Category Archives: war in Iraq

OPINION: The algebra of occupation

The algebra of occupation
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy In Focus, November 27, 2007

In 1805, the French army out maneuvered, outsmarted, and outfought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would flounder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas.

In 1967, it took six days for the Israeli army to smash Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, a Shiite militia fought the mightiest army in the Middle East to a bloody standstill in Lebanon.

In 1991, it took four days of ground combat for the United States to crush Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War. U.S. losses were 148 dead and 647 wounded. After more than five years of war in Iraq, U.S. losses are approaching 4,000, with over 50,000 wounded; 2007 is already the deadliest year of the war for the United States.

In each case, a great army won a decisive victory only to see that victory canceled out by what T.E. Lawrence once called the “algebra of occupation.” Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I, Lawrence put his finger on the formula that has doomed virtually every military force that has tried to quell a restive population. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Permanent bases; Kurdish-Shia coalition; language of war

US, Iraq deal sees long-term US presence
AP, November , 2007

President Bush on Monday signed a deal setting the foundation for a potential long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq, with details to be negotiated over matters that have defined the war debate at home — how many U.S. forces will stay in the country, and for how long.

The agreement between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirms that the United States and Iraq will hash out an “enduring” relationship in military, economic and political terms. Details of that relationship will be negotiated in 2008, with a completion goal of July, when the U.S. intends to finish withdrawing the five combat brigades sent in 2007 as part of the troop buildup that has helped curb sectarian violence. [complete article]

See also, War Czar: Permanent Iraq bases won’t require Senate ratification (TPM).

Iraqi Shiite leader defends Iran
AP, November 26, 2007

Iraq’s most influential Shiite politician said Sunday that the U.S had not backed up claims that Iran is fueling violence here, underscoring a wide gap on the issue between Washington and the Shiite-led Baghdad government.

A draft bill to ease curbs on ex-Saddam Hussein loyalists in government services also drew sharp criticism from Shiite lawmakers, opening old wounds at a time when the United States is pressing the Iraqis for compromise for the sake of national unity. [complete article]

Even more good news for Maliki
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, November 27, 2007

The tug-of-war between Ba’athists and leaders of post-2003 Iraq has dominated political life in Baghdad. What’s new is the apparent willingness of Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist bloc, to coordinate with Kurdish politicians. Muqtada also sent a very strong message to Kurdish politicians through one of his top loyalists, member of Parliament Bahaa al-Araji. Speaking to the Iraqi newspaper Ilaf, Araji defended article 140 of the constitution, pertaining to Kirkuk. That is certainly a new line for the Sadrists. The article, which has caused a storm in Iraqi political circles, calls for a census and referendum in the oil-rich city to see whether it can be incorporated into Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1986, as part of his Arabization process, Saddam called for the relocation of Arab families to Kirkuk, the center of Iraq’s petroleum industry, to outnumber the Kurds living there. He also uprooted thousands of Kurds from Kirkuk. Since the downfall of Saddam’s regime, the Kurds have been demanding Kirkuk, something that both Sunnis and mainstream Shi’ites curtly refuse.

Recently, however, after Maliki’s main allies in the Sadrist bloc and Iraqi Accordance Front walked out on him, he was left with no other option but to cuddle up to the Kurds and support them on Kirkuk. He backed article 140, calling it “mandatory” and called on 12,000 Arab families brought to Kirkuk by Saddam to return to their Arab districts. When that is complete, and the census and referendum are held, then Kirkuk would become 100% Kurdish.

Saddam’s deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz once told Kurdish politicians, “You [the Kurds] have one right: to weep as you pass through Kirkuk [since it will never become a Kurdish city].” But if Maliki and Muqtada support article 140, then Kirkuk very much might become “Kurdish”.

Muqtada’s about-turn was expressed by Araji, who said: “The article is constitutional and it should be handled accordingly.” When asked if this means giving Kirkuk to the Kurds, Araji did not say, “No, Kirkuk is an Arab city and will remain an Arab city.” He surprised observers by saying: “The Iraqis are the ones who decide on this.” Clearly, Araji could not have made such a bold statement without getting prior approval from Muqtada.

In the past, Muqtada has vehemently opposed any division of Iraq, claiming that even the Kurdish north (which is now Iraqi Kurdistan) should be re-incorporated into the Iraqi republic. Federalism was out of the question for Muqtada, even if it meant granting another oil-rich district in southern Iraq to the Shi’ites. Kirkuk was – until this weekend apparently – a red line for Muqtada. [complete article]

Iraq has only militants, no civilians
By Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch, November 26, 2007

“Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.” — Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

Name them. Maim them. Kill them.

From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed “militants,” “criminals,” “suspected insurgents,” “IED [Improvised Explosive Device] emplacers,” “anti-American fighters,” “terrorists,” “military age males,” “armed men,” “extremists,” or “al-Qaeda.”

The pattern for reporting on such attacks has remained the same from the early years of the occupation to today. Take a helicopter attack on October 23rd of this year near the village of Djila, north of Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among “a group of men planting a roadside bomb.” Only later did a military spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the dead were civilians. Local residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there were children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11.

Here is part of the statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman in northern Iraq, Major Peggy Kageleiry:

“A suspected insurgent and improvised explosive device cell member was identified among the killed in an engagement between Coalition Forces and suspected IED emplacers just north of Samarra…. During the engagement, insurgents used a nearby house as a safe haven to re-engage coalition aircraft. A known member of an IED cell was among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements. We send condolences to the families of those victims and we regret any loss of life.”

