The Surge Myth - Satellite images show ethnic cleanout in Iraq

[Mythos]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.
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The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.

The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra U.S. troops.

The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.

Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the U.S. invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.

They said the night lights of Shi'ite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shi'ite enclave.

Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Myanmar and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Ross Colvin)

Very interesting. It seems the surge did absolutely nothing to change the situation in Iraq. It was ethnic cleansing, Sunni Iraqis fighting AlQaeda and the Sadr ceasefire.

[jankren]

Good news for Obama. LOL

[Chaigidel]

such is the way of all human history-- ethnic cleansing followed by small years of peace then it starts again.

[Space Wolves]

lul wut?

[Mangalore]

Somehow I had the impression any expert in politics of the Near East already knew that well before the surge plummeting of attacks against coalition troops was tied to insurgents being busy fighting off ethnical attacks by neighboring militias.
Equally that the Sunnite did not join the US with their Awakening Council so much because they were so much against Al Qaeda (well, they were, but that would have played little into their contemplation wether to fight the coalition or not) but because they feared they would be annihilated as coalition troops cracked down on their armed militias while Shiite extremist proceeded with their ethnic cleansing with the support/acceptance of the Shia dominated Iraqi government that is manned by the Iranian backed arm of Shiite militias and political parties.

The latter is the greatest irony of the whole Iraq war: The US does all in its power to help people into power who are best buddies of Iran since more than a decade because Iran supplied them, sheltered them, paid them, helped them.

[DimeBagHo]

Very interesting. It seems the surge did absolutely nothing to change the situation in Iraq. It was ethnic cleansing, Sunni Iraqis fighting AlQaeda and the Sadr ceasefire.

You can figure out how much this study is worth just by looking at the evidence cited and the conclusions drawn. They did a study of lighting in Baghdad, and drew conclusions about the entire country. That's BS, and it's not even hard to spot.

[jankren]

You can figure out how much this study is worth just by looking at the evidence cited and the conclusions drawn. They did a study of lighting in Baghdad, and drew conclusions about the entire country. That's BS, and it's not even hard to spot.

The major conflict in Iraq was located in Baghdad anyway. So ...

[Caelius]

That's some absolutely atrocious circular logic you're using there.

The major conflict in Iraq was located in (surprise!)....Iraq. Just as the Surge was applied to the whole of the country, not just Baghdad.

This thread is really sinking to new levels in terms of its stupidity.

[Major.Stupidity]

That's some absolutely atrocious circular logic you're using there.

The major conflict in Iraq was located in (surprise!)....Iraq. Just as the Surge was applied to the whole of the country, not just Baghdad.

This thread is really sinking to new levels in terms of its stupidity.

Or could it be that you are trying to ignore the realities of the Ethnic cleansing of Baghdad where a large portion of the civil strife was located?

It appears more like a case of migration then ethnic cleansing. At least in the sense that the sunni's are far from helpless in defening themselves against their shia brothers. Also they apparently left, as a large group, as opposed to being round up and slaughtered which is, at least what i thought ethnic cleansing was.

.

So is "migration" what they call ethnic cleansing these days?

Anyways, here's Juan Cole on the subject.

[DimeBagHo]

So is "migration" what they call ethnic cleansing these days?

Are you claiming that any population shift from one ethnic or religious group to another is "ethnic cleansing"? No matter what the cause? Is gentrification an example of ethnic cleansing?

The question is not whether neighborhoods became more segregated, but what caused the segregation (sectarian violence, or improved security in segregated neighborhoods?), and what caused the drop in violence (segregation by itself, or the surge?).

The authors of the study cited above want us to believe that sectarian violence caused increased segregation, and that the increased segregation itself then led to a drop in violence. Unfortunately their data shows that sectarian violence did not cause these Sunni neighborhoods to empty out. The worst of the sectarian violence went on for more than a year before those neighborhoods showed any sign of change. They started to empty out when the surge got going.

So here's a better explanation for both the increased segregation and the decreased violence. One of the most important tactics employed in the surge was to organise neighborhoods for self-defense, starting with neighborhoods where one group was already predominant, because those neighborhoods were easier to organise. As that process went forward there was a natural tendency for people to move from less secure mixed neighborhoods to these more secure, more organised, and more segregated, neighborhoods.

The surge caused increased segregation, but not by means of anything that an honest person would call "ethnic cleansing". It caused increased segregation by offering better security in segregated neighborhoods. The surge also caused the decrease in violence, by progressively securing more neighborhoods, and by hunting down the bad guys who were forced to operate in a shrinking number of unsecured neighborhoods.

So I guess all those maps showing ethnically pure regions in Baghdad are somehow false?

