In doing some research for - and as a follow up to - this post from last month, I subsequently discovered this very detailed Wikipedia entry about The January 20, 2007 attack in Karbala, Iraq that killed five U.S. soldiers and injured three which in turn then apparently became a large justification for the Kyl-Liebermann Amendment.
I have been meaning to blog about this for some time, and certainly in the light of recent events, and I will admit that I find this event fascinating not only because I don't recall ever hearing about it at the time (which, granted, says more about me than anything else, I was preoccupied) but more with regards to what it represents concerning this low level , almost clandestine conflict which has been on going between the U.S. and Iran inside Iraq that is so difficult to decipher and goes largely unreported.
The entry describes "The Raid" as follows:
The attack was perpetrated by "nine to 12 militants posing as an American security team ... [who] traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles — the type used by U.S. government convoys — had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English."[4] According to one Iraqi official, the militant team was led by a blond haired man. The attack occurred as the U.S. military convened a meeting to discuss security for Ashura. About a dozen U.S. troops were inside the compound at the time.[1]
After being waved through the last of three checkpoints manned by Iraqi security forces at around 17:45, the militants parked their (at least) five SUVs[5] near the city's Provisional Joint Coordination Center (PJCC) main building.[1] The attackers' convoy divided upon arrival, with some vehicles parking at the back of the main building where the meeting was taking place and others parking in front. The commandos first used flash grenades to confuse the Americans. They then stormed into a room where Americans and Iraqis were making the security plans, capturing two U.S. soldiers.[6] They pulled two more soldiers out of an armored Humvee at the entrance. One soldier died and three were wounded when a grenade thrown by insurgents exploded in the local police chief's office on an upper floor of the building. Three U.S. Humvees were damaged by separate explosions in the raid.[5] No Iraqi police or soldiers were injured in the raid, as the insurgents specifically targeted the American soldiers in the compound.[6]
At approximately 18:00, the insurgents broke off the attack and left the compound with their prisoners, heading east toward neighbouring Babil province. Shortly after crossing the Euphrates River, the militants, who were then being followed by Iraqi police, shot their four captives and abandoned five vehicles along with uniforms, equipment, and a rifle.[5] The four soldiers were found later by Iraqi police with gunshot wounds to their heads near Bu-Alwan, a village close to Mahawil. Three were already dead (two handcuffed together in the back of one of the SUVs and the other on the ground) and the fourth died while being evacuated to a nearby hospital.[4]
Stunning, I think, would be one word for this incident; certainly exceptional, to say the least. It was apparently called by at least one journalist as the "boldest, most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare". And thus given this 'sophistication' its not surprising that the attack seized the attention of the American military and American policy makers, since it obviously exposed a profound vulnerability among American forces in Iraq. After all, even in the face of all the staggering chaos and violence presently taking place in that arena, here is an attack where the insurgents apparently dressed as Americans to such a believable extent (right down to the "blonde hair") that they managed to completely fool the initial security of this compound and get themselves inside before beginning their actual attack. Proceeding then to kidnapping the soldiers themselves, who they later apparently executed.
I just don't recall it ever gain much traction in the mainstream media. I would have thought it was a huge story. It is a huge story. It might still be the justification for the U.S. extending the war into Iran.
But in the very least, I would speculate that this kind of thing must be the worst nightmare of both the American forces and military leadership in Iraq, ( you know, already quite a nightmare unto itself) not to mention the American public at large, so I suppose its not all that surprising that they all reacted the way that they did - i.e. - calling out the Iranian Quds Force and Revolutionary Guards as 'attacking U.S forces in Iraq' if only as way to be seen as 'taking action' and coming back at them, (though an attack on Iran as a matter of policy and/or strategy in response to this, however, would be something else entirely - which I maintain would be completely stupid and self-defeating). And I will concede that it does on the face of it appear to be in its nature, planning and execution to be an attack that would go far beyond the usual kind of thing that we are used to hearing about in Iraq, and thus it wouldn't be surprising if there was truth to the claim of Hezbollah (who apparently seem to be able to skillfully kidnap Israeli soldiers) and Iranian involvement.
This Wikipedia entry also gives a name and some history to - Ali Moussa Dakdouk - who existed only as an 'unnamed Lebanese Hezbollah commander' in my last post.
And there is the suggestion, made in this post and elsewhere, that the attack came in response to previous 'U.S. raids on Iranian diplomatic missions in both Arbil and Bagdhad.
Journalist Bill Roggio explains:
This raid required specific intelligence, in depth training for the agents to pass as American troops, resources to provide for weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification, radios and other items needed to successfully carry out the mission. Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah executed a similar attack against Israeli forces on the Lebanese border, which initiated the Hezbollah-Israeli war during the summer of 2006…
Mahawil (where abandoned vehicles & the victim’s bodies were found) is in Babil province, about 27 miles directly east of Karbala. While it is impossible to prove, the attackers may have been making a bee-line towards the Iranian border.
The Karbala raid makes sense in light of the U.S. raids on the Iranian diplomatic missions in Baghdad and Irbil, where Iranian Qods Force agents were captured, along with documentation that divulged Iran’s involvement with and support of Shia death squads, the Sunni insurgent, and al-Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunnah. Five Iranians from the Irbil raid are still in U.S. custody, and captured U.S. soldiers would provide for excellent bargaining chips.
