MishpishBad ideas in Baghdad
February 16th 2007 23:29
Here are some excerpts from a disturbing article from The New York Times. It's disturbing because it highlights a crazy plan by the Iraqi government. As the country becomes more sectarian, it looms toward a path of genocide. However the move by the government to relocate and move people from homes seems plain crazy.
BAGHDAD, Feb. 13 — The Iraqi government on Tuesday ordered tens of thousands of Baghdad residents to leave homes they are occupying illegally, in a surprising and highly challenging effort to reverse the tide of sectarian cleansing that has left the capital bloodied and Balkanized.
He said the government would break into homes and cars it deemed dangerous, open mail and eavesdrop on phone calls.
On Tuesday, senior American officers expressed surprise about the plan to resettle people who had moved from their homes amid sectarian cleansing. But they declined to be identified, saying they did not want to contradict the Iraqi general.
General Qanbar indicated that the plan would be carried out evenly across Baghdad. But critics said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has come under intense criticism for pursuing a sectarian Shiite agenda, might be trying to appease his detractors and may not actually carry out the plan. Some feared that his government might not apply the same pressure to residents of Shiite areas.
Since the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra a year ago, the sectarian map of Baghdad has been almost completely redrawn, as Shiites pushed Sunnis from neighborhood after neighborhood.
At least 10 formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad are now almost entirely Shiite. East Baghdad, vulnerable to attack from Shiites in the Sadr City stronghold, is almost entirely under Shiite control. West Baghdad, where there are still fierce sectarian clashes, is a war zone of divided neighborhoods, where crossing from a Shiite enclave to a Sunni enclave without the right identification, or the other way around, can mean death.
The Iraqi cabinet proposed a plan last year to create space in West Baghdad for some 3,000 Sunni families who had been displaced, but nothing came of it.
It is impossible to know exactly how many people have been forced from their homes, but estimates by Iraqi and American officials range from tens of thousands to as high as 200,000.
Samantha Power, a public policy professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written widely on genocide, described the plan as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.
“To do this in the middle of a war when tempers have been inflamed and militarization is ubiquitous seems to be putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “You haven’t stopped the willingness to ethnically cleanse, but you’re imposing the moral hazard of ethnic cleansing on the cleansee? Unless you create security first, you are paving the way for a potential massacre of returnees.”
General Qanbar did not explain how the houses would be checked except to say that people in homes that did not belong to them must have currently dated letters from the owners.
For the full article:
Your text goes here
BAGHDAD, Feb. 13 — The Iraqi government on Tuesday ordered tens of thousands of Baghdad residents to leave homes they are occupying illegally, in a surprising and highly challenging effort to reverse the tide of sectarian cleansing that has left the capital bloodied and Balkanized.
He said the government would break into homes and cars it deemed dangerous, open mail and eavesdrop on phone calls.
On Tuesday, senior American officers expressed surprise about the plan to resettle people who had moved from their homes amid sectarian cleansing. But they declined to be identified, saying they did not want to contradict the Iraqi general.
General Qanbar indicated that the plan would be carried out evenly across Baghdad. But critics said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has come under intense criticism for pursuing a sectarian Shiite agenda, might be trying to appease his detractors and may not actually carry out the plan. Some feared that his government might not apply the same pressure to residents of Shiite areas.
Since the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra a year ago, the sectarian map of Baghdad has been almost completely redrawn, as Shiites pushed Sunnis from neighborhood after neighborhood.
At least 10 formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad are now almost entirely Shiite. East Baghdad, vulnerable to attack from Shiites in the Sadr City stronghold, is almost entirely under Shiite control. West Baghdad, where there are still fierce sectarian clashes, is a war zone of divided neighborhoods, where crossing from a Shiite enclave to a Sunni enclave without the right identification, or the other way around, can mean death.
It is impossible to know exactly how many people have been forced from their homes, but estimates by Iraqi and American officials range from tens of thousands to as high as 200,000.
Samantha Power, a public policy professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written widely on genocide, described the plan as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.
“To do this in the middle of a war when tempers have been inflamed and militarization is ubiquitous seems to be putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “You haven’t stopped the willingness to ethnically cleanse, but you’re imposing the moral hazard of ethnic cleansing on the cleansee? Unless you create security first, you are paving the way for a potential massacre of returnees.”
General Qanbar did not explain how the houses would be checked except to say that people in homes that did not belong to them must have currently dated letters from the owners.
For the full article:
Your text goes here
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