Iraqi military orders Sadr City residents to evacuate
“The residents here are laughing at the government,” she said. “Their demands are very strange. Either hand over our sons or leave our houses to live in small tents.”
Um Mohammed will stay in her home, she said, even though her neighborhood is beset by gunbattles and sporadic airstrikes.
“We refuse to leave,” she said. “Our death will be inside our homes.”http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/36436.html...................
From Juan Cole:
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The Iraqi military has warned civilians to leave the vast slum of Sadr City, apparently in preparation for a massive government assault on the Mahdi Army militia based there.
Since slum dwellers notoriously lack the means to leave their slums, this call seems more likely to be for the sake of appearances than a realistic expectation. When thousands are massacred in the course of a military attack on a densely packed civilian area, the authorities will be able to say that they gave fair warning. Although the US demonizes the Mahdi Army, Many Sadr City residents view it as in part a charitable organization, and they also are often grateful for the security it provides. It is not as if the federal government is providing security.
Saddam Hussein was the Iraqi leader who invented the technique of ethnically cleansing rebellious populations as a way of making his rule stick. He did it to the Marsh Arabs in the south and also to Kurds in the north.
The US has already either conducted or allowed ethnic cleansing in Falluja and West Baghdad. It now seems set to empty out the east of the capital.Apparently
the fractious, RPG-wielding slum dwellers are getting in the way of the planned Green Zone golf course, so they have to be removed.You know some British colonial administrators were still planning new cricket fields in India in 1946.
more at:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/05/sadr-city-residents-warned-to-leave.html