Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Iraq raid dispute threatens to draw US into sectarian conflict

Mr. Arkin notes that the fact that the forward deployment of US materials in the region greatly influenced the US decision to go to war in Iraq because "Who wanted to send everyone home and start all over with negotiations and access and networks when the capability to accommodate US ground forces was in place and relatively "hot"?"

This is an interesting comment by Arkin, we follow our supplies into battle. If true we will be also fighting in Central Asia which may mean China.

as well as the establishment of two new storage hubs, one in a classified Middle Eastern country “west” of Saudi Arabia and the other in a yet to be decided “Central Asian state.”
#msg-10358352

-Am


Differing accounts of raid come a few days after Pentagon announces investigation into other US attacks.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

posted March 28, 2006 at 12:40 p.m.

As relations between US authorities and Shiite leaders in Iraq have gotten increasingly rocky , Shiite officials have suspended negotiations over a new government, The New York Times reports.
The reason for the rift is an outburst of bitterness and mistrust after a hotly-disputed joint Iraqi-US raid on a compound that resulted in the deaths of at least 16 Iraqis, many of whom were followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

On one hand, The Washington Post reports that US Lt. Col. Sean Swindell, whose unit participated in the raid, said it was led by Iraqi soldiers and targeted an insurgent group at a compound in northern Baghdad.

Reuters reported that US officials accused "powerful Shiite groups" of moving the bodies of dead gunmen killed in battle into a mosque to make it look like a massacre of peaceful worshippers.

But on the other hand, the Post story quotes Shiite officials, and Baghdad residents who lived near the raid say that US and Iraqi troops targeted a Shiite mosque and gunned down innocent worshipers in the half-light of evening prayers. As the suspension of government talks indicates, the raid has created a precarious situation for the US presence in Iraq. Agence France-Presse reports in a Truthout translation of the French newspaper Le Figaro that several key Shiite officials have said they will cease cooperating with US military officials. The governor of Baghdad, Hussein al-Tahan, said he would "cease all political and logistical cooperation with American forces," and said that the United States embassy and the Iraqi Defense Ministry should conduct an investigation, "but not the American military." The Iraqi interior minister called the event an "unjustified aggression against the faithful as they prayed in a mosque."

Knight Ridder reported Monday that Shiite leaders also accused the US of conducting the raid so it could "distance itself" from the sect, because the Americans "feared that Iraq would be controlled exclusively by Shiites, rather than shared with the Sunnis."

Shiites represent 60 percent of Iraq's population and won a near-majority of seats in the parliament. A widespread loss of support from the Shiites could make Iraq almost impossible to govern and could put U.S. forces stationed in Iraq in a precarious position.
The Associated Press reports that the Shiite anger over the raid will make it difficult for US military forces to "steer clear of getting trapped in the middle as civil warfare heats up in Iraq."
“Whenever it happens, it's Iraq's problem and Iraqis have to take care of it,” Brig. Gen. Douglas Raaberg told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “Rushing in there isn't the answer.” Raaberg, deputy chief of operations for the US Central Command, said American forces would help only with measures such as sealing Iraq's borders and assisting Iraqi government troops in enforcing curfews.
But handling such conflict on its own would be a tall order for an Iraqi force that Washington acknowledges is not ready to deal solely with Sunni insurgents – much less respond to a more complex and wider civil war. That makes it unlikely that the Americans could stand in the shadows.

Conflict over the raid comes only a week after another disputed situation: according to the Sunday Times, a raid by US troops in the village of Abu Sifa on March 15 resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including "four women and five children aged between six months and five years."

Iraqi police originally said on Sunday that the 11 people had been "executed" with a shot to the head, but a partial version of the police report viewed by Knight Ridder said the bodies had multiple gunshot wounds, which would indicate a firefight.

Questions about the incident focus on diverging U.S. military and Iraqi police accounts of the raid, which happened around 2:30 a.m. on March 15 on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Both sides and neighbors agree that US troops were involved in a firefight with a suspected member of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But the US account gave the death toll as four and said the house collapsed from the heavy fire it took during the fighting. The Al Qaeda suspect was found alive in the rubble and arrested, the US report on the incident said. Iraqi police, however, contend that US troops gathered 11 people in the house into a single room and executed them, before destroying the house as they left the area.

Last week, Time magazine published a 10-week investigation into another incident in Haditha, Iraq last Nov. 19. A roadside bomb killed a US marine who was travelling in a Humvee. A report from the US military the next day reported that 15 Iraqis were also killed by the explosion. But the Time investigation revealed that local officials and eyewitness say the dead marine's comrades went on a "shooting rampage" after the explosion, killing the 15 people in their homes, including seven women and three children.
In January, after TIME presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis' accounts of the Marines' actions, the US opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military's initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force--Iraq, told TIME the involvement of the NCIS does not mean that a crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely with the insurgents, who "placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves."
The Sunday Times piece quoted above also reported that the Pentagon says it has investigated 600 reports of abuse by US solders in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disciplined 230 soldiers for improper behavior.
But a study by three New York-based human rights groups, due to be published next month, will claim that most soldiers found guilty of abuse received only “administrative” discipline such as loss of rank or pay, confinement to base or periods of extra duty. Of the 76 courts martial that the Pentagon is believed to have initiated, only a handful are known to have resulted in jail sentences of more than a year — notably including the architects of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
As the situation for US troops becomes more precarious in Iraq, William Arkin of the Washington Post reported last week that the US military has developed a 10-year plan for "deep storage" of "munitions and equipment in at least six countries in the Middle East and Central Asia to prepare for regional war contingencies."
As one looks at the US military presence in the region today, the only real wild card is Iraq. Clearly, the pre-positioning contract indicates the plans of the United States to shift heavy material and supplies out of the country in the long-run. While planning for an Iran war doesn't hinge on Iraqi bases or access, clearly a friendly government to the United States and the prospects for "episodic" operations from Iraq changes the calculus of any war. It may also explain the "deterrent" or coercive effect accrued to the United States government in not making it clear what its long-term plans are in the country.
Mr. Arkin notes that the fact that the forward deployment of US materials in the region greatly influenced the US decision to go to war in Iraq because "Who wanted to send everyone home and start all over with negotiations and access and networks when the capability to accommodate US ground forces was in place and relatively "hot"?"


http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0328/dailyUpdate.html