As usual, the version offered by locals was vastly different. Abdul al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of some of the victims, revealed that the “group of men” attacked were actually three farmers who had left their homes at 4:30 A.M. to irrigate their fields. Two were killed in the initial helicopter attack and the survivor ran back to his home where other residents gathered. The second air strike, he claimed, destroyed the house killing 14 people. Another witness told reporters that four separate houses were hit by the helicopter. A local Iraqi policeman, Captain Abdullah al-Isawi, put the death toll at 16 — seven men, six women, and three children, with another 14 wounded. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iraq – the shifting narrative

Bomb at a market shatters lull for Baghdad
By Stephen Farrell, New York Times, November 24, 2007

Last Friday, the Ghazil animal market was a crowded bazaar in a city willing itself into recovery. Cautious but hopeful parents led fun-starved children by the hand to show them parakeets, tropical fish and twittering chicks painted in bright, improbable hues.

As Baghdad’s relative lull in violence had extended from weeks into months, Sunnis and Shiites alike made the calculation — one shared by this reporter — that the Ghazil market was safe enough to risk walking around on a sunny Friday.

It was. But one week later, the market in the shadow of the Mosque of the Caliphs was a scene of carnage, a cruel reminder that the decline in violence in this city is relative and may not last. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — While American officials have been keen to attribute the recent drop in violence in Baghdad to the success of the surge, there seems to be evidence that this drop can also be attributed to another significant event: an isolated but effective disruption in the supply chain of suicide bombers.

A New York Times report last Thursday on a raid on an insurgent camp at Sinjar, close to the Syrian border, focused on intelligence findings that reveals where foreign fighters entering Iraq are coming from. The political significance of this data is obvious: At a time when Iran is frequently blamed for fomenting violence in Iraq, the U.S. military is making it clear that the most significant foreign element has actually been coming from Saudi Arabia. What this report and surrounding coverage has not focused on are the practical consequences that seem to have followed from this raid: a substantial drop in the number of suicide bombings. Friday’s bombing in the Ghazil animal market while apparently intended to look like the re-emergence of the trend of suicide attacks aimed at causing mass civilian casualties is noteworthy because it wasn’t a suicide bombing.

There’s no place like … Iraq?
By Larry Kaplow, Rod Nordland and Silvia Spring, Newsweek, November 24, 2007

Dawood is happy to be back in Baghdad. Not that he had much choice. Late last year the cautious, soft-spoken Shiite fled to Syria and on to Lebanon, leaving his wife and their three children in relatives’ care while he looked for a safer home. He had begun getting death threats after helping create an Internet hookup for the U.S. Army base at Taji. Dawood (he won’t risk the use of his full name) is a 33-year-old IT engineer, but he couldn’t find work outside Iraq. His Lebanese visa ran out, and Canada refused his asylum application. So a few weeks ago, practically broke, he returned to Baghdad. His old district is torn by an ongoing Shia-Sunni turf war, but Dawood says he feels safe in the family’s new, mainly Shia area. His youngest child, now 3, called him “Uncle” at first, and he’s still looking for work, but it’s good just to be with his family. “I’ll tell you something about missing Baghdad,” he says. “When I’m in Baghdad, I don’t want to hear any Iraqi music. But when I’m somewhere else, all I want to hear is Iraqi music.”

Thousands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war. Although they’re scarcely a fraction of the roughly 2.2 million who have fled into exile since 2003, they represent a big shift: for the first time since the war began, more Iraqis seem to be re-entering the country than leaving. At the desert outpost of Al Waleed, the main crossing on the Syrian frontier, border police reported 43,799 Iraqis coming home in October—more than five times the number heading out, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Other statistics remain patchy at best, but the signs point toward home. “I can tell you this,” says Abdul Samid Rahman Sultan, Iraq’s minister of Displacement and Migration (the job title alone tells how bad the problem has been). “Flights from Syria are always full. Flights out are not.” [complete article]

Railroading a journalist in Iraq
By Tom Curley, Washington Post, November 24, 2007

At long last, prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein may get his day in court. The trouble is, justice won’t be blind in this case — his lawyer will be.

Bilal has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since he was picked up April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, a violent town in a turbulent province where few Western journalists dared go. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents. This week, Editor&Publisher magazine reported the military has amended that to say he is, in fact, a “terrorist” who had “infiltrated the AP.”

We believe Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man.

In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, although the military has sent out a flurry of ever-changing claims. Every claim we’ve checked out has proved to be false, overblown or microscopic in significance. Now, suddenly, the military plans to seek a criminal case against Bilal in the Iraqi court system in just days. But the military won’t tell us what the charges are, what evidence it will be submitting or even when the hearing will be held. [complete article]

Iraq nullifies Kurdish oil deals
By Ammar Karim, AFP, November 24, 2007

Iraq’s oil ministry has declared all crude contracts signed by the Kurdish regional authorities with foreign companies null and void, a government official said on Saturday.

“The ministry has nullified all contracts signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government,” the official told AFP, asking not to be named. “They will not be recognised.”

The government in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region has signed 15 exploration and exportation contracts with 20 international companies since it passed its own oil law in August, infuriating the Baghdad government. [complete article]

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NEWS: Foreign fighters in Iraq

Foreign fighters in Iraq are tied to allies of U.S.
By Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times, November 22, 2007

Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006. [complete article]

Ex-Iraq commander says bring troops home
AP, November 21, 2007

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year.

His comments come as welcomed ammunition for the Democratic-controlled Congress in its standoff with the White House on war spending. This month, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would pay for combat operations but sets the goal that combat end by Dec. 15, 2008. The White House threatened to veto the measure, and Senate Republicans blocked it from passing.

The Pentagon on Tuesday said that as many as 200,000 civilian employees and contractors will begin receiving layoff warnings by Christmas unless Congress approves a war spending bill that President Bush will sign. [complete article]

Returnees find a capital transformed
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post , November , 2007

Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.

Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq. [complete article]

Shiites in S. Iraq rebuke Tehran
By Amit R. Paley and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post, November 22, 2007

More than 300,000 Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq have signed a petition condemning Iran for fomenting violence in Iraq, according to a group of sheiks leading the campaign.

“The Iranians, in fact, have taken over all of south Iraq,” said a senior tribal leader from the south who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life. “Their influence is everywhere.” [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: How is Iraq changing?

2008: The year of federalism in Iraq?
By Reidar Visser, historiae.org, November 12, 2007

In all the speculation about the fate of the US “surge” policy in Iraq, many analysts have overlooked a date on the 2008 calendar which is bound to become fateful: 11 April. On that day, the current moratorium on creating new federal entities – a last-minute addition to the Iraqi federalism legislation in October 2006 – comes to an end. From April 2008 onwards, the administrative map of Iraq could change dramatically. [complete article]

Iraq: Toward national reconciliation, or a warlord state?
By Jim Lobe, Antiwar, November 21, 2007

While the vast majority of analysts 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 skeptics 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.” [complete article]

In Iraq, signs of hope and peril
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, November 21, 2007

Even Osama bin Laden understands that al-Qaeda has stumbled badly in Iraq. In an Oct. 22 audiotape that attracted too little notice at the time, bin Laden scolded his followers for tactics that alienated Iraqis. “Mistakes have been made during holy wars,” he said. “Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks.”

Bin Laden’s self-criticism was “possibly the most important message” in al-Qaeda’s history, wrote Abdel Bari Atwan, an Arab journalist who has interviewed bin Laden and written an insightful biography. “It is the first time that bin Laden recognizes the error committed by the members of his organization and in particular the excesses committed in Iraq.”

Second, the recent security gains reflect the fact that Iran is standing down, for the moment. The Iranian-backed Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr has sharply curtailed its operations. The shelling of the Green Zone by Iranian-backed militias in Sadr City has stopped. The flow of deadly roadside bombs from Iran appears to have slowed or stopped. And to make it official, the Iranians announced Tuesday that they will resume security discussions in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

I suspect the Iranians’ new policy of accommodation is a tactical shift. They still want to exert leverage over a future Iraq, but they have concluded that the best way to do so is to work with U.S. forces — and speed our eventual exit — rather than continue a policy of confrontation. A genuine U.S.-Iranian understanding about stabilizing Iraq would be a very important development. But we should see it for what it is: The Iranians will contain their proxy forces in Iraq because it’s in their interest to do so. [complete article]

Maliki thrown a political lifeline
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, November 22, 2007

The Iraqi Accordance Front, the Sunni heavyweight in Iraqi politics, has decided to rejoin the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which it abandoned on August 1.

It is unclear whether the same five ministers, along with deputy prime minister Salam Zoubai, who all stepped down, will return to work with the premier or whether the Front will nominate new ministers for the vacant posts. They resigned because Maliki had not responded to any of the 11 demands they had made. These included a greater decision-making role for Sunnis and an amnesty for Sunni prisoners – mainly former Ba’athists who had joined – or been accused of taking part in – the Sunni insurgency.

This comes amid increased speculation that Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will also soon reconcile with Maliki, having also walked out on him in recent months due to Maliki’s “friendship” with US President George W Bush. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: A lull in the violence – how long will it last?

Q & A: Baghdad correspondent on end of the surge
The Lede, New York Times, November 20, 2007

One conservative blogger reacted to your piece today by saying that “When the New York Times prints a front-page exposé, essentially, about the improvements in Baghdad, that’s big news anyway you slice it.” Is the article being sliced the right way?

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.” [complete article]

Sects unite to battle Al Qaeda in Iraq
By Doug Smith and Saif Rasheed, Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2007

Despite persistent sectarian tensions in the Iraqi government, war-weary Sunnis and Shiites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants on both sides, U.S. military officials say.

In the last two months, a U.S.-backed policing movement called Concerned Citizens, launched last year in Sunni-dominated Anbar province under the banner of the Awakening movement, has spread rapidly into the mixed Iraqi heartland.

Of the nearly 70,000 Iraqi men in the Awakening movement, started by Sunni Muslim sheiks who turned their followers against Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are now more in Baghdad and its environs than anywhere else, and a growing number of those are Shiite Muslims. [complete article]

Shots fired from convoy set an Iraqi mob to action
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, November 20, 2007

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. [complete article]

Alarm over case against AP photographer
By Kim Gamel, AP, November 20, 2007

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. [complete article]

Iraqis joining insurgency less for cause than cash
By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post, November 20, 2007

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. [complete article]

Baghdad starts to exhale as security improves
By Damien Cave and Alissa J. Ruben, New York Times, November 20, 2007

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. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: War funding

Pentagon is left scrambling to pay for war
By Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2007

Congress’s failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens of domestic military bases and imperil the livelihoods of tens of thousands of defense workers.

The congressional inaction may trigger Secretary Robert Gates to carry out his threat last week to furlough as many as 200,000 civil servants and defense contractors this winter, raising the stakes for Democratic lawmakers determined to tie war funding to a drawdown of US troops from Iraq.

Before lawmakers left town Friday for their Thanksgiving recess, they did approve the Pentagon’s $470 billion base budget, but not a supplemental funding request to pay for war operations. Democrats don’t want to fund that $189 billion defense request from President Bush unless the money is tied to deadlines, or at least goals, to bring the bulk of troops home from Iraq by the end of 2008. [complete article]

Democrats say they won’t back down on war
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, November 19, 2007

Democrats in Congress failed once again Friday to shift President Bush’s war strategy in Iraq, but insisted that they would not let up. Their explanation for their latest foiled effort seemed to boil down to a simple question: “What else are we supposed to do?”

