Starting Points: Iraq

Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts

Apr 1, 2010

Banking on Chalabi

Image by HYAKUNEKO via Flickr

Banking on Chalabi

Mar 16, 2010

Followers of Sadr Emerge Stronger After Iraq Elections

Image via Wikipedia

BAGHDAD — The followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who led the Shia insurgency against the American occupation, have emerged as Iraq’s equivalent of Lazarus in elections last week, defying ritual predictions of their demise and now threatening to realign the nation’s constellation of power.

Their apparent success in the March 7 vote for parliament — perhaps second only to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the largest Shiite bloc — underscores a striking trend in Iraqi politics: a collapse in support for many former exiles who collaborated with the United States after the 2003 invasion. Although rivals disparaged the Sadrists’ electoral campaign, documents and interviews show an unprecedented discipline that has thrust the group to the brink of perhaps its greatest political influence in Iraq.

The performance completes a striking arc of a populist movement that inherited the mantle of a slain ayatollah, then forged a martial culture in its fight with the American military in 2004.

After years of defeats, fragmentation and doubt even by its own clerics, with Mr. Sadr himself an expatriate in Iran, the movement has embraced the political process, while remaining steadfast in opposition to any ties with the United States. It was never going to be easy to form a new post-election government — and the Sadrists’ unpredictability, along with a new confidence, may now make it that much harder.

“As our representation in Parliament increases, so will our power,” said Asma al-Musawi, a Sadrist lawmaker. “We will soon the play the role that we have been given.”

A worshiper at Friday prayers put it more bluntly.

“Today is our day!” he shouted to hundreds gathered outside the movement’s office in a ramshackle neighborhood that bears its name where electricity wires are tangled like cobwebs and discontent surges forth from a furnace of poverty, anger and frustration.

The results of the election are not yet conclusive, and under a complicated formula to allot seats, the percentage of the vote will not necessarily reflect actual numbers in the 325-member Parliament.

But opponents and allies alike believe the Sadrists may win more than 40 seats. In all likelihood, that would make them the clear majority in the Iraqi National Alliance, a predominantly Shiite coalition and leading rival of Mr. Maliki. If the numbers bear out, the Sadrists could wield a bloc roughly the same size as the Kurds, who have served as kingmakers in governing coalitions since 2005.

In Baghdad alone, whose vote is decisive in the election, Sadrist candidates, many of them political unknowns, were 6 of the top 12 vote-getters.

“They cannot be dismissed,” a Western official said on condition of anonymity under usual diplomatic protocol.

Disregarding the Sadrists has proven a motif of post-invasion Iraq. In the chaotic months of 2003, American officials habitually ridiculed Mr. Sadr as an upstart and outlaw, oblivious as they were to the mandate he had assumed from his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, whose portrait still graces the offices, home and workshops of followers.

That enmity erupted in fighting twice in Baghdad and Najaf in 2004. Four years later, the movement, blamed for some of the war’s worst sectarian carnage, was vanquished by the Iraqi military, with decisive American help, only to rise again in provincial elections last year. Many politicians now see it as part of the political mainstream, albeit with a canny sense of the street and a knack for fashioning itself in the opposition.

Through those years, Mr. Sadr himself has undergone an evolution. In the earliest days of the occupation, he possessed no particular aplomb. His black turban rode a little high on his forehead, somewhat uncomfortably, and he hunched his shoulders over a frame that was squat and pudgy.

In a news conference this month from Iran, where followers say he is studying to become an ayatollah, he struck a much more forceful tone. Confident, now 36, with gray sprinkled in his beard, he spoke deliberately in graceful if simple Arabic, with a casual disregard of journalists’ questions that the imperious can possess.

The movement is renowned for cryptic statements about its intentions, yet it participated in governments in the past while rejecting the political process. This time, in his clearest words yet, insisted that his followers vote.

“This will be a door to the liberation of Iraq, to driving out the occupier and to something else which is important, serving the Iraqi people,” he said.

The success of the Sadrists has added confusion to an already anxious landscape, roiled with speculation over what coalition will form the next government. Mr. Maliki may be the big loser. Though they once backed him, the Sadrists now exude a visceral dislike for Mr. Maliki, whom they blame for the campaign against them in 2008.

“Alarming,” Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker and ally of Mr. Maliki, called them.

