Iraqistan Out Of Control

Robert Dreyfus

September 07, 2004

Iraqistan Out of Control

Four Americans killed in Anbar over the weekend, two more killed in a deadly mortar barrage, seven more killed in a car bomb attack near Fallujah—the Labor Day weekend brought the total to near 1,000. It's astonishing that this doesn't spell the end of the Bush administration; a year ago I wrote that if Americans were dying at this rate before the election Bush was finished. I was wrong, but only because the media and the Democrats stunningly decided to cooperate in ignoring the news. Iraqis, however, aren't ignoring Iraq.

The fictional government of Iraqistan under Prime Minister Allawi is looking thinner every day. For months, in this space, I've been chronicling the balkanization of Iraq, and over the weekend the New York Times reported on the increasing lack of control by the United States and its puppet Iraqis in city after city. Dexter Filkins, who's actually out there reporting, cites a meeting between a U.S. general and a bunch of tribal sheikhs from Tikrit, Saddam's home town, in which the general threatens the powerless tribal leaders that they wont get U.S. reconstruction aid if Tikrit isn't pacified. No chance of that. Of course, it's not just Tikrit:

In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein.

The calls are rising for the Americans to pull out of even more areas, notably Sadr City, the sprawling neighborhood in eastern Baghdad that is the main base for the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. There, leaders of his Mahdi Army are demanding that American soldiers, except those sent in to do reconstruction work, get out.

Meanwhile, as I've reported before, the so-called elections to ratify the new order in Iraq might just bypass all the cities that oppose it. The Los Angeles Times says:

Iraq remains on course to hold landmark elections in January, but violence could force authorities to exclude hotspots such as the western city of Fallouja from voting, a top U.S. general said here Sunday.

So the people in Fallajuh, Samarra, Ramadi, Tikrit won't get to vote, except with their guns. The LA Times report says that General Metz figures that Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul are pretty much enough:

Still, Metz cautioned that the participation of Iraq's three largest cities - Baghdad, Mosul in the north and Basra in the south - was essential to any election.

But even Baghdad looks pretty hopeless, if the U.S. plans to include the two to three million people who live in Sadr City. Oh well, they can vote the next time.