Judge rules security guards' rights violated in Baghdad shooting case

CRIMINAL charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of fatally shooting 14 people in Baghdad in September 2007 have been dismissed.

Judge Ricardo Urbina said prosecutors violated the defendants' rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a State Department investigation to build their case.

“The government used the defendants' compelled statements to guide its charging decisions, to formulate its theory of the case, to develop investigatory leads, and ultimately to obtain the indictment in the case,” Judge Urbina ruled.

“In short, the government had utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants' statment or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The guards had been charged with killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others using gunfire and grenades during an unprovoked attack at a busy Baghdad intersection.

They had faced firearms charges, and up to 10 years in jail on each of 14 manslaughter counts.

Judge Urbina explained in his opinion that federal prosecutors were offered an opportunity during a three-week hearing that began in mid-October 2009 to prove that they had not made use of the defendants' statements.

“The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions... were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility,” Judge Urbina wrote.

He added: “The court must dismiss the indictments against all of the defendants.”

The five defendants were security guards employed by Blackwater Worldwide, which since has been renamed a Xe Corporation.

Blackwater has insisted its personnel were acting in self-defence, but critics repeatedly have accused the company of a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach when carrying out security duties in Iraq.

A State Department review panel in 2007 concluded that there had been insufficient US government oversight of private security firms hired in Iraq to protect diplomats and to guard facilities.

The panel found that as a result there was an “undermined confidence” in those contractors, both among Iraqis and US military commanders.

The Australian

Wasted U.S. Spending in Iraq: $53 billion and Counting

Since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the U.S. taxpayer has been rebuilding Iraq and – for just as long – I have been complaining about this being unnecessary and even counterproductive. (See here, here, and here for sample critiques.)

Comes a report today by Timothy Williams in the New York Times, "U.S. Fears Iraqis Will Not Keep Up Rebuilt Projects" that tops off my unhappiness. Excerpts:

In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.

But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq's ability to provide basic services to its people.

The projects run the gamut — from a cutting-edge, $270 million water treatment plant in Nasiriya that works at a fraction of its intended capacity because it is too sophisticated for Iraqi workers to operate, to a farmers' market that farmers cannot decide how to share, to a large American hospital closed immediately after it was handed over to Iraq because the government was unable to supply it with equipment, a medical staff or electricity. …

In hundreds of cases during the past two years, the Iraqi government has refused or delayed the transfer of American-built projects because it cannot staff or maintain them, Iraqi and American government officials say. Other facilities, including hospitals, schools and prisons built with American funds, have remained empty long after they were completed because there were not enough Iraqis trained to operate them.

"As large-scale construction projects — power plants, water-treatment systems and oil facilities — have been completed, there has been concern regarding the ability of Iraqis to maintain and fund their operations once they are handed over to the Iraqi authorities," said a recent analysis prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service. … Stuart W. Bowen Jr., inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said his watchdog agency had "regularly raised concerns about the potential waste of U.S. taxpayer money resulting from reconstruction projects that were poorly planned, badly transferred, or insufficiently sustained by the Iraqi government."

Things will only get worse as the American occupiers "continue to depart in large numbers, taking with them their money, equipment and expertise."

The article provides some specific instances:

• In Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, a recently completed $4 million maternity hospital built by the Americans is open, but the staff members cannot operate much of its equipment. "The building is fairly good and the Americans have provided the hospital with a variety of high-tech medical devices, but they did not pay attention to the training of doctors in how to use them," said Jawad al-Jubouri, a district officer.

• In Falluja, west of Baghdad, a $98 million wastewater treatment plant built by the United States serves only one-third of the homes it was intended to serve, because the Iraqi government has not supplied it with sufficient fuel, "raising the possibility that the U.S. effort has been wasted," according to a special inspector general's report.

• At Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad, which had been the American military's largest medical center in the country, Iraqi security forces took up guard positions even before the conclusion of a ceremonial transfer to the Iraqi government last month. The hospital, however, has been closed because the Health Ministry lacks the staff and equipment to reopen it, though the American military said it left $7.9 million in equipment behind.

• Iraq's most notorious reconstruction project might be the $165 million Basra Children's Hospital in the south, championed by Laura Bush when she was the first lady. Its completion has been delayed by more than four years, and the project is $115 million over budget. Once the hospital opens — perhaps next year — there will be too few doctors and other medical staff members to take advantage of much of its modern equipment. "It was supposed to open in March, but I don't think it will be ready," said Ahmed Qassim, the hospital's director. He added: "Maybe July, but we don't know. Maybe not July."

