Let the sectarian violence begin again.

Dey just waitin' fer us to bug out...
:eusa_eh:
Return of sectarian threats in Iraq raises alarm
Feb 25,`13 -- The fliers began turning up at Sunni households in the Iraqi capital's Jihad neighborhood last week bearing a chilling message: Get out now or face "great agony" soon.
The leaflets were signed by the Mukhtar Army, a new Shiite militant group with ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The zero hour has come. So leave along with your families. ... You are the enemy," the messages warned. Such overt threats all but disappeared as the darkest days of outright sectarian fighting waned in 2008 and Iraq stepped back from the brink of civil war. Their re-emergence now - nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion - is a worrying sign that rising sectarian tensions are again gnawing away at Iraqi society. Iraqis increasingly fear that militants on both sides of the country's sectarian divide are gearing up for a new round of violence that could undo the fragile gains Iraq has made in recent years.

Members of the country's Sunni minority have been staging mass rallies for two months, with some calling for the toppling of a Shiite-led government they feel discriminates against them and is too closely allied with neighboring Iran. Sunni extremists have been stepping up large-scale attacks on predominantly Shiite targets, and concerns are growing that the brutal and increasingly sectarian fighting in Syria could spill across the border. Many Sunnis who received the Jihad neighborhood messages are taking the warnings at face value and considering making a move. "Residents are panicking. All of us are obsessed with these fliers," said Waleed Nadhim, a Sunni mobile phone shop owner who lives in the neighborhood. The 33-year-old father plans to leave the area because he doesn't have faith in the police to keep his family safe. "In a lawless country like Iraq, nobody can ignore threats like this."

Iraqi security forces have beefed up their presence in and around Jihad. The middle-class community, nestled along a road to the airport in southwest Baghdad, was home to Sunni civil servants and security officials under Saddam Hussein's regime, though many Shiites now live there too. The Shiites, who are emboldened by a government and security forces dominated by their sect, have made their presence felt in Jihad in recent years. A Sunni mosque bears graffiti hailing a revered Shiite saint. A billboard on a major road shows firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr flanked by a fighter gripping a machine gun.

Jihad was one of the earliest flashpoints in Baghdad's descent into sectarian bloodshed. In July 2006, the neighborhood witnessed a brazen massacre that left as many as 41 residents dead and marked an escalation in Iraq's sectarian bloodletting. In that incident, Shiite militiamen set up checkpoints to stop morning commuters, singled out Sunnis based on their names and systematically executed them in front of their Shiite neighbors. Residents now fear the events in southwest Baghdad could be the spark for a new round of tit-for-tat killing. Two weeks ago, a Sunni and a Shiite were each killed in separate attacks in Sadiyah, next to Jihad, said a 30-year-old Sunni government employee living in the area who gave her name only as Umm Abdullah al-Taie, or mother of Abdullah.

MORE
 
Sectarianism rises again in Iraq...
:eusa_eh:
Sectarian tensions stalk Iraq elections
19 April 2013 - The provincial elections being held in Iraq come at a time of severe political and sectarian tension and will be a test for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ahead of the parliamentary elections due next year.
More than 8,000 candidates are competing for 378 seats in provincial councils - but the campaigns have been marred by violence. Fourteen contenders, most of them Sunnis, have been assassinated. In the past week, dozens of people have been killed in a series of bombings across Iraq, targeting mainly Shia areas but also two polling stations. Al-Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni extremist organisation, usually claims responsibility for such attacks.

When I met Saleh al-Mutlag, the Sunni deputy prime minister, he was in shock. The first candidate of his party in the mixed province of Diyala had been assassinated. "It's a very high price that we are paying for democracy. Iraq is losing its best people," he said. Mr Mutlag has lost six candidates in this campaign. When I asked who was behind the killing, he accused not only radical Islamists like al-Qaeda and the banned Baath party of Saddam Hussein, but also mainstream parties.

_67111835_860e94f2-f5f6-4148-af2f-ab42fff0120b.jpg

The polls are taking place amid tight security

Most of the parties, which have armed militias, are involved in violence one way or another. The government postponed the election in two Sunni provinces due to lack of security. This was a controversial decision. Locals in those two provinces wanted to vote and claim fear among the government that it would lose, rather than security concerns, lie behind the decision.

On his recent visit to Iraq, US Secretary of State John Kerry called for Iraq to hold the vote simultaneously as it had under violent circumstances before. But his call fell on deaf ears. US influence on Iraqi politicians has apparently decreased since the withdrawal of American troops. There will be no elections in the three provinces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north. The region runs its own elections separately at different times. For the second consecutive term there will be no elections in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Leaders of the Kurd, Arab and Turkmen communities in the province failed to agree the terms on which the poll should be held.

