IRAQ: RUN BY GANGS, THUGS, MILITIAS, RADICAL ISLAMISTS AND WARLORDS

There is a myth floating around the United States that started with the Bush White House and has been promoted by the Bush White House propaganda mouthpiece, FOX NEWS, that the U.S. military brought down violence in Baghdad and Falluja with the much touted "surge," but in reality it was the warlords in both cities who got together and ran Al Qaeda out of each city.

The news looks good on the surface, but in truth Iraq is now run by militias, gangs, thugs, radical Islamists and warlords and the United States is caught in the middle of supporting all of them with money and guns.

The media in the United States is obsessed with the race for the White House, but there is a growing concern by many insiders who feel Iraq is about to explode again in sectarian violence.

The story below is a perfect example of what has been taking place in Iraq and what looms on the horizon.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE.


Iraq: The Calm Before the Conflagration

By Chris Hedges, TruthdigPosted on February 27, 2008, Printed on February 28, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/77873/

The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq -- the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs.

These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military.

Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.

The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S. casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.

The United States cut a deal with its Sunni Arab enemies. It would pay the former insurgents. It would allow them to arm and form military units and give them control of their ethnic enclaves. The Sunni Arabs, in exchange, would halt attacks on U.S. troops. The Sunni Arabs agreed.

The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters -- Shiite, Kurd and Sunni Arab -- are not only antagonistic but deeply unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban.

The Sunni Arab militias are known by a variety of names: the Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias call themselves "sahwas" ("sahwa" being the Arabic word for awakening). There are now 80,000 militia fighters, nearly all Sunni Arabs, paid by the United States to control their squalid patches of Iraq. They are expected to reach 100,000. The Sunni Arab militias have more fighters under arms than the Shiite Mahdi Army and are about half the size of the feeble Iraqi army. The Sunni Awakening groups, which fly a yellow satin flag, are forming a political party.

Click on link above to read the full story.