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I believe that Zalmay Khalilzad is painting a bit overly rosy a picture, as other details in this article suggest. However, it is good to see that Abou al-Farouq was captured on a tip from residents. Muslim-on-Muslim violence always arouses a disgust with the mujahedin that violence against non-Muslims does not arouse, and it may be that he found his former protectors turning on him after the destruction of the Golden Mosque. From AP:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces announced the capture of a senior al-Qaida in Iraq figure as they sought to deflect criticism of their handling of a surge of sectarian violence. The U.S. ambassador said the risk of civil war from last week's crisis was over.
Wow, that's terrific. Just like that, civil war averted. Ancient hostilities smoothed over. I feel so much better.
In Tikrit Tuesday, a bomb exploded at the mosque where Saddam Hussein's father is buried in northern Iraqi, police said....Meanwhile, violence throughout Iraq killed 36 people Monday, as fierce fighting broke out between Iraqi commandos and insurgents southeast of the capital. But sectarian clashes have declined sharply since the bloodletting that followed the destruction of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, and Baghdad residents returned to their jobs after three days of a government-imposed curfew....
"That crisis is over," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declared.
"I think the country came to the brink of a civil war, but the Iraqis decided that they didn't want to go down that path, and came together," the ambassador told CNN. "Clearly the terrorists who plotted that attack wanted to provoke a civil war. It looked quite dangerous in the initial 48 hours, but I believe that the Iraqis decided to come together."...
The captured al-Qaida figure was identified as Abou al-Farouq, a Syrian who financed and coordinated groups working for Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, according to an Interior Ministry officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.
Acting on a tip from residents, members of the Interior Ministry's Wolf Brigade captured al-Farouq with five other followers of al-Zarqawi near Bakr, about 100 miles west of Baghdad, the ministry officer said....
Sunni leaders accused the Shiite-dominated police and army of standing by as Shiite militiamen sprayed their mosques with machine-gun fire and took over some of them.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that more than 1,300 Iraqis were killed in the violence following the Samarra shrine attack, according to Baghdad's main morgue, far higher than previously reported. Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, an official with the Interior Ministry, which collects statistics from police nationwide, put the figure Tuesday at 216.
The Defense Ministry said Monday that a curfew in Baghdad and three surrounding provinces curtailed the violence....
Interior Ministry commandos fought a three-hour gunbattle with Sunni-led insurgents near Nahrawan, about 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, after about 15 Shiite families were driven from their homes in the nearby village of Saidat, police said. At least eight commandos and five insurgents were killed in the fighting, which also injured six commandos and four civilians, police said.
The body of an official with Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim political group was delivered to the Health Ministry morgue Monday with signs of torture, his party said. Waad Jassim al-Ani, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was seized from his home Saturday by an unspecified "security agency," the party said. Sunni leaders accuse Iraq's Shiite-led Interior Ministry of running death squads that target them — a charge denied by the ministry.
Posted by Robert at February 28, 2006 4:07 AM
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"The U.S. ambassador said the risk of civil war from last week's crisis was over."
-- from the article above
The risk of "civil war" is over. For 1300 years the Sunnis have been at the throats of the Shi'a, but now that the American troops are there, and the American ambassador, and American money and all sorts of other stuff, the "civil war" is over. And if we can tamp down what others might have called a deep and abidinig resentment by the Shi'a for what they have enduredd, not only during the last decade under Saddam Hussein's thinly-disguised Sunni despotism (with an admixture of Shi'a and even Kurdish and Christian Ba'athists), but during the entire history of modern Iraq (see Gertrude Bell on the Shi'a revolt), and not only during the entire history of modern Iraq but during the entire history of Islam (see the Encyclopedia of Islam, passim), then why can't those American wonder-workers do it elsewhere?
