News & Views 11/20/07

Photo: A woman grieves on the feet of her son who was killed in a bomb attack, outside a morgue in Baquba, November 19, 2007. A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. foot patrol in Baquba killed at least three children, two of them siblings, and wounded seven people, police said. REUTERS/Stringer (IRAQ)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Tuesday: 2 Coalition Soldiers, 62 Iraqis Killed; 21 Iraqis Wounded

Four bodies found near Samarra

U.S. forces found four bodies near Samarra while policemen in al-Dalouiya salvaged an unidentified body from the River Tigris, a security source in Tikrit said on Tuesday.

IRAQ: Fallujah Now Under a Different Kind of Siege

Three years after a devastating U.S.-led siege of the city, residents of Fallujah continue to struggle with a shattered economy, infrastructure, and lack of mobility. The city that was routed in November 2004 is still suffering the worst humanitarian conditions under a siege that continues. Although military actions are down to the minimum inside the city, local and US authorities do not seem to be thinking of ending the agonies of the over 400,000 residents of Fallujah. "You, people of the media, say things in Fallujah are good," Mohammad Sammy, an aid worker for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Fallujah told IPS, "Then why don’t you come and live in this paradise with us? It is so easy to say things for you, isn’t it?" His anger is due to the fact that the embattled city is still completely closed and surrounded by military checkpoints to make it look like an isolated island. Those who are not genuine residents of the city are not granted the biometric identification badge from the U.S. Marines, and are thus not allowed to enter the city.

……….Fallujah General Hospital, situated across the Euphrates River from the city, is still functioning, but with a minimal number of specialist doctors and medical supplies. The only doctor who would speak to IPS did not want his name published. "The manager of this hospital is a good man and he is trying hard to improve the services, but the Ministry of Health in Baghdad still treats us here as a bunch of terrorists. We are suffering both corruption from the ministry and ignorance about Al-Anbar Province from this (Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki) administration," he explained. "We do not have enough medicines, and the equipment brought to us by contractors is still in boxes and seems to be part of the corrupt contracts of the province. It is impossible to work under such conditions." People coming for treatment or surgeries in the hospital appeared desperate to get their essential needs met. "We have to buy cotton, bandages, medicines and all we need from private pharmacies," 35-year-old Muath Tahir, a teacher who had his appendix removed three days earlier told IPS. "Those who can manage would go to the private hospital for better treatment, but my 230 dollar salary is not even enough for my daily needs. This city has become impossible to live in."

Shots fired from convoy set an Iraqi mob to action

The bullet tore through a red jacket that hung on the rack of the outdoor stall and struck Roba Taha in the foot. As her blood began to spill onto the sidewalk, so did the anger of scores of shopkeepers along this busy commercial street in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood on Monday. Some rushed the high school student to the hospital. Most rushed to a high-walled white dump truck to confront the driver, who allegedly fired several shots. Residents standing on their balconies yelled out that men were hiding in the bed of the truck. Frank Leever, 28, an Iraqi Christian shopkeeper, clambered up the back of the vehicle. “They are Afghanis. They are terrorists,” he recalled shouting. The mob closed in, hurling rocks and accusations. Monday’s incident offered a window into the collective psyche of a capital that is experiencing a lull in violence not seen since February 2006, when the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra triggered cycles of sectarian killings. Many Iraqis said they rose up against the truck driver and the men in the truck to preserve the gains in security Iraqis are enjoying. They also said they were anxious that violence could return, as it has many times since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Alarm over case against AP photographer

Iraqi journalists and international advocacy groups warned Tuesday that prosecuting an Associated Press photographer held for more than 19 months without charge is a worrisome precedent that threatens media freedom in the region. The Pentagon also raised the possibility that Bilal Hussein, who was part of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005, could continue to be held even if the Iraqi court acquits him. A public affairs officer notified the AP last weekend that the military intended to submit a complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Under Iraqi codes, an investigative magistrate will decide whether there are grounds to try Hussein, who was seized in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on April 12, 2006. Military officials have alleged that Hussein, 36, had links to terrorist groups but are refusing to disclose what evidence or which accusations would be presented. The AP’s own intensive investigations of the case — conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Paul Gardephe — have found no support for allegations that he was anything other than a working journalist in a war zone.

Iraqis joining insurgency less for cause than cash

Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said he didn’t join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a Muslim caliphate. He signed up for the cash. “I was out of work and needed the money,” said Abu Nawall, the nom de guerre of an unemployed metal worker who was paid as much as $1,300 a month as an insurgent. He spoke in a phone interview from an Iraqi military base where he is being detained. “How else could I support my family?” U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations.

