Photo: People bake bread in east Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007. More than four months after U.S. forces completed a 30,000-strong force buildup, the death toll for both Iraqis and Americans has fallen dramatically for two months running, and, as if sensing a possible shift in the capital, Iraqis in mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad have returned to the streets in numbers not seen in months. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
X
It is very clear to everyone that the security situation in Iraq improved remarkably especially in Baghdad. The improvement of the security situation encouraged some of the Iraqi politicians to talk about their aims to return back the displaced families to their original residency areas. This is one of the good news and everybody knows that its too hard to hear good news in Iraq because we used to think about death, killing, displacing and insurgencies whenever we hear the word IRAQin any news channel.
Few days ago, one of the Iraqi politicians gave a statement about the return of the displaced families. He says that he welcomes the return of the Shiite families to their houses in Adil and Khadhraa neighborhoods (Sunni controlled neighborhoods) if the Sunnis families returned to their house in Hurriyah and Shoala neighborhoods (Shiite controlled neighborhoods). Everybody I met in my area (Hurriyah) welcomed the idea. One of the people I know said “they must come back because they suffered enough” but the second day we (the residents of the neighborhood) found out that (X) don’t like the idea. X is the side that doesn’t want the Shiite to return to their houses in the Sunnis neighborhoods and he also doesn’t want the Sunnis to return back to their houses in the Shiite neighborhoods. We knew that X doesn’t want this good political step to succeed because we found out that the Sunni mosque which was close for more than a year had been burnt one night after the statement of the Sunni politicians. This mosque remained safe and no one even tried to touch it for more than a year. In fact, the shops beside the mosques kept cleaning the area around the mosque because as we say (it’s the house of Allah) and it must be respected. Everybody tried to guess who is the doer and why he did it this time. Of course, everybody in the neighborhoods including my families has their own theories and these theories were built according to their own ideologies and inclinations.
Until now, the Sunnis families returned back to their houses and the Shiite families didn’t return to their houses. If the government wants these families to return back to their houses, it must stop X from creating a new strife but the most important question is WHO IS THIS X
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Kurdish forces close pro-PKK parties' HQ
A Kurdish security force in the city of al-Sulaimaniya closed down the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party after closing its headquarters in Arbil earlier on Saturday for backing the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). "My party will continue to support the free revolutionaries in Turkey's Kurdistan," said a defiant Faeq Colby, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party. The measures coincide with the inauguration of the Iraq Neighbors conference hosted by the Turkish city of Istanbul earlier on Saturday. "A security force of 50 armed men raided the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party, cordoned its headquarters and denied access to any journalists," the correspondent of the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) in Sulaimaniya said. "After the closing of our party headquarters in Arbil, another security force closed down our headquarters in Sulaimaniya," Colby told VOI.
Top cleric calls for peaceful solution to border tension
Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said on Saturday that negotiations are the best solution to the current Iraqi-Turkish tension and called for developing mutual interests between the two countries. "We visited cleric Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and expressed our deep appreciation for his efforts in maintaining the Iraqi people's unity and fighting sectarian divisions. We discussed the situation in Kurdistan and the nature of Turkish threats," said Kurdistan parliament Speaker Adnan al-Mufti in a press conference during his visit to the holy Shiite city of Najaf on Saturday. "We stressed the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) willingness to play a significant role in preventing Turkish incursions," al-Mufti added. Describing the military solution as "not good," the Shiite cleric said "negotiations are the optimal solution to the crisis."
Iraq orders new measures against PKK
The Iraqi authorities enacted new measures Saturday to curb rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said here. "It is a plan we started today, Saturday, in the Kurdistan region. Today is the first day of its implementation," he told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on Iraq in Istanbul. "There are security measures being taken, the checking of any suspect officer of the PKK in the Kurdistan region and in all Iraq," Dabbagh said. He added that the measures would cut off all "possibility" of logistical support to the PKK.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
Mideast neighbours meet on Iraq turmoil
The foreign ministers of Iraq and other countries in the region met here Saturday ahead of talks with major Western powers to seek ways to stabilise the war-ravaged country. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan chaired the meeting which besides Iraq and host country Turkey included Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain. Iraqi leaders say there has been a downward trend in violence in recent months and feel they are in a stronger position to convince the international community that the situation in Iraq is improving. But Turkey's threat to launch a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq, coupled with accusations that the region's Iraqi Kurdish leadership harbours and aids the separatists, has raised fresh tensions. The ministers were to join US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and counterparts from the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8 countries for extended discussions later in the day.
Rice fails to ease Turkey's anger over Kurdish rebels
Turkish officials indicated Saturday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had failed during two days of talks to persuade them not to send troops across the Iraqi border to attack Kurdish rebels based there. Even before Rice's plane had left the ground here to take the secretary to Israel for Mideast peace talks there, Turkish officials briefing reporters said they'd heard nothing new during her visit and that tens of thousands of Turkish troops would remain poised at the Turkey-Iraq border. "All options are on the table. How, when and whether or not to use these instruments is a matter of strategy for us," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference.
U.S. Reconciliation Chief Says Sunnis Could Return to Insurgency
The U.S. military official in charge of supporting reconciliation efforts in Iraq says that unless the Shiite-led Iraqi government takes concrete steps to embrace the Sunnis, the new, mostly-Sunni ex-insurgent militias supported by the U.S. could return to insurgency. Shiite officials are like an "enormous lion very, very afraid of a tiny mouse," Army Colonel Martin Stanton told a blogger conference call this afternoon. That mouse, however, isn't so tiny: over the past several months, hundreds if not thousands of irregular groups of (mostly) Sunni militiamen -- called "Concerned Local Citizens" by the U.S. military -- have been formed with U.S. support. Stanton, like other military officials, estimated their number at 67,000 men under arms, with 39,000 of them operating under "security contracts" with U.S. and allied forces. Ever since the U.S. began cooperating with Sunni tribal figures who agreed to turn against al-Qaeda, the Shiites have feared that U.S.-supported Sunni gunmen represent a threat to their political dominance.
Stanton believes Shiite reluctance to bring the so-called Concerned Local Citizens into the formal security forces and to hold provincial elections -- expected to benefit the Sunnis, who boycotted the last round of provincial voting in 2005 -- might guarantee precisely the result that the Shiites fear. "How long before all of these people trying to reconcile get discouraged at the continuous rebuff and come up with their own Plan B?" he asked. Plan B, Stanton assessed, might be either formal secession or to "pick up insurgency again."
Quote of the day: The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. ~ Adolf Hitler
Photo: People bake bread in east 
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