Checkpoint Baghdad

What Iraqis Think of Barack

Larry Kaplow — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:22:10 GMT

Iraqis are mystified by Barack Obama. As he kicked off his tour of Europe and the Middle East—including a stop in Baghdad—this week, both leaders and ordinary people here were trying to size up the Democratic candidate. For many, opinions are distorted by decades of misinformation and years of post-war cynicism about American motives in general. If you ask unemployed, 34-year-old Uday Ahmed whether he views Obama as a Muslim, because his father was Muslim, or as a Christian, which is the candidate's religion, he answers: "I think he is Jewish." It's an old conspiracy complex common in the Middle East, that Jews run American policy. But Ahmed didn't seem to mind. "If he is going to save my country from the chaos, I think I will like him. It is so important to have a good person, whether he is a Muslim, a Christian, or Jewish."

Iraqis--even those who like and work with Americans--generally see the American invasion as a manifestation of U.S. interests in controlling the region and its oil wealth rather than anything done for their well-being. Most we talked to thought Obama would follow that path. Maybe, with all the power outages, they haven't had a chance to be touched by the candidate's telegenic charisma and set aside their cynicism. Here are some samples from Iraqis when we asked about their views of their incoming guest as the potential U.S. leader, his religion and what he'll do for Iraq:

--"What is interesting is that a man who is not white is trying to be president. This is interesting because it is so unique," says Haider al-Mousawi, a history professor in the city of the holy city of Najaf. "His second name, Hussein, is Arabic but that will make no difference because his father refused his religion and his name to get what he wanted. This is the height of pragmatism and is standard in the United States. The person's interests are above all other things." He continues: "Anyway, whether Obama or [Sen. John] McCain wins, the president is just the figure who works on strategies run by the institutions that run America. The president is like a middleman."

-- "He is just like other American politicians looking for their own interests," said Amira Hassan, a 56-year-old grade school teacher. "All the candidates are alike and will work for their own country and personal interests, not do good things for Iraq and its people."

-- "I know Obama is Muslim and I am afraid he will not win the elections because of that. I hope he can help change the bad image of Islam among the west and the whole world," says engineer Ahmed al-Hilli. "Muslims and all Arabs will react to him seriously and positively. . . Obama will do better for Iraq than his predecessors because we have something in common, which is religion."

-- "Obama will win the next elections because the American people want change and want to see the difference between Republican and Democratic policy," says 30-year-old Hussain Alwan. "I see Obama agreeing with Iraqi leaders on a timetable for a (troop) withdrawal and this is what the Iraqi people need at this time."

-- "Obama is right for president of the United States because now we want U.S. policy in the region to change and he will be open for negotiations with Iran and Syria, he prefers to use negotiations rather than force," says 24-year-old bank employee Basma Ibrahim.

Obama is expected to meet the Iraqi Prime Minister as well as huddle with top American officials in the Green Zone during his stopover in the Iraqi capital. Some of the Iraqis we chatted with spending Friday with their families in a park had other ideas for his itinerary.

"I think he should see the militias and put an end to the militias because they still are in the streets," says a 50-year-old former employee in Iraq's security services who asked us to call him by his familiar name, Abu Ali. A clerk in the transportation ministry, 35-year-old Mohammed Fadel al-Rubai, hoped Obama would observe the city's decrepit state. "I need for Obama to see the economic situation and the [poor] services, like the electricity." Abu Ali also wants him to know that Iraqi security forces are up to their jobs now, so U.S. forces can go home.

But Iraqi leaders are trying to discern just how Obama might handle the timing and manner of any withdrawal. Earlier this month as we pressed them for their views of the possible next president, a senior political adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki turned the tables. A genteel man, the adviser was escorting us out his office door when he asked what we thought Obama would do with Iraq. The question, politely asked, seemed to be whether Obama would just pull America out and abandon Iraq to its problems. He seemed reassured when we told him that the candidate's stated policy was a lot more nuanced than that.

With reporting from Hussam Ali, Yassar Ghani, Salih Mehdi and Hassan al-Jarrah.

Pizza Joint: A Baghdad Barometer with Extra Toppings

Larry Kaplow — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:36:26 GMT

Sign of the Times: Waleed al-Bayati has re-opened his pizza restaurant (Credit: Larry Kaplow)

Baghdad's probably still too dangerous for western reporters to comfortably linger over meals in restaurants but it's just about right for pizza runs. We made one the other day to mark something of a milestone, the return of Pizza Italiana Napoli, which owner Waleed al-Bayati reopened six months ago. The tiny, crumbling storefront sits amid groceries, liquor stores and sandwich shops on a gritty street near gates to the Green Zone.

There are other pizza options in Baghdad. There's a pizza franchise in the Green Zone and I hear the Italian embassy serves up a great slice to those who can wrangle an invitation. A few restaurants around town offer variations of pizza along with menus of mixed cuisine. But for me and a lot of other reporters who have covered the war, when you think of pizza, you think of Waleed. His shop was a favorite among reporters in 2003 and 2004. We'd meet at the counter – with the gigantic brick oven there's only room for dining at a thin counter in the window – on our way to and from meetings in the Green Zone. A bulletin board was full with business cards from American, British and Italian correspondents. Soldiers also ate there or ordered out, back in the days when things were laid back enough for that. And it was popular with Iraqis who liked western food.

Al-Bayati, 42, learned his pizza skills near the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where he went to college and worked in a restaurant. He speaks Italian and a little English. He opened his shop in 2003 and he was described in Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," an important book about the war's early days (and being adapted in an upcoming film, "The Green Zone.")

