[Kzin]

In Iraqi Divide, Echoes of Bosnia for U.S. Troops
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

JURF AS-SAKHR, Iraq — As Lt. Col. Patrick Donahoe scans the horizon through the mud-splattered, inch-thick windows of his armored Humvee, he can almost see Bosnia through the palm trees.

It is not there yet, Colonel Donahoe said, but the communal hatred he has witnessed in this area of Iraq, the blindingly ignorant things people say, the pulling apart of Shiite and Sunni towns that were once tightly intertwined are all reminiscent of what he saw years ago as a young Army captain on a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia.

"You talk to people here and it's literally the same conversations I heard in Bosnia," Colonel Donahoe said. "I had a police colonel tell me the other day that all the people in Jurf," a predominantly Sunni town, "are evil, including the children."

Jurf as-Sakhr, also known as Jurf, is 40 miles south of Baghdad. It is a community of crumbly dirt farms and dilapidated weapons factories and boys selling fluffy white chickens alongside the road. It sits right on a sectarian fault line that in the past few months has cracked wide open, and Colonel Donahoe is now back to playing peacekeeper.

The work is emblematic of a new role for the American soldier in Iraq, because as the threat has shifted, so has the mission. Sectarian violence is killing more people and destabilizing Iraq more than the antigovernment insurgency ever did. In response, American commanders, especially those in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas like Jurf, are throwing their armor, troops and money directly into the divide, trying to keep Iraq from violently partitioning the way Bosnia did.

What complicates their new mission is that the insurgency is far from over. It keeps mutating, finding new recruits and even new weapons; one soldier in Jurf was recently shot in the arm by an arrow.

Commanders have to simultaneously wage war and push peace, and Colonel Donahoe, along with other American officials, said the outcome of the entire American enterprise might hinge on how well they pulled off this balancing act.

"This is the critical year," Colonel Donahoe said. "If we don't turn things around, if we don't get the Shiites and Sunnis to stop killing each other, I'm not sure there's much else we can do."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/wo...cekeeping.html

[Pearl Campbell]

[Kzin]

Just south of Jurf is Hamiya, a mostly Shiite farming town that never enjoyed Jurf's whiff of privilege. While Jurf farmers drove tractors, Hamiya farmers swung hoes, and in an atmosphere of rising sectarian tensions, these deep-seated class rivalries eventually exploded. South of Hamiya are the almost purely Shiite towns of Musayyib and Sedda.

By the time the battalion arrived in December, insurgents had established an island hideaway near Jurf on a swampy spit of land between the Euphrates River and an irrigation canal. They stashed thousands of artillery shells there and ran a clandestine court, where insurgent judges would try, torture and execute collaborators, the Iraqi police said. Mutilated bodies were often found bobbing in the swamps.

Colonel Donahoe's soldiers soon discovered wires from roadside bombs snaking back to the island. On Jan. 10, they invaded, blowing up homes and unearthing an enormous weapons cache, though the insurgents apparently caught wind of the operation because by the time the tanks rumbled ashore, they had vanished. The bomb attacks continued, and in February, soldiers in a Bradley fighting vehicle fired on two suspects who they said tried to blow up a convoy and took off running, right past a house.

When the soldiers arrived at the house, the colonel said, a woman was screaming in the driveway, waving the severed leg of her daughter. The girl had been hit by an American shell and bled to death in front of the soldiers.

The troops have also been enmeshed in strange local dynamics. A few weeks ago, a schoolgirl came to them with an armload of books that included a chemical weapons training manual. She led the soldiers to her father, a former Iraqi Army colonel suspected of being an insurgent. After the soldiers detained him, they gave the girl a chocolate bar.

They have also gone on raids with local security forces. But this, too, has its risks.

One night last month, American troops helped police officers from Hamiya, the working-class Shiite town, aggressively round up 10 men, all Sunnis, from Jurf.

"I left thinking, wait a sec, were we just part of some sort of sectarian revenge?" the colonel said.

As things quieted down with the Sunnis, more problems emerged with the Shiites. Shiite-led police forces began detaining Sunnis and refusing to release them even after American commanders concluded they were innocent.

Yassir Naameh Naoufel, a Sunni elder in Jurf, said Sunnis could no longer visit Musayyib, a Shiite town. "If we do, we might disappear," he said.

Meanwhile, the Mahdi Army, a force of armed men loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has been pushing into Musayyib, introducing a harsh brand of Islamic law.

According to Staff Sgt. Joseph Schicker, a psychological operations soldier, Mahdi militiamen recently threw battery acid on a woman whose ankles were showing and dragged a man accused of being gay through the streets.

Colonel Donahoe draws on the Balkans for an easy metaphor.

"Moktada is like Milosevic," he said, referring to the former Serbian leader. "He'll do anything to stay in power."

Our buddy.

[teuf]

It keeps mutating, finding new recruits and even new weapons; one soldier in Jurf was recently shot in the arm by an arrow.

no one ever claimed they've become civilized...

[Jauhkar]

[Pearl Campbell]

And who led us into Bosnia, Kzin?

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by Pearl Campbell

And who led us into Bosnia, Kzin?

Those NATO guys who keep bitching about our treaty obligations?

[teuf]

Originally Posted by Pearl Campbell

And who led us into Bosnia, Kzin?

man, i'm thinking real hard here... i can't remember a name off the top of my head, but i'm sure it's the same person that was real hardcore about no-fly zones and import/export restrictions on iraq and doing nothing about him killing thousands of his own people...

[Cybren]

Why does no one remember rambo was the badguy in the first movie?

[teuf]

Originally Posted by Cybren

Why does no one remember rambo was the badguy in the first movie?

i remember.

[Cybren]

well, the sheriff was the bad guy but rambo was still killing people

[teuf]

Originally Posted by Cybren

well, the sheriff was the bad guy but rambo was still killing people

he didn't have to.

he could have just slipped away witout killing people, but he was a brain washed, blood thirsty killer. it was only natural that a veteran act brashly like that.

none of the military is to be trusted.

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by Cybren

well, the sheriff was the bad guy but rambo was still killing people

The bad guy in First Blood was "The Man" as represented by the sheriff.