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And then the military operations on Sunni areas like Tel Afar, Ramadi, Qaim and Samarra began once again. The feeling has been that Sunni areas are being intentionally targeted prior to the referendum to keep Sunnis from voting. When your city is under fire, and you’ve been displaced with your family to some Red Crescent tent in the middle of the desert, the last thing you worry about is a constitution.
Sunnis are being openly threatened by Badir’s Brigade people and the National Guard. Two days ago, in ‘Ras il Hawash’ in the area of A’adhamiya in Baghdad, National Guard raided homes as an act of revenge because prior to the raid, they were attacked in A’adhamiya. People from the area complain that every home they raided, windows were broken, doors kicked in, tables overturned, people abused and money and valuables looted.
In places like Tel Afar and Qaim, dozens of civilians have been killed or wounded and conveniently labeled ‘insurgents’ so that people in the US and UK can sleep better at night. Residents of Tel Afar who left the town returned to their homes to find many of them only rubble and to find family and friends dead or wounded. I read one report that said all civilians were evacuated before the military operation. That isn’t true. Many residents didn’t have cars or transport to leave the city and were forced to stay behind. Some weren’t allowed out of it.
Now, as the US troops attack a little village on the Syrian border, we hear reports that the civilians are heading towards Syria. Not Arab fighters, nor insurgents- ordinary men, women and children who feel that the Iraqi government cannot shelter them or give them refuge from the onslaught of occupation forces.
What is more disturbing is the fact that most of the people who do want to vote, will vote for or against the constitution based not on personal convictions, but on the fatwas and urgings of both Sunni and Shia clerics. The Association of Muslim Scholars is encouraging people to vote against it, and SCIRI and Da’awa are declaring a vote for the constitution every Muslim’s duty. It’s hardly shocking that Sistani is now approving it and encouraging his followers to vote for it. (If I were an Iranian cleric living in south Iraq, I’d vote for it too!)
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