Nearby bombings targeting the Green Zone's Assassins Gate rattled the restaurant and drove business away until almost no westerners would eat there. Al-Bayati closed down for about two and a half years. He says improved security makes the work possible again, a story being told by storeowners around Baghdad. But demand for his pizzas, which cost the equivalent of about $4, is down to a small percentage of what it used to be. The reporters don't come around anymore – in part because there are far fewer than there were in 2004 - and Iraqis are turned off by checkpoints and barriers used to protect the street. His complaints sounded familiar as Baghdadis are increasingly growing used to the relative calm but awaiting economic growth and public services.

When we showed up, it was around 100 degrees outside and he was sweating hard (no AC in the shop) as he shoveled our pizzas into the oven. There was the old pungent smell of sewage outside the door – this was never a big place for atmosphere. But the portly man had a wide smile for me when I walked in and the pizza tasted fine. He said I was the second reporter there in a month.

How Safe is Anbar?

Newsweek — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:26:02 GMT

By Lennox Samuels

As the U.S. presidential aspirants traded criticisms over the war in Iraq this week, some Americans may have been bemused by the insertion of "Anbar" into the discussion. Republican Sen. John McCain used the Iraqi province to show how off-base he thinks Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama was in his initial opposition to last year's surge, which saw the infusion of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into the war. McCain pointed out that Anbar, once among the deadliest places in Iraq, was greatly improved, with Al Qaeda in Iraq mostly driven from the sprawling western governorate.

The GOP senator was generally right, although Anbar at that moment was not exactly a poster province for tranquility. The day before he spoke, Iraqi authorities declared a security alert and imposed a curfew in Fallujah, a major provincial city and site of some of the war's heaviest fighting just months ago. Fallujah police chief Abdul-Kareem al-Dulaimi says the measure was taken because of recent incidents in the city, including a suicide bombing that killed 15 people and injured at least 17 at a tribal gathering. That attack followed months of calm in Anbar. "We also aimed at limiting the movements of the armed groups on the outskirts of Fallujah who plan to give support to other armed groups inside," he adds.

Anbar has been trumpeted since tribal Sunni militias turned against Al Qaeda in 2006 and appeared to have helped neutralize the terrorist network. But political rifts among the remaining Sunnis appear to be growing more disruptive. The tribal forces are in a bitter power struggle with the establishment Sunni leaders who were elected to key posts back when most Sunnis still boycotted the vote. Recently, the two factions have been feuding over who should be the provincial police chief. U.S. troops had planned to officially turn over security leadership in the mostly Sunni province to Iraqi troops in a ceremony on June 27, but canceled, with the military saying dust storms were going to interfere with travel to the event.

But since then, several Anbar figures have disputed whether the handover, which has occurred in 10 out of 18 provinces so far, should go forward just yet. Tribal leader Ali Hatem al-Suleiman told NEWSWEEK earlier this month that local forces were not strong enough or sufficiently organized to do the job. Though the weather cleared weeks ago, the handover still has not occurred.

As the surge ended this week, leaving 150,000 Americans troops still in Iraq, much of the country has been quiet. U.S. military officials say that nationwide, attacks are at their lowest level since March 2004, declining 80 percent since the surge began in June 2007. In Baghdad, attacks have returned to February 2008 levels after a spike in the intervening months, says Major Gen. Michael D. Jones, of the Directorate of Interior Affairs, which advises the Ministry of Interior. "They're currently at levels that I didn't dream we'd be at here in Baghdad," he says. He did not have specific numbers.

Current Anbar police chief Gen. Tariq Yousif, who is backed by tribal leaders, says the province is in much better shape now, with the Baghdad-Damascus and Baghdad-Amman highways (highly dangerous arteries a few months ago) safe, and open 24 hours. He insists the handover was postponed because of bad weather and adds, "I think we will do it this month, for we are completely ready to deal with the security in a good way by ourselves, without any help from the Americans, except consultations."

The Fallujah curfew was lifted after less than 24 hours. "[Al] Qaeda now has nothing to do but suicide operations and cannot face the Iraqi police," says Yousif. But with at least 30 people killed in the city in recent weeks and signs of restiveness appearing in other parts of the province, "Anbar" may still be more of a cautionary tale for the U.S. military than a success story to be cited in America's presidential campaign.

With Omar al-Mansoury in Fallujah

Bush Hosts An Ally On Force Agreement

Larry Kaplow — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:31:43 GMT

President George W. Bush probably can't find an Iraqi more sympathetic to the idea of keeping U.S. troops in his country than Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who stopped by the White House today. The topic was the negotiations over the future of U.S. troops in Iraq and what legal status they will have when the United Nations resolution authorizing them expires at the end of the year.

Talabani is an elder statesman and patron for Iraq's ethnic Kurds. He's the long-time leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish factions. Kurds, who suffered chemical gas attacks at the hands of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, have been America's closest allies in Iraq since American jets started protecting their autonomous region with a no-fly zone in the mid-1990s. U.S. soldiers can walk around safely in Kurdistan. On a trip there late last year, several Kurds told me they'd be glad to host U.S. bases permanently. For one thing, they think it would deter the Turkish invasion they fear from the north.

U.S. officials in Iraq are relying on the Kurds to help sell a new agreement on an American presence in the country to more hesitant Iraqis, especially the Shiite coalition leading the government, but it's been slow going. Though American diplomats hold out hope to meet a self-imposed July 31 deadline for a deal, Iraqis are less interested. A senior Shiite figure close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told me this week that they didn't see the deadline as firm, a fact U.S. negotiators have obliquely acknowledged.

