Don't Miss Today's Juan Cole: "No Government and 16 Dead"

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No Government and 16 Dead

Juan Cole, Informed Comment

Monday, March 28, 2005

US Generals revealed on Sunday < http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200503/s1332344.htm > that a) guerrillas in Iraq are able to keep the number of attacks at about 60 a day and b) that the proportion of fighters that is foreign jihadis has increased somewhat in the past few months. (The proportion seems to have been about 5 percent through last fall). The CIA is worried that the jihadis are getting training in Iraq that will allow them to contribute to destabilizing the Middle East and might impel them to attack the United States, as the veterans of the Reagan Afghanistan Jihad did.

By the way, if there are 60 attacks a day, why do I only read about 7 or 8 of them?

A different kind of violence < http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=617800 >, social violence, broke out on Sunday. About 50 building guards demonstrated outside the ministry of Science and Technology, protesting that they had not been paid their salaries in full. Bodyguards for the minister, Rashad Mandan Omar, shot into the crowd and killed one. Generally, I'd say you want to avoid killing the people who guard your building if you are a cabinet minister in Iraq (many ministers have had assassination attempts on their lives). In fact, I'd say if you made sure anyone was paid, it should be the guards outside your building. (Does this mean the Iraqi government is broke, having been badly hurt by oil pipeline sabotage?)

This incident shows how horrible and jumpy the atmosphere is in Iraq.
Guerrillas killed 16 persons in Iraq on Sunday < http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/fo
cusoniraq/2005/March/focusoniraq_March134.xml§ion=focuso ... > , including three members of the Badr Corps in a drive-by shooting at Baquba. The Badr Corps is the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite party that is one of two big winners in the recent parliamentary elections. Badr itself ran on the United Iraqi Alliance slate as a political party, the Badr Organization.

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