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I came across this article and read about the brutal execution of this Shiite Iraqi family. Many of the family members, children, were killed by the assailants by having their throats slit - a common Islamist terror tactic going back to the days of prophet Muhammad.

The article provides testimony from neighbors who say they believe the killers were Ba'athists seeking revenge against this family because the father hung up posters for a Shia political group. That may be true, but what should not be overlooked is that after the war, many Baathists increasingly became Islamicized - growing their beards out, becoming influenced by the teachings of local and foreign ideologies that began to permeate the Sunni Iraqi insurgency since the early days.

One of the interesting dichotomies of Saddam Husein's regime was that during the nineties, Saddam's government courted conservative Muslims and Shia to garner support for his regime. In Fallujah, the nineties saw a period of conservative Muslims who would firebomb Iraqi movie theaters (as we are now seeing in Gaza). The Iraqi government did indeed seek out and persecute Iraqi Salafists and members of the Brotherhood, but at the same time, the government also passed ultra conservative laws, such as establishing the death penalty for homosexuals, to win over support from the large percentage of Iraqis who are religious extremists.

In Sunni areas, politics were a bit more nuanced. Saddam needed to maintain his base of support with the tribes in Anbar, so he was more lenient with the Salafists as long as they didn't carry out violence. This led to the secular/nationalist government giving breaks to the Salafists in Fallujah and elsewhere. The city was definitely a bastion of ultra conservative beliefs.

As Saddam's government was toppled, many of the Baathist higher ups were mostly secular. But men on the bottom rungs of the ladder tended to be more religious. The Sunni insurgency increasingly became more religious, Talibanized, in nature. Some of this was merely show - Sunnis would grow out their beards and appear on internet videos talking about Islam so they would get money from the more religious audiences in the Arab world. But some of this seems to have been genuine.

Many of the top leaders of AQI are believed to be former members of Saddam's government, for instance. The Sunni insurgency is primarily comprised of religious groups and when they quarrel, they often accuse each other of not being "Islamist" enough. The hand Saddam extended to Islamists in the nineties has today borne fruit in the landscape of an Islamist insurgency. The few groups that were 'secular' (we're talking about the Muslim world here) have become marginalized and, indeed, they all seem to be working for the Americans and Shia led government.

Through natural selection, only the Islamist elements, sometimes in league with Iraqi Baathists in Syria, hold the reigns of the Sunni insurgency. The Iraqi Baathists and the Islamists seem to have been inseparably intertwined from a common cause (disregard for Shia Iraqi life, common enemies, etc), diffusion of ideas and years of alliance - with Baathists, as mentioned previously, joining the ranks of the Islamists.

Today, this is a fact, as the vast majority of AQI are Sunni Iraqis and much of the leadership appears to be Iraqi. Intelligence reports reveal that most of the 'princes' of AQI operating in Baghdad, Anbar and Diyala provinces are all men with former Baathist credentials. It is unknown if these leaders ever take their orders from Baathists in Syria, but there is no doubt that their commitment to AQI is strong, as is evidenced that these men are still with the terror organization during the Sons of Iraq ordeal.

As a result, the brutal tactics of the Baathists and Islamists have almost always been the same since the start of the war. The Baathists probably were the backbone of the insurgency early on - they were the ones who provided the bombs and know-how on how to construct the bombs and the Islamists were the cannon fodder and entered Iraq flush with cash. Since 2004, AQI has effectively become a self sustaining movement, able to operate, flourish and recruit without the help of other local insurgent groups. The Islamization drive during the Saddam era made it easy for many Iraqis to become enticed with the ultra conservative, Takfiri ideology of al-Qaeda operatives and foreign mujaheddin entering Iraq. Although almost always few in numbers (except in the first two years of the war when there were probably several hundred to well more than a thousand foreign insurgents in Iraq - Saudi Arabia reported that two to three thousand of its citizens were unaccounted for, for example), the Takfiri ideology has managed to perpetuate and has found a strong footing in an Iraq rife with Baathist thugs, local Islamists and a disenfranchised Sunni population.

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THE slaughter of the al-Kaabi family last week horrified Iraqis who had prayed that the parliamentary elections next Sunday would be free from political violence.

Eight-year-old Ahmed was found hanging from a ceiling fan, blood dripping from slashed wrists tied behind his back. Little Rafel, her throat cut, was still in the purple and pink T-shirt she had worn to bed.