The agreement would have to spell out what control Iraqis have over U.S. military operations, whether American civilian contractors have to face Iraqi law when they are accused of killings (or other crimes), whether American troops can continue detaining Iraqis and how many bases they can have here. Those are all sensitive issues that have to be coaxed through the Iraqi parliament (while the Bush administration has taken the controversial stance that the agreement does not need approval from Congress).

Talabani is considered a wily and skilled political tactician. But his usefulness to Bush is limited by his health. At 73, Talabani went to Washington after a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which he said was meant to help him lose weight. He went there once last year, reportedly after he had collapsed.

Iraqi Staff: Should They Stay or Should They Go?

Larry Kaplow — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:08:28 GMT

What would you tell an Iraqi who asks you if they should uproot their entire family and move to the United States?

That's the question facing us in NEWSWEEK's Baghdad bureau as we explain a new U.S. immigration program aimed at giving safe haven to Iraqis who have risked working with Americans. After years of pleading--often from high-ranking U.S. officials concerned for their interpreters--it will now be easier for Iraqis endangered by their links to Americans to immigrate with their families. The program applies to Iraqis working for the U.S. military, embassy, contractors or media.

Their perils are obvious. NEWSWEEK wrote last year about a married couple who worked for the U.S. embassy and was murdered. The news of the new rules has created a buzz within the media ranks, with translators, drivers, guards and house staff weighing whether to send away for the online application.

The applicants, according to briefings from the embassy, must believe they are in danger because of their link to westerners. It's an easy argument to make for media staff. Translators have been killed and threatened. Most struggle to keep their jobs secret even from family members. They avoid interviewing people who might know, or be able to find out, where they live. Meanwhile, we push them to identify themselves to sources, to list their names on stories in the magazine and on the Web site (for journalistic transparency) or to go with us to press conferences that often televise shots of the attending journalists. We also ask them to give personal information, including addresses, to Iraqi agencies issuing press credentials for media events. Our guards accompany us to interviews and our house staff can be seen coming and going.

While westerners face danger in Iraq, it's so much simpler. If things get dicey, we just leave. Staff, on the other hand, will have to live with their associations forever through whatever political winds could blow in Iraq--pro-Iranian rabble-rousing, the upsurges in anti-Americanism any time Israel strikes a neighbor--in the years to come.

Iraqis have already been fleeing their country but many languish in neighboring states or spend their small fortunes on shady schemes to get to Europe or America. Compared to the several hundred thousands burdening public services in Jordan and Syria each, and the tens of thousands in Sweden (a common destination), the United States has let in a trickle of thousands. George Packer reported the new program might bring in to about 4,000 Iraqis by fall of 2009.

But the new rules posed as much a dilemma as an opportunity for our staff. They asked about their chances of earning a living in America. Some questions: Can a man get a job to support a whole family or will his wife have to work, too? Will their college degrees be recognized? Will their children's schools teach in Arabic? They seemed to weigh the answers against their insecurity in Iraq.

They were healthy questions I was glad to hear. Too often, there's a perception that America's streets are paved with gold or, at least, that the United States offers the kind of wall-to-wall welfare of Saddam's socialist state or nearby Gulf countries, where jobs, health care and university educations are guaranteed.

My western colleagues and I are mainly concerned about the intangibles, the alienation Iraqis might feel in a land that is highly impersonal compared to Baghdad. Americans are private. They don't invite strangers into their homes on chance meetings. And Americans value mobility, flexibility, more than people in this land first settled 8,000 years ago. Many Iraqis, especially those that have stuck it out through the five years of carnage that forced millions into exile, are fiercely loyal to their homes and families. They're also hesitant to start over in a country where they fear they will be treated as second-class citizens, where their degrees won't be recognized and where no one will recognize their tribal names. The heat-inspired Iraqi work rhythms--work in the morning, take a long break in the afternoon, possibly resume in the evening--don't work in the States.

I keep in touch with a few former translators who have left Iraq. One lives in California, training Marines in Iraqi culture and he seems happy. But he is Christian and his mother had lived there for years already. Another lives in Sweden and recently e-mailed me about the lonely walks he takes, despite the large Iraqi community there. Another, a Canadian citizen, has bounced between efforts to start businesses from Montreal to Bulgaria.

Our staff paused some when I told them that, in the standard American immigrant experience, the first generation faces hardship but life is better for their children, who would basically become Americans (and, I joked, might turn around someday and invade Iraq). At the same time, I was wary of my own motives. Was my advice tinged by my desire to keep my staff intact? I told them to reach out to Iraqis they already know living in America for a true picture of what the transition is like, how it compares to living with the dangers of Baghdad.

There are many growing Iraqi or Arab communities in America where a newcomer could feel comfortable and our employees know some who have made it there. Our translators know enough English to work in most jobs (and the refugee status offers English training). Our cook might have the best chance for success. His ambition is simply to cook and he could do that in many an American diner, though I'd miss his roast beef and fine lasagna. Maybe he can leave a few months' worth in the freezer for us to eat after he's gone.

A Horrific Bombing Marks Baghdad's Patchwork Instability

Newsweek — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:01:17 GMT

By Larry Kaplow

The terrible bombing in northern Baghdad Tuesday, which reportedly killed at least 50 people in a crowded afternoon market, highlights both the ongoing dangers here and the shifting security geography of the capital.

The Hurriyah (Freedom) neighborhood where the bombing happened is a predominantly Shiite area and is the typical target chosen by Al Qaida in Iraq. That Sunni Muslim group, made mainly of Iraqis, apparently aims to fan the fires of civil strife, in effect provoking Shiite militias into retaliatory strikes that will drive more Sunnis to their cause. U.S. officials have cautiously said that Al Qaida in Iraq has been greatly weakened and Iraqi officials have boasted that it is all but finished. But a string of bombings has occurred in Baghdad and other cities since the start of U.S. and Iraqi raids against Al Qaida targets in the northern city of Mosul a couple weeks ago. This was just the biggest death toll – since March, in fact. Al Qaida still maintains the strength for regular strikes.