Shia rivals

See also:

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu casts wary eye over region
18 April 2013 - In an exclusive BBC interview, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me "Israel reserved the right to act" to prevent advanced weaponry from falling into the hands of Islamist groups in Syria, and to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
A "right to defend itself, by itself" is invoked a lot by Israel these days. Asked whether President Obama had given Israel what is often referred to as a "green light" to act militarily on Iran, Mr Netanyahu quipped: "Israel's right to defend its existence is not subject to a traffic light." A number of people close to the prime minister have emphasised, in conversations over the past year, how Mr Netanyahu sees stopping an Iranian atomic bomb as his "mission". "It's in the prime minister's DNA," said one senior Israeli official.

Last year he had railed against the United States for allegedly stopping Israel from taking military action, if necessary, to stop Iran's nuclear programme. Iran continues to insist its programme is entirely peaceful. Israeli officials underline how it rankles Israel not to be able make its own decisions when it comes to its own security. But Mr Netanyahu's confidence has been bolstered by what he and President Obama now refer to as "unprecedented" military and intelligence cooperation on this issue. "He seems more relaxed now," reflected the BBC's Iran analyst Kasra Naji.

Watching the clock

Last September the Israeli leader grabbed world headlines at the United Nations when he drew a crude cartoon bomb slashed by a red line, which he warned Iran would not be allowed to cross. Then, he predicted they would be at that point by this spring. But when I met Mr Netanyahu in London this week, he told me Iran had not surpassed the threshold of enriching enough uranium to move quickly towards a bomb. "They've sort of crept up but not crossed it," he said. I pressed him on how much time was left on the clock. There's "less time", was all he would tell me.

Western diplomats say Iran is now being "very careful". In recent weeks, both Mr Netanyahu and his Army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz have made it clear that not only is Israel ready to strike militarily, if necessary; they say Israel also now has the military means to do so. "Israel has a military option on Iran," said one senior Israeli official who would not go into further details. But Mr Netanyahu said he didn't want to "get into the discussion" about the significant opposition he faces at home from a nervous Israeli public and security establishment which worries a controversial military strike on Iran's heavily guarded nuclear installations could spark a regional war.

'Which rebels?'
 
Last edited:
They were just waitin' for us to get out of the way...
:eusa_eh:
Clashes suggest Sunni anger boiling over in Iraq
Apr 24,`13 -- With Sunni gunmen beginning to confront the Shiite-led government's security forces head-on in northern and western Iraq, fears are growing fast of a return to full-scale sectarian fighting that could plunge the country into a broader battle merged with the Syrian civil war across the border.
With more than 100 people killed over the past two days, it's shaping up to be the most pivotal moment for Iraq since U.S. combat troops withdrew in December 2011. "Everybody has the feeling that Iraq is becoming a new Syria," Talal Younis, the 55-year-old owner of a currency exchange in the northern city of Mosul, said Wednesday. "We are heading into the unknown. ... I think that civil war is making a comeback." A crackdown by government forces at a protest site in the northern town of Hawija on Tuesday triggered the latest unrest. It has enraged much of the country's restive Sunni Arab minority, adding fuel to an already smoldering opposition movement and spawning a wave of bold follow-up clashes.

It is too soon to say whether the rage will lead to widespread insurrection in the largely Sunni cities of Mosul and Ramadi or, more significantly, spiral into open sectarian warfare in the streets of Baghdad. The Iraqi capital is far more tightly controlled by security forces than the remote towns hit by the latest unrest, but insurgents continue to launch regular, well-coordinated waves of attacks inside Baghdad. Outright threats that all but disappeared as the last bout of sectarian fighting waned in 2008 are making a comeback too, like the leaflets signed by a Shiite militant group that began turning up on the doorsteps of Sunni households in Baghdad earlier this year.

The exact circumstances of the Hawija bloodshed remain murky, but there is outrage over the government's handling of the unrest and the fact that most of the 23 killed at the site were among the Sunni demonstrators. Talal al-Zobaie, a Sunni lawmaker from the opposition Iraqiya bloc, described this week's events as a pivotal moment for the country. "The crime in Hawija clearly shows that people have lost faith in their armed forces, which have been turned into a tool in the hands of the prime minister," he said. "Some people now think that the only way to protect themselves is to take up arms."