“Ignoring them is a problem,” he said. “Taking them with you in the government is another problem. They’re unpredictable, and no one can guess their next move.”They seem certain, too, to eclipse veteran Shiite leaders who returned from exile in 2003 and with whom the Sadrists are nominally allied. In January, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by another storied clerical family, outpolled the Sadrists. This time, they are believed to have performed so poorly that they may find themselves forced to split the alliance and join Mr. Maliki to preserve their relevance. At the very least, the Sadrists have made clear they believe the alliance’s leadership should be theirs.

“The results are going to require some parties to reconsider the size they deserve,” Asad al-Nasseri, a Sadrist leader, told worshipers Friday, in their stronghold of Kufa.

Since 2003, the Sadrists have refused any contact with the American military or diplomats.

“It would be helpful if they would change their policy,” one American official lamented on Tuesday.

But America’s loss will not necessarily be Iran’s gain. In a vivid illustration of Iranian power here, it cajoled the Sadrists to join the Supreme Council in their electoral coalition, even though the two fought in the streets a few years before. The two still air their feuds in public. But many politicians believe the Sadrists, long seen as more nationalist than other religious Shiite parties, will prove less pliable for Iran.

Mr. Sadr “is not the easiest of customers for Iran to deal with,” the diplomat said.

Perhaps most striking was the prowess the movement demonstrated in mobilizing its followers, the lumpen Shiites, whose poor neighborhoods still go days without running water. In Friday prayers and through leaflets, organizers warned followers against casting ballots for secular candidates. It insisted they not disperse their votes among several lists.

“Don’t forget to vote for one candidate only!” one leaflet declared.

One detailed diagram, drawn up by the Sadrist strategists, broke down a vast slum by precinct. For one candidate, Hakim al-Zamili, a former deputy minister of health widely accused of running death squads during the civil war, voters were organized in 22 locales. So far, he is the sixth biggest vote-getter in Baghdad and seems sure to receive a seat.

“Congratulations!” worshipers said as they greeted him at Friday prayers in Sadr City. “Good luck!” others shouted, surging forward to kiss Mr. Zamili on the cheek.

To each and everyone, he reciprocated with a smile, kiss or handshake.

“We are the masses,” he said afterward. “The rest of the parties rely on individual leaders. We’re the strength and the numbers, and we’ve risen through the election.”

Mar 11, 2010

Arab neighbors cast a wary eye on Iraq election results

With the first Iraq election results coming in, Middle East countries are watching close and gauging what the vote means for their influence on the oil-rich state.

Iraq election: Electoral workers sort through ballots cast in the national election in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday. Iraqi and UN officials say the first results from this week's parliamentary elections are likely to be released on Thursday.
(Karim Kadim/AP)

By Kristen Chick Correspondent, and Tom A. Peter Correspondent
posted March 11, 2010 at 4:08 pm EST

Cairo and Amman, Jordan —

As the first Iraq election results started to trickle in Thursday, many countries in the Middle East were watching closely for clues to how the outcome will shape regional dynamics.

A victory by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition, which initial results show leading a tight race, would likely ensure the continued presence and influence of Iran in Iraqi politics.

But majority Sunni nations are watching for a surge from Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition. Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, is seen as an Arab nationalist whose policies would tilt toward his Arab neighbors, rather than to Iran.

Under Mr. Hussein, Iraq was a bulwark for Arab states against the regional ambitions and influence of Iran, a Shiite regime long feared and often hated by its Sunni neighbors. Arab leaders are concerned that oil-rich Iraq could become part of an expanding sphere of Iranian influence.

"The issue here will be the reaction of Iran and the Sunni countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia," said Emad Gad, a political analyst at Cairo's Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government-financed think tank. "Iran is dealing with Iraq today as a region of Iranian influence, so Iran will refuse any Iraqi government that doesn’t deal with Iran as a big brother." Saudi Arabia would likely try to isolate a new Maliki government to counter Iranian influence, says Dr. Gad.

A new phase

Many in the region are watching the election with trepidation, and wondering what kind of regime will be left behind when US forces withdraw.

"We might be moving into a new phase where as the US takes a bow the other regional players step up their own presence, but it’s difficult to tell for now," says Peter Harling, the International Crisis Group’s project director for Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. "That’s one of the question marks for the period to come, how the US withdrawal and the vacuum that it entails will play out regionally."

In largely Sunni Arab Jordan, home to the second-largest population of Iraqi refugees after Syria, grocer Majdi Hijazin says he worries about what will happen if Shiites or Kurds gain more power. Mr. Hijazin says that he, like most Jordanians, hopes the Sunnis will be the big winners in the election. If not, he fears Iran may further influence Iraq, which could negatively affect Jordan in terms of both security and business opportunities.

