Ethnic cleansing in Iraq

9th July 2006

posted in ethics, globalvoices, military, politics |

This headline from this evening breaks my heart:

Gunmen roaming a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday killed at least 42 unarmed Iraqis as soon as they identified them as Sunnis, emergency police said. Ala’a Makki, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party — Iraq’s main Sunni political movement — said the victims included women and children.

This is not, apparently, a killing spree perpetuated by an organized governmental or non-governmental group, but I wonder if qualifies as attempted ethnic cleansing? This reminds me of the Rwandan genocide. In both cases, people were and are being killed because of their group identity. The article continues:

In the Hay al Jihad rampage, gunmen — mostly “young reckless teenagers” — started to pick up Sunni youth and execute them in public, while others went door-to-door looking for Sunni families who stayed behind, Makki said. After warning one Iraqi woman she had 10 seconds to leave, the gunmen killed her and her children, Makki said.

My prayers go out to the families of those killed in these senseless attacks, the other Iraqis living in fear in such a climate, and the military servicemen and women serving Iraq, the US and other nations to preserve peace and promote respect for the rule of law amidst such chaos.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 9th, 2006 at 10:26 pm and is filed under ethics, globalvoices, military, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On July 10th, 2006, Jim Cottrell said:

I agree that prayer is needed. Revenge is a deception that leads to destruction. In many places around the world, including the gangs in the US, angry individuals are killing others based on group identity. This is not a new problem, which makes it even more heartbreaking. This problem is as old as the father of rebellion and was seen in the anger of Cain. Prayer to the God of Abraham is effectual against the deceiver and destroyer. Pray that he is restrained. Also pray that an interpretation of the following part of a verse is not fueling these individuals.

‘Believers, retaliation is decreed for you in bloodshed: a free man for a free man, a slave for a slave, and a female for a female.’ (Chapter entitled ‘The Cow’).

Quote taken from: http://www.irvl.net/koran.pdf