Tag: iraq

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International News

Shooting in Tunisia Museum

On Wednesday, March 16, gunmen entered and open fired on The Bardo Museum in Tunisia killing 19 people and injuring at least 20 more.

The museum, according to CNN, is housed in a 19th century palace, and calls itself “a jewel of Tunisian heritage.” The museum hosts exhibits featuring art, culture and history, marble sculptures, furniture, jewels, and mosaics dating from the back to the Roman and Carthaginian era, including one of the widely known poet, Virgil.

imgresAccording to Reuters, a London based news agency, the gunmen, dressed in military uniforms, stepped off of a bus and began open firing on tourists. Two of the gunmen then fled inside the museum with hostages.The two gunmen inside the building were later killed and are believed to be Tunisians, while the other three gunmen are still believed to be at large. Their identities, as well as their motives remain unclear.

Among the dead were five Japanese tourists and visitors from Poland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, as well as at least one Tunisian native, according to Reuters. In addition to the deaths, there were another 20 tourists and two Tunisians wounded in the attack.

While there is no solid evidence linking ISIS to the attack, many factors are forming suspicion of the influence of the Islamic State. The biggest factor causing suspicion, according to The New York Times, was the celebration of the attacks by ISIS supporters via social media which cited a video released by supporters in December that claimed there were ‘more attacks to come.’ Boubakr Hakim, a Tunisian militant, urged for the support of the Islamic state and claimed responsibility for the assassinations of two liberal Tunisian politicians and warned authorities, “You will not live in safety as long as Tunisia is not ruled by Islam.”

Another one of the largest indicators of the Islamic State’s involvement with the shooting is, according to New York Times, it’s emergence as one of the largest sources of foreign fighters joining ISIS. According to The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London, “Up to 3,000 Tunisians are believed to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight as jihadists, more than any other country.” While the country has not experienced as much violence as other nations that were part of the Arab Spring, it has experienced its share of outbreaks and protests. The Arab Spring, which took place in Tunisia, sparked protests throughout North Africa and the Middle East and was a revolutionary wave of non-violent and violent demonstrations, protests, and civil wars that took place in the Arab world.

Despite Tunisia’s transition from dictatorship to dictatorship, it’s recent completion of presidential and parliamentary elections, and “ a peaceful handover of political power from one governing party to another,” authorities have struggled to handle periodic attacks by Islamic extremists. According to CNN, in February 2015, Tunisia’s Interior Ministry announced the arrests of about 100 alleged extremists, and “published a video allegedly showing that the group possessed a formula for making explosives and a photograph of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

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International News

Iraqi Militia Vs. ISIS

The Iraqi military, alongside thousands of Shiite militia fighters, began a wide-scale offensive on Monday March 2, 2015 to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State.

This was not the first time the Iraqi military has sought to retake Tikrit in the months since the city, Saddam Hussein’s hometown and a Sunni stronghold, fell into rebel hands during the Islamic State’s blitz through the country after seizing the northern city of Mosul in June of last year.

Joe Poyfair GreySeveral times since then, the Iraqi army and allied Shiite militias have begun counteroffensives, only to abort them shortly after. These counteroffensives were sometimes in the defiance of objections from American officials, who would warn the Iraqi military of a blood bath should they try and enter Tikrit.

By sundown Monday, March 2, 2015 fighting raged in the areas surrounding Tikrit, but the army and militia fighters had not yet pushed on the city’s center. ISIS, during this time, released a video that was intended to terrify the citizens who were considering aiding the advancement of the Iraqi military forces.

The video clip showed the execution by gunshot of four men dressed in orange jumpsuits. These men were said to have been local tribesmen collaborating with the Iraqi Military.

In a speech Monday to Parliament, Mr. Abadi echoed the words of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trades Center, saying that the residents of Tikrit were either with Iraqi or with ISIS. “There is no neutrality in the Battle against ISIS. If someone is being neutral with ISIS, then he is one of them.”

The fight against ISIS has brought the United States and Iraq into an awkward alliance in Iraq. While the United States’ effort has been in airstrike campaigns, Iraq has taken the most prominent role on the ground.

In a statement that addressed the worries over militias taking retribution on the local population, the United Nations representative in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said Monday that “Military operations reinforced by international and Iraqi air support must be conducted with the utmost care to avoid civilian casualties, and with full respect for the fundamental human rights principles and humanitarian law.”

