Part I

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

— W. B. Yeats

“Should we be any more surprised, then, to see evidence emerging in Iraq of false-flag terrorist bombings conducted by the major occupying powers? The secret services and special forces of both the U.S. and Britain have, after all, had some experience in these matters.”

The violence stemming from the [February 22nd 2006] bombing of the Al Askariya Mosque in Samarra continues unabated. The death toll continues to rise as does the intensity of recrimination amongst Iraqi political and religious leaders.

Predictably Western leaders were quick to denounce the bombings and call for restraint.

“But our message to Iraqis is what I think others around the world would say, as well: Exercise restraint. Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists want. Make no mistake about it. This was a brutal terrorist attack. It was an attack against people of all faiths and against all of humanity. The terrorists have no regard for innocent human life, and all they want to do is create chaos. That’s why it’s important that we continue to work with the Iraqi people and win in Iraq.” [Source - all links in this article open in new windows ]

That these calls most notably those from the Bush Administration and its embassy in Iraq are aimed primarily at their domestic political audience and not at those who have to live in the blood-soaked mess that those Western leaders bear prime responsibilty for creating should go without saying. That they stem from a desperate need to be seen to be doing something is also self-evident such statements from Bush, Blair, and their hangers-on are essentially meaningless and deserve no further attention.

Far more important is to comprehend the context of the bombing and the significance of the timing. Both say much about those who committed the attack. The perpetrators and those from whom they take their orders, whoever they they may be, wanted to precipitate a civil war. They picked an excellent target, carried out a technically quite difficult operation - planting charges to demolish a large building is a skilled and lenghty task:

“According to initial reports, the bombing was technically well conceived and could only have been carried out by specialists,” the minister told Iraqia state television.

“holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives.”

“Then the charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance,” the minister added.

To drill into the pillars would have taken at least four hours per pillar, he also estimated.

Damage to the mausoleum, holding the tombs of the 10th and 11th Shiite Imams, was extensive.

“The dome was completely wrecked and collapsed on the tombs which were covered over by debris. The shrine’s foundations were also affected as 40 percent of the power of the blast was directed inwards,” he added.

[snip]

Jaafar said he survived a double bomb attack while returning from Samarra when blasts went off in front of his convoy and behind it.Samarra when blasts went off in front of his convoy and behind it.”

[ AFP story in Turkish Press ]

Chose the most politically inflammatory time [link to my background briefing] at which to carry it out, and succeeded in their alloted task.

Nobody was killed during the bombing itself, but there have been scores of deaths during the ensuing “sectarian violence.” From the reports coming out of Iraq the bulk of these seem to be “revenge attacks” upon Sunnis.

The reaction was predictable and that America as the main occupying power would be blamed is not only equally predictable, but correct, the US and her allies are responsible for security in Iraq and have singularly failed in their duty to provide it.

Equally predictably the Western media and Western commentators have been agog at the prospect of the attack and its aftermath presaging full-blown civil war in Iraq.

“Iraq took a lethal step closer to disintegration and civil war yesterday after a devastating attack on one of the country’s holiest sites. The destruction of the golden-domed Shia shrine in Samarra sparked a round of bloody sectarian retaliation in which up to 60 Sunni mosques were attacked and scores of people were killed or injured.” [ UK Independent ]

“Iraq slips towards civil war after attack on Shia shrine”

“Appeals for calm fail to halt reprisals” [ The Guardian ]

It is a measure of the magnitude of the Bush and Blair collaboartive failure to observe even the most minimal decencies of war, of international law, or of military effectiveness that it is all too easy to see how full-blown civil war could indeed now materialise. No amount of optimistic powerpoint® presentations can conceal their failure. The simple fact is that they do not control over 70% of the country and their grip upon what they do “control” is increasingly tenuous. Far from declining the rate of resistance attacks upon occupying troops has risen as has the level of sophistication of those attacks. Those who talk of Iraq already being in a state of full-blown civil war fail to realise that that rate would fall dramatically because fighting would be directed inward.

