Mere Irak

Fra The Weekly Standard, om de ikke-voldelige politikker shiaerne bruger mod deres tidligere undertrykkere, sunnierne, og hvorfor der er brug for de 20.000 ekstra amerikanske soldater primært i Baghdad:

To get an idea of the problems facing American commanders in Iraq, consider the case of the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood. The bank, which has been closed since shortly after Saddam's fall, isn't much more than a storefront on a street lined with small retail businesses, but residents desperately want it reopened. General George Casey visited Amiriyah in mid-December, heard those demands, and ordered his top subordinates to make reopening the bank a priority.

Colonel J.B. Burton, who has responsibility for Amiriyah, snapped into action. Money was spent to install surveillance cameras and teller windows. Concrete barriers were put out front as protection from car bombs. The Sunni management of the bank hired local guards. All the work was done quietly through Iraqi intermediaries so it would not look like an American project and become a target for insurgents. By late December, the bank was open again.

And here is where the story takes an all-too-familiar turn. After three weeks of brisk activity, the bank was no longer doing business, a victim not of insurgent bombs, but of the Iraqi government. The finance ministry, which is controlled by the Shia SCIRI party, ordered the bank closed. It's not secure, ministry officials explained, and therefore must be shut down. Military officials with responsibility for Amiriyah say the claim is bogus. "That bank is secure because these people have a vested interest in keeping it secure," says Major Brynt Parmeter. "We could open it tomorrow." The military suspects the bank was shuttered for
another reason: It was injecting economic vibrancy into a Sunni neighborhood that had been slowly dying.

This kind of story is told and retold every day in Baghdad. The Shia-dominated federal and local governments are systematically denying resources to Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods. You see it in lines that go on for blocks at fuel stations. The Sunni areas don't get much gas or kerosene. You see it in the trash strewn everywhere in once upscale Sunni neighborhoods. Sanitation trucks don't come anymore. "They have the trucks," says Major Parmeter. "They have the people to drive them, but the trash isn't picked up." Fuel lines are much shorter in the Shia neighborhoods, but access to those stations is frequently blocked by Shia militia thugs who stand in front of the stations and, mafia-like, decide who gets fuel and who doesn't.

Several U.S. military officers I spoke to in Baghdad are convinced that the squeezing of Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods is a deliberate operation carried out primarily by Baghdad's unelected Shia provincial government. The local government, they say, is trying to "soften" the Sunni neighborhoods, so Shia militias can move in and force out Sunni residents. Whether it is government malfeasance or incompetence, the result is the same.

The first thing that hits you in these neighborhoods is the stench of garbage. Picking up trash was part of the mission when the military launched Operation Together Forward back in August. The plan was to kill the bad guys, clean up the streets, and give Iraqis a chance to take their neighborhoods back. In the Sunni Doura neighborhood, the military scored its first success. The insurgents were either killed or chased away, the trash bulldozed, and sure enough, the markets reopened and a sense of normalcy returned. That was August. In September, as soon as U.S. troops left, the trash began to pile up again. Dead bodies piled up too--many of them with holes drilled in their heads. Over the past three months, this has been perhaps Baghdad's deadliest neighborhood.