The Coming Siege and Destruction of Mosul

Breaking News:
Iranean President Ahmadinejad to visit Baghdad on March 2

Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to meet Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani and PM Nouri Maliki during his two-day visit, which is scheduled to begin on March 2.

The visit comes as Iran postponed talks with the US on Iraqi security.  

“Pacifying” Mosul

“When I hear anyone talk of Culture, I reach for my revolver.”
Hermann Goering (1893-1946)

In the Orwellian world of the United States military, when a killing spree in Mesapotamia is embarked upon, it is called an “Iraq Pacification Operation”. There have been hundreds of these (I abandoned counting at three hundred and eighty, with numerous more to go.)

Each ‘pacification’ has a name which brings a glimpse into a very strange mindset: “Operation Devil Thrust”, “Operation Terminator”, “Operation Scorpion Sting“, “Operation Sidewinder”, “Operation Roaring Tiger”, “Operation All American Tiger”, “Operation Panther Squeeze”, “Operation Warhorse Whirlwind”, “Operation Resolute Sword”, “Operation Wolverine Feast”, “Operation Arrowhead Ripper”, “Operations ‘Geronimo Strike’, ‘Rat Trap’ and ‘Grizzly Forced Entry‘”. (Source: Global Security)  

Having “pacified” Iraqis into the grave, from Abu Ghraib to Falluja, from Ramadi to Tel Afar, with numerous other murderous stop offs across the land of Abraham, the crusading Christian soldiers are moving onwards to “cleanse” Mosul. That it was the puppet “Prime Minister”, Nuri Al Maliki who used the expression is as inconsequential as he is – his orders come from the pacifiers and their masters in Washington.

In words and deeds, happenings in Iraq are chillingly redolent of Nazi Germany. Neighbourhoods walled in and “cleansed” of Sunnis, others of Shias, Christians and Iraq’s richness of minorities … people who have lived together and inter-married since time immemorial. The distinctions were imposed with the incoming tanks and troops – divide and rule writ large. In Falluja, Goebbel’s ghost walks tall. The residents even have their own ‘identifying arm patch’ to prove it. And it has certainly been cleansed, in uncountable thousands – exactly how many unknown, since in the words of General Tommy Franks it is not “productive” to count Iraqi deaths.

So how is Mosul to be purified? The most ethnically diverse city in Iraq, consisting of Arabs, Syriacs, Kurds, Armenians, Turcomans, Jews, Christians, Yazedis, Muslims and a trading centre since the sixth century BC. Who will draw the short straw? Their slaughter justified in a search, of course, for “Al Qaeda” with the innocents “a mistake”, “regrettable” or “collateral damage”. Americas military planners have become the modern day equivalent of the child who repeatedly cried “wolf’, they continually justify massacre by crying “Al Qaeda. In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler, referred to the ‘”racketeering” of the “military gang”. He described his military career as a: “… muscle man for big business, Wall Street and the bankers”. In Mosul’s case, surrounded by and floating on oil, the “muscle” is for Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobile…

The pastoral Yazedis have already been subject to a cleansing last August, blamed of course on suicide bombers from “Al Qaeda”, who presumably, thoughtfully, left identification amongst their and others body parts – similar to the two “Down’s syndrome” women, who detonated bombs in two pet markets two weeks ago.

This article was written by Felicity Arbuthnot, a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary, “Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq” and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.)

Please also see:
No Attack on Mosul!
An Emergency Statement of Intellectuals and Activists – 05 February 2008

How did we get there?

‘We live in chaos’

Iraq’s third-largest city looks like Baghdad did a year ago. U.S. soldiers drive armored Humvees and tanks through a decimated and dusty landscape. Burned-out cars sit on the street corners, and trash and chunks of concrete litter the medians and the gutters. Poor people from the countryside have flooded the city, but the streets and sidewalks are mostly deserted.

U.S. officials say that al-Qaida in Iraq and other terrorist groups have a significant presence in the city and that Mosul is a gathering point for foreign fighters coming across the border from nearby Syria.

Gunmen killed five U.S. soldiers during a firefight after an improvised explosive device attack on their Humvee, and in the past week, 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of explosives in an insurgent weapons cache exploded, killing 60 people and ripping a huge crater in the city. The next day, a suicide bomber killed the police chief at the blast site.

Terrorists aren’t Mosul’s only problem. The city’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs detest each other, and the Arabs distrust the city’s Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen minorities.

Although 60 percent of Mosul’s population of 1.8 million is Sunni, three-quarters of the provincial government is Kurdish, and the Arabs suspect the Kurds of wanting to take over the city.

“We live in chaos,” said Sheik Fawwaz al Jarba, a former member of the Shiite alliance in Iraq’s central government. He spoke from Baghdad because Sunni insurgents blew up his house in Mosul.