Moreover several things militate against full-blown civil war not least that senior clergy and nationalists on all sides of Iraqi society have set their face against it. Many of the Shia blame the the US and its allied occupying powers:

“My brothers this is no coincidence consider that in the space of a few days we have:

  1. The Danish cartoons.
  2. More photos of the evil the crusaders do in and are still doing in Abu Ghraib.
  3. We have the British army assaulting Muslim children.
  4. We have an “incident” at the jail.
  5. Our brother Shiite’s mosques in Pakistan have been bombed just yesterday.
  6. Just yesterday the massacre of Shiites and now;
  7. This most heinous act of desecration.

No reasonable person can believe that any of these acts are random, they were all planned and co-ordinated by the Americans and the Danes and the English to plunge us to war so they can continue to rape our land.”

Others initially blamed “Takfiris,” but not the Sunni population en bloc. While this:

“Among the dead were 47 people, apparently both Sunnis and Shi’ites, whom gunmen dragged from vehicles after they attended a demonstration to show cross-sectarian solidarity near Baghdad.” [ Reuters ]

If true, and I see no reason to doubt it, is harrowing. The mere fact that there have been such demonstrations of “cross-sectarian” solidarity is not only unsurprising to anyone who knows Iraqis. It is also very encouraging. that such demonstrations took place despite three years of divide et impera. Despite their pious protestations to the contrary the occupying forces, particularly during the Bremer régime have gone out of their way to encourage both sectarianism and separatism. Iraqis are not fools - they know what was done to their country, they know who did it, they know that those people have “special forces” opreating in their country. They haven’t forgotten that in Basra for example the British army used tanks to free two members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment from Basra jail. Nor have they forgotten that the UK army tried to hush the matter up.

“At the request of the MoD, British media obscured the faces of the two captured men. The two sides give wildly differing accounts of events, but it is not disputed that they had been sitting in a car outside the police station in Arabic dress. They were heavily armed and had an impressive array of surveillance equipment with them. It is not impossible that one or both of the men are not British. Special forces from Australia and New Zealand, for example, often work closely with the SAS. They could even be “civilian contractors” of the kind hired by the CIA, usually ex-special forces. But it is their mission that is more significant.” [ UK Independent

“The two SAS soldiers, reportedly working undercover, were arrested by Iraqi police but then handed over to members of the Mahdi Army, a Shia militia that has heavily infiltrated the security forces in southern Iraq. The raiding force freed the two from a house next to the police headquarters.” Financial Times ]

The explanation as to what the “undercover servicemen” were doing in Basra, and why releasing them was so that the British Army alienated its client régime there by sending in tanks and fighting with residents has never been satisfactorily answered. The answer given at the time was as follows:

  • The Basra local government is now effectively under the control of Shi’ite militias specifically the armed wing of SCIRI, the Badr Corps.
  • Moeover SCIRI is under the thumb of Iran.
  • Iran is fomenting unrest in Basra and the surrounding province using SCIRI.

It was a coherent reasonable sounding explanation. There’s just one problem, it was manifestly untrue:

Iran was working through the pro-occupation SCIRI? Really? The Iranians were working their nefarious magic through “The reactionary and collaborationist Islamic Supreme Council (SCIRI)“ and their Badr Corps?

The fact is that SCIRI’s militia was fighting Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and nobody else at that time..The “Iranian” cover story simply won’t wash and Iraqis knew it then, and know it now:

“The fierce determination of the British army to remove these men from any danger of interrogation by their own supposed allies in the government the British are propping up—even when their rescue entailed the destruction of an Iraqi prison and the release of a large number of prisoners, gun-battles with Iraqi police and with Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, a large popular mobilization against the British occupying force, and a subsequent withdrawal of any cooperation on the part of the regional government—tends, if anything, to support the view that this episode involved something much darker and more serious than a mere flare-up of bad tempers at a check-point.