The capital remains an unstable patchwork of dangers and safe havens - though much better than last year. This morning I came back from an interview in downtown Baghdad via Haifa Street. A year or so ago, that would have been unthinkable as the avenue of boxy, modern apartment buildings had been used off and on as an insurgent staging area. Today, Haifa Street was safe and looked rather tidy and healthy. The nearby Allawi neighborhood, once crime-infested, was also safely passable if still a collection of dilapidated storefronts and workshops.

On the other hand, I recently scrapped plans to go to the flashy, upscale Arasat al-Hindia Street, known for restaurants, banks and clothes stores. It stayed relatively safe through most of the five years of war and was a good place to meet both Sunnis and Shiites. But asking around before our trip, we heard it has been hit by an onslaught of gangster-like street crime. A money changing office there, where I used to go to get large cash transfers for my bureau, has been repeatedly robbed. It's hard to see how, as the office had careful security including lookouts on the street. The short strip of road has also been the scene of repeated carjackings.

Meanwhile, Sadr City, the slum of more than two million Shiites, changes nearly daily with the prevailing political winds as sailed by radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. His followers closely control most of the neighborhood and were ensuring safe passage for western journalists for most of the last few weeks. A recent decree by Sadr that he was reforming his militia and reasserting its right to attack U.S. forces, throws the area in doubt again.

Seatbelts and Shakedowns: Security, Baghdad Style

Larry Kaplow — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:19:43 GMT

It’s always been a good idea to wear seatbelts in the capital’s chaotic and obstacle-strewn streets. But whenever I’ve started to buckle in my Iraqi colleagues would warn me off it. Baghdadis don’t wear seatbelts, so the danger of showing myself as a safety-obsessed Westerner would be greater than the risks of a fender bender. But on a trip downtown this week, my Iraqi driver buckled himself into his shoulder strap and explained that while I had been out on a break the police had started requiring drivers to wear their belts or face a fine of about $25.

The streets are tricky. Hundreds are blocked by blast walls protecting public and private compounds or makeshift barricades meant to keep strangers from passing through residential neighborhoods. The asphalt is in crumbling disrepair, and parked cars choke off roads. So traffic police, who have kept working throughout the war, are forgiving about drivers choosing the dangerous “wrong side” option (the English phrase was adopted into the local Arabic long before the war) on busy streets. It seems like a good sign that now they finally not only have a seatbelt law, they actually enforce it.

I got another taste of Baghdad security later as I interviewed a storeowner. Plainclothes police pulled up to question my Iraqi staff waiting in the street. Perhaps someone had called them, worried that my driver and guards were suspicious strangers. (I’ll keep the exact number of guards and other details vague in case any of those who like to kidnap foreigners read this.) I explained to an English-speaking officer, a tall man in a T-shirt and jeans, that I was an American reporter and showed him various IDs. But he insisted that we all go to his nearby station house to explain our presence to his boss. In five years of working in Iraq I’ve never had to do this before.

I ran through some troubling thoughts regarding the spotty record of Iraqi police and the many instances of criminals posing as police. The storeowner was clearly scared about whether he would somehow be held responsible for something. Though the men showed us badges, those could be faked. They were in plain clothes and unmarked cars. But they were consistently polite, almost apologetic, and it was in a part of town where illegal militia activity had been rare of late. Anyway, we had little choice but to follow them to their station, and they placed one of the officers in my car to assure our cooperation.

It was a good sign when we pulled up to the small police post and saw four U.S. Humvees pulling out through the blast wall channel. At least it was a true Iraqi police office. I thought of flagging down the Humvees, but the officer in our car told me there were still more Americans inside, which turned out to be untrue. They gathered us in the commander’s well-appointed office. He had a satellite channel from France on his television, and a little boy, likely his son from his air of entitlement, sat on one of the couches. As in most police offices, there was a metal-frame bed in the corner, neatly made, where the leader must spend a lot of nights.

Things were relaxed as he signed unrelated paperwork and listened to his underlings explain what they had found: a reporter, men with weapons. They took a long at our IDs and paperwork, questioning unclear details about the guards’ government certificate. I explained, truthfully, that NEWSWEEK works with a private security company and that, unlike the massive U.S. and Iraqi government-backed firms traveling the city, our small company has meticulously worked according to Iraqi law. He let me use my mobile phone to start the calls to the Ministry of the Interior that could vouch for us. Our security company sent an Iraqi lawyer to the station. With that in motion, I called a well-known Iraqi official who instructed the officer to release us; I had recently been with this official when he received a similar call for help from Iraqi reporters. That did the trick.

We were let go with handshakes and apologies, and you could say the authorities were just doing their jobs. But there was a catch I didn’t know about until later. Just before we got outside, while I was briefly separated from my colleagues, one of the officers told one of my Iraqi staffers that they frequently provide protection for journalists who show their gratitude in cash. One of my staff, without my knowledge, handed them some money, which they said would only cover part of their costs. So he handed over more and a little more, getting into the neighborhood of about $100 worth of Iraqi currency. They never demanded it outright—and were polite throughout—but to my staff a substantial tip seemed like the prudent move.

