Outburst of violence in Iraq has echoes in past
BAGHDAD — More than a year after the U.S. military left Iraq, the country is reeling from its most sustained violence since 2008. Over the past two months more than 1,700 people have been killed, raising fears the country is sliding back into chaos.
The current mayhem began with a wave of protests by Sunnis alleging neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government of Nouri alMaliki. Violence has risen steadily since an April 23 crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest in the northern city of Hawija.
But the Iraq of 2013 is different from the country seven years ago.
Two AP Chiefs of Bureau in Baghdad, past and present, paint a picture of what it was like then and how things have changed:
It began with fierce fusillades — rapid bursts of gunfire aimed wildly, designed to drive people from the streets as much as to kill.
In rapid succession, and with military precision, gunmen set up checkpoints along the major streets in west Baghdad’s religiously mixed Jihad district, while black-clad Shiite youths strung barbed wire along side streets.
As a blistering sun sent temperatures soaring above 100 degrees, gunmen bearing lists of names roamed house to house, taking away fighting-aged men. Some were never seen again. Others were found lifeless in the streets.
At the checkpoints, motorists were hauled from their cars and shot dead if they were found with ID cards identify- ing them as Sunnis.
By sunset on July 9, 2006, at least 41 people, mostly Sunnis, were dead, according to police. The next day, two bombs exploded in a Shiite neighborhood, killing 10 people in what appeared to be payback.
How many died because of religion and how many fell victim to common criminals or personal vendettas? No one really knows. In the calculus of barbarity, the Americans came up with their own formula: anyone shot in the head was a victim of sectarianism. Bullets to the torso were deemed the work of common criminals. Fast forward seven years to 2013. The once-pervasive American troops and armored vehicles are gone. Baghdad neighborhoods are patrolled solely by the Iraqi police and army, which still draw heavily from the Shiite majority that controls the levers of power. At some of their posts, banners bearing the image of Shiite saint Imam Hussein wave proudly — a not-so-subtle affirmation of the security forces’ sectarian loyalties.
Traffic checkpoints still block streets lined with concrete blast walls, although many of the barriers have been removed. The car bombings and roadside explosives deployed primarily by Sunni extremists never really went away. It is only their frequency that goes up and down. They’re up sharply these days, with multiple blasts rocking Baghdad and other cities nearly every day.
Iraq again feels at an ominous turning point, even if the tallies of the dead are a fraction of what they were at the height of the bloodshed.