[snip]

Should we be any more surprised, then, to see evidence emerging in Iraq of false-flag terrorist bombings conducted by the major occupying powers? The secret services and special forces of both the U.S. and Britain have, after all, had some experience in these matters.” [ link ]

Part II

Having if only briefly explained some of the context let us now turn to the attack itself. Who did it? And Why? “Cui bono?”

Who did it?

The short answer is “we don’t know.”

“There was no claim of responsibility, but the five police officers responsible for protecting the mosque were taken into custody, and Iraqi authorities said another 10 men “with links to al-Qaida” had been arrested.”

[ The Guardian ]

Mouwafak al-Rubaie blamed the al Qaeda terror network and Ansar al-Sunnah for the explosion, saying it was intended “to pull Iraq toward civil war.”

While this from AP:

“Insurgents posing as police destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday”[ Search ]

Became standard fare for western media. At the time of writing nobody has claimed responsibility. I doubt anybody ever will. What did happen was a rush to condemn the bombing and to assign blame:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “These heinous acts are committed by a group of Zionists and occupiers that have failed. They have failed in the face of Islam’s logic and justice.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “This is a political crime and its origins should be found in the intelligence organisations of the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists … There are definitely some plots to force Shi’ites to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunnis. Any measure to contribute to that direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by Sharia.”

Moqtada al-Sadr through Abdel Hadi al-Darajee: “We will not only condemn and protest but we will act against those militants. If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people we are ready to do so,”

Iraqi Islamic Party: “(The party) strongly condemns this sinful act and calls for a wide-reaching and objective investigation to catch those behind this crime that aims to harm the Iraqi people by provoking destructive sectarian strife.”

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani an ethnic Kurd: “This new ugly crime comes as a warning that there is a conspiracy against the Iraqi people to spark a war among brothers. God willing, we will not allow this … We must cooperate and work together against this danger, the danger of civil war. This is the fiercest danger because it threatens our unity and our country with a devastating civil war.”

Source Reuters

Consultative Council of the Mujahideen in Iraq:.”Shame and dishonor to those who undertook and executed the crime against the Imam Ali Al Hadi Holy Shrine!

It is the US and only the US which is the number one responsible of the crime against the Imam Ali Al Mahdi - Peace be upon him - holy shrine, not only because it is occupying Iraq and is responsible of whatever goes on in this country but also seen from the angle of planning the crime and the ones who have the greatest interest into undertaking it. As for Iran, it is the natural US partner in this crime as in all the previous ones, before the occupation and until now. Yes! Iran has uncovered its last criminal cards in its attempts to use our brothers and families in the south as a fire wood for its wars and a tool to find a solution to its differences with the US on the soil of Iraq. That is why we heard from some of those who consider Kahmenei and Kadhim Haeeri and others as their sectarian reference announce in absolute stupidity and idiotic behavior that if Iran was attacked their supporters will attack the US in Iraq! This kind of a homeland treason makes some of these shut up about the occupation of Iraq and its crimes while some others participates into supporting the Occupation, execute its crimes and destroy Iraq but announces at the same time that it will use force to defend Iran? Today all the cards which used to be denied and concealed from the Iraqi people in general and specially from our people in the south, have been uncovered. The Ba’ath Party

Resistance Council: “[The] “Shi’i government” of American-installed puppet “Prime Minister” Ibrahim al-Ja’fari and Iran were behind the bombing … … … to cover up their crimes against the Muslims.”

So much for the western corporate media, however as Dahr Jamail pointed out what they (mostly) didn’t show was Iraqi’s spontaneous reactions of solidarity. His report is worth quoting at lenght: Empasis added by me:

“The horrific attack which destroyed much of the Golden Mosque generated sectarian outrage which led to attacks on over 50 Sunni mosques. Many Sunni mosques in Baghdad were shot, burnt, or taken over. Three Imams were killed, along with scores of others in widespread violence.