What gets my goat is that Iraqis don't even appreciate what they have been given. The Times article quotes Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq's minister of planning, dismissing the $53 billion on the grounds that it has not had a discernible impact. "Maybe they spent it, but Iraq doesn't feel it."

Comment: One's tempted to blame Iraqis for this travesty but the real blame belongs with the George W. Bush administration which had a vision of "a free, … stable, democratic, and prosperous Iraq" and did not let realities get in the way of its fantasy.

As so often was the case with Bush, the motives were good but the implementation terrible.

Daniel Pipes

Powerful car bombs kill more than 100 in Baghdad

FIVE powerful car bombs have rocked Baghdad, killing at least 101 people, many of them students, and wounding 182 and shattering a month of calm in the capital ahead of a general election.

Two car bombs exploded near the labour and interior ministries and a suicide attacker driving a car struck a police patrol in Dora, in southern Baghdad, causing 15 of the deaths, an interior ministry official said.

The first explosion in central Baghdad was heard at 10.25 am (0725 GMT) with a second blast within seconds and a third one minute later.

Sporadic gunfire then sounded and the sirens of emergency vehicles were also heard, with helicopters taking to the skies soon afterwards.

The interior ministry official said 12 of those killed by the suicide attacker in Dora were students at a nearby technical college. The remaining three victims were policemen working at the checkpoint.

The two remaining car bombs targeted a criminal court building in Mansour, western Baghdad, and a market in Shorjah, in the centre of the city.

Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks since the US-led invasion of 2003. Official figures showed a total of 122 people were killed in November.

However the Baghdad government and the US military have warned of a rise in attacks in the run up to the election, which is expected to take place in February.

The threat of political violence linked to the poll is a major concern after bloody attacks in Baghdad in August and October that killed more than 250 people.

The attacks, including truck bombings outside the finance, foreign and justice ministries, punctured confidence in the Iraqi security forces.

"We believe that there will be an attempt to conduct more attacks between now and the election,'' General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, said in November.

Tuesday's bombings came two days after the war-torn country's parliament passed a law governing the election, which will be the second national ballot since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power.

The United Nations on Monday urged Iraq to announce ``as soon as possible'' the date for the vote after more than two months of delays.

The presidency council, made up of President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies, now has to announce a date for the ballot.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) in a statement said that February 27 was ``feasible'' and it stood ready to give all possible help to bring this about.

US diplomats, most notably Christopher Hill, Washington's ambassador to Baghdad, had pushed MPs to pass the law, seeking to avoid delays to the planned pullout of tens of thousands of American troops in 2010.

The United States has 115,000 soldiers in Iraq, but that figure will drop to 50,000 next year as all of its combat troops are pulled out before a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.

The Australian

Deaths in Baghdad school blast

At least eight people have been killed, mostly students, in a bombing at a school in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

Among the dead were six children between the ages of 6 and 12, an Iraqi police official said.

Monday's blast also wounded at least 41 others. The toll is expected to rise.

An interior ministry official confirmed the casualties.

The blast took place at Abaa Dhar School for boys, in Baghdad's Shia district of Sadr City, an area that has seen only infrequent attacks because it is encircled by US and Iraqi security forces and has its own neighbourhood security.

Many children were returning to school for the first time after the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

Twenty-five children were among the wounded, two hospital officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information.

The blast partially toppled a brick wall in front of the school, leaving a crater that quickly filled with muddy water, apparently from a broken water line.

The attack comes a day after the Iraqi parliament passed a new electoral law paving a way for the general elections in February.

Iraqi and US military officials have expressed concern about a possible spurt in attacks aimed at destabilising the government before next year's elections.

On Monday, gunmen stormed a checkpoint near Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, killing five members of an anti-al-Qaeda group, police said.

The men were members of the Sunni Awakening Council, one of many Sunni groups that have begun taking on al-Qaeda in Iraq.

There are an estimated 2.5 million Shia living in Sadr City, a stronghold of Shia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, known for his anti-US stance.

Al Jazeera

Iraq Threatens to Cut Off Economic Ties with Syria

The Iraqis have added another threat to Syria, on top of trying to establish a U.N. tribunal to prosecute those in Syria facilitating the violence, and thus exposing the Assad regime’s involvement.