"Of course it will have an effect on us Jordanians, but it’s very hard to know how exactly this election will affect us," he says. "Jordanians don’t know what the Shiites will do if they come into power."

Western enthusiasm 'premature'

Others across the region were more disinterested than worried, viewing US praise of the election as somewhat naïve and saying one election will not cause a huge political shift, or even much of a difference at all.

"Right now, the Egyptians are not interested in Iraq," said Ahmed Khalifa, a newspaper seller in Cairo. "The important things are Palestine, Gaza. Iraq doesn't affect us."

Samir Al Taqi, director of the Orient Center for International Studies in Damascus, called Western enthusiasm over the elections "premature." Before observers come to any conclusions about the election, he says they must first see if the new government is representative of Iraq’s different ethnic groups. If not, violence and instability are likely to continue.

"The Iraqi elections were a decisive step in Iraq’s path towards nation building. But we can’t yet judge whether they were a success and will move Iraq forward," he says.

And even if the election is proved a relative success, it will not mean an end to the country’s problems, says Ahmad Said Nufal, a political science professor at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan. He predicts that his country and others such as Syria and Turkey will likely be hosting Iraqi refugees for years to come.

"I don’t think the election in Iraq will change anything. The problems between the parties will continue and at the same time terrorist attacks in Iraq will continue,” says Mr. Nufal. “We need two or three years to be sure before we say that [displaced] people can return back to Iraq."

Jordanians, Syrians want stability

Some Jordanians are hoping Iraq is stabilizing, providing business opportunities in the sprawling nation next door.

"If after the elections everything goes smoothly, it will affect us positively. People will start to do more business with Iraq and it will be more open between the two countries," says Georgette Fattaleh, a pharmacist in Amman. "But no one in Jordan thinks the elections will change Iraq. Now at the White House they are very happy about these elections, but it will not help."

In Syria, some hope a positive outcome to the elections will bring more stability to the region.

Amer Kasser, a telecommunications professional in Damascus, said it was positive to see a democracy emerging in the region and he hoped the government that emerges from the election would be strong enough to bring stability to Iraq.

Haifa Mohammad Said, a translator and editor at the Syrian Arab News Agency, also said she hoped the elections would be a positive step for the region, and allow Syria and Iraq to resolve border and refugee issues.

"The elections will hopefully help to do that," she says. "Whether this will happen or not depends on the results and whether there have been clean elections. Even so, Iraq still has a long way to go to get back on its feet."

Sarah Birke contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

Opponents File Challenges as Maliki Is Said to Hold Early Edge in Iraq Vote

Image by hbushra via Flickr

By ANTHONY SHADID and TIM ARANGO

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s major coalitions were locked in a surprisingly close race Thursday, in initial results from elections that deepened divisions across a fractured landscape. Candidates were quick to charge fraud, heightening concerns whether Iraq’s fledgling institutions are strong enough to support a peaceful transfer of power.

The day was the most tumultuous since Sunday’s vote for Parliament, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office saying he underwent surgery, officials with his chief rival complaining their ballots were dumped in the garbage, and a leading Shiite coalition claiming they had challenged the popular mandate Mr. Maliki needed to return to power.

The turmoil deepened both anticipation and uncertainty over an election to choose a government that will rule Iraq as the United States begins its military withdrawal in earnest next month.

“It is a very close race,” said a Western official, who viewed the early results but spoke on condition of anonymity since Iraqi officials were designated to release them. “Whatever the end results, we know it will be a fierce struggle to form a government.”

The initial returns, according to officials who have seen tallies from across the country, suggested a very tight race between Mr. Maliki’s coalition; Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of the Iraqiya coalition; and a Shiite coalition known as the Iraqi National Alliance. The Kurds, though divided, appeared poised to finish strongly as well, they said, leaving Iraq’s political map far more ambiguous than just weeks ago.

Although officials said Mr. Maliki appeared to have a plurality in returns so far, his rivals in the Shiite coalition and Mr. Allawi’s alliance trumpeted their gains — Mr. Allawi in Sunni regions and the Shiite coalition in rural southern provinces. And the early indications suggested Mr. Maliki fell short of the mandate he might have needed to guide negotiations over a coalition government that he could lead. At the very least, the showing could weaken his caretaker government during the months of negotiations that will follow the final results, which electoral officials expect by the end of March.