This is what was shown by western corporate media.

As quickly as these horrible events began, they were called to an end and replaced by acts of solidarity between Sunni and Shia across Iraq.

This, however, was not shown by western corporate media.

The Sunnis where the first to go to demonstrations of solidarity with Shia in Samarra, as well as to condemn the mosque bombings. Demonstrations of solidarity between Sunni and Shia went off over all of Iraq: in Basra, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Kut, and Salah al-Din.

Thousands of Shia marched shouting anti-American slogans through Sadr City, the huge Shia slum area of Baghdad, which is home to nearly half the population of the capital city. Meanwhile, in the primarily Shia city of Kut, south of Baghdad, thousands marched while shouting slogans against America and Israel and burning U.S. and Israeli flags.

Baghdad had huge demonstrations of solidarity, following announcements by several Shia religious leaders not to attack Sunni mosques.

Attacks stopped after these announcements, coupled with those from Sadr, which I’ll discuss shortly.

Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, shortly after the Golden Mosque was attacked, called for “easing things down and not attacking any Sunni mosques and shrines,” as Sunni religious authorities called for a truce and invited everyone to block the way of those trying to generate a sectarian war.

Sistani’s office issued this statement: “We call upon believers to express their protest … through peaceful means. The extent of their sorrow and shock should not drag them into taking actions that serve the enemies who have been working to lead Iraq into sectarian strife.”

Shiite religious authority Ayatollah Hussein Ismail al-Sadr warned of the emergence of a sectarian strife “that terrorists want to ignite between the Iraqis” by the bombings and said, “The Iraqi Shiite authority strenuously denied that Sunnis could have done this work.”

He also said, “Of course it is not Sunnis who did this work; it is the terrorists who are the enemies of the Shiites and Sunni, Muslims and non Muslims. They are the enemies of all religions; terrorism does not have a religion.”

He warned against touching any Sunni Mosque, saying, “our Sunni brothers’ mosques must be protected and we must all stand against terrorism and sabotage.” He added: ‘The two shrines are located in the Samarra region, which [is] predominantly Sunni. They have been protecting, using and guarding the mosques for years, it is not them but terrorism that targeted the mosques…”

He ruled out the possibility of a civil war while telling a reporter, “I don’t believe there will a civil or religious war in Iraq; thank God that our Sunni and Shiite references are urging everyone to not respond to these terrorist and sabotage acts. We are aware of their attempts as are our people; Sistani had issued many statements [regarding this issue] just as we did.”

The other, and more prominent Sadr, Muqtada Al-Sadr, who has already lead two uprisings against occupation forces, held Takfiris [those who regard other Muslims as infidels], Ba’thists, and especially the foreign occupation responsible for the bombing attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Sadr, who suspended his visit to Lebanon and cancelled his meeting with the president there, promptly returned to Iraq in order to call on the Iraqi parliament to vote on the request for the departure of the occupation forces from Iraq.

“It was not the Sunnis who attacked the shrine of Imam Al-Hadi, God’s peace be upon him, but rather the occupation [forces] and Ba’athists…God damn them. We should not attack Sunni mosques. I ordered Al-Mahdi Army to protect the Shi’i and Sunni shrines.”

Full report here:

Why?

To begin to answer that we need to undestand that the bomning wasn’t a resistance attack. It doesn’t meet any of the criteria for one:

  1. It wasn’t directed against either occupiers or Iraqi troops.
  2. It wasn’t directed against Iraqi police even the five policemen inside the mosque were only tied up inside it - not killed.
  3. It wasn’t directed against the occupation’s infrastructure - such as a base.
  4. And it wasn’t directed at worshippers at prayer - the mosque was empty.