Rebels undertook a series of attacks in and around the Iraqi Capital Baghdad on Thursday, March 5, 2015 killing at least 16 civilians. These attacks by armed insurgents were mostly targeting civilian areas as Islamic State militants (ISIS) in the country’s north, set oil wells ablaze in an attempt to slow the Iraqi Government forces that were battling to reclaim territory.

In separate attacks on an outdoor market in the Baghdad suburb of Nahrawan, thirteen civilians were killed. At least thirty-nine individuals were wounded in a residential area in the southern district of Dora and in a market in Mahmoudiyah only twenty miles south of Baghdad.

An attack targeting a military patrol in a northeastern district, a bomb killed three soldiers and had wounded seven.

These armed attacks continue to come as government forces, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and Sunni volunteers continue their fight to recapture areas around Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, which fell to Islamic State Militants in June of 2014.

On Thursday, March 5, 2015 militants set fire to some oil wells outside the city. The smoky fires were apparently meant to obscure targets from government bombing raids. The Iraqi government took part in wide-scale operations that began Monday, March 2, 2015.

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News

World // ISIS Crisis Continues

The violent acts being committed by the Sunni-Islam extremist group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has prompted the United States and other nations take military action. ISIS, which has its base in Raqqa, Syria, has taken over large areas of Syria and Iraq. The group has declared this area to be the “Islamic State,” according to a CNN article. Its oppressive rule and interpretation of Islamic law has been ravaging civilians, including ethnic and Christian minorities. Video of public executions has been released on the internet as ISIS continues to tighten its grip in the Middle East.

MaryCroninAccording to CNN, the beheadings of two American journalists was an impetus to the United States’ military intervention. The offensive has mostly included missile strikes by sea followed by air raids by bombers and fighter jets. According to the US military, training compounds, headquarters, storage facilities, supply trucks, and armed vehicles were hit in the initial strike on Tuesday September 23. The Pentagon also stated that some ISIS operatives were hit, but the number was not specified.

Other nations have joined the United States, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. As stated by a Washington Post article, France has also lent its support to the offensive.

According to Army Gen. Ray Odierno, who was quoted in the Washington Post, there is a possibility that civilians may be at risk as ISIS moves from more open areas with visible targets to urban areas. “We’ll have to determine that, as we go forward, if we can sustain the level of preciseness that is necessary to limit civilian casualties,” he cautioned.

Another complication threatening progress in the fight against ISIS may arise. Though there has been much cooperation in the Arab world with the West on this matter, the fact that ISIS is technically a Sunni Muslim group may be problematic for some governments. As stated in a CNN article, some governments may face dissent from their people, and they disagree with Sunnis fighting against other Sunnis.

Furthermore, Syria has cited disregard of its sovereignty, according to the New York Times. The nation has complained that American military actions on its soil without its cooperation is a violation of sovereign rights. President Obama and other US officials, on the other hand, insist this is not the case. Civil war in Syria helped extremist movements like ISIS to take root and spread, and Obama contends that by striking only ISIS and not “Mr. Assad”, the United States is helping Syria, thus the nation’s sovereignty is still intact.

Recent action involved the US-led air strikes targeting ISIS positions in northeastern Syria while the Syrian government aimed at other insurgents near its capital, Damascus this past Saturday. Meanwhile, ISIS attacked a Kurdish village near the Turkish border, according to the New York Times. At roughly the same time, two car bombs were detonated in the Syrian city of Homs, killing at least 45 people, including 41 children. The group has not taken official responsibility for this, though it is likely that it is responsible because of their recently increased presence in Homs. This, among other issues, has caused even more civilians to flee to Turkey, joining more than 150,000 refugees already there, the New York Times reported.

Military officials, including General Odierno, have dismally predicted that this conflict could endure much longer than previously anticipated.

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Opinions

Faith, Justice and Hope

During one of the CLEW services, Dr. Marvin McMickle referenced a gospel song sung in many African-American churches: “This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me; the world didn’t give it, and the world can’t take it away.” I thought back to a seminary friend, who used to sing it, an African-American friend who invited me into his church, his neighborhood and his life. In my ignorance, I thought of his neighborhood as impoverished, disadvantaged and frankly, “bad,” a neighborhood that I, on my better days, might help to save.

MikeJordanLittle did I know, that neighborhood, and that friend and that church, would help to save me.  When my friend took me to his church in his “bad” neighborhood, I met the warmest, most hospitable Christians I had ever known. I met people who had less than I had, but shared more; people who society had pushed to the margins, but who welcomed me into the center; people who had known more suffering than I, but had more joy.

