Friday, April 09, 2004

Toppled  

A year ago today joyful Iraqis swarmed to Central Baghdad's Ferdous Square to help U.S. Marines topple the giant bronze statue of Saddam Hussein--the symbolic end of his 35 year stranglehold on the country.

But this week those smiles are a distant memory as the U.S. led coalition now faces the potential nightmare it had only imagined for post war Iraq--a simmering war on two fronts.

There is the fight against die-hard Sunni insurgents in places like Falluja and Ramadi--the heart of the Sunni Triangle; and now a new battle in the south with Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muktada Al Sader.

It is a mean turn of events at the worst time--and the irony is lost on no one. With the U.S. –led Coalition scheduled to turn power over to the Iraqis on June 30th – there is a political and military triage underway in an effort to keep the country together until then.

Lt.General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, played down the uprising in a recent press conference, saying they had planned for this scenario.

"We knew before we stared this campaign that this was a possibility," Sanchez said, "and the entire military, both coalition and U.S. forces were prepared to engage in this kind of operation if it came to that."

But how did things turn so bad so quickly--in which a scattered insurgency gains broader support and the coalition Shiite alliance begins to crack?

Some critics say it's a combination of a year of mismanagement by the Coalition Provisional Authority in which the lives of most Iraqis have not improved much since the reign of Saddam Hussein and the hardball tactics of occupation military forces that are alienating the people they were intending to help.

One member of a Ramadi-based Sunni insurgent cell who calls himself "Continuous Jihad" says the Coalition hasn't delivered on anything.

"They break into houses in the middle of the night and arrest innocent people," he says, "and they've given us less then we had under Saddam. People are jobless, they distort our religion, and they're taking our oil and living in Saddam's palaces. Nothing has changed. They've become like him, yet they pretend they're here to help us."

Much of this week's trouble started after last week's killing and mutilations of four American security contractors in Falluja. U.S. Marines retaliated by surrounding the city on Monday in an effort to capture or kill those responsible.

But on Tuesday insurgents staged their own attack on a U.S. Marine compound in Ramadi, killing 12 Marines, the highest, single-day American death toll in combat action since the end of the war.

The Marines hit back hard--using mortars, tanks and even air strikes against fighters gathered in a Falluja mosque.

"We don't want a fair fight with this guy," said Marine Lt.Colonel Greg Olsen, "We want to win."

But the cost of winning this battle may have gone too high. The local Falluja hospital director said that nearly 300 Iraqis have been killed and 400 wounded since the fighting began in the city--many of the casualties, civilians.

The media images from Falluja seem to build both anger at the coalition and sympathy for the insurgents from a broader base of Iraqis; some giving food, medicine--even blood to be distributed to those inside the barricaded city.

Paul Bremer, U.S. administrator in Iraq, announced a unilateral 24-hour ceasefire in Falluja on Friday, time to allow meetings with the local leadership and for residents to evacuate the wounded and bury their dead.

But there was no ceasefire in the rest of Iraq as insurgents attacked U.S. supply convoys on the road to Falluja, killing one U.S. soldier and an Iraqi driver.

And a spate of foreign hostage taking made headlines, the most serious concerning three young Japanese; videotaped by their captors who threatened to burn them alive--if Japan didn't withdraw it's 500 troops from Samawa, Iraq within three days.

And earlier in the week Shiite militia fought gun battles with Polish troops in Karbala and drove Ukranian and Spanish troops out of Najaf and Kut, before American forces retook Kut Friday morning. However, the militia still controls police stations and government buildings in Najaf.

This face off with the supporters of Muktada Al Sader first began when U.S. forces shut down Al Sader's newspaper, which they say, was inciting violence against coalition troops. Then the U.S. announced it intended to arrest Al Sader in connection with the murder of another Shiite cleric last year.

Critics again say American timing was all off--that going after Al Sader on just one week before the start of the Shiite celebration of Arbain, in which thousands of pilgrims gather in Karbala to end 40 days of mourning over the death of the Immam Hussein, would just inflame an already superheated environment.

They also say that it served to promote and legitimize Al Sader, who at best was considered a fringe leader with a small following. But today, U.S. soldiers were again in Baghdad's Ferdous Square--removing the image of an enemy leader--dozens of pictures of Muktada Al Sader plastered on the same base that once held the statue of Saddam Hussein.

And now some fear that Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia--longtime enemies--could put down their differences and take up the fight against a common enemy; a nightmare scenario that is clearly not the kind of peace most had hoped for when Saddam came toppling over.

Discuss (photo: AP)

Kevin 10:10 PM