Probably not false, but it is hard to tell what they mean. The BBC maps don't say what counts as a "Sunni Neighborhood" but similar maps I have seen count a neighborhood as "Sunni" if more than 75% of the population is Sunni. But a neighborhood that is 76% Sunni is still very far from being "pure". If there were actual ethnic cleansing going on, you would expect to see lots of areas becoming 99%+ Sunni, or 99%+ Shia. Maybe that has happened, but I haven't seen any maps that show that.

[BobTheLethargic]

That's some absolutely atrocious circular logic you're using there.

The major conflict in Iraq was located in (surprise!)....Iraq. Just as the Surge was applied to the whole of the country, not just Baghdad.

Actually the surge was focused primarily on Baghdad and the Anbar province... yet some members of this forum seem to believe that it was applied equally across the entire country. The article doesn't even suggest that the study was making generalizations about Iraq as a whole based on a few conclusions about Baghdad.

I think a question that a some people are wondering is whether a "liberal" professor can perform a study and reach an unbiased conclusion. Well it's considered bad practice among academia to perform any sort of study with a political motives in mind. The conclusion is supposed to come after the data, not the other way around. Assuming that a respected professor is being totally disingenuous is merely acting as biased as the bias you're trying to accuse him of. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the head researcher was some sort of "liberal, flower-picking hippy." The fact that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal makes it even less likely that the authors were pushing some sort of agenda.

If they cant live beside each other, separate them- is that really that morally outrageous? If it saves lives?

Separate them now and it solves the immediate problem.The greater difficulties lie in reintegrating them afterwards.

[Mythos]

You can figure out how much this study is worth just by looking at the evidence cited and the conclusions drawn. They did a study of lighting in Baghdad, and drew conclusions about the entire country. That's BS, and it's not even hard to spot.

It was published in a quite prestigious and peer reviewed journal. It is quite credible. But it is nice to see how blind all those surge supporters are. People have been saying for a lot of time that the surge managed to do diddly squat about Iraq and now there is evidence to prove it. You lost this argument too. Find something else.

[DimeBagHo]

It was published in a quite prestigious and peer reviewed journal...

...and yet it's obviously garbage, which you can figure out just by looking at the summary.

Look, if a study showed you data about rainfall in Paris, and drew conclusions about crop yields in the whole of France, you would be skeptical wouldn't you? You don't need to suspect liberal bias, or wonder if the methodology is dodgy, because there is a big, fat, obvious, non sequitur right in the headline:

Satellite images show ethnic cleanout in Iraq

No they didn't. No way they could. At most they showed a cleanout in some neighborhoods of Baghdad.

*edit*

Even if you look at the claims made about Baghdad they are obviously rubbish.

They say lighting in these Sunni districts increased from 2003 through 2006. But the worst of the sectarian violence started at the beginning of 2006. In other words lighting was still increasing even as sectarian violence was climbing to a peak. According to the study lighting decreased from March 2007 through December 2007, which happens to *coincide* with the surge. The surge started in January 2007, General Petraeus gave his first progress report in September 2007, and the surge was still building at that point.

So how did this study manage to distinguish between the supposed effects of sectarian violence and the effects of US forces going after bad guys in these neighborhoods? The answer is they did not, because there is no way they could have.

[Remison]

It appears more like a case of migration then ethnic cleansing. At least in the sense that the sunni's are far from helpless in defening themselves against their shia brothers. Also they apparently left, as a large group, as opposed to being round up and slaughtered which is, at least what i thought ethnic cleansing was.

The surge was widely advertised in all parts of iraq. I was in the anbar when in they first started extending some units tour by a few months. Everyone knew it was coming, including the iraqs. Perhaps the sunnis anticipated they would be the focus of the new troops in baghdad, and decided to split. It wouldnt be unlike what the iraqs in falluja did when that city was the focus of a US offensive.

[lord o kelly]

OK, thanks a geography professor (at the highly liberal UCLA) looking at "satellite images" is now the leading source on the surge, yep alright, thanks for the news...

/sarcasm

[Caelius]

That's as far from being accurate...or even plausible that i've ever seen.

Are people really getting this desperate to report something negative from Iraq these days? Its either that or this must be politically motivated, like the Lancet Report.

[Pivra]

I know 2 Iraqi chicks and they look great.....

[Adrian]

Even if this was true why should i give a ? I dont live in Iraq so they can nuke the place for all i care .........

[The King Of Peasants]

OK, thanks a geography professor (at the highly liberal UCLA) looking at "satellite images" is now the leading source on the surge, yep alright, thanks for the news...

Are you insinuating that because this liberal professor is almost certainly against the war that might influence him to try and find reasons for failure that might not even be true?
Besides why believe the obivious facts when a possibly legitimate conspiracy is so readily availible...

[Tiwaz]

So I guess all those maps showing ethnically pure regions in Baghdad are somehow false?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/h...dad_navigator/

I guess that BBC map is totally wrong too. Iraqis live happily mixed together, not in ethnically pure areas. Oh yeah, and it's wrong too in it that most attacks take place either in mixed areas or areas at the border of ethnic regions.