Frustrated by the lack of political progress in Iraq, under pressure by antiwar groups and mindful of polls showing that most Americans want the war to end, the Democrats last week put forward a $50 billion war spending bill with strings attached knowing it would fail.

Like so many of the war-related measures that Democrats have proposed this year, the spending bill sought to set a timeline for redeploying American troops, and to narrow the mission to focus on counterterrorism and on the training of Iraq’s security forces. [complete article]

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NEWS & FEATURE: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad; U.S. kills allies; U.S. Army desertion rate up 80 percent

When night falls, the assassins gather in Hayaniya Square
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, November 17, 2007

Hayaniya Square in Basra is a busy intersection leading to a poor and run-down neighbourhood. On one side of the piazza, sewage water flows through what was once a dried-up river bed, filling the air with an oppressive smell. On the other side, a pair of kebab stalls send columns of smoke from skewers of burning meat into the warm air. Two sheep, whose fate lies on those skewers, stand tethered to a nearby telegraph pole.

The square is dominated by a painting of six men dressed in casual trousers and jackets, behind whom loom the faces of Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi army, and his father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. The six men, described on the mural as martyrs, are Mahdi army commanders who were killed by the British.

At night, when traffic in the square slows, a group of men gather. These are the sakkaka, or assassins. Their Toyota saloons, chosen for the voluminous boots that can accommodate two bodies with room to spare, stand parked nearby.

The assassins chat, eat kebabs and stroll around in small groups, discussing their sinister trade. They buy and sell names of collaborators, Iraqis who worked for the British, as well as journalists and uncooperative police officers, businessmen and the footsoldiers of other militias.

Depending on the nature of their perceived crime, the price on a collaborator’s head can vary from couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. The most valuable lives these days in Basra are those of the interpreters and contractors who were employed by the British before they withdrew from the city. [complete article]

Sunni group says U.S. killed its members
By Cara Buckley, New York Times, November 17, 2007

A tribal group tapped by American forces to root out extremists here said Friday that more than four dozen of its members were killed during United States air and ground strikes north of the capital this week. But the United States military insisted that the attacks had been aimed instead at Al Qaeda and had killed 25 insurgents.

“We had some people on the ground who identified these individuals as bad guys, basically,” said Lt. Justin Cole, a spokesman for the coalition forces. “That’s why we engaged. And there is really no change in our posture since then.”

The attacks were mounted late Tuesday near Taji, a restive town 15 miles north of Baghdad, after American forces said they saw armed men in the area and detected “hostile intent.” Helicopters and airplanes strafed buildings, and ground troops later exchanged fire with men who had shot at them, according to the military version of events. Three weapons caches were found that contained, among other things, antiaircraft machine guns, missiles and a wide array of explosive devices, the military said.

Yet Sheik Jasim Zaidan Khalaf, who heads one of the area’s American-backed tribal groups, known as an Awakening Council, said the Americans had erred in the attack. The sheik said his council had been active in purging the area of militants belonging to Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group. The council recently detained 20 insurgents from the group, the sheik said, and confiscated their weapons with the intent of turning them over to United States forces. “The Americans suspected our people,” the sheik said. “The whole issue started with a mistake.” [complete article]

Army desertion rate up 80 pct. since ’03
AP, November 17, 2007

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: America’s hidden war toll; Muslims Scholars Assn. shut down; strategic drift

America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans
By Tom Baldwin, The Times, November 15, 2007

More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 – an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.

The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic” – often linked to post-traumatic stress. [complete article]

Hard-line Iraqi clerics group shut down
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2007

A government-sponsored Sunni religious foundation Wednesday closed the main office of the influential Muslim Scholars Assn., a group of Sunni clerics suspected of ties to insurgents.

The clerics’ group, most of whose senior leaders left the country in the last year, protested the move in what amounted to the latest example of the split among Sunni Arabs between those aligned with and opposed to U.S. forces. [complete article]

Shiite politics in Iraq: The role of the Supreme Council
International Crisis Group, November 15, 2007

Often misidentified in Western media as “the largest Shiite party” in Iraq, SCIRI – the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Al-Majlis al-‘Aala li al-Thawra al-Islamiya fi-l-Iraq) – is certainly one of the most powerful. Its defining characteristics are a strong organisation, whose leadership hails from one of Najaf’s leading families, the Hakims; a surprising political pragmatism in light of profound sectarian inclinations; and a somewhat incongruous dual alliance with the U.S. and Iran. Since its founding a quarter century ago, it has followed a trajectory from Iranian proxy militia to Iraqi governing party, whose leader, Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim, has been courted and feted by the Bush White House. Today, it is engaged in a fierce competition with its main Shiite rival, the movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr, which may well determine Iraq’s future. To help shape the party into a more responsible actor, the U.S. should stop using it as a privileged instrument in its fight against the Sadrists but press it to cut ties with its more sectarian elements and practices. [complete article]

Strategic drift
By John Podesta, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis, Washington Post, November 15, 2007

With apparent disregard for the opinion of the American people, the debate over whether the large U.S. military presence in Iraq threatens our national security has been put on hold. Both political parties seem resigned to allowing the Bush administration to run out the clock on its Iraq strategy and bequeath this quagmire to the next president. The result is best described as strategic drift, and stopping it won’t be easy.

