Juan Cole - 09/13/05

Tal Afar as Ethnic Civil War

Much of the American press has reported the Tal Afar campaign as a strike by the new Iraqi Army, supported by US troops, against foreign infiltrators in the largely Turkmen city of 200,000.

As Jonathan Finer makes clear in the Washington Post, however, the operation looks different if we know some details. The "Iraqi Army" leading the assault turns out to be mainly the Peshmerga or Kurdish ethnic militia. Along for the ride are local Turkmen Shiites who are being used as informers and for the purpose of identifying Sunni Turkmen they think are involved in the guerrilla movement (apparently they sometimes make false charge to settle scores). Tal Afar was 70 percent Sunni Turkmen and 30 percent Shiite Turkmen. The Sunni Turkmen had thrown in with Saddam, and some more recently had turned to radical Islam. The Shiite Turkmen lived in fear of their lives.

No Comments: Raed

In a sad sign of the times, Raed Jarrar and friends, the Iraqi bloggers, have closed their comment section. They were alarmed by the recent launching of a lawsuit against a site for reader comments at the web page. They were also alarmed by a more draconian form of the phenomenon. What, they ask, would happen if one of the commenters made deep criticism of the US troop presence. They fear the new Iraqi government might hold them accountable if a commenter supports the guerrilla movement (Raed's brother was already detained for reader comments that appeared at his blog.)