February 04, 2004
COUNTERTERRORISM:
'Kurdish Sept. 11' boosts resolve: Two Kurdish parties targeted by bombings were moving towards closer cooperation. (Dan Murphy, 2/05/04, CS Monitor)
Kurdistan's two main political parties, rivals who had fought long and bloody civil wars for local dominance in the 1990s, were on the cusp of setting old animosities aside when terror returned to Arbil.So it was a bitter irony that twin suicide attacks on Sunday morning - which Kurdish officials say they believe was organized by the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam - targeted both parties at a time when they are moving at full speed towards closer cooperation. Indeed, officials at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) believe the two things are linked.
"We have so many enemies that don't want us to be united - they want to keep us weak and divided," says Kakamin Mujar, the Arbil party boss for the KDP. "But this only strengthens our will to work together. We see that we can't afford to be divided." Other Kurdish leaders say they believe the attacks, which killed about 100 and injured more than 130, may have been in revenge for what they say was help provided to the US in the capture of suspected Al Qaeda member Hasan Ghul. The Pakistani national was captured in northern Iraq last week.
The irony may be bitter but since 9-11 (inclusive) every bomb al Qaeda has set off has ultimately served our interests rather than theirs. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2004 09:59 PM
It actually really bugs me to hear people refer to something as 'another/our September 11' (I remember this being said about one of the attacks in Saudi Arabia last year). The attacks on September 11 killed 3000 people. One hundred people dead is horrific (I thought it was 56?), but three thousand is on another scale.
And of course the islamofascists are strategic idiots. Were it not for September 11, attacks like this would just be some crazy foreigners blowing up some other foreigners. Few Americans would ever even hear about it.
Posted by: brian at February 4, 2004 10:41 PMAs a % of population it probably isn't dissimilar.
Posted by: oj at February 4, 2004 11:39 PMSilly me. I was thinking 3000 people died, but actually it was only 0.001% of the population. I feel much better now.
Posted by: brian at February 5, 2004 02:51 AMAnother pointer in the argument for pre-emption. What would John Kerry say about a suicide bomber who killed 100 people at the Democratic National Convention? Serve papers on the bloody dust?
Posted by: jim hamlen at February 5, 2004 07:11 AMbrian:
They didn't say that the bombing was another 9-11, but that it was their 9-11.
Posted by: oj at February 5, 2004 09:22 AMoj:
Yes, I noted that. Regardless of scaling for population, I have a hard time believing these bombings had the same effect on the citizens of pseudo-Kurdistan as September 11 had on Americans. Of course, they weren't living in the same "It can't happen here" cocoon as we were...
Posted by: brian at February 5, 2004 03:27 PM