That experience recalibrated my spiritual life. I had to wrestle with the obvious fact that I had, in the end, very little to offer these fine Christians. I had more money and possessions, certainly; and yet, in the presence of these good people I realized that these were more liabilities than assets to the spiritual life. My friend’s church exemplified the fruit of the Spirit in a way that I did not. I was stuck in an anxious pattern, unable to discern God’s gifts in my life, and they knew genuine and obvious joy.  While I frittered and worried about finding God’s call on my life, they lived with bold confidence that they were God’s people for this time and place. While I gritted my teeth and tried doggedly to save the world (to embarrassingly little effect), they were joyfully operating as the hands and feet of Christ in their community.

MJThis reality makes me especially excited for this year’s Faith and Justice Symposium, with the theme “Stories of Hope.” We sometimes imagine that people who have been through war and armed conflict are incapable of hope. Places like Somalia, the Ukraine, Iraq, the Sudan (and other nations like Rwanda and Ethiopia before them) become bywords, shortcuts we use to approximate otherwise unimaginable suffering. “There can be no hope there,” we say, “unless those of us who follow Jesus bring hope to the hopeless,” and in so saying we honor not Jesus but ourselves.

Yet, of course, the reality is different, and far more joyful: God is already at work in all of these places. There is already hope there because God is there. And it is not merely a bud that one day might flourish, but often amid the poor and war-torn there is a more genuine, a more lasting hope; because it is a hope that quite obviously does not depend on everything being just right, or on the absence of war, or the presence of physical peace, or on stable government or riches. It depends only on God to give it: after all, the world doesn’t give it, and the world can’t take it away. That kind of hope was in short supply in my life before I met my friend. I had a fairly hopeful approach to life, but was always worried about something going wrong, or running afoul of God’s will. In the end, I guess I hadn’t known what it meant to truly hope, to hope without the nagging fear that something could go wrong and, in the process, take my hope and happiness away.

Usually, events like this symposium challenge us to get involved and work for justice.  And ultimately, I hope you do that. But before you sign up to help, before you run off to bring Jesus’ light to a dark world, listen to these stories of hope; hear that God is already there, amid all of His children caught in war and conflict, bringing hope to the oppressed. And above all, I pray that you allow yourself to learn from these stories of hope, to learn what real hope is, a hope that might just be sturdier than whatever you call hope today: because the world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away.

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News

International Delegates Talk Syrian Peace

As international delegates arrived in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday, January 21, doubts persisted concerning whether they would be able to bring an end to Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Courtesy of radioaustralia.net.au
Courtesy of
radioaustralia.net.au

Sponsored by the United States, Russia, and the United Nations, the peace accords, known as “Geneva 2,” will bring together officials from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government along with the Syrian National Council (SNC) an opposition bloc consisting of various groups seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. However, numerous groups engaged in the conflict have refused to attend, including many Islamist fighters who seek to turn Syria into an Islamic emirate. Complications further expanded as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, under the lobbying influence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, withdrew an invitation to Iran, one of Assad’s main financial and materials supporters.

According to Reuters, Ban faced immense pressure from both Washington and the SNC, the latter threatening to boycott the talks and further obstruct any chances of conflict resolution. Moreover, Iran rejected the caveat that it had to accept the guidelines of a previous peace conference held in Geneva in 2012 that called for President Assad to step down and allow a transitional administration to take over. These peace talks failed after the U.S. and Russia could not agree on Assad’s post-conflict, political role. Washington Post reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said excluding Iran is not a “catastrophe,” and said Russia and the other countries at the conference will still push for a productive dialogue between the warring factions.

Further complications arising as peace talks begin include the revelation of widespread torture and systematic killing committed by the Assad régime against 11,000 detainees in Syrian government custody. Al-Jazeera reports that thousands of photographs smuggled out of Syria and examined by a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts show emaciated bodies marked with signs of brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture. The photographs were taken by a photographer for the military police who had secretly defected to the opposition. While both sides of Syria’s civil war have been accused of war crimes, this evidence is the most definitive proof of large-scale killing on the part of the régime to date. According to U.S State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one reason “Geneva 2” needs to be fruitful is because “the situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place and…we need to get the Assad régime out of power.” Reuters reports that the former chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, Desmond de Silva, commented that “some of the images we saw were absolutely reminiscent of people who came out of Belsen and Auschwitz.” It is not yet known how the revelations of these photographs will influence the demands of other negotiators, such as Russia, or the SNC.