Iraq now says that they will end their economic ties with Syria if it does not stop providing insurgents with safe passage and extradite Baathist insurgents involved in the horrific bombings in Baghdad since August.

The Iraqis are handing the confessions of three captured terrorists involved in the October bombings in Baghdad to the U.N. as part of their effort to have a tribunal created and expose Syria.

To better understand Syria’s complicity in radical Islamic terrorism, check out Barry Rubin’s article in Middle East Quarterly, which I might add, mentions yours truly.

World Threats

Britain 'deports Iraqi refugees'

Britain has forcibly sent 39 Iraqi asylum seekers back to Baghdad, a refugee group has said.

The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (Ifir) has raised concern over the welfare of the asylum seekers once they arrive in Iraq, which has seen a continuation of deadly suicide bombings in recent months.

The Ifir said 39 people had been deported on a specially chartered Air Italy flight that left London's Stansted airport early on Thursday.

The group said people on the flight were told it was going to Baghdad, making it the first deportation flight into south or central Iraq from the UK.

Previously, Iraqi deportees from Britain have been flown into the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which has not seen the level of violence experienced in other parts of the country.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from London, Richard Whittel, from the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq, said: "People were woken up at the dead of night last night and put on coaches from detention centres and then taken to Stansted airport.

"We think they've been put on a plane operated by Air Italy and thought to have been taken to Baghdad.

"The Home Office [UK interior ministry] argument would be that Iraq is now safe to send people back to, people aren't at risk, and people's asylum applications have failed.

"We're used to the macabre immigration policies of the UK government, and indeed other European governments, but this is an especially malicious step sending people to Baghdad."

A spokesperson for the UK border agency, which is alleged to have issued letters to the refugees about deportation, said on Wednesday they could not comment on the "timing or detail of removal operations".

But it added: "Anyone who is in the UK illegally is expected to leave and the UK Border Agency will not hesitate to enforce their removal where necessary.

Hussein, one of the Iraqis said to be facing deportation, told the Ifir he could be killed if he returned to his homeland.

"I'm from Baghdad. I'm a Sunni - I have a big problem with a Shia party. They've used their influence to imprison my brother and they're looking for me.

"If I'm deported I know 100 per cent I'm going to be killed."

According to Britain's interior ministry, 632 people were deported to northern Iraq between 2005 and 2008.

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

Bombings in Iraq Kill Dozens

By ROD NORDLAND and SAM DAGHER | August 10

BAGHDAD — At least 39 people were killed and more than 209 were wounded early Monday morning as a series of bomb attacks struck Baghdad and a village near the northern city of Mosul.

A pair of truck bombs exploded simultaneously, destroying an entire Shiite village known as Khazna, about ten miles east of Mosul, according to an official in the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry policy.

The village is inhabited mainly by Shiite Shabaks, a small Kurdish-speaking minority that lives in northern Iraq.

The police in Mosul said 30 homes were destroyed from the two bombs, which were placed in trucks that had been parked overnight in the village. Police officials put the preliminary toll of casualties at 23 dead and 128 wounded.

George Kako, a resident and contractor in the nearby town of Bartella, said many people in Khazna were still trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. He said he had provided an earthmover to help in the rescue effort.

“It is a horrifying and disgusting scene,” said Mr. Kako, speaking by telephone from Bartella. “Those who did it are not human.”

In Baghdad, two other blasts targeted lines of workers who had gathered to look for jobs as day laborers, one in the El Amal district, the other in Shorta, both of which are Shiite areas.

The El Amal blast went off at 6 a.m., killing seven and wounding 46. Half an hour later, the explosion in Shorta killed nine and wounded 35, according to the ministry official. Both explosions were attributed to bombs in cars that had been parked in the areas for a long period of time.

A similar string of attacks struck Mosul and Baghdad last Friday, the weekly day of public prayer in Islam. Those bombings killed at least 43 people and wounded hundreds, police officials said, and they came at the end of an important Shiite religious occasion.

The attacks on Friday occurred just two days after the Iraqi government said it would lift all blast walls from the main roads in the capital, and the head of Baghdad’s operations command, Maj. Gen. Abud Qanbar, declared that “security is not an issue anymore.”

A week earlier, five Shiite mosques in Baghdad had been bombed in coordinated attacks. At least 29 people were killed in those blasts.

