fallen" and "wounded" coalition forces during a surprise trip to Iraq Friday, February 11, as outside over 30 people died in insurgent violence and Iraqi Christians contemplated their future.
"I join in paying tribute to all of those who have fallen, and been wounded, in this struggle,” Rumsfeld told hundreds of soldiers in the northern town of Mosul, where he visited injured U.S. troops at a combat hospital
"We’re proud of them. We’re grateful to them. We honor them. And they deserve not merely our gratitude, but our commitment to their unfinished work," he added.
He also watched several exercises in half a dozen locations in northern and central Iraq, some involving live ammunition of Iraq’s new security forces. At one base, Iraqi commandos slid down ropes from a U.S. helicopter to attack a house, demonstrating how Iraq’s new special operations forces might assault an insurgent hideout, the Voice of America (VOA) network reported from that region.
TRAINING LATE
Yet the training came to late for those who died when a vegetable truck rigged with explosives blew up Friday, February 11 outside a Shiite mosque northeast of Baghdad. Gunmen also sprayed automatic fire into a bakery in a Shiite district of the capital in sectarian violence that killed at least 23 people, the Associated Press (AP) news agency said. At least eight others died in separate violence, news reports said.
The attacks occurred as election officials announced provisional final results from the January 30 elections for provincial councils in 12 of the 18 provinces, confirming fears within Iraq’s minority Christian minority that Shiite religious groups won most ballots.
In Mosul, where Rumsfeld visited the troops, Christians have also complained about alleged vote rigging, and say tens of thousands of people were unable to participate in the country’s first multi party election in half a century.
CLOSELY WATCHED
Final results from the more closely watched national race for the 275-member National Assembly were expected in a few days. On Friday, February 11, news reports said that Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq stand to be hurt the most if Shariah, or Islamic law, is ever established in the country.
"It was clear ever since the [U.S.-led] invasion in 2003 that Iraq would become an Islamic nation no matter what, and those who will pay the high price are the minorities," Catholic News Service (CNS) quoted Father Justo Lacunza Balda, head of the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome, as saying.
Analysts say results of Iraq’s election look set to hand a sweeping victory to Shiite Muslim parties in the formation of the country’s transitional national assembly. At 62 percent, Shiite Muslims make up the majority of Iraq’s population, while 34 percent of the country is Sunni Muslim, a different branch of Islam.
SHIITE MAJORITY
The Rome-based representative of the Baghdad Patriarchate of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Father Philip Najim, told CNS that the Shiite majority would not be able to set up an Islamic constitution without widespread approval. However Father Lacunza said that whatever happens "the huge gulf" between religious freedom in principle and religious freedom in practice was likely to persist.
"The heart of the problem is will people be allowed to practice their religion? Minorities suffer discrimination in practice, not in principle. By offering protection to a minority, it is like we accept they are an endangered species," he was quoted as saying. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians are believed to have fled Iraq in recent months because of persecution and violence, human rights groups claim. (BosNewsLife News Center, with reports from Iraq and Italy)