The raid in Hawija sparked clashes and a spate of other attacks, mostly targeting Sunni mosques, that killed at least 56 people on Tuesday. Raids by Sunni gunmen on army checkpoints broke out in the hours following the protest camp raid and continued into Wednesday. In the most dramatic incident, armed tribesmen sealed off approaches to the Sunni town of Qara Tappah, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Baghdad. When Iraqi troops backed by helicopters arrived to try to clear the makeshift roadblocks, fierce clashes erupted. Police say 15 gunmen and seven soldiers were killed.

MORE
 
Granny seen dat comin' when we bugged out...
:redface:
Gunmen seize Iraqi town in wake of ethnic clashes
2013-04-26 : ‘CORNER BY CORNER’: Iraq’s army was preparing to retake the town, taken after a raid on Sunni protesters sparked violence that has left more than 120 dead since Tuesday
Iraq’s army deployed reinforcements around Sulaiman Bek and was preparing yesterday to move into the northern town, a day after it was seized by a group of gunmen, official sources said. Also yesterday, a spokesman for now-dispersed protesters near the town of Hawijah in northern Iraq, where the latest wave of violence began on Tuesday, vowed to seek revenge for a “massacre” at the protest site, where clashes killed 53 people. The unidentified gunmen swarmed into Sulaiman Bek on Wednesday after deadly fighting with the security forces, who pulled back in the face of the offensive as residents fled. “We withdrew tactically so we can work on clearing the area completely, after we knew that the residents had left,” a high-ranking army officer said. “We will clean the region corner by corner, and we will not allow any attack against the safety of citizens,” the officer said.

Shalal Abdul Baban, a local administrative official responsible for the area, said that gunmen were still in complete control of the town, but that the army was deploying reinforcements on its outskirts. The attack on Sulaiman Bek came amid a wave of violence, much of it clashes and attacks involving security forces, protesters and their supporters, that has left more than 120 people dead. The violence began on Tuesday, when security forces moved in against anti-government protesters near the town of Hawijah. The military said the operation was aimed at the Naqshbandiya Army, a band of Sunni militants it said had infiltrated the ranks of the anti-government protesters. The deadly fighting near Hawijah sparked a wave of revenge attacks in five Sunni-majority provinces that continued into Wednesday, and included heavy fighting in Salaheddin Province that saw the gunmen take Sulaiman Bek.

Two leaders of the Hawijah protest said yesterday they would form a wing of the Naqshbandiya Army in response to Tuesday’s killings. “We in the Uprising of the Free People of Iraq announced our full loyalty to the [Naqshbandiya Army], so we can be an armed wing related to it, working on cleaning Iraq from Safavid militias,” protest spokesman Hamed al-Juburi said, using a pejorative word for Shiites, who make up the majority of Iraqis. “We will take revenge for the massacre of Hawijah,” he said. “After they burned our tents and broke into our sit-in, we decided to join the [Naqshbandiya Army] as a military wing,” protest organizer Abdulmalik al-Juburi said.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted in Sunni Muslim areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago. The Sunni protesters have called for the resignation of Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railed against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities. A police lieutenant colonel was shot dead and another policeman wounded south of Tuz Khurmatu, a police colonel and a doctor said. In other violence apparently in revenge for Tuesday’s clashes, gunmen attacked a Sahwa anti-Qaeda militia checkpoint in Khales, northeast of Baghdad. They killed four militiamen and wounded a fifth, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said. Heavy fighting in Mosul in north Iraq that lasted for hours on Wednesday left one policeman dead, police said. Gunmen also killed a soldier and wounded a policeman in Mosul, while a soldier was hurt in another shooting to its south, according to police and a doctor said.

MORE
 
Granny seen dat comin' when we bugged out...
:redface:
Gunmen seize Iraqi town in wake of ethnic clashes
2013-04-26 : ‘CORNER BY CORNER’: Iraq’s army was preparing to retake the town, taken after a raid on Sunni protesters sparked violence that has left more than 120 dead since Tuesday
Iraq’s army deployed reinforcements around Sulaiman Bek and was preparing yesterday to move into the northern town, a day after it was seized by a group of gunmen, official sources said. Also yesterday, a spokesman for now-dispersed protesters near the town of Hawijah in northern Iraq, where the latest wave of violence began on Tuesday, vowed to seek revenge for a “massacre” at the protest site, where clashes killed 53 people. The unidentified gunmen swarmed into Sulaiman Bek on Wednesday after deadly fighting with the security forces, who pulled back in the face of the offensive as residents fled. “We withdrew tactically so we can work on clearing the area completely, after we knew that the residents had left,” a high-ranking army officer said. “We will clean the region corner by corner, and we will not allow any attack against the safety of citizens,” the officer said.