We headed home slightly cowed. We had been sidetracked against our will for about an hour. That storeowner was probably still shaken, and my staffers were worried that they had now been identified as Iraqis working with a Westerner. We wondered if our paperwork had ever been the issue or it was just a pretense for supplementing modest police incomes. But we complimented each other on our calm—we’d all avoided the kind of shouting matches that can occur. The police never threatened or insulted anyone. And they sure were plugged into what was going on in the streets. My driver buckled up and took us home.

Spin Watch: When is a Lull Not a Lull?

Larry Kaplow — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:21:43 GMT

A senior U.S. Administration official briefed reporters today about the situation in Iraq and applied a spin heavier than any I've heard in Baghdad for a long time. True, security is much better in Iraq today than it was several months ago but this official went beyond what even military leaders would claim. In the meeting, held on the usual (but irritating) diplomatic ground rules that he/she not be identified by name, a reporter asked about the Iraqi government's ability to take advantage of the recent "lull in violence." The official jumped on the phrasing.

"This is not a, quote, lull in violence," the official insisted. "It is a steady decline, which one could track, plot on a graf, which I know [ military spokesman] Kevin Bergner has and you've probably seen, starting in December 2006 and projecting in virtually a straight, leveled averaged line down to this week in Iraq."

The official didn't stop there: "That's not a lull. That is a continuous decline in every metric of violence. Where spikes have occurred, those spikes have been related to developments on the ground, often to security advances or, in the negative sense, to a particularly spectacular Al Qaeda attacks. But the trend line has been, based on the plots I've seen, unaffected by that. It ain't a lull. It is a progressive decline that is now some 17 months in duration."

Setting aside whether you can logically discount things like "developments on the ground" and "spectacular Al Qaeda attacks" when assessing conditions here, the official's statement that the violence started dropping 17 months ago goes back further than I've heard others assert. It would mean the violence was dropping even before the troop surge, which was done for the purpose of reducing the violence.

I'm not sure exactly which military charts the official is referencing. But since the speaker claimed the backing of "every metric," I'll go with the most comprehensive chart offered by military spokesmen, which been updated frequently on this blog, the latest last week.

The graph clearly shows that the number of overall attacks in December, 2006, was in the middle of a gruesome climb to a peak of nearly 1,600 attacks a week in June, 2007. Then there is, indeed and thankfully, a steep drop that is largely reflected in what Iraqis say anecdotally. But if we're going to understand the Iraqi experience and the overall conditions here – both crucial as decisions are made for the future - it's worth noting that the downward trend is more like 10 months old instead of 17. And many of those months were still bloody by any normal standards.

Iraq's National Soccer Team Gets Back on the Pitch

Larry Kaplow — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:39:46 GMT

Iraqis breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday as they learned their beloved national soccer team would be allowed to keep playing. FIFA, world soccer's governing body, rescinded a decision to suspend the Iraqi squad from qualifying matches for next year's World Cup tournament. The national team is set to play Australia in Brisbane on Sunday, when you can expect all televisions to be tuned in any place in Baghdad that's getting its share of the seven hours of daily city electricity.

Iraqi soccer is often called the only big national success story since the U.S. invasion and fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Despite the country's chaotic mayhem, dysfunctional government and decrepit utilities, Iraq came in fourth at the 2004 Olympics and won the Asian championship last year. The wins repeatedly sent Iraqis into the streets with dances and celebratory gunfire that sometimes alarmed U.S. troops. The team–a mix mainly of Arab Shiites and ethnic Kurds with one Sunni Arab star (see The Official Younis Mahmoud Website)–unites Iraqis in its success and diverts attention from bloodier matters. But it has also gone through its own episodes of raw bloodshed, division and politics.

Hussein's son Uday ran the country's sports establishment for years before the war. He infamously had players jailed and beaten when they failed to bring home wins. He also stifled their requests to play abroad where they could make real money.

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After the war, retired soccer stars Ahmed Radhi and Hussein Saeed engaged in a public feud over control for the newly liberated soccer domain. I interviewed Radhi in 2003. He was young and handsome but with an athlete's naiveté and clearly doomed against Saeed, an older and educated former player who had already reached high positions in the soccer union under Uday. Baghdad soccer fans would buzz with rumors about Radhi having Saeed's house raked with machine gun fire (others said it was a hand grenade) but Saeed, who I saw at a team practice in 2004 as he was flanked by Kalashnikov-wielding bodyguards, was secure in his hold on soccer power and had good connections in the game internationally.

Even amid their early post-war success, players would complain that the soccer administration wasted or stole money that they should have gone for things like good soccer shoes (players bought their own) and health insurance. Granted, sports organizations worldwide have a pretty long record for corruption and mismanagement.

It was a decision by the Iraqi government that apparently touched off the latest off-field drama. The cabinet of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disbanded the Iraqi Olympic Committee, claiming its leadership was corrupt and failing to hold required elections. The soccer federation, still run by Saeed, is under the committee's jurisdiction and was apparently also dissolved. FIFA, which held to a hands-off stance throughout much of Uday Hussein's sadistic rule of Iraqi soccer, pronounced this decision as illegitimate political interference. On Monday, it announced it would suspend the team's World Cup participation unless the Iraqi government reversed its action.

Widespread distress and news coverage ensued with frequent updates on the negotiations. The team arrived in Australia (they train outside Iraq for safety) on Tuesday. Coach Adnan Hamad, who steered the team through the 2004 Olympics, fretted that the controversy would prove a defeating distraction.

But Thursday the FIFA ban was reversed after the Iraqi government stipulated that it was not targeting the country's soccer federation in its move against the umbrella Olympic Committee. One of the first hints that a resolution was on the way came the night before in a report quoting none other than Ahmed Radhi, who for now appears to be back on workable terms with Saeed. Saeed assured him that the game would go and Australian officials were pushing to play the Sunday match so they would not lose the television revenues. Whatever the reason, now it's up to the players to overcome the chaos and win. They've done it before.

