Ethnic Cleansing Becomes Policy in Iraq

Shia and Sunni people and politicians are increasiningly relying on militias to provide protection from sectarian killings. The end result is that the militias are engaging in ethnic cleansing, ordering the Infidels out where they are minorities. This has been happening all along all over Iraq, but now it appears ethnic cleansing has become Iraqi government policy. This article from washingtonpost.com lays out the scenario quite well.

Retaliatory violence between Sunnis and Shiites has soared to its highest level of the war, increasingly forcing moderates on both sides to look to armed extremists for protection. The Shiite-led government's security forces, trained by the United States, proved immediately incapable of dealing with the sectarian violence in Balad, or, in many cases, abetted it, residents and police said.


[...]Al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters instigated the killings, then stood by as innocent Sunnis were killed in the retaliation that followed, said police Maj. Hussein Alwan in Duluiyah.


[...]Balad's Shiite leaders asked for protection by the Mahdi Army, and for the militia to exact revenge, Taysser Musawi, a Shiite cleric in Balad, later recounted.


Mahdi Army fighters in plain clothes crowded into two buses and headed to Balad, Musawi said. More Mahdi Army fighters followed in army uniforms and army vehicles, Musawi said. Others wore the blue-and-white camouflage pants that Iraq's Interior Ministry commandos wear, but with black T-shirts to distinguish them from the real commandos.


By early in the day on Oct. 14, a Saturday, the Shiite forces had assembled to rid Balad of Sunnis. Mosque loudspeakers blared warnings for all Sunnis to leave the city within 48 hours, residents recalled. Gunmen in uniforms and civilian clothes took control of Balad's streets and outlying roads, police and residents said. The Shiite gunmen set up checkpoints, quizzing occupants of each passing vehicle about whether they were Shiite or Sunni.


Um Mustafa, 37, a dentist from Balad, lost her husband at one such checkpoint. The Sunni couple and their two young children had tried to flee the city at 7 a.m. that Sunday. But armed men in black were waiting at one checkpoint. A hooded man among them pointed to Um Mustafa's husband, she recounted later. This man is a Sunni, the hooded man told the Shiite gunmen, and he served as a colonel in Saddam Hussein's army. The Shiite gunmen bashed her husband in the face with the butts of their rifles, Um Mustafa recalled. "My husband was screaming, 'God! God!' " she said. "And they were saying, 'Do not mention God, you infidel.' " Gunmen put her bloodied husband in a white sport-utility vehicle and drove away. Um Mustafa, now sheltered with strangers outside Balad with her 11-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter, found her husband's body the next day in Balad's morgue.


By the end of Saturday, the U.S. forces had learned about the mass killings underway in Balad, Caldwell, the military spokesman, said in Baghdad. A platoon-size quick-reaction force was dispatched that same day, he said.


[...]The U.S. soldiers asked the Balad officials whether they wanted help, Caldwell said, but the officials declined the offer. The Iraqi government made no request for assistance, he said. Caldwell described Shiite officials in the town as seemingly interested only in receiving local intelligence from the Americans.


[...]The Balad morgue had received about 80 bodies by Tuesday, hospital officials said. Most were Sunnis, and all had been shot; some bore the holes of electric drills.


The Iraqi government ordered in national police commandos, whose forces often have been accused of working with the militias to kill Sunnis.


Forty-eight hours after the attacks on Sunnis started, the Iraqi government ordered in the Iraqi army's 3rd Regiment, 4th Division from outside Balad, Iraqi army officials said. Residents credited the Iraqi army forces, many of them Sunni Arabs and Kurds, with finally quelling the violence.


By then, however, very few Sunnis were left in Balad.


[...]Balad's Shiites had been living alongside Sunnis for hundreds of years, Ali said, staring bleakly at the road outside. He had a Sunni son-in-law and Sunni friends, he said. It took the American occupation, he said, to change all that. "What do you want to know?" Ali demanded bitterly. "How we reached this level? How we started to kill people according to their identity? How this sectarian strife was brought to us?"


[...]"I am a Shiite, but I condemn what the Shiites did," he said, snorting his refusal later when asked to give his name. "It's the government who's behind the sectarian feelings. Doing that, they are creating the sectarian killing."