President Bush claims that his strategy is having some success, but toward what end? He argued that the surge would provide the political breathing space needed to achieve a unified, peaceful Iraq. But its successes, which Bush says come from a reduction of casualties in certain areas, have been accompanied by massive sectarian cleansing. The surge has not moved us closer to national reconciliation. [complete article]

U.S. links drop in Iraq attacks to Iran
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2007

Iran appears to be honoring an informal pledge to try to halt the smuggling of explosives and other weapons into Iraq, contributing to a decline in bombings by more than half since March, a senior U.S. general told reporters Thursday.

“We have not seen any recent evidence that weapons continue to come across the border into Iraq,” Maj. Gen. James Simmons said. [complete article]

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OPINION: The astronomical and unconscionable costs of the Iraq war

The (White) House of Shame
By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, November 14, 2007

It’s been three years since President George W. Bush experienced what he called his “accountability moment,” i.e., his re-election. And it’s a year now since American voters sent a Democratic majority to the House and Senate on the delusional assumption they’d hold this administration responsible for what it’s done to the United States and the world. We know how that hasn’t happened.

So why would the folks in the Bush White House be the least bit perturbed by publicity about the mind-boggling long-term costs of the war in Iraq that they rushed to wage? I don’t think they are, and I wouldn’t expect them to be. This is an administration that admits no guilt and knows no shame, and in that it is a perfect reflection of what America and Americans look like to the rest of the world. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: The problem with militias

U.S. forces accused of shooting Sunni allies
By Leila Fadel and Mohammed al Dulaimy, McClatchy, November 14, 2007

Members of a Sunni Muslim group that was formed with American backing to fight Sunni militants charged Wednesday that a lengthy U.S. air and ground attack killed at least seven of its fighters.

Mansour abd Salem, one of the leaders of the Sunni Awakening council in Taji, north of Baghdad, charged in a television interview that U.S. forces had “deliberately” killed members of the group in a “hideous” assault.

The U.S. military said that the operations targeted armed “associates of senior al Qaida in Iraq leaders,” killed 25 suspected terrorists and detained 21 suspects.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, the U.S.-backed Iraqi government seized the offices and shut down the radio station of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni group that’s voiced support for al Qaida. In a television interview, the group’s leader, Sheik Harith al Thari, who’s now in Jordan, once said that, “We are from al Qaida and al Qaida are from us.” [complete article]

The problem with militias
By Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect, November 13, 2007

Everywhere you go in Iraq, there’s victory. The commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, told reporters last Wednesday that he had wiped al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the city. Stability in Iraq is “within sight, but not yet within touch,” he said. And while categorical statements about progress have come back to haunt U.S. officials, commanders are evincing more certainty about the possibilities of success than they would ever have dared prior to Gen. David Petraeus’ September testimony. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has gone even further, proclaiming “victory against terrorist groups and militias.” It’s pretty bewildering, even for those who’ve seen some recent reasons for cautious optimism.

Perhaps the only voice of caution over the last two weeks has been Ambassador Ryan Crocker. When last Crocker drew attention, it was during his shared testimony with Petraeus, in which he showed a surprising eagerness to lie about the pace with which sectarian reconciliation had advanced. These days, he’s warning of a looming danger — militias taking over the mechanics of running Iraq. Using the military’s acronym for Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, Crocker recently mused, “We have seen JAM Militant transform into JAM Incorporated. They may not be shooting at us or Iraqi soldiers, but [they are] controlling gas stations, real estate, trade and services. … That is a major challenge to the state.”

Right Crocker is. But if he recognized how his observation undermined his colleagues’ declarations of victory, he didn’t show it. Consider the case of the newest militias on the block — the so-called Concerned Local Citizens, a mostly Sunni collection of ex-insurgents and rejections that’s responsible for much of the spring in the steps of U.S. officials. The CLCs represent the U.S.’ first attempt at actually creating Iraqi militias, and U.S. officials are enthusiastic about the effort. Few seem to have noticed that everything Crocker says about the “major challenge” posed by the militias applies to U.S.-friendly militias as much as it does to U.S.-opposed militias. And yet, these new militias are, in large part, the basis for the success that U.S. and Iraqi officials are claiming. [complete article]

Muqtada moves to stop a Sunni ‘surge’
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, November 16, 2007

The world is seemingly too busy these days to mind the day-to-day news coming out of Iraq – much to the pleasure of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. With the spotlight off him, Maliki gave an interview to the Saudi television channel al-Arabiyya, in which he asserted that “There is no civil war in Iraq.” He added, “We don’t have a militia problem in Iraq anymore.” He wrapped up by noting that Iran does not have a decision-making influence on the Prime Minister’s Office in Baghdad.

Maliki knew that he was, to put it politely, not telling the truth. In addition to spreading false public relations about his administration’s effectiveness in combating terrorism, the Iraqi premier was also doing something very important. He was reconciling with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. Or at least, he was trying to find common ground with his former allies, recently turned enemies. Muqtada quit the government this year.

This week, Muqtada called for a renewal of his truce with both American forces and those of the Iraqi government. It is a gesture of goodwill towards Maliki. Another six months of peace and quiet from the Mahdi Army, giving the prime minister more room to concentrate on other pressing issues, like the looming war between Turkey and Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. [complete article]

F.B.I. says guards killed 14 Iraqis without cause
By David Johnston and John M. Broder, New York Times, November 14, 2007

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter. [complete article]

Iraqis wasting an opportunity, U.S. officers say
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, November 15, 2007

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.

In more than a dozen interviews, U.S. military officials expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government’s failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but “it’s unclear how long that window is going to be open.” [complete article]

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NEWS: The not-so hidden costs of war

‘Hidden costs’ double price of two wars, Democrats say
By Josh White, Washington Post, November 13, 2007

The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs”– including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled “The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,” estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Peace through division

In Iraq, the silence of the lambs
By Ali al-Fadhily, Asia Times, November 14, 2007

The separation of religious groups in the face of sectarian violence has brought some semblance of relative calm to Baghdad. But many Iraqis see this as the uncertain consequence of a divide and rule policy.

