Another Iraqi Weblog

Posted with the same caveat as This Modern World gave. (It’s the inter­net, ergo, it could be writ­ten by some guy in Topeka, Kansas, and not by a woman in Bagh­dad, though it’s pretty detailed and seems real­is­tic.) One of the most wor­ry­ing things about the cur­rent cat­a­strophic state of Iraq is the rise in Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism, cur­rently coor­di­nated by The Supreme Coun­cil for the Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq:

The Supreme Coun­cil for the Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq (SCIRI- but I prefer ‘SCAREY’) was estab­lished in 1982 in Tehran. Its main goal is to import the con­cept of the “Islamic Revolution” from Iran to Iraq. In other words, they believe that Iraq should be a theoc­racy led by Shi’a Mul­lahs. Abdul Aziz Al-​Hakim, the deputy leader of SCIRI, is a part of the nine-​member rotat­ing pres­i­dency and will soon have a go at ruling Iraq.

The SCIRI would like to give the impres­sion that they have the full sup­port of all Shi’a Mus­lims in Iraq. The truth is that many Shi’a Mus­lims are ter­ri­fied of them and of the con­se­quences of having them as a ruling power. Al-​Hakim was respon­si­ble for tor­tur­ing and exe­cut­ing Iraqi POWs in Iran all through the Iran-​Iraq war and after. Should SCIRI govern Iraq, I imag­ine the first step would be to open the bor­ders with Iran and unite the two coun­tries. Bush can then stop refer­ring to the two coun­tries as a part of his infa­mous ‘Axis of Evil’ and can just begin call­ing us the ‘Big Lump of Evil and Bad North Korea’ (which seems more in accord with his lim­ited lin­guis­tic abilities).

Ever since enter­ing Iraq, Al-​Hakim has been black­mail­ing the CPA [the Coali­tion Provin­cial Author­ity] in Bagh­dad with his ‘major Shi’a following’. He entered Iraq escorted by ‘Jaysh Badir’ or ‘Badir’s Army’. This ‘army’ is com­posed of thou­sands of Iraqi extrem­ists led by Iran­ian extrem­ists and trained in Iran. All through the war, they were lurk­ing on the border, wait­ing for a chance to slip inside. In Bagh­dad, and the south, they have been a source of terror and anx­i­ety to Sunnis, Shi’a and Chris­tians alike. They, and some of their fol­low­ers, were respon­si­ble for a large por­tion of the loot­ing and the burn­ing (you’d think they were going to get recon­struc­tion contracts…). They were also respon­si­ble for hun­dreds of reli­gious and polit­i­cal abduc­tions and assassinations.

River­bend is here, and makes for some scary reading.

Posted at 6pm on 30/08/03 by Leon McDermott to the politics, web category.
Permalink · Add to del.icio.us