Not “resistance fighters” then. Could it have been associates of “Al Qaeda in Iraq” as “everyone” assumes? Possibly, they have of course carried out attacks on Shi’ite worshippers - but the mosque was empty and like their equally sectarian counterparts they tend to go for smaller scale “target of opportunity” atttacks. Moreover, again like their equally vicious counterparts, they usually take the bodies elsewhere to be found.

The case against the occupying powers

“Who benefits?” Who would want outright civil war in Iraq? Who would that serve? An Al-Qaeda inspired group? Certainly, but we should not stop there. There is one actor in Iraq, two if you count their “strategic ally” with an strong interest in fomenting civil war, a power with a long and shameful record in the region, a power which does not hesitate to use violence against small countries whenever it feels even remotely threatened.

There are entirely valid reasons why a superpower intent upon “definitive domination [this link is to a PDF document]” that has “lost” its bases in Saudi Arabia, been chucked out of its bases in one Central Asian country, and is aware that it might “lose” its other bases in the region might desire a civil war, particularly a “contained” civil.

The most important of which is ;

An Iraq violently riven by unbridgeable sectarian divisions would have great difficulty forming a unified bloc against the occupation.

It has several other benefits for such a power:

  1. It diverts those Iraqis who might otherwise heed unity calls from fighting occupation troops.
  2. Domestically it diverts attention away from the rising tide of public scandals involving US and UK troops.
  3. It provides a justification for “staying the course” in Iraq.
  4. As a further benefit from point 3 above, it diverts attention away from the 14 “enduring bases” in particular the “super-bases” desigated h1, h2, h3, and h4. [Of these four super-bases base h4 can be ignored for present purposes, bases h1 - h3 are situated to give stategic control of the pipeline(s) through Syria.]

Of these from a local strategic point of view the first, third, fourth point are the most important. The number, intensity, and sophistication of attacks against the armies of occupation was already rising. While the Iraqi population as a whole do not support the occupation:

“The survey was conducted by an Iraqi university research team that, for security reasons, was not told the data it compiled would be used by coalition forces. It reveals:

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are “strongly opposed” to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

The opinion poll, carried out in August, also debunks claims by both the US and British governments that the general well-being of the average Iraqi is improving in post-Saddam Iraq.” [source] [Non-UK readers should note the the Daily Telegraph is an emphatically conservative newspaper. - mfi ]

See also: Iraqis think U.S. will stay permanently, poll finds [ link ]

Despite that fact, despite the fact that some of the most recent pre-Samarra attacks could be laid at the door of an emerging Shi’ite resistance. The main occupying power believes it cannot “afford” to leave. As noted above even the House of Saud doesn’t want them on their soil. Thus from a Washington perspective to follow their ejection from the peninsula with a forced exit from Iraq would represent an unthinkable loss of face. To leave without defeating the resistance would be effectively to admit that the resistance, a minority of a minority, in a relatively small part of the country - had won. America would be seen as an enfeebled giant whose military had been hollowed out by Secretary Rumsfeld’s reforms [link to my posting on this site “Attacking the Tail” this link does not open in a new window] , incapable of defeating a minority of a minority within a geographically relatively discrete area of a defeated fifth rate military power.

Moreover as William Arkin notes like their British allies the US has a long history of using agents provocateurs

“Insulated from outside pressures, armed with matchless weapons and technology, trained to operate below the shadow line, the Pentagon’s black world of classified operations holds out the hope of swift, decisive action” [ Source Los Angeles Times ]

and created a specialised group, the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group tasked with doing just that.

Update

I’m now working on describing the other parties in the Iraqi war of whom an Iraqi might say “cui bono.” In the meantime I thank you for your continued patience and invite you to read two articles that I’ve written today on my other site:

  1. “Incident” in Al Amarah

    and

  2. Ozymandias and Empire

As always feel free to comment either here or there.

markfromireland: March 1st 2006

Update 2
I have urgently updated my posting “Reaction to the Samarra Bombing” below.