Baghdad starts to exhale as security improves

Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad. Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees. “I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.” Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

Eating soup with a knife in an Iraqi town

Battling an insurgency, wrote T.E. Lawrence, the legendary "Lawrence of Arabia" who fought in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire almost a century ago, is "messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife." It's a lesson the U.S. military has learned painfully in Iraq, a messy war dragging into its fifth year with a mounting toll in Iraqi and American lives. Stung by setbacks, Washington this year installed a new commander, General David Petraeus, to oversee a new approach to counter-insurgency. Nahrawan, a poor town of 100,000 and stronghold of Shi'ite militiamen in the parched rural hinterland southeast of Baghdad, is one place that strategy is being tested. A short walk from the market, cranes lift huge concrete slabs to build a protective wall for a U.S. outpost in the centre of town -- a reverse from the old strategy of keeping troops in large bases far from population centers. Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 10th Field Artillery Regiment, work with the local council and tribal leaders to support reconstruction and humanitarian projects, and enlist locals to man checkpoints and monitor the area.

Iraq uncovers mass grave from 1991 Shi'ite revolt

Gravediggers uncovered the remains of at least 13 people from a mass grave on Tuesday which Iraqi officials said was the work of Saddam Hussein's bloody crackdown on a 1991 Shi'ite rebellion. Gravediggers crouched in a large rectangular pit chipping bone fragments out of the dry earth and cradling the dusty skulls they uncovered. Police looked on as the remains were placed in piles after an excavation in a rural area north of Najaf, some 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad following a tip-off by a farmer. Those in the grave had taken part in the Shaabaniya uprising, a 1991 revolt in southern Iraq against Saddam Hussein in which tens of thousands of Iraqis died, a spokesman for the Najaf provincial government said.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Iraq warns foreign security firms after shooting

Iraq's government turned up the heat on private security firms on Tuesday, threatening to deal firmly with those that act outside the law and opening an investigation into the shooting of a woman in central Baghdad. Monday's shooting was the latest in a string of incidents that have triggered widespread anger and prompted the Iraqi government to propose a change to the laws under which foreign security contractors operate.

Iraq Security Forces Crack Down on Sadr Militants

Dozens of militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were arrested in a massive assault by US and Iraqi troops in the central city of Diwaniyah, officials said on Monday. Iraqi security officials said that 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen supported by military tanks and hundreds of US and Polish troops launched the assault on Saturday to flush out Shiite militants from the city. Hussain al-Buderi, a member of the Qadisiyah provincial council, said that 49 militants from the Sadr group, including four leaders, were arrested since the launch of "Operation Lion's Leap". Witnesses said the city of more than one million people was under curfew and US aircraft were dropping leaflets urging locals to cooperate in locating militant hideouts.

Al-Maliki lashes out at Sunni leader

Iraq's prime minister lashed out at the country's Sunni Arab vice president in an interview published Tuesday, drawing attention to a bitter rift between two key politicians from rival sects at a time the U.S. is pressing for Iraqi unity. The outburst by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, printed in a newspaper read throughout the Arab world, occurred as American officials are urging the Iraqis to take advantage of a downturn in violence to resolve their differences before next year's planned drawdown of U.S. forces. In the interview, published by Al-Hayat, a London-based, Arabic-language daily, al-Maliki, a Shiite, said Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi was to blame for a backlog of legislation adopted by parliament but not yet ratified by the three-man presidential council of which the Sunni is a member. Al-Maliki also said al-Hashemi's Iraq Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, was not representative of the country's Sunni Arab community.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

US accepts proposal to hold talks with Iran on Iraq security

The United States has accepted a proposal put forward by the Iraqi government to hold new talks with Iran about the security situation in Iraq, the State Department said Tuesday. "We have communicated to the Iranian government that we are agreeable to that," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, adding that the United States has not yet received a reply from the Iranian side. "We are open to using this channel as a way of talking directly about important issues concerning security in Iraq. We don't yet have a date, and as soon as I am aware of a date, I'll try to convey that to you," McCormack said. Two such rounds of talks have been held between the United States and Iran with little results achieved.

AP Lawyers Will Go to Iraq Next Week to Defend Photographer

Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll believes AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who finally may be charged with unspecified alleged terrorist crimes in Iraq, can get a fair trial there. But she stressed that the U.S. military's failure to provide AP with specific information or evidence related to charges may well hamper efforts to mount a defense and ultimately free Hussein, whom AP contends is innocent. "I have no reason to think the Iraqi court system will be anything but fair and impartial," Carroll told E&P a day after AP revealed charges had been brought. "But they can only be impartial about what is presented to them. If one side has evidence and the other side doesn't know what it is, how can we defend Bilal? They have told our lawyers they will find out specifics when the complaint is filed next week."

U.S. Prosecutors Subpoena Blackwater Employees

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of the Blackwater employees present at a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad in which the company's security personnel killed 17 Iraqi civilians, lawyers in the case and government officials briefed on the matter said Monday. The opening of the grand jury inquiry is a significant step in the case because it indicates that prosecutors believe that there is enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant a formal criminal investigation.

