Afternoon Buzz: Iraq Readies for Civil War

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Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:10:19 -0500 (EST)

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Afternoon Buzz: Iraq Readies for Civil War

 

 

As Bush Continues to Mislead America, Iraqis Prepare for Full Civil War

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/15/MNG6MHOD1T1.DTL

 

 

Ordinary Iraqi families getting ready to fight

They're stockpiling weapons, food and fuel

 

Charles Levinson, Chronicle Foreign Service

 

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

 

 

Baghdad -- Om Hussein, wrapped in her black abaya, lists the contents

of the family's walk-in storage closet: three 175-pound cases of rice,

two 33-pound cases of cooking fat, six cases of canned tomatoes, three

crates of assorted legumes, a one-month supply of drinking water,

frozen chicken livers in the freezer. And in the garage, jerry cans

filled with fuel are piled floor to ceiling.

 

Om Hussein, who was reluctant to give her full name, and her Shiite

family are preparing for war. They've stocked up on food. They bought

a Kalashnikov rifle and a second car -- so that there is space for all

13 members of their extended family should they need to flee in a hurry.

 

" We are afraid of what will happen in the coming days, " she says.

" Maybe there will be a monthlong curfew, or maybe fighting in the

streets will force my family to stay in the house for days at a time. "

 

In the past week, President Bush has tried to assure Americans that

Iraq has stepped back from the brink of civil war. " Iraqis have shown

the world they want a future of freedom and peace, " he told the

Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Monday.

 

Few Iraqis, however, share Bush's view that the crisis has been

averted. They are readying themselves for the worst, fleeing likely

flash points, stockpiling weapons and basic foodstuffs, barricading

their neighborhoods, and drawing lines in the sand delineating Sunni

and Shiite territory.

 

Since the golden dome of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra was

reduced to rubble last month, the country's long-simmering sectarian

feud has flared into the open with unprecedented brutality.

 

In the wake of that attack, a series of sectarian reprisals has left

hundreds of ordinary Iraqis dead and dozens of mosques ransacked.

Daily execution-style killings and car bombings continue. On Sunday,

multiple car bombs killed scores. The bodies of scores more, many

bound and garroted, have been discovered around Baghdad since Monday.

The capital's hospitals overflow with the wounded. Meanwhile, the

country's politicians remain deadlocked in negotiations to form a

government based on the outcome of elections more than three months ago.

 

A recent AP-Ipsos Poll found that an overwhelming majority of

Americans think a civil war is likely in Iraq. Iraqis by and large

share that assessment. The dozen Iraqis interviewed for this article,

Sunnis and Shiites, have bleak expectations. Many are afraid and

increasingly reluctant to see their names or their pictures in print.

 

" There is no security right now, and I don't expect things to get

better, " says Tahrir Aboud Karim, 25, an abstract painter who has laid

down his brushes and taken up arms to defend his largely Sunni

neighborhood against roving Shiite militias. " I'm an artist, so I have

a sense of what people need. When things were peaceful in Iraq, the

people were lacking beauty, so I painted. Now the people need

security, so I have become a soldier. "

 

Every evening, after sunset, Karim joins some 50 young men at

checkpoints around the perimeter of the Al Jihad district in southwest

Baghdad. Makeshift barricades of palm trunks, scavenged razor wire and

rubble have turned this 1,500-home neighborhood into a quasi-fortress.

 

Karim and his band of armed neighborhood watchdogs have maintained an

uneasy calm. Elsewhere, Shiites and Sunnis have become refugees in

their own country, as they flee neighborhoods and outlying villages

where they have found themselves members of a suddenly unwelcome minority.

 

On the other side of Baghdad, more than 50 Shiite families from nearby

villages have turned the classrooms of the Al-Shahid Al-Jazairi

elementary school in the Shiite neighborhood of Shoala into a refugee

camp. They sleep on the school's cracked tile floors, atop

dust-colored mattresses donated by neighbors, and cook with kerosene

camping stoves.

 

Mohammed Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite shopkeeper from the

Sunni-dominated suburb of Abu Ghraib, near the infamous prison, has

taken shelter here. The day after the bombing of the Shiite shrine in

Samarra, he says, he found a notice pasted to the door of his women's

clothing store in the Abu Ghraib market.

 

" We have information that you are engaged in suspicious activities and

have cooperated with suspicious people, " the notice read. " You have 48

hours to leave. " It was signed by a group calling itself the

Mujahedeen Brigades. Hussein collected his family and fled that same day.

 

" Now I don't have anything, " he says. " I had to leave all the goods in

the store, and all my furniture in my home. It's not safe to go back

to get them. "

 

At least 10 other Shiite families fled Abu Ghraib that same day, he

says. Hussein, once content to live among Sunnis, is now vowing to

fight his erstwhile neighbors. " I don't have the money to buy guns,

but if they try to attack me again, I will fight even if I have to use

stones, " he says.

 

Such stories can be found on both sides of the Shiite-Sunni divide, as

the respective sects consolidate their territory and expel potential

enemies. Until last week, Abu Abdallah lived in Diwaniya, a largely

Shiite provincial capital south of Baghdad. Abdallah, a Sunni, fled

when Shiite militias loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

began attacking the city's Sunni residents.

 

" They raided our mosque, and killed or kidnapped many of the

worshipers and guards, " he says. " They started to raid our homes and

kidnapped whole families at random. "

 

The 36-year-old father of two fled Diwaniya with his family and the

clothes on their backs. They moved in with relatives in the west

Baghdad neighborhood of Baya. Once a mixed neighborhood, Baya is

increasingly a Sunni-only domain.

 

" Anyone who says this war has a solution is wrong, " says Abdallah, his

family's recent ordeal etched in sunken, blood shot eyes. " This is

truly a civil war now. There is only hatred, envy and a blood-thirst

for revenge. "

 

The migration to safer neighborhoods and provinces has upended

property values across Iraq. Real estate prices in Baghdad have

plummeted, while rents in onetime backwaters such as Nasiriya have

skyrocketed. For many Shiites, that relatively calm southern city has

become a sought-after haven from the sectarian bloodshed roiling

Baghdad and central Iraq.

 

" You could buy a house in Nasiriya for $1,500 before the war, " says

Hussein Ali, a real estate broker in Baghdad. " That same house today

is worth between $50,000 and $60,000 because now, especially after the

Samarra bombings, people are desperate to live someplace safe. "

 

Meanwhile, Iraqis are stockpiling arms, preparing to defend themselves

in the event of a full-scale civil war. Arms dealers say that the

supplies of guns for sale -- once as common as date trees and kebab

stands -- have largely dried up.

 

" After the Samarra bombings, the demand for guns went way up, and the

supply became very low, " says a gun dealer in Baya, speaking

anonymously out of fear for his safety.

 

Weapons prices have skyrocketed. A used Kalashnikov that sold for $100

before the Samarra bombing now sells for $150. The price for a 9mm

Browning handgun has gone up from $800 to $1,200.

 

The hobbling arms dealer stands behind the counter of his gun repair

shop polishing the barrel of a Russian-made Makarov pistol. His

succinct appraisal of the Iraqi weapons market suggests what may lie

ahead:

 

" This is not the time to sell guns, only to buy guns. "