When the Shiites Rise

[Tom Odom]

When the Shiites Rise (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060701faessay85405/vali-nasr/when-the-shiites-rise.htmll), Vali Nasr, Foriegn Affairs Jul-Aug 2006

Summary: By toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has liberated and empowered Iraq's Shiite majority and has helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This development is rattling some Sunni Arab governments, but for Washington, it could be a chance to build bridges with the region's Shiites, especially in Iran.

VALI NASR is a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

I recommend reading this for its insights on the greater Shia issue.

Best
Tom

[sgmgrumpy]

Another good read http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2006/as-columns-0805-0-6h04s2718.htm


What if Shia turn against U.S.?
By Joe Galloway
08-05-2006

... However invincible the military of the world’s only superpower might seem, every army has its weak spot. Historically, it centers on logistics, the supply line tail that wags the dog. From Hannibal to Erwin Rommel, from Robert E. Lee to Kim Il Sung in 1950, it’s been ever thus.

The lifeline for American forces in Iraq is a 400-plus-mile main supply route that runs from Kuwait through Shia-dominated and Iranian-infiltrated southern Iraq to Baghdad and points north and west.

Along that route, trucks and tankers driven by third-country nationals — Turks, Pakistanis and others — haul 95 percent of the beans and bullets for our troops and 100 percent of the fuel that our tanks and Bradleys and Humvees gulp at staggering rates.

That route runs through the heart of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim south, an area now thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and under the sway of well-armed Shiite militiamen and Iraqi police who are often indistinguishable from the militiamen and sometimes the same people.

The lightly protected American convoys are vulnerable to ambushes, improvised explosive devices and even an occasional rocket-propelled grenade slamming into a fuel tanker.

In an article for The Christian Science Monitor, Lang asked what we could do if that supply route were cut. Only about 5 percent of the supplies for our troops in Iraq come in by air. With a huge effort, that could be doubled or perhaps even tripled, but an airlift couldn’t provide nearly enough food, ammunition and fuel to keep our troops on the job, even if the Sunni insurgents around Baghdad and Balad didn’t start trying to shoot down the supply flights or drop mortar rounds on the runways.

Would our military have to stop trying to end the sectarian violence in Iraq in order to keep its own supply lines open? How many troops and tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters would have to be diverted to such an effort, and would it be worth it?

There’s another strategic vulnerability farther up the chain: Supplies for our forces must first reach the main port in Kuwait by ships — ships that must transit the Strait of Hormuz past a gantlet of Iranian Silkworm anti-ship missiles and suicide torpedo boats.

Little wonder, then, that Iran and its ayatollahs have the nerve to thumb their noses at efforts to curtail their nuclear ambitions and to supply thousands of short- and medium-range missiles to their Hezbollah proteges in Lebanon...


Edited by admin to stay within copyright regulations.

[SWJED]

19 September Associated Press - Young Children Fight U.S. Troops in Iraq (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091900800.html) by Antonio Castaneda.


Shiite militias are encouraging children - some as young as 6 or 7 - to hurl stones and gasoline bombs at U.S. convoys, hoping to lure American troops into ambushes or provoke them into shooting back, U.S. soldiers say.

Gangs of up to 100 children assemble in Sadr City, stronghold of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, and in nearby neighborhoods, U.S. officers said in interviews this week.

American soldiers have seen young men, their faces covered by bandanas, talking with the children before the rock-throwing attacks begin - and sometimes handing out slingshots so the volleys will be more accurate, the troops said.

"It's like a militia operation. They'll mass rocks on the last or second-to-last vehicle" in a U.S. patrol, said Capt. Chris L'Heureux, 30, of Woonsocket, R.I. "There's no doubt in my mind that they're utilizing these kids in a deliberate, thought-out way."...

[marct]

Interesting article, thanks for posting it.

It looks to me like it's actually a good opportunity for some agit-prop. The reaction mentioned later in the article is quite interesting.


Other Iraqi adults have been more helpful. After several rocks were thrown at passing U.S. vehicles in Shaab, soldiers followed one child home. When soldiers told his mother what had happened, she slapped her son across the face in front of them.

What I found interesting about this is that children aren't allowed to be used in a jihad according to Islamic law. It seems to me that a case can be made within both Shia and Sunni Islam that to purposefully put children in harms way is contrary to both Islamic law and tradition, and that those who do so are placing themselves beyond the boundaries of Islam. Do you think there is any chance of getting a fatwah in support of that position?

Marc

[sgmgrumpy]

Interesting article, thanks for posting it.

It looks to me like it's actually a good opportunity for some agit-prop. The reaction mentioned later in the article is quite interesting.



What I found interesting about this is that children aren't allowed to be used in a jihad according to Islamic law. It seems to me that a case can be made within both Shia and Sunni Islam that to purposefully put children in harms way is contrary to both Islamic law and tradition, and that those who do so are placing themselves beyond the boundaries of Islam. Do you think there is any chance of getting a fatwah in support of that position?

Marc



This is Nothing New!

http://www3.youtube.com/watch?v=rL4OPvdQbXs&mode=related&search=

[marct]

This is Nothing New!

http://www3.youtube.com/watch?v=rL4OPvdQbXs&mode=related&search=

Thanks for posting this link.

I certainly knew that there have been other incidents involving children in the past. The point I was trying to make was that the particular article SWJED posted appeared to show a clear link between the Shia militias and the organization of the children as bait/shield.

The kids' actions in the video can could be written off as "boys will be boys" and easily justified within both Islamic and International discourses as a natural reaction to being occupied (as that idiot Sameerah did). However, using children overtly as bait for snipers cannot be written off that way - the two are separate from the viewpoint of agit-prop.

The overt and blatant use of children as bait/shield, where it can be proven, is an excellent opportunity to create a situation where the jihadists are symbolically defined as being outside of Islamic law. Since Islam isn't going to disappear, it is imperative that the extremists be separated from the mainstream and condemned within Islam.

Marc