COMMENTARY

One child dies every five minutes in Iraq because of the conflict

Looking at photographs of Iraqi children maimed by the war makes the conflict unforgettable. Reflecting on the causes that led to that war makes it unforgivable. Slowly but steadily new information is coming out on the effects of the war on children, and how it has affected not only their health but also their quality of life and prospects for the future. The International Children’s Day is celebrated throughout the world today, but certainly not in Iraq, where children have become the most tragic victims of the conflict.
One child dies every five minutes because of the war, and many more are left with severe injuries. Of the estimated 4mn Iraqis who have been displaced in Iraq or left the country, 1.5mn are children. For the most part, they don’t have access to basic health care, education, shelter or water and sanitation. They carry on their shoulders the tragic consequences of an uncalled for war. “Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in the hundreds because they don’t have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limb are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.” This is the assessment of 100 British and Iraqi doctors.

Truth?

A lot of people have commented with questions asking me about the truth about Baghdad. First there is no ever lasting truth in Baghdad. Is this sudden relative calm a lasting change or a lull before the storm? Nobody really knows. The violence has dropped to levels of 2005, I still wake up to shooting outside the windows and we hear explosions that shake our desks or sometimes are just a distant boom. Now bombs are killing one or two in Baghdad, it has been a long time since they've killed tens or hundreds. Thank God for any moment of peace for Iraqis. But the future is unsure. In the south the Shiite battle between two historic rivals, the Hakims and the Sadrists, continue. They vie for power and popularity among the Shiite Iraqis. Diyala is murky for us, but the last I gleaned the villages between Baqouba and Baghdad were a maze of Al Qaida strong-holds. They are encased on one side by the Shiite Mahdi Army-controlled town of Khalis and on the other side the newly anti-Al Qaida elements of the Sunni insurgent group the 1920 Revolution Brigade. It is unclear what the side effects of the growing former insurgent groups turned concerned citizens will mean for the future of Iraq. Is this reconciliation or a band-aid until the U.S. troops leave. Then both Shiite Arabs and Sunni Arabs can legally carry arms and the battle may be yet to come. Some of the new-found quiet in Baghdad is related to the cleansing of neighborhoods and the division will last for a long time to come. The blast walls are high and divisive, even when painted with pretty pictures. Trust is gone; trust in your neighbor, your countryman and your government. It will take a long time to recover. What is the truth? Right now we don't know. No one does, we can only watch and see.

IRAQ: Toward National Reconciliation or a Warlord State?

While the vast majority of analysts here agree that sectarian violence in Iraq has declined sharply from pre-"surge" levels one year ago, a major debate has broken out as to whether the achievement of the Surge's strategic objective -- national reconciliation -- is closer or more distant than ever. On one side, advocates of the surge -- the deployment beginning last February of some 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to help pacify Baghdad and al-Anbar province -- claim that the counter-insurgency strategy overseen by Gen. David Petraeus has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. On the other side, surge sceptics argue that the strategy's "ground-up" approach to pacification -- buying off local insurgent and tribal groups with money and other support -- may have set the stage for a much bigger and more violent civil war or partition, particularly as U.S. forces begin drawing down from their current high of about 175,000 beginning as early as next month. One prominent analyst, George Washington University Prof. Marc Lynch, believes that Petraeus' strategy of reducing violence by making deals with dominant local powers is leading to the creation in Iraq of a "warlord state" with "power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power-brokers, with a purely nominal central state."

Q & A: Baghdad correspondent on end of the surge

A lot of bloggers seem to be slicing and dicing it mainly into a story purely about improvements. They are indeed significant, but for Iraqis, it’s far more complicated. A lot of people I talked to described the current moment as — in all likelihood, but hopefully not — the calm before another storm. And when asked, no one said that life in Iraq today is what it was before the American invasion. The streets are safer now than they were a year ago, and there are signs of life being better — but it’s still far from good. The American commanders I’ve talked to have also offered pretty sober assessments — declaring that they’ve “created the conditions” for political reconciliation, noting that ultimately the future depends on the Iraqi government’s ability to come together and forge some kind of compromise. One commander, Colonel J.B. Burton, whose unit was in charge of northwest Baghdad, recently put it very simply, in terms of golf. “We’ve got the ball on the tee,” he said,” but it’s not going to take much wind to blow it off.”

RESISTANCE

Quotes of the day: "Soldiers kick in the doors of houses and immediately search inside even if there are women there. According to our traditions, this is absolutely not acceptable," said Mehsin al-Chainimi, 50, in his clothes shop in Nahrawan's market. "If they insist on kicking down our doors, then, to speak frankly, we will resist them," he said. – from article Eating soup with a knife in an Iraqi town