PATRICK COCKBURN"Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear"

(I encourage reading the entire article: the strife, which brings to mind ethnic cleansing, is up close and personal, on a neighborhood level that our media, government and people don't care about.)

http://counterpunch.org/patrick03202006.html

"If This Is Not Civil War, Then God Knows What Civil War Is"

Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Irbil, Iraq.

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The scale of the violence is such that most of it is unreported. Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, said yesterday that scores were dying every day. "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

Unseen by the outside world, silent populations are on the move, frightened people fleeing neighborhoods where their community is in a minority for safer districts.

There is also a growing reliance on militias because of fears that police patrols or checkpoints are in reality death squads hunting for victims.

Districts where Sunni and Shia lived together for decades if not centuries are being torn apart in a few days. In the al-Amel neighbourhood in west Baghdad, for instance, the two communities lived side by side until a few days ago, though Shias were in the majority. Then the Sunni started receiving envelopes pushed under their doors with a Kalashnikov bullet inside and a letter telling them to leave immediately or be killed. It added that they must take all of their goods which they could carry immediately and only return later to sell their houses.

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