Meanwhile, as “Geneva 2” begins, warfare continues in Syria. It is estimated that 130,000 people have died along with 22 million being displaced. Spillover from the conflict has also affected neighboring countries. In Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a suicide bombing occurred in front of the headquarters of Hezbollah, a Shi’a group that actively assists Assad and militarily adheres to the Alawite offshoot of Shi’a Islam. Meanwhile, Iraq faces political strife as al-Qaeda-linked groups seek greater influence amongst the country’s Sunni population.  Currently, Iraqi government forces and tribal fighters are trying to expel al-Qaeda fighters, staunchly opposed to Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government, from the Sunni enclave in the country’s west. Consequently, as the conflict between Sunni-backed rebels in Syria and the Alawite-majority government continues, sectarian divides deepen further throughout the Middle East.

 

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News Opinions

Iraq 10 Years after the Invasion

It has been controversial since it began.  It divided Americans: some watching as the number of troop deaths mounted, others warning that the costs were worth it if Saddam Hussein’s threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had any merit.  After over one trillion dollars invested in the country, no WMDs discovered at all, the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein, 4,000 dead American soldiers and over 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, many still wonder whether the Iraq war was worth it.

Courtesy of propublica.org
Courtesy of propublica.org

The average current college student was 10 to 11 years old when the invasion began.  I remember staying up with my Dad late that night watching television and waiting for the bombs to fall on Baghdad, Iraq’s capital.  I remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner after the fall of Baghdad just a few short weeks later.  Then the insurgency began, for which nobody was prepared.

Bush’s claim that cutting off the head of the problem would immediately resolve it proved to be wrong as the United States found itself bogged down with al-Qaeda groups and Shi’a extremists using car and suicide bombs in hope of dominating each other through attempting to get their respective populations to hate and kill each other.  It looked as though the United States was about to fail miserably, as critics said it would whenever the country attempts “nation-building”.

But then the surge happened and, after 120,000 U.S. soldiers were sent to Iraq, along with “Awakening Councils” that joined the U.S. troops to drive out al-Qaeda (whose brutal tactics had alienated large swaths of Sunnis), violence began to decline.  As security increased, investments for Iraq’s oil reserves, which some argue are larger than Iran’s, helped to bring more stability to the country.  Even after U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011, violence has remained relatively low.  There are still the occasional bombings, such as the one that killed over 60 Iraqis on the anniversary of the invasion, but, overall, Iraq remains much more stable than it was throughout the insurgency.

However, problems remain.  Iraq is a shaky democracy set up to distribute power equally among the three big ethnic groups: Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd.  But after the attempted arrest of a Sunni vice president for supposedly running death squads, arguments began between the central government and autonomous Kurd regions. These debates were over who has rights to oil reserves. With numerous Arab Spring-style protests against the government of Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’a that Sunnis accuse of becoming increasingly dictatorial, and suicide bombings continually trying to stir sectarian tensions, Americans may wonder if, in fact, the U.S. should have ever even invaded in the first place.

In the end, nobody can say that the United States made the right choice.  Regardless of the critics that say it only stirred ethnic tensions, Iraq never did slip into a civil war or become a failed state.  At the same time, a democracy was set up, but it remains incredibly fragile, particularly considering that for almost 11 months in 2010 the country could not form a government due to political infighting between Shi’a and Sunni politicians. Nevertheless, economically, the country has been recovering; tourism flourishes as millions of Shi’a pilgrims flock to mosques and shrines throughout the country.  Foreign direct investment in the country’s oil reserves has helped to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure, and in the Kurdish regions cities bustle and commerce thrives, with virtually no violence.  The Sunnis, however, claim to be finding themselves marginalized politically and economically, creating the potential for a new conflict as frustrations rise.

Whether or not you agree that it was a good idea to invade Iraq, never forget that despite the bad, many good things have happened in the country.  This is a milestone for our generation and continues to be pertinent to an American foreign policy that promotes the establishment of liberal democracy around the world, as liberal democracies do not fight each other.  Based on this logic, this war was in America’s national interest.  A good choice?  I am not sure, but it is something that will have a large impact in the Middle East for years to come.

Caleb Johnson is a third-year student with a double-major in international relations and history.