The sprawling, seething city of Mosul, among the most violent places in Iraq, is home to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the mostly homegrown insurgent group that is known to have some foreign leadership. The city is also the home of the banned Baath Party, once led by Saddam Hussein, who erected a large palace compound there. It was from Mosul and other towns in Nineveh Province that Saddam recruited many of his senior generals and closest aides.

Most American forces have withdrawn from posts within Mosul and are now garrisoned at a base. A fractious power struggle between Sunni Arab and Kurdish political factions has further complicated the security issue in the province, which is home to a number of ethnic and religious groups.

Source: New York Times

Dozens killed as Iraq says al-Qaeda boss captured

By Salam Faraj | April 23

AT least 70 people were killed in two bloody suicide bomb attacks in Iraq today as the military announced the capture of the al-Qaeda chief in Iraq.

In the deadliest strike, at least 45 people, including several Iranian pilgrims, were killed when a suicide bomber struck a restaurant in a town northeast of Baghdad, a military official said.

Another 28 people, including children, were killed in a suicide attack on a police patrol in southeastern Baghdad, defence and interior ministry officials said.

The bloodshed was unleashed as the Iraq military announced the arrest of one of the country's most wanted men, the head of the Iraqi wing of al-Qaeda which calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq.

"Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was arrested today in Baghdad," Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qasim Atta said.

"It was Iraqi forces who arrested him based on an intelligence tipoff from someone," he added.

Security has improved dramatically in Iraq over the past two years as local and US forces crack down on al-Qaeda fighters, but attacks targeting security forces are still common in some parts of the country, including the capital.

At least 45 people were killed on when a suicide bomber struck a restaurant in a town near the restive city of Baquba, a military official said.

The official said another 55 people were wounded in the attack on the restaurant, which was packed with Iranian pilgrims on their way to the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad.

The attack took place in the town of Muqdadiyah northeast of Baquba, the capital of the ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala province, which still sees sporadic attacks despite security improvements elsewhere in Iraq.

In southeastern Baghdad, another 28 people were killed in the attack on a police patrol in the mixed district of Al-Riyadh, officials said.

"Iraqi police were distributing aid to displaced families when a suicide bomber blew himself up," an interior ministry official said. "At least 10 police and five children are among 28 dead."

Fifty-two people were also wounded in the blast, defence and interior ministry officials said.

A second interior ministry source said the suicide bomber was a woman but this could not immediately be confirmed.

Source: The Australian

From roads to ruin, Baghdad gets back on track

Martin Chulov, Baghdad | November 19, 2008

A YEAR ago it would have been unthinkable. After all, it was a city where driving to work became a life-or-death decision and where residents were cooped in enclaves amid murder and mayhem.
But the Mayor of Baghdad has surprised everyone by announcing plans for an underground rail network that would literally carve a swathe through the city's sectarian lines.

If investors sign up, the world's most violent capital will soon have a $US3 billion ($A4.6 billion) metro. Mayor Sabir al-Issawi said money had been set aside in next year's budget for a feasibility study.

And if if goes ahead, the Iraqi Government has earmarked money that it says could build most of the two mooted rail lines without private help. Even the country's optimists were last night calling the plan ambitious, but lauding its audacity.

In a city where raw waste often spills from an antique sewer system, power goes off hourly, a postal service does not exist and public transport has long been a fantasy, lofty ideas have recently been capturing imaginations.

Last month planning got under way for an above-ground commuter train line in the city's west, which is set to remove thousands of cars from an approach to Baghdad known as bomb alley. And since then, a series of roads and a highly symbolic bridge have reopened to cars and pedestrians.

The al-Aaimmah bridge linking the mostly Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya and the predominantly Shiite district of Khademiya was opened last Tuesday, three years after nearly 1000 Shiite pilgrims died in a stampede on the span. And Berlin-style walls put in place to keep Shiites and Sunnis apart have gradually come down.

Baghdad's civic planners seem intent on making connections. But the small steps they have taken so far pale next to the grand plan for a metro.

A rail line under Baghdad was first flagged under Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, but shelved owing to three decades of war, blockades and invasion.

One of the proposed lines would run 18 kilometres from Shiite-dominated Sadr City in the east to Adhamiya in north Baghdad. The other would run 21 kilometres, linking central Baghdad to the primarily Sunni western suburbs. Each line would have 20 stations.

