Sliding towards anarchy · Looting of hospitals and homes · Mob murders leading cleric · Fall of Kirkuk alarms Turkey Julian Borger in Washington and Nicholas Watt Friday April 11, 2003 Iraq's slide into violent anarchy will trigger a humanitarian disaster if US and British troops are unable to fill the power vacuum and reassert order quickly, UN and other aid officials warned yesterday. The warning came as looting in Baghdad spread from government buildings to hospitals, embassies and private businesses, and the growing lawlessness in the capital prevented the few remaining aid workers there from delivering badly needed medical supplies and water to hospitals. Adding to the sense of chaos, a suicide bomber blew himself up on the east bank of the river Tigris, killing one marine and severely injuring three others who were manning a checkpoint. A wave of lawlessness across the country illustrated the potential for the unravelling situation to turn a successful military campaign into postwar disaster in a matter of days as a result of the total collapse of government services. "From what we have seen in the reports, it appears there is no functioning government in Iraq at the moment," the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said. "We have also seen scenes of looting, and obviously law and order must be a major concern." In the central Iraqi town of Najaf, a Shia cleric recently returned from exile in London was murdered by a mob in an attack possibly instigated by Saddam supporters among the population. With US forces focused on taking on remaining pro-Saddam strongholds in the northern cities of Tikrit and Mosul, Kurdish militiamen took the lead in storming a third, Kirkuk, with support from a few score US special forces troops. The fall of Kirkuk alarmed the Turkish government which has presented itself as the guarantor for the security of the city's minority Turkoman population. Washington assured Ankara that it would take control of Kirkuk and persuade the Kurdish peshmerga fighters to leave, and a battalion of US paratroopers and special forces was sent into the city in an attempt to ease the Kurds out. The Pentagon yesterday described the situation as "fluid". Looting was reported to have eased in Basra yesterday, but that may have been because there was little of value left to steal from former government buildings. Residents complained to journalists that armed gangs were getting the upper hand in the southern city and that British troops were doing little to control the situation. In Baghdad two humanitarian organisations that had operated throughout the war, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins sans Frontières, said their work had been hobbled by the general lawlessness. MSF halted its work in Baghdad after two of its workers went missing. Amanda Williamson, a Red Cross spokeswoman, said the organisation had suspended its work in the capital after a Canadian employee was killed. "It's not possible to distribute medical and surgical supplies or drinking water to the hospitals as we had wanted to. The situation is chaotic and very insecure," Ms Williamson said, arguing that US troops in the city could do more to help. "At this stage they could at least do everything possible to protect vital civilian infrastructure, like hospitals and the water supply." The intensifying problem of lawlessness was raised yesterday at the war cabinet in London. The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told cabinet colleagues that police officers would be sent to Basra. But only two officers from the Ministry of Defence police will be sent to Iraq's second city to advise British forces. This prompted criticism that Britain is responding to the immediate crisis rather than implementing well-ordered plans. Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said: "This is almost laughable. The government appears to be paying lip service to a dangerous situation. If they were to send 200 to 300 MoD police officers to Basra they would be able to start patrols, which would be effective." The decision was announced as Mr Hoon told the war cabinet of his grave concern at the collapse of law and order. Cabinet anxieties were voiced in public by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and the international development secretary, Clare Short, in consecutive statements to the House of Commons. Ms Short warned of "breakdown of law and order", adding: "There are reports of a hospital being looted and individuals attacked and in some cases raped ... in Basra some water plants have been looted and rendered unserviceable." At the Pentagon, an official said he knew of no plans to move civilian or military police to Baghdad in the immediate future. He said the US troops would become a "stabilisation force", not a police force. Major-General Stanley McChrystal said the continuing fighting in Baghdad and the threat of suicide bomb attacks made it difficult to combat looting. "You can't do everything at once," he said. "Clearly the focus right now has got to be getting the death squads and Special Republican Guard out of the city ... Looting is a major problem but it is not a major threat." Alex Renton, an Oxfam spokesman, said: "We're waiting on four borders in order to get in there ... what we need now is a serious effort made to bring this breakdown in law and order under control. "There is a duty under international law to provide security and law and order to civilians." http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,934559,00.html
The Guardian has ummm....a bias. A regime collapse and its aftermath in a formerly totalitarian country with 25 million people of various tribes has many facets. The Guardian only sees one facet however, and ignores the others. Get on the first flight over to Damascus and hop a camel to Baghdad and help out msfe! Teach them some German efficiency and order!