Claims are being made that sectarian violence in Iraq has fallen because that the US military “surge” has succeeded in reducing attacks against civilians. But Baghdad residents say that they now live in a largely divided city that has brought an uneasy calm.

“I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and that everything is fine,” retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told Inter Press Servce (IPS) in Baghdad. “But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq.” [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & FEATURE: In Iraq, it’s getting harder to find any bad guys

Who’s the Enemy?
By Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch, November 11, 2007

Who is the enemy? Who, exactly, are we fighting in Iraq? Why are we there? And what’s our objective?

Nearly five years into the war, the answers to basic questions like these ought to be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, they’re anything but.

We aren’t fighting the Sunnis. Not any more, anyway. Virtually the entire Sunni establishment, from the moderate Muslim Brotherhood-linked Iraqi Islamic Party (which has been part of every Iraqi government since 2003) to the Anbar tribal alliance (which has been begging for U.S. support since 2004 and only recently got it) is either actively cooperating with the American military or sullenly tolerating what it hopes will be a receding occupation. Across Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq, the United States is helping to build army and police units as well as neighborhood patrols — the Pentagon calls them “concerned citizens” — out of former resistance fighters, with the blessing of tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, and Salahuddin provinces, parts of Baghdad, and areas to the south of the capital. We have met the enemy, and — surprise! — they are friends or, if not that, at least not active enemies. Attacks on U.S. forces in Sunni-dominated areas, including the once-violent hot-bed city of Ramadi, Anbar’s capital, have fallen dramatically. [complete article]

Inside the surge
By Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, November 19, 2007

Joint Security Station Thrasher, in the western Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya, is housed in a Saddam-era mansion with twenty-foot columns and a fountain, now dry, that looks like a layer cake of concrete and limestone. The mansion and two adjacent houses have been surrounded by blast walls. J.S.S. Thrasher was set up last March, and is part of the surge in troops engineered by General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq. Moving units out of large bases and into Joint Security Stations—small outposts in Baghdad’s most dangerous districts—has been crucial to Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy, and Thrasher is now home to a hundred American soldiers and a few hundred Iraqis. This fall, on the roof of the mansion, amid sandbags, communications gear, and exercise equipment protected by a sniper awning, Captain Jon Brooks, Thrasher’s commander, pointed out some of the local landmarks. “This site was selected because it was the main body drop in Ghazaliya,” he said, indicating a grassy area nearby. “There were up to eleven bodies a week. Most were brutally mutilated.” [complete article]

2008: The year of federalism in Iraq?
By Reidar Visser, historiae.org, November 12, 2007

In all the speculation about the fate of the US “surge” policy in Iraq, many analysts have overlooked a date on the 2008 calendar which is bound to become fateful: 11 April. On that day, the current moratorium on creating new federal entities – a last-minute addition to the Iraqi federalism legislation in October 2006 – comes to an end. From April 2008 onwards, the administrative map of Iraq could change dramatically.

The Iraqi constitutional and judicial modalities for creating new federal entities are poorly understood in the West. Under the legal framework adopted in October 2006, there are two paths to a federal status for an existing governorate: based on grassroots initiatives (by one tenth of its voters or by one third of the governorate council members) any Iraqi governorate can call a referendum for the creation of a new federal entity – consisting either of itself, or of itself in union with other governorates where the same kind of initiatives are launched (except Baghdad). A successful bid for federal status requires a simple majority of Yes votes in all governorates concerned. This is a complicated procedure, but it is at least a method that is based on popular initiatives. As such, it is antithetical to the recent resolution by the US Senate on federalism in Iraq, where there are suggestions about foreign “assistance” and elite conferences to “help” the Iraqis design a new administrative map – in other words, a plan to impose federalism on the entire country, not only “from above”, but also from the outside. [complete article]

Iraq to ease Baghdad controls
By Stephen Farrell, New York Times, November 13, 2007

Iraqi military commanders signaled on Monday that they will soon remove some roadblocks, blast walls and other restrictions that had been imposed over the past nine months as part of the effort to reduce violence here in the capital.

However tens of thousands of American troops will remain on the streets of Baghdad, and the announcement appears to have been made to indicate to their constituents the Iraqi leaderships’ desire to change the emphasis from the military crackdown in the earlier stages of the operation to providing vital utilities and social services to the Baghdad population. [complete article]

The plight of American veterans
Editorial, New York Times, November 12, 2007

As an unpopular, ill-planned war in Iraq grinds on inconclusively, it can be a bleak time to be a veteran.

There is little outright hostility toward returning military personnel these days; few Americans are reviling them as “baby killers” or blaming them for a botched war of choice launched by the White House. Indeed, both Congress and the White House have been hymning their praises in the run-up to Veterans Day. But all too often, soldiers who return from Iraq or Afghanistan — and those who served in Vietnam or Korea — have been left to fend for themselves with little help from the government.

Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Looking for Iran in Iraq

Iraq: Call an air strike
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, November 10, 2007

“… the literature on counter-insurgency is so enormous that, had it been put aboard the Titanic, it would have sunk that ship without any help from the iceberg. However, the outstanding fact is that almost all of it has been written by the losers.”
– Martin van Creveld, in The Changing Face Of War, 2006

Amid the George W Bush administration’s relentless campaign to “change the subject” from Iraq to Iran, how to “win” the war against the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi’ite, now means – according to counter-insurgency messiah General David Petraeus – calling an air strike.

