Sunni insurgents encircle Baghdad

Baghdad has been cut off by heavily armed Sunni insurgents, who are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement of the Iraqi capital, reports The Independent.

'The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south,' says the article, titled 'Baghdad is under siege.'

The Sunni fighters are driving out Shias from small hamlets and towns like Mahmoudiyah, Balad and Baquba, which lie on important roads out of Baghdad, The Independent said.  'Shias may be in a strong position within Baghdad but they risk their lives when they take to the roads. Some 30 Shias were dragged off a bus yesterday after being stopped at a fake checkpoint south of Balad,' it said.

The siege has already led to severe food shortages in some isolated neighbourhoods in Baghdad, which has been divided into 'a dozen or more hostile districts, the majority of which are controlled by the main Shia militia, the Mehdi Army,' said the report.

Noting that 'the scale of killing is already as bad as Bosnia at the height of the Balkans conflict,' the article warns that 'an apocalyptic scenario could well emerge - with slaughter on a massive scale.'

'As America prepares its exit strategy, the fear in Iraq is of a genocidal conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shias in which an entire society implodes,' says the article by Robert Cockburn, author of  The Occupation:

War and Resistance in Iraq.

According to the article, 'almost all the main players in Iraqi politics maintain their own militias. The impotence of US forces to prevent civil war is underlined by the fact that the intense fighting between Sunni and Shia around Balad, north of Baghdad, has raged for a month, although the town is beside one of Iraq's largest American bases. The US forces have done little and when they do act they are seen by the Shia as pursuing a feud against the Mehdi Army.'

'The intense fighting between Sunnis and Shias around Balad, north of Baghdad, has raged for a month, although the town is beside one of Iraq's largest American bases,' says Cockburn, underlining the impotence of the US forces in Iraq.

'Another ominous development,' says the article, 'is that Iraqi tribes that often used to have both Sunni and Shia members are now splitting along sectarian lines.'

According to Cockburn, 'In Baghdad it has become lethally dangerous for a Sunni to wander into a Shia neighbourhood and vice versa. In one middle-class district called al-Khudat, in west Baghdad, once favoured by lawyers and judges, the remaining Shia families recently found a cross in red paint on their doors. Sometimes there is also a note saying "leave without furniture and without renting your house". Few disobey.'