Iraqi foreign minister warns of civil war if US pulls out

The burst of violence comes at a sensitive time. US forces are waging offensives in and around Baghdad aimed at uprooting militants and bringing calm to the capital, and a progress report to Congress is due on July 15. At the same time, several Republican congressman have joined calls for a withdrawal from Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraqis “understand the huge pressure that will increase more and more in the United States” ahead of the progress report by the US ambassador and top commander in Iraq.

“We have held discussion with members of Congress and explained to them the dangers of a quick pull out (from Iraq) and leaving a security vacuum,” Zebari said. “The dangers could be a civil war, dividing the country, regional wars and the collapse of the state.”

“In our estimations, until Iraqi forces are ready, there is a responsibility on the United States to stand with the (government) as the forces are being built,” he said.

The Iraqis calls for the arming of civilians to fight insurgents reflected the growing frustration with Iraqi security forces’ inability to prevent extremists’ attacks – like Saturday’s devastating suicide truck bombing in the Shiite town of Armili, north of Baghdad, that killed more than 160 people, according to the latest toll from police and officials.

Yesterday, Armili residents shouted insults at the governor of Salahuddin province, Hamad Hmoud Shagti, and the provincial police chief as they visited the town for funerals of the victims, police and other officials said.

Shagti had detained the Armili police chief and put him under investigation for security failures. Shagti told the Associated Press that 250 new police were sent to Armili – a town of 26,000 people with long-time tensions between Shiites and Sunnis that one lawmaker said had only 30 policemen before the attack.

Col Abbas Mohammed Amin, chief of police in Tuz Khormato, the main city closest to the town, said the 250 new police were recruited from the residents of the Armili area – a sign authorities are trying to respond to demands for arming civilians.

The latest attacks in Baghdad followed a surge of bloodshed in the capital yesterday, when around 60 Iraqis were killed in bombings, shootings and kidnap-slayings.

A roadside bomb exploded in the central Nahda district in the morning killing a passer-by and wounding three others. Several hours later, an explosive-wired car detonated in the same area, killing two people and wounding six, a police official said.

In southern Baghdad, a suicide bomber set off an explosives-packed car into a joint Iraqi army-police patrol, killing four passers-by and a soldier in the violence-torn district of Dora, police said.

Around dawn, police discovered gunmen trying to plant bombs near the security wall surrounding the Sunni district of Azamiyah. In a gunbattle that followed, two soldiers and two policemen were killed, police said. There were no immediate reports about the casualties among the gunmen.

Today, a dead body with bullet wounds and torture marks was found dumped in a street in the western district of Mansour, an apparent victim of sectarian death squads, police said.

Iraqi commanders say US and Iraqi troops are making progress in a three-pronged security sweep launched in mid-June – one in Baghdad, another to the north-east in Baqouba and the third to the south.

The offensives on Baghdad’s doorsteps aim to uproot al Qaida militants and other insurgents using the regions to plan attacks in the capital.

But Saturday’s attack on Armili – a town of Shiites from the Turkoman ethnic minority – indicated extremists were moving further north to strike at unprotected regions, and the devastation wreaked there sparked anger at Iraqi security forces for failing to stop them.

Amin of the Tuz Khormato police put the toll from the blast at 160, including 10 more bodies newly found in the wreckage. Earlier Monday, Ali Hashim Mukhtaroglu, deputy head of Iraqi Turkoman Front, said the toll had reached 154 dead and 270 injured, and that 30 people were believed to be buried under the rubble of more than 100 mud-brick homes levelled in the town.

Turkoman leaders accused the security forces of “negligence” and called for the arming of their community. “We demand the Iraqi government form Turkoman military units to protect Turkoman areas and their surroundings,” Mukhtaroglu said.

The call for civilians to take up arms in their own defense was echoed today by the country’s Sunni Arab vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who said the government should provide communities with money, weapons and training and “regulate their use by rules of behaviour.”

“People have a right to expect from the government and security agencies protection for their lives, land, honour and property,” al-Hashemi said in a statement. “But in the case of (their) inability, the people have no choice but to take up their own defense.”

Another prominent Sunni lawmaker, Adnan al-Dulaimi, said Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had failed to provide services and security but he stopped short of saying his followers would seek to topple the Shiite-led government in a no-confidence vote.

The CBS Evening News reported Saturday that a large block of Sunni Iraqi politicians will ask for a parliamentary vote of no-confidence against Maliki’s government on July 15.

“The situation has become terribly bad,” al-Dulaimi said. “All options are open for us. We are going to study the situation thoroughly, and we are going to look into the possible measures which go with the interests of the Iraqi people. We will also consider whether to keep on with the government or not.”

But Iraq’s national security adviser, a Shiite, insisted that the government still enjoyed broad support and he warned against any effort to replace Maliki, telling CNN’s Late Edition that the result would be a “hurricane in Iraq.”