Shalal Abdul Baban, a local administrative official responsible for the area, said that gunmen were still in complete control of the town, but that the army was deploying reinforcements on its outskirts. The attack on Sulaiman Bek came amid a wave of violence, much of it clashes and attacks involving security forces, protesters and their supporters, that has left more than 120 people dead. The violence began on Tuesday, when security forces moved in against anti-government protesters near the town of Hawijah. The military said the operation was aimed at the Naqshbandiya Army, a band of Sunni militants it said had infiltrated the ranks of the anti-government protesters. The deadly fighting near Hawijah sparked a wave of revenge attacks in five Sunni-majority provinces that continued into Wednesday, and included heavy fighting in Salaheddin Province that saw the gunmen take Sulaiman Bek.

Two leaders of the Hawijah protest said yesterday they would form a wing of the Naqshbandiya Army in response to Tuesday’s killings. “We in the Uprising of the Free People of Iraq announced our full loyalty to the [Naqshbandiya Army], so we can be an armed wing related to it, working on cleaning Iraq from Safavid militias,” protest spokesman Hamed al-Juburi said, using a pejorative word for Shiites, who make up the majority of Iraqis. “We will take revenge for the massacre of Hawijah,” he said. “After they burned our tents and broke into our sit-in, we decided to join the [Naqshbandiya Army] as a military wing,” protest organizer Abdulmalik al-Juburi said.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted in Sunni Muslim areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago. The Sunni protesters have called for the resignation of Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railed against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities. A police lieutenant colonel was shot dead and another policeman wounded south of Tuz Khurmatu, a police colonel and a doctor said. In other violence apparently in revenge for Tuesday’s clashes, gunmen attacked a Sahwa anti-Qaeda militia checkpoint in Khales, northeast of Baghdad. They killed four militiamen and wounded a fifth, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said. Heavy fighting in Mosul in north Iraq that lasted for hours on Wednesday left one policeman dead, police said. Gunmen also killed a soldier and wounded a policeman in Mosul, while a soldier was hurt in another shooting to its south, according to police and a doctor said.

MORE
yep ...:(
 
Last edited:
Sectarian violence startin' up in Iraq again...
:eek:
Sectarian Violence Kills 11 in Iraq
May 18, 2013 - It was a violent day in Iraq Saturday with at least 11 people killed and 10 policemen kidnapped as hatred simmers between the ruling Shi'ite majority and the Sunni minority.
Gunmen broke into the home of an anti-terrorism policeman in the Baghdad suburb of Rasheed, killing him, his wife, and two children. Another security officer was killed elsewhere in Rasheed.

Police say gunmen killed a Sunni cleric near his home in the southern port city of Basra and a car bomb exploded in the town of Latifiya, killing at least one person. Suspected Sunni Muslims kidnapped at least 10 policemen in Ramadi, near the Syrian border.

D26727C2-89E3-4866-A0E7-8BD6F9AC705B_w640_r1_s.png

Baghdad, Iraq map

Iraq's Sunni population says the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri-al-Maliki has been ignoring their needs while targeting them for arrests since taking power 10 years ago.

On Friday, 70 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks targeting Sunnis, including two blasts outside a mosque north of Baghdad. Bombings and other violence have killed more than 100 people in Iraq in the past week.

Sectarian Violence Kills 11 in Iraq
 
Sunni/Shia schism startin' to split Iraq...
:eusa_eh:
Iraq’s PM to alter security strategy as violence rages
Wed, May 22, 2013 - Four bombings in northern Iraq killed five people and wounded 69 yesterday, officials said, the latest in a spate of violence that has killed more than 370 people so far this month. Yesterday’s attacks came a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced an overhaul of Iraq’s security strategy.
Two car bombs exploded in a Turkmen Shiite area of Tuz Khurmatu, a town in Salaheddin Province, killing three people, wounding 44 and causing extensive damage to 10 houses, police and a doctor said. Two roadside bombs detonated in a sheep market in the city of Kirkuk, killing two people and wounding 25, other officials said. The bombings came a day after attacks killed more than 60 people across Iraq. Al-Maliki said the matter would be discussed at a Cabinet meeting yesterday. “We are about to make changes in the high and middle positions of those responsible for security, and the security strategy,” Maliki told journalists in Baghdad on Monday. Cabinet would discuss the matter yesterday, he said. “I assure the Iraqi people that they [militants] will not be able to return us to the sectarian conflict” that killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq in past years, he added.