They run through a patchwork of sectarian neighbourhoods, which largely remain divided, despite the security improvements. Bombs still rattle Baghdad daily, but on a much smaller scale than the violence that ravaged the capital throughout 2006-07.

"If anyone suggested a train back then, they would have been sent to one of Saddam's old mental homes and never heard from again," said Umm Fatimah, 41, from the suburb of Karada. "Even now it does seem a bit crazy."

Another Karada resident, Nazem al-Qasemi, said something had to be done to unclog Baghdad's arterial roads.

The project's engineer, Atta Nabil Hussain Auni Atta, of Iraq's Transport Ministry, said 1970s blueprints for the underground line were being redrawn to bring it up to the specifications of modern railways.

"This is one of Baghdad's most important projects and we hope that investors will join it," he said. "We have called for tenders from them … We are planning to start work as early as next year.

"This has been postponed so many times because of war and chaos, but this time we are sure it will happen."

Source: The Age

Reminiscences of old Baghdad by one of last Jews

Sun Nov 9, 2008 12:25pm EST
By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - One of the last eight Jews in Baghdad, a portly retired accountant, erupts in a bellyful of laughter when asked why he never married.

"I was a playboy. Don't write that!" he jokes, grinning. "How old do you think I am? Wrong. I'm 65! Don't write that! Write that I am 55!"

His government ID proves his age, and on the back it says, unmistakably: "Religion: Jewish."

He has made contact with a reporter, not because he wants to tell the story of his persecuted community, but because he wants to complain about the landlord who is raising his rent.

"Because we are Jewish he knows we can do nothing. He isn't afraid because he knows we have no tribe here. Don't use my name."

Once one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East, Baghdad Jews have now nearly vanished while the country has been consumed by sectarian war.

Speaking in fluent English, the ex-accountant launches into a description of the Baghdad of his youth, one of the Muslim world's most cosmopolitan cities.

He recites the names of legendary social clubs where Jews, Christians and Muslims mingled in better days, with music and whisky and parties that ran through the night.

"So many people -- Muslim people -- say if the Jewish people come back it will be nicer," he says.

His family have left. Some are in London, some in the United States. His father was offered a chance to move to Canada, but turned it down because he wanted to die and be buried in Iraq.

The ex-accountant himself stayed, but if he can sell his father's house -- now a ruin bombed out in the Iran war in the 1980s -- he will finally leave.

"I want to sell the house and go. I like Iraq, but I am fed up. We had very nice times in Iraq, but now we don't like it."

Iraq's Jewish community dates from biblical times. According to Charles Tripp's History of Iraq, the country was home to 117,000 Jews in 1947.

Under Ottoman rule, well into the first half of the 20th century, Jews made up about a fifth of the population of the capital. Some of the villas in neighborhoods along the Tigris still have six-pointed stars of David in their stucco.

How many Jews are there now?

"We know them all," says the ex-accountant, counting.

There's the ex-accountant himself, plus the nephew with whom he shares a rented house in Baghdad's central Karrada district. There's the man who lives near them, the man who leads the community, the very old woman, the male doctor and the female dentist. And the man whose brother was a goldsmith.

The goldsmith married the dentist a few years ago. A few months later, he was abducted by gunmen.

"They came to his house and took him. He disappeared. They left his car, they left his mobile. They just took him."

So that leaves eight. Eight Jews left.

The synagogue in central Baghdad has been boarded up since 2003. The ex-accountant occasionally runs into some of the other Jews on the street, but confesses he isn't much for religion.

"We don't know how to pray," he says. "Hebrew books we have everywhere in the synagogue, but we don't know how to read it. Some words I know. The important one is Adonai. Adonai is God. We believe in God."

In the old days, Jews were an integral part of Iraqi life. A relative of the ex-accountant was finance minister decades ago. But beginning in the late 1940s, successive Arab governments accused Baghdad's Jews of supporting Zionism.

Some were jailed, others were barred from government posts, and thousands upon thousands left for Israel or the West.

By the time of Saddam Hussein's fall, the ex-accountant estimates there were only a few dozen Jews left. Western organizations came and evacuated most of the rest.

"A woman called Rachel, she came here took some of them to the Jewish community in London, I think," he said.

In 2003, he went to the Green Zone to meet a cousin who was born in the United States and had come to Iraq to work for the U.S.-run administration. The American woman was shocked when her mother put them in touch.

"She said: incredible! You are still here? She did not know she had a cousin in Iraq," he said.

