On Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Can someone explain the strategic rationale behind this?
>
>> HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 22 people south of
>> Baghdad on Sunday by offering poor Shi'ite workers day laboring jobs and
>> then detonating explosives packed inside his minibus as the crowd
>> gathered around it.
>
> Nihilism? Sectarianism?
Sectarianism. The majority of the 100+ average daily killings seem to follow this model nowadays: reprisal killings against the rival community.
Even the American military now says the insurgency is no longer their major problem, not because it's gotten better, but because the sectarian civil war has gotten so much worse.
If there's a strategic motive to such killings, it's ethnic cleansing in the broadest sense: making the other side flee while they try to get you to do the same.
Michael