Newsweek, Tribe Versus Tribe

When elections are held in Iraq at the end of the month, Iraqis will not see any of the 150,000 American troops stationed there guarding the polling places. Instead, voters will pass groups of armed, masked men wearing black balaclavas to hide their faces. The gunmen may look like terrorists, but they'll be Iraqi Army and police, hiding their identities to protect themselves from retaliation by insurgents, who rarely bother to hide their faces anymore. American officials are hopeful the much-beleaguered Iraqi forces will prove their mettle on Election Day, and preside over an election "by Iraqis and for Iraqis," as an American general puts it. Yet Iraq's rebellious Sunni minority is likely to see it differently: an election for Shiites and Kurds, guarded by Shiites and Kurds, to dominate the Sunnis who once ruled the country.

The goal of American military planners has long been to use the new Iraqi military to build national unity. And officially, that hasn't changed. American military officials insist that Iraq's security services are not dominated by non-Sunnis. "Absolutely incorrect," says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of training efforts for the Iraqi forces.......
...
..."There is no doubt that we are heavily infested in the government, right at the top," says a leading official who has close ties to the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The new Iraqi military's first chief of staff was a Sunni—a former general in Saddam's Army. But Gen. Amar Bakir al-Hashimi was fired last summer after insurgents allegedly got key intelligence from one of his staff and used it to assassinate a high-ranking officer. The new chief of staff is a Kurdish general, and the other two highest Iraqi Defense officials are a Shiite and a Kurd. In Mosul, the Sunni police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi, fled the city after his entire force collapsed in the face of insurgent attacks. Later Kurdish troops arrested him carrying $600,000, and accused him of selling out to the insurgents. He was eventually released without charges. "He at one time was a shining example," says an American officer who has worked with Barhawi. "But he was ground down, too long in that job, shot three times, house badly damaged. In retrospect, he should have been transferred somewhere else."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6831675/site/newsweek/

WTF?

"Candidate name recognition doesn't appear very important, however. For security reasons, the actual names of most candidates on the 78 party or multiparty lists have so far not been released. This odd situation, in which the candidates are not known amonth before the election, attests to how dire the political and security situation in Iraq really is"

http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/death-and-death-threats-in-iraq-some.html

Nothing about it says "Democratic election" to me. But then, oh yeah, look who is running it! :(

do they serve...I was under the impression that only cowards need to hide their identities.

but he was something of a lone ranger.

I'm so old :cry:

Lovely quote. Sums us all up, somehow.