Why, for example, do we not send Americans to Yemen, where the country is split almost evenly between Sunni and Shi'a, so as to bring them together, and thus bring "stability" to Yemen? And why not do the same thing in Saudi Arabia, so the Wahhhabis need not worry overmuch about the several hundred thousand Shi'a living in the Eastern Province of al-Hasa, near Dammam and Dhahran and all that oil? And had the Americans cared enough, they could have sent some International Crisis Group, some Kennedy-School messianic fixers-of-the-world, some Amnesty-International-cum-thisandthat which might, in Pakistan, have prevented all the Sunni attacks on Shi'a over the past few decades. They might have prevented the Sunni Taliban regime from massacring Shi'a Hazaras. They might right now stop off in Bahrain to help the Sunni ruler from any possibility of a revolt by his largely-Shi'a subjects. And don't forget how very much it is in the American interest to make sure that Hezbollah and the Sunnis of Lebanon get along swimmingly together. Why, if they fought with each other, that might make the Christians of Lebanon able to regain some of their leverage and power -- and that would never do, would it? That would practically "destabilize" Lebanon, and wasn't it David Satterfield of our very own State Department who sat in, benignly, as that Treaty of Taif, that diktat, was forced on the Lebanese Christians by the Syrians and especially the Saudis, and they were forced for the first time to declare that Lebanon is an "Arab nation" (something every Christian statesman, whether Maronite like Chamoun or Greek Orthodox like the greatest of them, Charles Malik, had always resisted).
Why don't we, wonder-workers that we are, make the Arab and Muslim world just as prosperous, stable, and secure as it might be, so that its inhabitants can, in that secure and stable environment, pursue the things that bring their lives the deepest meanig, and to promote those same things throughout the world.
What might those things be?
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at February 28, 2006 9:10 AM
I'm sick to death of hearing that these guys have been arrested. What good does that do? They're not going to talk, and more than likely will start whining that their civil rights are being violated. Are car bombs and roadside bombs traffic violations? Is beheading littering? Show me a picture of these pieces of garbage in the middle of the street full of bullet holes, then I'll be impressed.
Posted by: Balrog at February 28, 2006 9:32 AM
This is un realated to the above, but, i can see everyone i getting pretty heated about these issues.
So, if you want to take some time out to relax, why not enter my drawing competiton at http://spaces.msn.com/jacksplaice/
The idea is to draw a picture of a Fictional Character ive decided to name Mohammed.
Good day
Posted by: jack at February 28, 2006 10:08 AM
Balrog-
Remember, bullet ridden Mohammedan bodies are just further evidence of our unwarranted war against Islam. We wouldn't want them to get mad at us, would we? Makes better press to show them in Gitmo getting served FrootLoops for breakfast and treated like old people in a retirement home.
Posted by: Eisenhund at February 28, 2006 3:52 PM
"That crisis is over," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declared.
Excellent job! As long as we've declared the civil war over in Iraq, can we also declare "victory" and get the h*ll out of there?
Posted by: special_guest at February 28, 2006 6:08 PM
Famous Last Word candidate of the new millennium:
"The Crisis Is Over!"
Get our ambassador a job writing dialogue for horror movies.
He's right up there with:
"That's the last of the zombies."
"I think the monster's dead."
"We're all safe now."
"It's locked out!"
"Relax, baby."
How soon before this captured al-Qaedi killer gets his own useless Saddam show trial, is allowed to propagandize through al-Jizeera for months, and finally escapes from the poorly-guarded Muslim prison they send him to for 6-10 years?
Posted by: profitsbeard at February 28, 2006 9:41 PM
>>> The captured al-Qaida figure was identified as Abou al-Farouq, a Syrian who financed and coordinated groups working for Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
The experts on cable news earlier today had never heard of this guy, and yet he's supposed to be Zarqawi's right hand man of sorts. It seems that about two dozen "right hand men" have been captured, but never Zarqawi himself. Is the Interior Ministry making this up, or glorifying another small fish capture, to distract from the
obvious and dire crisis that confronts Iraq these days?
at February 28, 2006 10:32 PM
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