Ashoura in Karbala and Najaf, Iraq, 2007.  (01/31/07)

Several days ago a significant "battle" occurred in Iraq near Karbala and Najaf at the beginning of the holiest celebration in the Shiite Muslim's calendar known as Ashoura, which honors the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Mohammad.  According to reports about the firefight, which lasted for something like twelve hours, the leader of the insurgents claimed to be Imam Hussein returned from the grave to lead Iraqis to victory against the occupiers.  His plan was to attack pilgrims traveling to the holy sites in Karbala and Najaf, perhaps to assassinate prominent Shiite leaders, especially Ayatollah al-Sustani, and thereby deepen the sectarian violence now raging in Baghdad.  This at least is what Iraqi security forces have reported as justification for attacking the camp of the insurgents.  There probably isn't any reason to doubt the accuracy or validity of the claims put forth here; however, there is one aspect of the situation that raises at least one serious reservation.  In the course of the battle 200 or 300 insurgents were killed.  Coalition forces (American and Iraqi) lost 2 and 8 people respectively during the battle.  With a casualty ratio of one to twenty or thirty, several things must be true--that is, the insurgents must have been incredibly inept fighters, they must have been vastly out-manned by Iraqi and American forces, they must have been incredibly unlucky, they must have been cursed and damned by Allah, etc.

Some curious details concerning the camp of the insurgents have surfaced.  There were apparently a fairly large number of women and children in the camp.  That fact has already been explained by saying that the insurgents were disguised as pilgrims to make it easier for them to escape detection as evildoers when they attempted to infiltrate the holy sites in Karbala and Najaf.  A fallback position here, of course, is that the evildoers intended to use the women and children as human shields.  Everyone already knows they do that every chance they get.  It has also been reported that the insurgents were heavily armed and had dug themselves into positions in the palm grove where they were hiding.  One wonders how, if the evildoers were so well armed and fortified, the usually inept Iraqi security forces were able to inflict such heavy casualties on them while suffering virtually none themselves.  Earlier in the year there were numerous reports of evildoers in Baghdad, kidnappers usually, who were disguised as security personnel.  Every time I heard that, since most people acknowledge the the Iraq units are heavily infiltrated by bad guys and sectarian militiamen, I wondered why the perpetrators of atrocity were said to be "disguised."  It seems just as likely they weren't but were actual security forces doing the evil.  How embarrassing to the US would it be if it turns out we have trained the Iraqi militias that oppose us to fight us instead of fighting the evildoers.  Wait--maybe we are the evildoers and the Iraqis actually have it right.

What puts me in this frame of mind, however, goes back to the disparity in the casualty figures--that and nothing else.  In the war against native Americans in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries, a number of significant "battles" occurred with widely differing casualty figures between natives and US military forces.  The only exception was at Little Big Horn.  At Sand Creek, Colorado, for instance, in 1864, a camp of about 1200 Cheyenne and Arapahoe were attacked by the Colorado Volunteers.  In four hours 800 native Americans were slaughtered.  The Volunteers did not suffer a single injury.  This miraculous result occurred because the native Americans, mostly women, children, and elderly men, were completely unarmed.  They had surrendered to the US Army three weeks before the attack and had given up their weapons in exchange for protection from the white population of Colorado.  Did not work out too well for the Indians but was perceived as a glorious victory for the Volunteers.  The account of the incident is in the Congressional Record for the 38th Congress (second session), which held a joint House and Senate hearing into the Massacre at Sand Creek.  No one on the US side was punished and the natives escaped without penalty as well since most of them were dead by the time the hearings were held.  Fortunately for me, my great grandparents somehow survived.

A possible scenario: a contingent of Iraqi security forces discover a camp of Shi'a pilgrims on their way to Karbala for Ashoura.  The security forces are heavily infiltrated by Sunni militiamen.  They claim they were attacked and call-in reinforcements from the US military.  The Sunnis shoot down a Black Hawk, accounting for the 2 US casualties.  Friendly fire kills 8 Iraqis.  The US takes out 200 to 300 unarmed Shiite pilgrims.  Glorious victory for joint US/Iraqi forces in the war against terrorists.  Ayatollah al-Sustani saved from assassination by the Liberators of Iraq.  Long live the occupation of Iraq.  Another one of Dick Cheney's "enormous successes."

I have no proof any of this is remotely true but, if in two or three weeks or months, a slightly different spin on these events surfaces, don't tell me no one anticipated the possibility.

The ex-commander in Iraq, General Casey, said yesterday that as few as half the number of troops in the surge are actually necessary to quell the sectarian violence in Baghdad and that it will take only a few weeks or months to accomplish.  If that is the case(y), why did Bush wait a year to get cracking on the problem?  The mosque in Summara went down last February and has been cited repeatedly as the single most significant event fueling the sectarian violence.  If the problem of the Iraqi civil war is so easy to fix, why did the commander in charge when it happened, when it spiraled out of control, not do anything then to fix the problem.  Maybe Casey is showing us now just how incompetent he really is.