On a parallel level, the Pentagon has practically finished a base in southern Iraq less than 10 kilometers from the border with Iran called Combat Outpost Shocker. The Pentagon maintains this is for the US to prevent Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. Rather, it’s to control a rash of US covert, sabotage operations across the border targeting Iran’s Khuzestan province.

With the looming Turkish threat of invading Iraqi Kurdistan and President General President Musharraf’s new “let’s jail all the lawyers” coup within a coup in Pakistan, the bloody war in the plains of Mesopotamia is lower down in the news cycle – not to mention the interminable 2008 US presidential soap opera. Rosy spinning, though, still rules unchecked.

The Pentagon – via Major General Joseph Fil, commander of US forces in Baghdad – is relentlessly spinning there’s now less violence in the capital, a “sustainable” trend. This is rubbish. [complete article]

Iraqi fighters ‘grilled for evidence on Iran’
By David Smith, The Observer, November 11, 2007

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is ‘gold’. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards’ alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there’s clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I’ve had, I’d say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran. [complete article]

Broken supply channel sent weapons for Iraq astray
By Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson, New York Times, November 11, 2007

As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The path travelled by one of those Glocks is revealed in a report in The Guardian. The reporter describes interviewing a Sunni insurgent — one of America’s newly recruited fighters. “He pulled his pistol out and showed it to me. It was a Glock, supplied by the US to Iraqi security forces. ‘This belonged to the commander of al-Qaida here,’ he said. ‘They called him the White Lion. I killed him and got his gun.'”

Americans said to have proposed a six-month truce to the resistance groups
By Badger, Missing Links, November 9, 2007

Al-Hayat says this morning that it has learned from “sources in the government and sources close to the armed groups” about a plan including a followup reconciliation meeting, to be arranged by the Iraqi Reconciliation Agency, but to be held under American and international auspices, along with a proposal for a six-month truce between the armed resistance groups and the American/Iraqi forces. [complete article]

Forced Iraq postings ‘may be necessary’
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, November 11, 2007

Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department notified employees yesterday that “about half” of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled.

“This reduces but does not eliminate the possibility that directed assignments may be necessary,” Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte wrote in an e-mailed update. Filling the remaining jobs is still “the Department’s priority,” he said, adding that he is optimistic that more will volunteer. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The email had to come from Negroponte and not the Sectretary of State herself because madame secretary declines to use email. That’s right! “Rice does not use e-mail.”

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FEATURE: “After we finish with al-Qaida here, we will turn toward our main enemy, the Shia militias.”

Meet Abu Abed: the U.S.’s new ally against al-Qaida
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, November 10, 2007

Abu Abed, a member of the insurgent Islamic Army, has recently become the commander of the US-sponsored “Ameriya Knights”. He is one of the new breed of Sunni warlords who are being paid by the US to fight al-Qaida in Iraq. The Americans call their new allies Concerned Citizens.

It is a strategy that has worked well for the Americans, on paper at least. This week, the US military claimed it had forced the extremist group al-Qaida in Mesopotamia out of Baghdad altogether, and cut the number of murders in the city by 80%. Major General Joseph Fil, commander of US forces in Baghdad, said: “The Iraqi people have decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence.”

Critics of the plan say they are simply creating powerful new strongmen who run their own prisons and armies, and who eventually will turn on each other.

A senior Sunni sheikh, whose tribe is joining the new alliance with the Americans against al-Qaida, told me in Beirut that it was a simple equation for him. “It’s just a way to get arms, and to be a legalised security force to be able to stand against Shia militias and to prevent the Iraqi army and police from entering their areas,” he said. [complete article]

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NEWS: Displaced, bribed, killed without provocation, Iraqis look forward to economic surge

Report: 14 percent of Iraqis now displaced
McClatchy, November 6, 2007

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction offered a generally optimistic picture of security developments in Iraq in his quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday, but noted that while violence was down, one of every seven Iraqis — 14 percent of Iraq’s population — is now displaced by the war.

The report said that electricity production in Iraq reached its highest level since early 2003, in part because insurgent attacks on power-lines and repair crews have declined. Corruption, however, remains a major problem, the report said. [complete article]

Will ‘armloads’ of US cash buy tribal loyalty?
By Sam Dagher, Christian Science Monitor, November 8, 2007

Inside a stately guesthouse on the grounds of Saddam Hussein’s palace in Tikrit on the banks of the Tigris, sheikh Sabah al-Hassani jokes that the initials “SH” of the former dictator etched on the walls are his.

“I have a weakness for Cuban cigars, French cologne, and Spanish-made loafers,” he says with a wide grin.

Since June, Mr. Hassani, who claims to be one of the princes of the legendary Shammar tribe, which numbers nearly 7 million across the Arab world, says he has received at least $100,000 in cash and numerous perks from the US military and the Iraqi government.

With his help, at least $1 million has also been distributed to other tribal sheikhs who have joined his Salahaddin Province “support council,” according to US officers. Together, they have assembled an armed force of about 3,000 tribesmen dubbed the “sahwa [awakening] folks.”

All of these enticements serve one goal: To rally Sunni tribes and their multitude of followers to support coalition forces.

The payments are a drop in the bucket given the billions spent annually in Iraq by the United States. And paying tribes to keep the peace is nothing new. It was one of Mr. Hussein’s tools in his selective patronage system designed to weaken and control all institutions outside his Baath party. The British also tried it when they ruled Iraq last century. [complete article]

Militant group is out of Baghdad, U.S. says
By Damien Cave, New York Times, November 8, 2007

Soon, General Fil said, there will be fewer troops for the Iraqis to rely on. “Already we are at a point where we’ll see that as the surge forces depart the city, we’ll see a natural decline in numbers, and I’m very comfortable where that comes to,” he said.

