 or 50.

.....

In one of the few comprehensive surveys of how many Iraqis have fled their country since the US invasion, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said last month that there were 644,500 refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2005 — about 2.5 per cent of Iraq’s population. In total, 889,000 Iraqis had moved abroad, creating “the biggest new flow of refugees in the world”, according to Lavinia Limon, the committee’s president.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2268585_3,00.html

[ 14 July 2006: Message edited by: jeff house ]

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The fighting is everywhere, he tells me. Now that the U.S. military/Rumsfeld (who was just in Baghdad) and Khalilzad have declared war on the Shia Mehdi Army, accusing them of terrorism, all bets are off. Of course, the timing of this with Israelis attacks against Hezbollah couldn't be more perfect. Coincidence?

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I've read alot of mentions of the Hezbollah getting alot of funding from Syria and Iran... And there are ties between Iraq 'insurgents' and Iran as well. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some degree of cordination behind this.

added:
Is Hizbollah another correct spelling of Hezbollah, or are a few news sources like Yahoo not knowing what they're talking about? Heh, niether answer would surprise me ^^

[ 14 July 2006: Message edited by: Noise ]

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A bomb exploded at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad after Friday prayers, killing 14 people and wounding five, while mortars barraged a Shiite mosque north of the capital.[...]

In other violence Friday:

-Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint on a highway near Kirkuk, killing 11 soldiers and wounding three.

-A taxi driver was killed in a drive-by shooting in the volatile Dora neighbourhood in southern Baghdad.

-Gunmen in southeastern Baghdad opened fire on a minivan carrying passengers to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing five, including a woman and a child.

-Gunmen opened fire on a minivan in western Baghdad, wounding three passengers.

-An unidentified body dressed in traditional Arab clothing and showing signs of torture was found shot in the chest in Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad.

-A Sunni policeman was shot to death in front of his home in Mosul, while gunmen in a car killed the bodyguard of a judge elsewhere in the northern city, Col. Abdul-Karim al-Jibouri said.

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"Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?"

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[ 14 July 2006: Message edited by: uh clem ]

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Saddam Hussein, in the face of a full-scale decade-long international embargo, was doing a better job governing this country than the Crusaders and their puppets.

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Saddam Hussein did, indeed, keep a tight lid on sectarian conflict. But, ultimately, he was an embarassment to a variety of concerns that insisted upon his ouster. To the U.S. because he was their saviour when it came to dealing with Iran until he started thumbing his U.S. political and corporate demands. To the rest of the middle east because women were accorded a variety of rigths and privleges [makeup, driving, having professions, to name a few] that outrages the majority of middle eastern ideologies. To the corporate community because he knew he had the premium oil supply and demanded premium prices from them.

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Originally posted by uh clem:
And Riverbend, whose blog is always open, honest and painful writes of her reaction...

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