For May at Least, A Drop in Violence

Larry Kaplow — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:35:38 GMT

With the end of the intense fighting between Shiite militias and U.S. and Iraqi troops, violence has dropped significantly, according to military statistics. Here's another look at the trends in one of the charts released by the military that we've been posting on Checkpoint Baghdad. The chart runs through the start of May. U.S. officials said over the weekend that there were only about 325 attacks for the week ending May 23 (not on the chart), which would make the lowest weekly figure since March, 2004, when there were about 330 attacks.

The figures coincide with anecdotal evidence around Baghdad. Iraq is still volatile and violent but Iraqis in many neighborhoods say the last couple weeks have been quiet, even to the point in which there is anecdotal evidence of more displaced people attempting to return to neighborhoods from which they fled or were forced. A look at the chart shows that bloodshed can skyrocket or drop from quickly from week to week, but the month of May has been better than most.

Violence in Iraq
Military statistics reflect the pattern of attacks in the country

'They're in Good Hands': Inside the Hospital at Iraq's Balad Air Base

Newsweek — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:51:44 GMT

By Lennox Samuels

The young man in the gauzy yellow jumpsuit sits motionless in a reclining chair at the edge of the ward, his knees drawn up in a near-fetal position. His face is puffy from his wounds and he exhibits the stillness of someone who is blind. Indeed, the thick white bandage over his eyes seems to confirm that he is. But a second look takes in a light-brown leather strap that tethers him to the chair, and an American military officer confirms that he is a detainee. There’s nothing wrong with his eyes. The oversized bandage is there to make sure he won’t be able to identify anyone after he is released.

Apprehended because of his actions fighting Coalition forces in Iraq (Only captured or suspected insurgents face such restrictions), the man is a patient at the U.S. Air Force Theater Hospital at Balad Air Base. He is an emblem of the facility’s policy of treating anyone, friend or foe, who arrives there needing medical help. The care is world-class at the hospital, which is renowned for its trauma treatment and the skill of its doctors. "For us, if you’re a military physician and come to Iraq and practice medicine, this is the Super Bowl,” says Colonel Patrick R. Storms, commander of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group and the hospital’s boss. A soldier brought to Balad, however badly injured, has a 99 percent chance of surviving. The one percent who die essentially are beyond saving because they have suffered extreme traumas such as loss of brain substance. The survival rate for Iraqi patients is 91 percent; they don't do quite as well as the Americans because they lack the soldiers' protective gear and are unable to heal as quickly since their bodies are often not as well nourished.

Saving lives is a reversal of roles in the building, which had a far more sinister function during the Saddam Hussein regime. “There used to be torture chambers in the basement, which boggled my mind,” Storms says. “Now the place looks a lot like a hospital. We’ve kind of lost that MASH feel.” Like the surgical hospital in the classic TV medical drama, the Air Force facility used to be housed in tents. Now it is in a 63,000-square-foot building outfitted with an overhead mortar protection field – a wise addition in this area, 42 miles north of Baghdad, where Iraqi militants regularly fire rockets and mortar onto the sprawling base. The patients, about half of whom are Iraqi and half American, are in the hands of a staff of 380, among them 17 surgeons. Not surprisingly in a war zone, the hospital’s priorities are to save lives and clear beds. American patients stay a little more than a day, on average. “It is not unusual for someone to be in Walter Reed within 72 hours of his injury,” says Storms, referring to the Army medical center in Washington. Iraqis typically are discharged after about six days.

Many hospitals in the United States treat perhaps three or four trauma patients a month. Balad handles 246 monthly, with 150 evaluated for traumatic brain injuries, from admissions totaling 500. “Traumatic brain injuries are the signature injury of this war,” Storms says. With suicide vests and IEDS now the favorite weapons of Iraq’s insurgents, he and his team are seeing more and more patients with a combination of blast and burn injuries. “There’s no parallel stateside,” he says. “We’re talking about blast, burns, penetrating injuries.” Among the worst cases he’s seen is one in which 23 car bombing victims were brought in; 22 had life-threatening injuries. Storms says 8 to 12 percent of admissions are children. “The injuries have been horrific, devastating. Monstrous stuff, like some sniper shooting a child through a window just because they can.” Further, he says, while a doctor in the U.S. might remove one or two eyes in his career, Balad physicians extract about 70 damaged eyes in each 120-day rotation. Reservists Lt. Colonel Peter Sorini and Lt. Colonel Jim Budny are among the doctors on the current rotation. Both are struck by the severity of the trauma cases. In the U.S., trauma injuries tend to be related to events like car accidents. “It’s the depth and breadth of the injuries you see here that’s different from back home. I don’t think I saw a penetrating wound to the head in Montana in 10 days. Here you see them every day,” says Sorini, of Butte. “The big question to me is what kind of person would do this to another person,” adds Budny, of Buffalo, N.Y. “There’s no limit to their cruelty.” On a light day, surgeons at the Balad hospital log a total of around 20 hours in the operating room. A heavy day pushes that number to 80 hours. Storms says he has jammed as many as 21 patients into the emergency room at the same time, in “a ballet of chaos.” Even with that many people, he strives to keep the place clean, making sure no blood or drip accumulates on the floor “so the next casualty coming in has no idea there were casualties before. That’s good for morale. “

The hospital was completed last July, with the medical staff working through construction. “We didn’t say 'stop the battle,'” says Storms, a doctor of gastroenterology and aerospace medicine. The hospital is known for neurosurgery; treating head and neck as well as ear, nose and throat cases; and for oral and face reconstruction. It also handles general surgery, internal medicine and a range of other maladies. But it is best know for its trauma work. Most trauma patients arrive by helicopter and are on an operating table within 30 minutes. Wounded troops are rushed from the landing pad to the OR, passing along “Heroes Highway” through a tent whose ceiling is a large American flag. “They’re on their backs and they look up and see the flag and know they’re in good hands,” Storms explains.