With less than two months to go before his division heads home, General Fil offered a mixed vision of the military’s role for the coming year. He said that if 2007 was the year of security, 2008 would probably be “a year of reconstruction, a year of infrastructure repair, and a year of, if there’s going to be a surge, a year of the surge of the economy.” [complete article]

How Blackwater sniper fire felled 3 Iraqi guards
BySteve Fainaru, Washington Post, November 8, 2007

Last Feb. 7, a sniper employed by Blackwater USA, the private security company, opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. The bullet tore through the head of a 23-year-old guard for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network, who was standing on a balcony across an open traffic circle. Another guard rushed to his colleague’s side and was fatally shot in the neck. A third guard was found dead more than an hour later on the same balcony.

Eight people who responded to the shootings — including media network and Justice Ministry guards and an Iraqi army commander — and five network officials in the compound said none of the slain guards had fired on the Justice Ministry, where a U.S. diplomat was in a meeting. An Iraqi police report described the shootings as “an act of terrorism” and said Blackwater “caused the incident.” The media network concluded that the guards were killed “without any provocation.” [complete article]

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NEWS ANALYSIS OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENTS: Iran, war, prisoners, oil, nuclear advances

The Iranian challenge
By Trita Parsi, The Nation, November 19, 2007

Iran will be the top foreign policy challenge for the United States in the coming years. The Bush Administration’s policy (insistence on zero enrichment of uranium, regime change and isolation of Iran) and the policy of the radicals around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (unlimited civilian nuclear capability, selective inspections and replacing the United States as the region’s dominant power) have set the two countries on a collision course. Yet the mere retirement of George W. Bush’s neocons or Ahmadinejad’s radicals may not be sufficient to avoid the disaster of war.

The ill-informed foreign policy debate on Iran contributes to a paradigm of enmity between the United States and Iran, which limits the foreign policy options of future US administrations to various forms of confrontation while excluding more constructive approaches. These policies of collision are in no small part born of the erroneous assumptions we adopted about Iran back in the days when we could afford to ignore that country. But as America sinks deeper into the Iraqi quicksand, remaining in the dark about the realities of Iran and the actual policies of its decision-makers is no longer an option.

A successful policy on Iran must begin by reassessing some basic assumptions:

1. Iran is ripe for regime change.

Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they are not going anywhere anytime soon. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — At a moment when numerous contrasts and comparisons are being drawn between Iran and Pakistan, this is one among many that deserves underlining: non-nuclear Iran is more politically stable than nuclear Pakistan.

Noun + verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ defeat?
By Frank Rich, New York Times, November 4, 2007

… there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.

Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.

You’d think the same tired tactics wouldn’t work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless. [complete article]

See also, Inexorable march toward war with Iran? (Joseph L. Galloway).

U.S. ‘to release’ Iranians in Iraq
BBC, November 6, 2007

The US military in Iraq says it intends to release nine Iranians being held there, including two detained on suspicion of helping Shia militias.

They were among five Iranians who Tehran insists are diplomats seized in the Kurdish city of Irbil in January.

The announcement came as Iran opened two consulates in northern Iraq to improve ties with the Kurdish region.

Iran’s ambassador said the detention of the five men was an “illegal act against Iraqi sovereignty”. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Hmmm…. I wonder whether Centcom commander Admiral Fallon came back from Pakistan with word that this would be a good time to slip this one under the radar while Bush and Cheney were distracted?

US faces dilemma in targeting Iran’s oil
By Sebastian Abbot, AP, November 5, 2007

With oil above $95 a barrel, there are limits to how much pressure the U.S. is willing to place on Iran’s petroleum sector to influence a persistent nuclear standoff, analysts say.

The dilemma is pretty clear for the world’s largest energy consuming nation, which last week announced sanctions against several Iranian oil-services firms. Taking more aggressive action risks hurting America’s economy, while enriching Iran’s.

Washington is also limited by the reality that, even if it wanted to take a more bellicose stance, it can do little — short of military action — to hinder Iran’s oil sales at a time when global demand is bulging. [complete article]

See also, Oil passes $98 on weaker dollar (BBC).

Poll finds Americans split on taking military action in Iran
By Susan Page, USA Today, November 6, 2007

Americans are concerned about Iran’s nuclear program but split on whether military action should be undertaken if diplomacy and economic sanctions fail to stop it, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

The findings underscore public concern about an Iranian threat and a partisan divide over how to respond. Iran has emerged as a key issue in the presidential race, especially among Democrats.

While 46% of those surveyed say military action should be taken either now or if diplomacy fails, 45% rule it out in any case. Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to endorse taking military steps. [complete article]

Experts: No firm evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy, November 4, 2007

Despite President Bush’s claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger “World War III,” experts in and out of government say there’s no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush’s point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

“Iran is seeking a nuclear capability … that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability,” Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.

“I don’t think that anyone right today thinks they’re working on a bomb,” said another U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. Outside experts say the operative words are “right today.” They say Iran may have been actively seeking to create a nuclear-weapons capacity in the past and still could break out of its current uranium-enrichment program and start a weapons program. They too lack definitive proof, but cite a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Bush’s rhetoric seems hyperbolic compared with the measured statements by his senior aides and outside experts. [complete article]

Defiant Iran reaches key nuclear target
AFP, November 7, 2007

Iran has reached a key target of 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday, vowing to ignore UN resolutions calling for a halt to Tehran’s sensitive nuclear work.

“We have now reached 3,000 machines,” a defiant Ahmadinejad told a rally in the northeastern city of Birjand.

It was not the first time that the president had boasted that Iran had 3,000 centrifuges up and running. [complete article]

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