Dear God

by hilzoy

I've noticed a horrifying trend in my posts about Iraq over the years. I normally don't post on particular horrible episodes: a suicide bomber, a car bomb, and so forth. This isn't because I don't think they're important: I do. It's just because I couldn't post on all of them, and if I tried, I would hate it: trying to find words over and over for unspeakable things. Every so often, though, something happens that's so completely horrific that I have to try. And during the time I've been posting here, the number of corpses that it takes to make something that kind of event has been rising. I can't check back over my old posts -- searching for something like "Iraq casualties" would produce too many hits, and I have no idea how to narrow it -- but I think I recall, early on in my tenure here, posting about an episode in which twenty whole people were killed. Then, later, sixty. If I posted now every time twenty people were killed in one episode, I'd be writing about it every other day.

But so help me God, I cannot imagine what it would be like for this to become somehow usual:

"Officials said Wednesday that as many as 500 people probably died in a series of coordinated truck bombings that devastated two northern Iraqi villages Tuesday and set a record for mass carnage in war-torn Iraq.

Residents and rescue workers in Tal al Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two villages near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, spent Wednesday pulling the dead and wounded from the rubble of clay homes that had collapsed when the massive bombs exploded.

The confirmed death toll was at least 250 and climbing, officials said. Five hundred more were wounded, many critically. More than 100 one-story homes and shops were destroyed by the blasts. (...)

Official accounts of the blasts varied. Iraqi authorities said four bombs were involved, three at a bus station and a marketplace in Tal al Azizziyah and one in Sheikh Khadar.

American accounts put the number at five, with four striking a bus station in Tal al Azizziyah and the other detonating in a residential area of Sheikh Khadar. (...)

Some accounts said the explosives were concealed in fuel tankers; others said the bombs were hidden underneath haystacks. There was no official estimate of the size of the bombs, and U.S. officials didn't respond to requests for more information."

A few years ago, I couldn't have imagined bombs killing twenty people becoming usual either. I pray that this time, I'm right.

Comments

[Dantheman]

hilzoy,

One more item to add to this -- the bombs appeared aimed at a Kurdish group called the Yazidi. This opens another front for Iraqi ethnic cleansing, and may bring the Kurds into a more active role in the sectarian strife.

[Gary Farber]

"...a Kurdish group called the Yazidi...."

To be clear, Yazidi is a syncretistic religion, not an ethnic group. Although it's true that they're primarily Kurdish, that's pretty much irrelevant as to why they were attacked, and it's a bit misleading to identify them by ethnicity, rather than by religion, in this context, kinda in the way that saying Israelis are Jews (only 76.4% are), or vice versa, would be. Most Kurds aren't Yazidi, and not all Yazidi are Kurds.

And the Yazidi are persecuted in Iraq for not being Muslim, not so much for being Kurdish.

[Gary Farber]

"This opens another front for Iraqi ethnic cleansing"

Oh, and the conflicts, while dating back centuries (some Muslims regard a primary figure of the Yazidi as Satan), certainly didn't just open in Iraq with this incident. This in April was a big deal, after all.

[Jay Jerome]

And this is the second massacre of Yazidi in the last few months. The first killings were by 'unknown' assailants on April 22nd, who execution style gunned down 23 Yazidi, after hijacking a bus they were riding home from work in.

[Jay Jerome]

ah.. didn't see your 2nd post till after I sent the duplicate, Gary

[alphie]

A response to the wingnut's phony claims of "progress" perhaps?

It should be obvious that the insurgents haven't even broken a sweat yet.

This is nothing compared to what they could do.

[Model 62]

Following up on Gary's clarification, this source seems more authoritative.

[Gary Farber]

"ah.. didn't see your 2nd post till after I sent the duplicate, Gary"

No prob.

"Following up on Gary's clarification, this source seems more authoritative."

Much of it was clearly directly paraphrased, or used directly in the Wikipedia entry. That is to say, much of the Wikipedia entry is, in fact, directly plagiarized from Iranica. Does Wikipedia have a plagiarism rule?

[Nell]

The fifty young people who were recently arrested by the Kurdish authorities for having waved the Iraqi flag in celebration of the Asian Cup victory are Yezidis.

[Hartmut]

At least in the 19th century the Yazidi were considered to be isolated* enough to apply for "separate ethnicity status" (metaphorically speaking)**. The same as the Bosnian Muslims that are predominantly Serbs by descendence but are now considered a group of their own.

*in-group marriages and the like
** at least this seems to be the opinion of German authors of the 1880s

[Nell]

This is devastating. The number of people killed has now reached 500.

[Ugh]

Last throes. Once they get to 1,000 we'll have won.

[Model 62]

The Iranica article includes some interesting comments regarding the Yazidis true ethnicity. While clearly Kurdish (language, cultural practices), they have been regarded as Arab by the Baathists (because the designation somehow fit their arabization policy), and as Kurds by their Kurdish neighbors. Yazidi groups in the caucasuses, however, try not to identify (or be identified) as Kurdish since the neighbors there link the Kurds with Islam.

Hartmut: You're German, as I recall, so maybe you know something about the 40,000 or so Turkish Yazidis who emigrated there in the 1990s. Notice any restaurants (where lettuce won't be served), churches (where Satan is*), etc?

Gary: I think wikipedia does have a policy regarding plagiarism, but given the editorial structure of the thing (none), enforcing the policy is probably something else left to users/contributors.

----------------
*Kidding. Sorry.

[Hartmut]

Sorry, no first hand information. I just have heard that they have trouble to convince German officials that they are indeed a persecuted minority (nothing to do with Iraq but with Turkey and Iran).
But those officials would find "Wanted Dead or Not Alive" posters insufficient proof of persecution.

[Praedor Atrebates]

C'mon, this is GOOD NEWS. It obviously means the insurgents and terra-ists are in their last throes. It also means they are trying to influence the September report on the Iraq Debacle to Congress. It ALSO means they are trying to influence the November 2008 elections in favor of Democrats! Vote Republican!