Iraq Disintegrates
Enders, David
By David Enders Illustration by Sam Weber Iraq Disintegrates THE WAIT IS ON FOR THE FALL of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s U.S.-backed government in Baghdad. “I think it is in the intensive...
...Iranian interference” is coded language for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, which is Bush’s strongest ally in Baghdad...
...The Sadr bloc has since withdrawn its support because Maliki refused to bring the issue of the occupation to the parliament...
...People were watching and they could do nothing...
...Sunnis are in Ghazalia, Hay al-Adil, and Yarmuk,” he says, rattling off areas of the capital...
...If they talked, they would be killed...
...It’s just normal...
...David Enders is the author of “Baghdad Bulletin...
...In the fall of 2005, he was one of the loudest voices amongst the 100-plus members of the newly elected Iraqi interim parliament that decried U.S...
...Salam Talib and Hiba Dawood contributed reporting for this article...
...Hurrea was once a mixed neighborhood, but following November car bomb attacks in Sadr City, the capital’s largest Shiite neighborhood, Shiite militiamen from Sadr’s Mahdi Army drove out the remaining Sunnis, burning and occupying mosques and homes...
...Meanwhile, the Bush Administration twists Maliki’s arm to crack down on the militias, something he is powerless to do...
...By putting $150,000 or more in a Jordanian bank, they could buy residency...
...As Maliki’s weak and corrupt government collapses along sectarian lines and Bush throws his backing behind the Shiite party least likely to find common ground with the insurgents, Iraq is disintegrating...
...It was looping video of Humvees being destroyed by roadside bombs and men in dishdashas launching katyusha attacks...
...Faidhy said things entirely broke down in 2005, when members of the Association of Muslim Scholars and some of Sadr’s representatives assembled a convoy of aid for residents of Tel Afar, a mostly Sunni city in the north where U.S...
...Tamimi’s followers have barricaded the mosque against attacks...
...While shopping in downtown Amman, my fianc?e and I strolled into a shop full of backgammon sets and water pipes...
...Now those fleeing Iraq are mostly in dire straits, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has raised concerns that Iraqis are being denied entry into Jordan, reportedly based on sect...
...But as Shiite outrage over insurgent attacks against civilian targets built, Shiite leaders began to accuse Sunni clerics of not doing enough to prevent such atrocities...
...Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is Sunni, warned of a “Shiite crescent” of influence in the region ranging from Tehran to southern Lebanon...
...Maliki himself appears to be trapped in an impossible position...
...In Jordan, the initial influx consisted of rich members of the old regime...
...Yesterday, three people passed by me and stopped in front of another man and just shot him in the head and walked away...
...Hiti hopes the government will be put out of its misery...
...This made him acceptable to the popular Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his parliamentary bloc...
...Hurrea, Shoala, and Khadmiya are Shia...
...Anyone from the other side who enters the neighborhood will be killed...
...Americans have to be logical,” says Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhy, a spokesperson for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni political group...
...In 2004, before widespread sectarian violence broke out, Sadr’s militia coordinated to some extent with Sunni guerrillas to battle U.S...
...But time ran out a while ago, as the execution of Saddam Hussein, with guards chanting “Muqtada, Muqtada,” demonstrated...
...The intractable sectarian violence on all sides has sent more than a million Iraqis out of the country, mostly to Jordan and Syria...
...That they are not going to have bases in Iraq...
...He says he is hopeful that Sadr’s supporters would move away from sectarian politics and ally with Sunnis, though he acknowledges, “We are running out of time on this issue...
...It is a civil war, there are civilians just killing each other,” Ali says...
...interference in the government...
...He argued that if Iraq, as stated in U.N...
...troops to remain in the country...
...I think it is in the intensive care room,” says Mustafa al-Hiti, a member of the Iraqi parliament who spends much of his time in Amman, Jordan...
...The mosque Tamimi occupies is on Palestine Street, a neighborhood south of Sadr City...
...We need to have an alliance with secular and religious Sunnis,” says Ghaith Tamimi, a member of Sadr’s media department in Baghdad...
...While some sit on the grounds having tea, other men stand guard...
...Faidhy accuses Sadr’s people of delivering weapons along with the aid to Shiite militiamen in Tel Afar...
...Ali is a twenty-five-year-old carpenter living in Hurrea, on the east side of what has become a rigid front line in Baghdad...
...Hearing her accent—my fianc?e is Iraqi—one of the men asked her whether she was a Sunni or “a follower of the ayatollah...
...The two men working in the shop were watching al-Zawraa, a channel with a strong bent toward the Sunni resistance...
...Ironically, it maintains warm relations with Tehran, where Hakim spent his exile from Iraq and organized Iraqis to fight against Hussein’s regime...
...This is going on in “all Baghdad, not just here,” he says...
...Hiti belongs to the National Dialogue Front, a secular party whose leader, Saleh Mutlaq, managed a chicken farm owned by Saddam Hussein’s wife, Sajida...
...Resolution 1546, was indeed sovereign, then its parliament should be allowed to vote on the issue of allowing U.S...
...Even as he speaks of reconciliation, Tamimi himself now occupies a Sunni mosque he and his followers took over as Shiite militias carried out retaliatory attacks in the wake of the destruction of the Askaria Shrine, a Shiite holy site, last February...
...troops before Sadr was convinced to participate in the political process...
...They have to know one thing—that they are not going to stay in Iraq...
...The new government must stop Iranian interference in Iraq,” he tells me in Amman...
...troops were engaged in ground fighting with insurgents...
...That wasn’t a question people asked on the street here a year ago...
...The presence of the Shiite militia in the area shows that it has strengthened itself outside its traditional stronghold...
Vol. 71 • February 2007 • No. 2