In the intensive care unit, a GI sleeps in a bed, recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest. An Iraqi man in his 30s is in isolation, injured in his stomach and arm by an IED. A one-year-old Iraqi boy is receiving a skin graft, his donor arm still attached to his face. He bit into an electrical cord and was grievously injured. Capt. Brian Caldwell, of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, lies in a bed nearby, awake but slightly groggy. He had been walking at Forward Operating Base Warhorse when an IED exploded. “They threw me in a vehicle and brought me here,” he says. “All I remember is reading the word ‘Phillips’ – on some kind of CAT Scan.” Caldwell appears to have been lucky. He is being evaluated for a concussion and depending on how he responds, will be sent either to Germany for further treatment or back to his unit in Iraq.

Down the ward from Caldwell, a few curtained partitions over, the Iraqi detainee doesn’t stir. People walk to and fro, paying him little attention. “Insurgents flow through from time to time,” says Captain Brian Caruthers, the hospital’s executive officer. “It’s great to patch them up. They’re actually vital, in a way, because we get a lot of information from them that helps the war effort.” Just so they don’t expect to see their surroundings, or anyone in them.

Baghdad Gets a Bank

Newsweek — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:49:47 GMT

Residents of Baghdad’s Green Zone who have had to keep wads of cash on hand and listen to the grumbling of Iraqi staff unhappy to be paid with wrinkled American dollars are getting some relief. The zone’s first real commercial bank is open for business: A branch of the Iraqi chain, Warka Bank, is now offering a range of services including savings, checking, Visa credit cards, ATM facilities, even online and mobile-phone banking. External wire transfers are available, at a cost of $50. Dollar savings accounts earn 4 percent a year. Certificates of deposit earn 4.5 to 5.5 percent on U.S. dollars and 12 to 14 percent on Iraqi dinars, depending on duration.

The branch is set up in a converted former residence, conveniently--or perhaps strategically--located down the street from the Karadat Maryam police station and inevitably, hidden behind a bank of high concrete barriers. “This place was in ruins and it took months to accomplish this,” says one of the managers, waving at the front office with its new computers and faux leather furniture. Asked if it had been difficult to get the venture going, another manager shrugs. “Everything in Iraq is complicated, even the weather,” he says.

The zone has had only one working bank, located in the Ministry of Defense, and many consider it hard to find. It is used mostly by ministry employees. Warka Bank, part of a chain founded in 1999 that now boasts more than 100 branches around the country, hopes to attract Iraqis, expatriates and corporate customers. The banking system is traditional commercial, not Islamic, which prohibits usury and investing in businesses considered haraam, or unlawful, such as those that sell pork or alcohol.

“This is such a relief for those of us who live and work here,” says a German businessman. “Nobody wants to have to go to Karada [in the Red Zone] or always use currency brokers to get money.”

But the managers remember well that the Iraq conflict persists, and does seep into the Green Zone despite all the safety precautions. They are negotiating with security companies to protect the facility as much as is possible. And none of the men who spoke to NEWSWEEK about the bank would allow his name to be used. “I’m really excited, but this is Baghdad,” says one manager. “I’m also a poet. Maybe you can do a story about that--and then you can use my name.”

-- Lennox Samuels

Marla Ruzicka: Lessons and a Legacy

Larry Kaplow — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:46:08 GMT

Three years ago today, April 16, 2005, a suicide car bomber killed 28-year-old Marla Ruzicka and her colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, on the capital's airport road. It's worth noting this anniversary along with the others that recently marked the American invasion and fall of the Iraqi government five years ago.

Ruzicka founded and headed CIVIC – the Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict, which tries to hold governments accountable for compensating the victims of wars. Though she's often called an "aid" worker, she once corrected me on the label saying her group advocated for victims, bringing their suffering to the public, and did not provide direct aid. Much of her whole, short life had been as an advocate for various causes and her work in war showed how awareness, that overworked concept, can actually affect people lives.

Indeed, far from maintaining the aid worker profile of big budgets, SUVs and villas, Ruzicka worked on shoestring funding, bumming rides and accommodations from those she met along the way. Her main weapon was an iron-willed determination wrapped in a sunny – some might say relentless – charm. She worked extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq (along with other places) and reporters looked on in amazement as she would talk her way through checkpoints and closed doors we could never open. She was often disheveled and scattered -- even waifish. But when she was asked about her work, she could deftly cite names, laws and figures in detail from memory.

She often hung out with reporters in part because, like us, she was in that very small group of Westerners in Iraq who were not employed by the U.S. government or its contractors, without access to things like embassy housing. She would throw parties or, more likely, convince others to host parties she wanted to throw since she usually had no living quarters of her own. She had ups and downs – personal baggage she would sometimes discuss. But in all the talk about her – and there is a lot of talk in the cliquish ranks of Westerners in Baghdad – I never heard anyone ever suggest that Ruzicka had done anything insincere or malicious. A biography of Ruzicka, titled "Sweet Relief" was published in 2006 and a Hollywood movie about her has been in the works. In other words, she is already legendary.