The killers had gunned down Hussein al-Kaabi, 46, the children’s father, when he opened the front door last Monday night. They then appear to have gone methodically through the house in the Al-Wehdah district in southern Baghdad, knifing his wife and six children, some of them as they slept.

Photographs from the scene are shocking. Pretty nine-year-old Rafel looks almost peaceful, with locks of her dark hair hiding the wound on her neck. Seven-year-old Mais has a scarf wrapped around her mouth, obscuring the bloody wound on her neck. Ahmed looks painfully young and fragile, his football shirt evidence of his obsession with the game.

Their mother, Widad, 36, was pregnant when she was shot and butchered. Family members said she appeared to have been running to help her husband.

Relatives said the only crime committed by Hussein, a guard for a wealthy farmer, was to have been hanging posters for Entifadh Qanbar, a candidate standing for the Shi’ite Iraqi National Alliance (INA).

The Kaabis were Shi’ites, living in a mixed neighbourhood, but family members said they believed the killing had political rather than sectarian motives. “It was an intentional, premeditated act of political terror,” said Abdullah al-Kaabi, 52, Hussein’s cousin. “The people who did this are trying to make people fearful of working for their candidates, or scared to vote.”

Abdullah said Hussein spent last weekend putting up posters for the Shi’ite party. Qanbar blamed former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party for the killings. They have been angered by the recent blacklisting of Sunni candidates because of alleged links to the outlawed party.

Tensions have been rising in recent weeks between Shi’ite and Sunni groups, although they have not yet exploded into the sectarian violence that saw thousands killed in 2006-7.

Many Iraqis had hoped the vote would be an opportunity to move past the old divisions but the slaughter of the Kaabis suggest they are still raw.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, who is running as head of a secular Shi’ite-led bloc, was already facing Sunni anger after a Shi’ite-led commission barred 440 candidates, mostly Sunnis, from standing because of suspected ties to the Ba’ath party.

Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, who is third on the list of candidates for the Shi’ite INA, was a key player in the decision by the justice and accountability commission to bar the candidates, deepening Sunni anger.

Maliki, whose support has been slipping, made the unexpected announcement last week that 20,000 former army officers who were dismissed after the 2003 US invasion would be reinstated. It was a gesture billed as healing resentment among Sunnis, who although a minority, were dominant within the officer class under Saddam.

The timing of the announcement raised suspicions that Maliki was currying Sunni votes. His support has waned as his claim to have brought security to Iraq was undermined, not only by the murder of the Kaabi family, but also by a series of spectacular bombings.

Last month suicide bombers mounted co-ordinated attacks just minutes apart on Baghdad hotels that had been expected to house foreign election observers, killing 36 people and injuring 71. Following in the wake of similar attacks in August, October and December, they wrecked what had been a fragile but growing sense of security in Baghdad.

Since last summer, army and interior ministry security forces have assumed sole responsibility for security after the withdrawal of American troops from patrolling Iraqi cities. Officials had already warned that violence would escalate in the run-up to the vote.

Survivors of the blasts blamed hardline Ba’athists, believed to be allied with Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown terrorist group linked to Osama bin Laden.

Maliki’s government, already under fire for a lack of tangible improvement in basic services, and allegations of corruption, is facing its toughest challenge from the INA, whose main partners are the pro- Iranian Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-US cleric whose strength comes from the mostly poor Shi’ite majority.

An unlikely ally of Sadr in the coalition is Chalabi, the controversial politician once favoured by America but who now provokes vitriolic criticism from Washington.

If the INA emerges as the largest group in the 325-seat parliament, that would place Sadr in the role of kingmaker in a position to pick the next prime minister.

The Americans have announced plans to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year, but that process could be delayed if the unrest that has erupted over the election continues.

One signal the violence, however horrific, may be contained was the decision by Saleh al-Mutlak, the best-known Sunni candidate and leader of the National Dialogue Front, to rescind his earlier call to boycott the elections, saying he did not want the Sunnis to lose power in the new government, as they did in 2005 when they stayed away from the polls.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 043978.ece

And your point is......................????

Bora Bora wrote:And your point is......................????

Creating awareness of an islamic ideology that is increasingly abused by religious nutters. Thats what I get from this.

Too sick for words. How on earth can those people sleep well under the name of their religion.