Middle East Focus: An Iraqi Tragedy: Sins of Fathers, Sins of Children……..

Arabia Deserta

An Iraqi Tragedy: Sins of Fathers, Sins of Children……..

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF
“There is little sympathy for families associated with the foreign and homegrown Qaeda fighters who slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis and tilted the country toward chaos. The militants’ wives and widows are pariahs. Their young children are not legally recognized by Iraq’s government. In the rural stretches of Diyala Province, in northeastern Iraq, militant recruiters found fertile soil in the seething ranks of poor, young Sunni men. Scores of the tribesmen of one local sheik, Yousef al-Hilan, joined Qaeda. They bombed cars; guarded checkpoints where they shot and killed passing Shiite motorists; and controlled entire villages. Now, Sheik Hilan estimated, about half of their families had been killed or displaced by reprisal attacks.…….. Shortly after the 2003 invasion, Arab men with long beards, foreign accents and a veneer of righteous anger arrived at Ahmed Mustafa’s village in Diyala and urged its young men to fight the American occupier. Mr. Mustafa’s oldest son, Waleed, was enraptured, and left home with the militants. As the bodies of beheaded Iraqis began appearing in the streets, Mr. Mustafa said he urged his son to stop fighting. Then, Mr. Mustafa said, he received a letter that warned, “We will cut your tongue and kill you.” In 2007, his 17-year-old son was killed while leaving the family farm. The next year, his other son was shot to death while shopping with his mother…………”

Iraq has been out of the headlines recently, but as many Iraqis are being killed and maimed every day as in other Arab countries undergoing revolutionary upheaval. Iraqi blood is continues to be shed by Salafi terrorists. Terrorists coming mostly from ‘brotherly’ neighboring Salafi states, financed by Salafi-leaning moneybags. It will take a long time to make Iraq whole again; the ugly sectarian genie is out of the bottle. Just like it will take even longer to make Bahrain whole once their ugly sectarian genie was taken out of the bottle by the ruling al-Khalifa clan and the al-Saud. Spilled blood has an unfortunate logic of its own in our tribal sectarian societies.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com