This isn't directly aimed at Cubano because at least he sees that the Iraqis are indeed benefiting. However, by listing other countries he's (inadvertently?) echoing those who similarly charge that by "only" going into Iraq, the US is only showing what an evil, hypocritical nation it really is. Utter lunacy. Bill Gates gives billions every year to charity. Oops, he didn't give to ALL the charities - damn hypocrite! He's a total asshole! A local orphanage has reached its limit and cannot take in any more abandoned infants. - Hypocrites! Villains! The checkout girl at the local Safeway didn't smile at me today.- Goddamn bitch! I knew she's really just a stuck-up slut! All my friends got a tax refund this year, but I owed. - Freakin' IRS is out to get me. Etc., etc., etc. The US cannot be all things to all people. Yes, we pick and choose our fights. WE HAVE TO. Our choices are thus confined to those conflicts we feel are necessary for our national security. We have neither the resources nor the will to do otherwise. Imagine if the US did try to remove all the world's dictators and anything we construed as evil. The same people who call us hypocrites today for not doing so would be calling us imperialists should we attempt it.
i may regret jumping in this, but.... -> i was against the war. still am; think the 'reasons' for it are a lame justification for (fill in the blank) and didn't want to put americans lives on the line for something that didn't directly affect america. my fill in the blank answer is "bush's advisors told him we need to fix the economy so you can get re-elected, and most of the time there's a war, the market goes up". -> please don't take "anti-war" as "anti-troops" or "pro-saddam". i know people who were on the next wave to go over there, and have hoped that all americans can return safely. people who were anti-troops during vietnam (as opposed to anti-war) are terrible. -> i'm glad saddam is out of power. i wish all tyrants / torturing dictators were out of power. i don't have the right answer on how to accomplish this without either being a bully / risking american lives. -> i was FOR the war in bush round 1, because i felt the loss of oil and potential for future aggressions to countries such as saudi arabia, which we knew existed from the kuwaiti invasion, were too great to our country's economic position. i also felt that NOT taking out saddam was the wrong thing to do; in other words, we stopped too soon. and we gave too many signs to others that we'd help them overthrow saddam (ie. kurds) and we backed out. i know people died in that war, but if you go to war, you're either in or not. -> if i was in charge? rather than go after iraq, i'd have spent tons and tons to go after bin laden and al-qaeda associated groups. and used THAT as the public platform... and to answer the unasked question: i held my nose and voted for gore last time (no excuses RE: florida; if he'd won his *home state*, he'd have won the election. and i'm glad he WASN'T in charge after 9/11). i would have voted for mccain if it was gore v. mccain. so there ya go. i hope that this offers a view on why one person didn't agree with the war.
msfe, I'm glad to see that right on schedule you are now whinging about something new (looting) since the "quagmire" is now so, oh pase. And when the looting stops I will expect you to trundle along to a new fashionble critique. keep squirming please, you wouldn't want to dissapoint me now!
Hmmm...interesting...so a nation doesn't have the right to take action to protect itself. Fascinating. Please continue.
What does the UN charter have to do with this? How does it abrogate each nation's sovereign authority to defend itself?
While we're on the subject of looting (as posted on another thread, but highly relevant here): Many of the looters appear to have been well aware of exactly who and what they were looting: John Burns in Baghdad, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/i...nt&position=top