The death toll of Iraqis, which in recent times has probably exceeded the length of a million Muslim prayer beads, just got a bit longer. 250 are feared dead, 350 wounded, as Al Qaeda bomb attacks in the Yazidi villages of Khataniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair shattered the rustic tranquil of their abodes in another million clayey pieces. This is not news. What I find bone-chilling is how oh, so nearer this recent spate of bloodletting has brought home the reality that, following America’s evacuation, Iraq is destined to disintegrate in countless shards of tribal fiefdoms on the incarnadine foreground of a brutal civil war.
Until the current Sunni-led attack, Kurdish settlements were for the most part unaffected by Iraqi insurgencies. This observation gave the slightest of hopes to proponents of the American invasion for containment of the vitriolic Sunni-Shiite ethnic conflict within the greater Baghdad geography. That was until general outrage was sparked off by the public stoning of a Yazidi girl who had married a Muslim and converted to Islam. This barbaric ‘honour-killing’ especially incensed Muslims in Iraq, who view the Yazidi as devil-worshippers or devotees of Shaytan, the Qur’anic variant for Satan. For their part, the Yazidi refer to him as Melek Taus ((Tawûsê Melek in Kurdish), or the Peacock Angel, leader of a Heptad of angels who govern the earth. They adhere to a strict code of religious purity, evident in their caste system and intra-marriage customs, which meant that the girl’s apostasy could only be visited with summary ruthlessness. Consider the irony, then, that another faith noted, if infamously, for inviolate compliance with religious purity, Islam, should find this pious display of fundamentalism so palpably odious! In true fundamentalist style, the retaliation was equally unadulterated. In April, Al-Qaeda gunmen shot dead 23 Yazidi factory workers in Mosul. The 3-way bombing detailed above was an assuredly bloody follow-up, claiming more lifes in a single concerted attack than ever witnessed since 2003, according to The Guardian (You've gotta admire their sense of dedication, these extremists!).
And so, with this most recent of blitzes, the vicious arc of extremist violence turns full circle. In the meantime extremists continue their mass butchery gleefully, their bloodlust yet unsated. Bush may have been decried vehemently for opening the Pandora’s Box, but for the extremists, he is their Prometheus, bearing the benevolent gift of purging fire. And Iraq smoulders still within its unslaked flames.
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