IF (sic) it is confirmed that Iran’s Qods Force was responsible, the news that the United States has authorized the death or captured (sic) of Iranian agents inside Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan and Lebanon makes all the more sense.
In any event, as of a week ago, two of the Iranians who were either 'arrested' or 'kidnapped' in that January 11 raid on Iranian Diplomatic Mission Abril have now been released, alongside seven other Iranians who were being held in U.S. custody.
From an article in the NYT:
Two of the freed men were among five Iranians arrested in January in a raid on an Iranian office in the northern city of Erbil, an act that further strained relations between the United States and Iran. At the time the military accused the five Iranians of working with Shiite extremist groups, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice later said that President Bush had authorized that raid and others because the military believed that sophisticated bombs were flowing into Iraq from Iran.
The Iranian Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, is quoted in the same article as saying that there are still another 25 Iranians being held by the U.S. in Iraq, while the American military is quoted as saying that the number is actually 11. It gives some assertions as to why, but admits that they haven't actually been charged with anything as of yet.
This article on the same subject from McClatchy speculates as to the reason why the Iranians were released:
-It came two days after the regional government in Kurdish Iraq engineered the release of eight Turkish soldiers who'd been captured last month by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK in its Kurdish initials, a group that's on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations but has widespread support in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Kurdish regional officials have complained repeatedly over the past year that American forces were detaining Iranians who'd been in Iraq at their invitation.
-The International Committee of the Red Cross announced in Geneva that it had overseen the repatriation to Iran of an Iranian who'd been held for two months in northern Iraq by the anti-Iranian Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.
PJAK, which Iranian authorities accuse of attacks in Iran, is closely affiliated with the PKK. The ICRC provided no details of how the Iranian had been captured or what led to his release.
-Iran inaugurated a new consulate in Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq. The United States has detained at least five Iranians in Irbil, including two of those now awaiting release.
Furthermore, as of today - November 15, 2007 - we now have this story coming out of Washington which states that the Iranians have now halted their shipments of Explosively Formed Projectiles - 'their deadliest weapons' - to Iraq:
WASHINGTON — Iran appears to have stopped shipping the deadliest type of weapons used against U.S. troops in Iraq after a European government confronted Tehran with proof that the weapons came from Iranian factories and Iraqi officials warned their neighbor that instability in Iraq affects the entire region, U.S., Western and Iraqi officials said.
A senior U.S. general in Iraq said Thursday that Iran is upholding informal commitments it's made in the last several months and no new weapons caches have been found recently. "We believe the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up," said Maj. Gen. James Simmons, a deputy corps commander in charge of studying explosive attacks, during a press briefing.
That's a striking departure from repeated U.S. condemnations of Iranian meddling in Iraq and from the argument by allies of Vice President Dick Cheney that there's little point in negotiating with Iran because its leaders can't be trusted to deal in good faith.
A Western diplomat with knowledge of the incident and two U.S. intelligence officials told McClatchy that the Iranians began curbing their support for anti-American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan after they were caught supplying explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Similar weapons have turned up in southern Iraq, the Western diplomat said.
A European government delivered a demarche, a diplomatic protest, to Tehran several weeks ago after truckloads of Iranian weapons were intercepted entering Afghanistan on at least four occasions, the Western diplomat and the U.S. intelligence officials said.
When Iranian officials denied any involvement, European diplomats showed them photographs of markings on the weapons that identified the Iranian factories where they were produced, they said. The photographs "had a major impact," said the Western diplomat.
The Western diplomat and the U.S. intelligence officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. For the same reason, they declined to identify the European government that delivered the protest.
Any reader who took the time to my last post on this subject will note that I was deeply skeptical of the American claim of Iranian interference in Iraq and Iranian involvement in attacks on U.S. troops given the paucity of the evidence and the overall mendaciousness of the Bush Administration when it comes to its public declarations of foreign subterfuge. I took the time to find out what I could, but I was still only working from second-hand sources on the Internet, in a land far, far away. There is every possibility, as this story would seem to suggest, that I was wrong, (sort of), and that the Iranians were involved in something.
I still maintain, as I said in that post, that even if it is actually going on it is still just a part of a larger actual conflict that is presently taking place between the United States and Iran - a conflict which could easily escalate - given these sorts of attacks and activities - into the grand regional war that everyone fears. It certainly something that I fear: A war which will have grave consequences, and war that it seems to me is completely unnecessary unless it is part of your agenda to provoke just such a war in the first place.
And I do find it astonishing just how surreptitious all of this is, given what's at stake. All the references to anonymous sources. All the claims and counter claims. All the different numbers. There still remains very little in terms of publicly verifiable evidence, and most of it seems to come second hand from the U.S. military. No journalist that I am of aware of has confirmed any of this. It remains this nefarious business of far away assertions. And yet, if the region and the conflict should descend into war over this - what did any of us actually know about it?
Perhaps now - given the other big announcement today - this great looming showdown between the U.S. and Iran will now return to being described, and being about the fledgling Iranian nuclear program.
For as the above article in The Guardian states:
Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported last night.
The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will intensify US and European pressure for tighter sanctions and increase speculation of a potential military conflict.
The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran's enrichment plant at Natanz is a "red line" drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. When spinning at full speed they are capable of producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium (enriched to over 90% purity) for a nuclear weapon within a year.
FURTHERMORE:
The always excellent PBS program FRONTLINE aired another excellent documentary about all of this a few weeks ago entitled Showdown with Iran. Its worth watching.