Just hours after his statement, bombings during evening prayers at two Shiite mosques in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killed 13 people and wounded another 71, police and a doctor said. One bomb exploded inside al-Wardiyah mosque, while a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged belt at al-Graita mosque nearby. Dozens of mosques have been attacked in Iraq so far this year. Earlier on Monday, at about the time al-Maliki spoke, a car bomb exploded in Shaab, a Shiite area of north Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding at least 20, officials said.

Two car bombs went off in the main southern port city of Basra, killing 13 people and wounding 48, while a wave of other bombings hit Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and wounding 102. In Balad, north of the capital, a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing eight people and wounding another 15. The US condemned the attacks. White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday the US was “deeply concerned by the frequency and the nature of recent attacks, including bombings today.” US officials had contacted a wide range of Iraqi leaders “to urge calm and help resolve ongoing political and sectarian tensions,” he said.

Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam and is visited by hundreds of thousands of foreign pilgrims every year, most of them from neighboring Iran. Six Sahwa anti-al-Qaeda fighters were also killed and 27 wounded in three separate attacks north of Baghdad. The Sahwa are made up of Sunni Arab tribesmen who joined forces with the US military against al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping to turn the tide against the insurgency. Also a car bomb killed one person and wounded four in Rutba, a town in Anbar Province, while a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul wounded three people.

Iraq?s PM to alter security strategy as violence rages - Taipei Times

See also:

Iraqi PM Orders Security Shakeup as Violence Surges
May 21, 2013 - Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a shakeup of senior government security officers, as a weeks-long wave of violence grips the country and fears of all-out sectarian war spread.
The shakeup was confirmed on the prime minister's website, but details were not immediately clear. The move comes as authorities reported at least 21 deaths Tuesday in attacks that include a car bombing at a Sunni mosque that killed at least eight people and wounded about 20 others. Earlier Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed in attacks in three Iraqi cities.

Dozens of mosques have been bombed so far this year, including two Shi'ite places of worship south of Baghdad, where more than a dozen people died on Monday. Iraq is experiencing its worst sectarian violence since U.S. troops withdrew from the country in late 2011.

More than 200 people have been killed in the past week, including 70 who died Friday in a series of bombings targeting Sunnis. In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney condemned all the recent attacks, saying U.S. officials have been in contact with "a wide range of Iraqi leaders ... to help resolve ongoing political and sectarian tensions."

The unrest has raised fears of a return to the level of sectarian fighting that left tens of thousands dead in 2006 and 2007. Violence has fallen from that peak, but the United Nations said 712 people were killed in April, making it the deadliest month in Iraq since June 2008.

Iraqi PM Orders Security Shakeup as Violence Surges
 
Syrian Sunni/Shia war about to spread to rest of middle east region...
:eek:
Sectarian clashes in northern Lebanese city kill 9
1 Dec.`13 — Gun battles and rocket fire in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli killed at least nine people and wounded dozens more over the weekend, the latest clash between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Sectarian clashes linked to the war in neighboring Syria often flare between two impoverished rival neighborhoods in the rundown coastal city. The Bab Tabbaneh district is largely Sunni Muslim, as are most of the Syrian rebels fighting against Assad's rule. Residents of Jabal Mohsen, a neighborhood perched on a hill, are mostly of Assad's Alawite sect.

Tripoli is mostly Sunni Muslim, with a large Christian minority, but the fighting rarely spreads beyond the two neighborhoods who have decades of bad blood between them. Fighting began Saturday after Sunni gunmen shot a man whose brother controls an Alawite militia, sparking gun battles that trapped children in schools and forced traders to flee their shops.

The state agency said fighters used rocket-propelled grenades to target their rivals in the crowded neighborhoods. Lebanese media reported that schools in the affected neighborhoods asked parents to keep their children home Monday, fearing for their safety.

Sectarian clashes in northern Lebanese city kill 9
 
"Syrian Sunni/Shia war about to spread to rest of middle east region..."
...........................................

We need to sell all of the offensive weapons we have to both sides, sharing equally......and then get out of the way.
 
It's been a Civil war since the fall of Saddam. The Bush Administration completely fucked up the occupation. Hundreds of thousand have died because of it.
 
It's been a Civil war since the fall of Saddam. The Bush Administration completely fucked up the occupation. Hundreds of thousand have died because of it.

Wrong.
Two successful elections.
Obama fucked up the status of forces agreement in his desire to get out, leading to the current violence.

I hope people realize the OP was talking about Israel/Palestine, not Iraq.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top