Death Squads in The New Iraq. posted by Richard Seymour

They're not even trying to deny it any more. The CIA-trained Iraqi security forces are working with Kurdish and Shi'ite militias to carry out "abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation" . I know what you're thinking - they're just talking about getting the bad guys, right? Think again:

Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, the militias, and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them, are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents have said they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

Further:

Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, which claimed members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed men in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a trash-strewn parcel known as The Lot.

Fabulous:

Across northern Iraq, Kurdish parties have employed a previously undisclosed network of at least five detention facilities to incarcerate hundreds of Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and other minorities abducted and secretly transferred from Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and from territories stretching to the Iranian border, according to political leaders and detainees' families. Nominally under the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, the militias have beaten up and threatened government officials and political leaders deemed to be working against Kurdish interests; one bloodied official was paraded through a town in a pickup truck, witnesses said.

Some parties in the south get to expel a police chief they don't like and instal one they prefer , which certainly puts a stop to any precipitous investigations into what how the Salvadoran Option is panning out on the ground. Try that in London and Ian Blair will scream bloody murder - or, more likely, he'll simper about "a terrible tragedy, er, deep regrets, er, police under terrible pressure, many other deaths, er, no further questions". Meanwhile, the militias are into beating and killing those they take a dislike to.

Sadly, what appears to be happening is that the putative 'civil war', often used to justify troops remaining in Iraq, is actually taking seed under the rubric of the occupation - and with no small amount of help from the occupiers. And, of course, it is no surprise to see how Haditha , having been brutalised by the occupiers , has now gone over to authoritarian Islamist groups , with - if The Guardian is right - the general support and acquiescence of the local population .

On top of which, the invasion looks set to turn Iraq into a state governed by Shari'a law . If Iraqis choose this, it is no one else's business to dictate otherwise, but this is a constitution being drawn up by a puppet government, closely 'advised' by the enormous US embassy.

No, it's all going swimmingly. Iraq is in fine shape. Look at all those schools and hospitals they're rebuilding. Iraqi trade unionists totally dig it . They keep saying how thrilled they are.

Actually, to break with glum cynicism for a moment, the most hopeful sign from Iraq is precisely the recrudescence of grass-roots trade unionism . They are being supported in their struggles - both against the occupiers and the employers - by British and American trade unions. This is particularly important when large parts of the liberal left in both of these countries have been cheering on the occupiers, and when a large part of (what remains of) the Iraqi left has acquiesced in the occupation of their country. Another hopeful sign has been the joint Sunni-Shi'ite demonstrations , and the spectacle of Sunni resistance groups defending Shi'ites . That sort of solidarity is precisely what is most dangerous to the occupiers, who need - and are evidently striving to accomplish - the total fragmentation of Iraq's struggle and identity.