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Murky origins of Iraq attacks stir foreboding
Tue Apr 14, 2009 9:19am EDT
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By Mohammed Abbas
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A series of bombings and clashes between Sunni militias and Shi'ite-led government forces have stirred a sense of foreboding in Iraq ahead of a national election and the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Violence in Iraq remains sharply down on past years, when most attacks were blamed on al Qaeda or Shi'ite militias, but uncertainty about the origins of the recent violence has led to an incendiary mix of conspiracy theories and accusations.
Many fear too much emphasis has been placed on grooming Iraq's security forces and too little on forging political compromise between ethnic and sectarian groups.
"The political parties are the cause, and the solution, but it's the ordinary citizen trying to make a living who has paid the price," said Saad Abu Haider, sitting in a Baghdad park.
A spate of bombings in Baghdad last week included an apparently coordinated series of seven blasts that killed 37 people.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, a truck bomb was the deadliest attack for U.S. forces in over a year. On Saturday a suicide bomber killed 12 U.S.-backed Sunni militiamen south of Baghdad as they collected paychecks.
The bombings occurred just after clashes between one of the Sunni militias -- set up to fight al Qaeda -- and Iraqi forces aiming to arrest one of the militia's leaders in Baghdad.
Analysts say there is a mistaken focus on the readiness of Iraq's security forces to take over from the U.S. military, whose combat troops are due to leave Iraq by August 31 next year, when a peaceful future for Iraq depends as much on efforts to seek a viable political framework.
"The level of military progress in Iraq has sometimes led to dangerous illusions about its stability and the level of violence that it will endure until it can achieve a far more stable level of political accommodation," said Anthony Cordesman of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.
BAATHISTS AND SUNNIS?
The government blames the violence on Saddam Hussein's Baath party, which last week marked 62 years since its foundation in Syria. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, its most senior leader at large, made a rare statement urging attacks on Iraqi and U.S. forces.
Last week was also the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to invading U.S. troops six years ago.
"It's about the Baath party. They're trying to show they're still a force in Iraq," said laborer Ahmed al-Saadoun.
The government said the mostly Sunni Baathists were aided by Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which analysts say may also be exploiting tensions between the government and ethnic Kurds.
Two recent truck bombs in Mosul in the north, where Kurds and Arabs dispute territory, carried the group's hallmarks. Continued...
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