Ruzicka's work was turning an important corner at the time she was killed. Her persistence had wrung important information about civilian casualties from the American military and the cause had been getting increased attention in Washington. According to CIVIC, a U.S. government fund spearheaded by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy has so far been budgeted $50 million to give medical care and vocational training to Iraqis wounded by U.S. troops and another fund for Afghanistan war victims has received $34 million.

Ruzicka brushed off friends' advice to avoid Iraq as it descended into chaotic mayhem. And in Iraq, she took risks – though not wildly – to get close to war victims so she could hear and document their plight as well as give them hugs and make friends of many. She would come back to the reporter hotels with stories of specific people needing help or exposure and do the same later with political and military officials.

Her irrepressible cheerfulness, along with her petite physical stature, makes the thought of her so-brutal death all the more jarring and incongruous. Many pointed out the fact that she was a non-combatant killed like those for whom she sought to speak – mothers, fathers, children, innocents devastated by war, so often noted but unprotected. Her death also highlighted a less-obvious horror worth considering any time armed conflict is option. War often draws in extremely rare individuals acting selflessly on their own initiative and kills them.

Parsing the Bombing Upsurge

Babak Dehghanpisheh — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:36:45 GMT

It's starting to look like the bad old days again. A series of bombings in Baghdad, Baquba, Mosul and Ramadi today killed nearly 60 people and wounded more than 100. Multiple bombings are often the work of Al Qaeda in Iraq and have been rare in recent months, largely because many former insurgents in Sunni-dominated areas are now on the U.S. payroll. The worst attack today was a car bomb near a courthouse in Baquba which, according to the U.S. military, killed 36 and wounded 67. The large bomb wiped out three buses and damaged 10 shops in the area.

The timing of these attacks is hardly a coincidence. The Iraqi security forces are still reeling from a botched foray into Basra three weeks ago and are currently bogged down with sporadic fighting in Sadr City. The fighting against Moqtada al-Sadr's militant Shiite Mahdi Army and various splinter factions has also drawn in the U.S. military, who have logged the highest casualty count of the year--approximately 20 soldiers killed in the past 10 days alone, mostly from IEDs. So what better time for the Al Qaeda jihadis to make themselves heard? U.S. military officials, including top commander General David Petraeus, have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI in military shorthand, hasn't been knocked out and is likely plotting "spectacular attacks." At a briefing yesterday, a senior U.S. military official said he frequently tells his soldiers, "Don't get fooled. Don't think for a second [AQI is] anything more than disrupted." The bombings today, as well as a handful of bombings in northern Iraq which killed 18 people yesterday, are ample proof of that.

So are these bombings a sign that AQI is back on the scene in their typically brutal fashion? The U.S. military takes great pains to track trends of violence in Iraq and there really haven't been any similarly large bombings in more than two months. At the briefing yesterday, the senior U.S. military commander even rolled out a series of graphs to show that violence levels in Baghdad had dropped after a spike linked to the fighting against Shia militia elements in late March and early April. These graphics have become such a regular part of the U.S. military's briefings on Iraq that they were lampooned on the Daily Show last week. One of the faux-reporters doing a standup from Baghdad agreed to replace disturbing footage of wounded Iraqis and burning cars with innocuous graphs to make his report more palatable. Still, the graphs and charts do show low attack levels prior to the recent fighting with the Shia militias. A spokesman quoted in the U.S. military's release on the Baquba bombing today noted, "Although attacks such as today's event are tragic, it is not indicative of the overall security situation in Baquba." And that's one trend line that few Iraqis or American soldiers want to see change.

Which Iraqis Are Coming Home?

Larry Kaplow — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:04:51 GMT

While the rate of Iraqis fleeing their homes has been lower in the last several months than before, it still looks like only the biggest risk-takers or those with the shortest journeys are ready to bet on a return. They face tough conditions in their old homes--including poor services and low employment, but many say they feel safe.

A new report from the Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration (www.iom-iraq.net/idp.html), perhaps the best record-keepers of these things, says they have counted about 80,000 Iraqis (13,030 families multiplied by their standard six per family for 78,180 individuals) who have returned to their original neighborhoods from around Iraq or abroad. The report notes that these figures are likely the "majority" of those who have returned, but there's no comprehensive registry of these movements. So the real figure could be more than 150,000 – a sizable amount but just a fraction of the more than 3 million who have fled their homes or country since 2003. The bulk of the movement since 2003 came in 2006 with the escalation in sectarian killing.

The group interviewed 900 returning families. It's not a fully representative sampling of all returnees and there are some puzzling trends. For example, the number of returns for March, 2007, is much higher than any month before or after. But it looks like those coming back are probably the most fearless--they stuck it out longer in their homes and returned sooner. Here are some of the hints the survey offers about those braving a return to Iraq:

    --46 percent of those returning were only out of the country three to six months, meaning they had stayed long into the violence and came back amid the first indications that bloodshed was decreasing.

    --53 percent said they left for specific threats against them or the expulsion from their property. Others cited less specific worries, such as generalized violence, armed conflict or fear.

    --Only about 8 percent were returning from bordering countries, meaning most of are making the trip back from temporary homes in Iraq.

    --About 72 percent were Shiite Muslim Arabs and about 25 percent Sunni Arabs. Only one returning family of the 900 questioned was Christian, though Christians have fled the country in large numbers.

    --55 percent said they "consistently" feel safe in the places they went back to and 43 percent said they "sometimes" feel safe.

    --10 percent said the homes they fled are still occupied by others (the returnees are in their neighborhoods but not their original homes). Polls of those still displaced have shown about a third of them saying their homes were occupied.

    --About 76 percent said they have 10 hours or less of electricity in the homes they returned to, including 37 percent with two hours or less.

    --Of the married men who are heads of households, 48 percent said they were unemployed.