Washington Post Misses the Mark on the Askariya Mosque Bombing

By Evan Kohlmann

Today's Washington Post features an article by Thomas Ricks (titled "Shrine bombing as war's turning point debated"), suggesting "many Iraq experts" are in disagreement with the "Bush administration" assessment that the February 2006 Askariya mosque bombing in Samarra was a major tipping point for the war in Iraq. There are several comments that should be made regarding this piece:
1.) Sectarian violence in Iraq began on a small scale by mid-2003 and only escalated from there. I don't think anyone either in or outside the Bush administration is trying to suggest that internecine conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq first emerged in February 2006. Indeed, the infiltration of Iraqi security forces by Shiite militiamen was giving rise to greater and greater resentment among Sunnis. But what was *different* about the Askariya mosque bombing was that this single act served as the "final straw" for Shiites who had restrained their anger and feelings of vengeance during nearly three years of suicide bombings, assassinations, and massacres. Who executed all these sectarian operations? Until late 2005, the majority of provocative terror attacks targeting Shiites in Iraq were executed by Al-Qaida and its local Sunni supporters. Other mainstream Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups didn't really jump on that bandwagon until the winter of 2006 -- when Shiite militiamen themselves went haywire in response to the bombing in Samarra. That isn't my opinion as an informed observer, or from reading the newspaper -- that's just plain fact if you statistically tally up the claims of responsibility from the groups themselves. An important lesson here for everyone: if you are attempting to discuss and evaluate the insurgency in Iraq, you should at least try and listen to what the real insurgents are saying (and by "real insurgents", I'm not referring to the widely-despised Mishal Jabouri at Al-Zawraa television).

2.) Almost all of the "dissenting" experts quoted in the Washington Post article are former Defense Department officials and analysts. Yet, as the article itself concedes, the majority of U.S. military officers it had consulted do, in fact, concur that the Askariya mosque bombing was a major tipping point for the war in Iraq. The Post also quoted Asad Abu Khalil, whose strident political views on the war in Iraq eclipse somewhat his credibility as an independent analyst. I wonder, for example, if the Washington Post bothered to ask anyone interviewed in this article about the influential Iraqi Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood) and the huge fight it had with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in late 2005 over the killing of innocent Shiites and those who vote in democratic elections. I'll give you one guess what made all those problems fade away. Herein lies another important lesson (credited to my colleague Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly): when conducting interviews about the insurgency in Iraq, ask pointed, factual questions that actually probe the depth of knowledge of your interviewee.

3.) Insh'allah, one would hope that Bush administration has recognized the importance of the Askariya mosque bombing as part of a general growing awareness of the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq. But the idea that its importance has been "invented" by the White House (or anyone else for that matter) is just way off target. I, for one, have been very critical of Bush administration policies in Iraq and elsewhere, and yet, I still don't think there is any doubt of the role of the Askariya mosque bombing in the timeline of the insurgency. Maybe it makes good headlines, but this just is not a partisan issue -- it is a simple issue of looking at the facts, instead of speculation.

See also:
September 2005 - "First Signs of Daylight in Battle with Zarqawi in Iraq"
April 2006 - "Countering the 'New Dayton': A Shift in Strategy for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq."

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