Apart from his quarrel with his landlord, the ex-accountant says he has had few problems with the neighbors, most of whom don't know he is Jewish, some of whom don't care.

"Somebody says 'You are Christian', I don't say anything. Somebody says 'You are Muslim', I don't say anything. I think most people think we are Christian because they don't know there are still Jews in Iraq."

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Source: Reuters

Battered Baghdad being transformed

BAGHDAD: Patrick Walters | September 03, 2008

BAGHDAD in 2008 is a city tantalisingly close to a genuine transformation.

The first impression after an absence of two years is the stunning reduction in the appalling level of violence that had torn the city's suburbs apart over the past four years.

A relative calm has now descended. On the day I arrived, there was not a single serious security incident across the whole of Baghdad.

As Ramadan begins, it seems Iraqis are increasingly weary with war and yearn for a more normal life. Last week, 60,000 people crowded into a city stadium for a major football match.

Rocket attacks on the giant US base at Camp Victory, next to the airport, are far less frequent than two years ago.

The run into town from Baghdad's international airport on Route Irish - once famously dubbed "the most dangerous road in the world" - is fast becoming a routine trip.

The threat from improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, remains but thanks to sophisticated counter-measures, better roads and a far more capable Iraqi army, the number of lethal attacks has been hugely reduced.

New overpasses now jump across Route Irish and tens of millions are being spent upgrading the airport highway.

If the passengers on my US mine-resistant, ambush-protected armoured transport into the heart of Baghdad yesterday were apprehensive, they didn't show it. The armoured truck is hardly an ordinary taxi but one of my companions busied herself on her BlackBerry while another snoozed all the way.

Construction is booming inside Baghdad's international zone, dominated by the enormous new US embassy stretching more than a kilometre along the banks of the Tigris.

For once, the ubiquitous T-walls - the concrete barriers that separate the international zone from the rest of the city - are not the centre of attention.

New office blocks and a five-star hotel are springing up and neighbourhood markets are booming.

As the appalling level of sectarian violence has fallen away, so local governments are gradually restoring services: picking up garbage and restoring footpaths and median strips.

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier yesterday, a cheerful Iraqi soldier showed us around. Over much of central Baghdad, the Iraqi security forces are firmly in control.

There's still so much that can go awry but as the searing heat of a Baghdad summer gradually subsides, there is a palpable sense that the old city is coming to life again.

Source: The Australian

Iraq: Al-Qaeda militants surrender to US forces

Baghdad, 14 July (AKI ) - Seventy militants, many of whom are reportedly linked to al-Qaeda cells in Iraq, have surrendered to US forces in the Sunni area of Biji, west of Baghdad.

According to the Arab newspaper al-Hayat, the militants surrendered in the area of al-Siniya in front of local tribal chiefs.

The US military had presented to Sunni tribes a list of 150 people they were seeking from the local population on charges related to terrorism, murder and kidnappings.

After the mediation of tribal leaders, almost half of those who surrendered agreed to return to their original clans, hand over their arms to the Americans and promise to give up armed conflict if their names were removed from the most wanted list.
Read more ...

Source: AKI

Iraqi artists and singers flee amid crackdown on forbidden culture

By Afif Sarhan and Caroline Davies

Iraqi singers, actors and artists are fleeing the country after dozens have been killed by Islamic radicals determined to eradicate all culture associated with the West.

Cinemas, art galleries, theatres, and concert halls are being destroyed in grenade and mortar attacks in Basra and Baghdad. Read more ...

Source: The Observer

What Happened in Basra

By Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan

On March 24, 2008, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) under Lieutenant General Mohan al-Fireji launched a series of attacks against illegal Shia militias and criminal elements in the city of Basra.

The attack appears to have resulted from an impulsive order by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who had gone down to Basra to see the preparations for a more deliberate operation then being planned. The militias, which included elements of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) nominally under the control of Moktada al-Sadr as well as the Special Groups--secret cells organized by the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps--were well dug-in and fought back.

Iraqi forces in Basra, supported by American advisers and air support, pressed the attack and sent reinforcements. Special Groups and elements of JAM attacked the ISF throughout Shia Iraq in what appears to have been an attempt to ignite widespread fighting in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriya, and Diwaniya. Iraqi forces repulsed these attacks with very little assistance in the area between Baghdad and Basra, and coalition forces worked closely with the ISF to contain the violence in Baghdad. Read more ...

Source: The Weekly Standard