Mr. Maliki has not appeared in public since the election. He entered the hospital on Wednesday for a two-hour surgery to remove a cyst in his stomach, officials said. The government confirmed the operation on Thursday, saying he had returned to work.

After the last parliamentary election in December 2005, political leaders clashed for more than five months in an effort to form a new government, a period of indecision and confusion that allowed insurgents to gain strength and religious tension to worsen. Tens of thousands were killed in the sectarian fighting that followed, and many have worried that while Iraq is more peaceful, any transition will prove fraught with danger.

“We may witness long months of problems and bargaining,” said Hazim al-Nuaimi, a political analyst. “This is the bad face of liberalism.”

Nearly everyone had expected jockeying after Sunday’s vote, Iraq’s second parliamentary election, but the frenetic feel to the deliberations was striking. Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, an ally of Mr. Allawi, held meetings with rivals, with or without Mr. Allawi’s blessing. Shiite politicians said the followers of a radical cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, had performed surprisingly well, giving them a greater voice. Already, party leaders were suggesting alternatives to Mr. Maliki if his alliance entered a coalition.

In past days, Iraqi newspapers have speculated about every possible combination, and the muddled atmosphere has exacerbated divisions that have plagued Iraq since the American-led invasion. Some Sunni politicians have insisted a Sunni Arab succeed President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Kurdish officials themselves have worried that the entry of a dissident movement into national politics might weaken their hand in negotiations.

“Any government, to be successful, should consider the Kurds and include them in a coalition,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker. “That would be the logical thing, I think.” But he added, “We look to be weaker in this parliament, this time.”

Coalitions themselves already seemed to be fraying, with several politicians claiming that talks had begun this week to persuade candidates to leave their alliances.

“Many small blocs and figures will split,” said Safaauddin al-Safi, a minister and candidate with Mr. Maliki in Basra. “We are in dialogue with several of them.”

The United Nations had hoped preliminary results would be released Thursday morning, but by nightfall, only partial results from five of Iraq’s 19 provinces were made public. Electoral officials blamed the sheer logistics of the process, saying computers used to compile data were overloaded Wednesday and crashed for several hours. By early next week, electoral officials said they hoped to have 80 percent of the returns tallied.

A Western official said they had no reports of significant fraud, though some reports were being investigated. In fact, the official said, there were fewer complaints than in the provincial elections in January 2009, despite the far larger number of votes.

Since the day of the vote, several parties have complained of tampering in the count, with the Shiite coalition going as far as saying it might question the legitimacy of preliminary returns if its demands for more transparency weren’t met. But the charges by Mr. Allawi’s officials were the most extensive and almost sure to aggravate suspicions by Sunni Arabs, who have long accused religious Shiite parties of monopolizing power.

At a news conference, his representatives came armed with visual aids, including pictures and ballots, some of which they said were abandoned in a schoolyard in Kirkuk.

“Votes for the Iraqiya list are in the garbage,” said Adnan al-Janabi, a candidate from Baghdad with Mr. Allawi’s coalition. He said he did not know the extent of the alleged fraud. “One or one million, we don’t know,” he added.

In addition to claiming to have found abandoned ballots in the garbage, and boxes in some homes, the representatives also struck at the heart of Iraq’s election process, claiming that workers at the election commission, who have been entering data in to the computer systems, were caught fiddling with the tally for Mr. Allawi’s coalition.

The questions over the vote’s legitimacy, along with the uncertainty over the negotiations for a new government, have given rise to unease that violence could grow, as politicians seek leverage or as insurgents try to exploit the transition of power.

In Anbar Province, once the cradle of the insurgency, a candidate, Sheik Aiffan Saadoun al-Aiffan, said three of his men were killed by insurgents posing as policemen on Wednesday. One of them, Mr. Aiffan said, was beheaded.

“The violence is going to escalate against us,” he said. “But we’ll face them.”

Marc Santora, Riyadh Mohammed, and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting.

Mar 8, 2010

In a Reversal, Sunnis Vote, to Retain a Voice in Iraq

Image by Kurdistan KURD كوردستان كردستان ا via Flickr

By ANTHONY SHADID

FALLUJA, Iraq — In this town, nicknamed the City of Mosques, the scratchy loudspeakers of muezzins that once preached resistance to the American occupation implored Sunni Arabs to defy bombs and vote Sunday. They did, in a landmark election that demonstrated how far Iraq has come and perhaps how far it has to go.

The droves of Sunni Arab residents casting ballots in towns like Falluja — the name itself synonymous with the cradle of the insurgency, where relatively few voted in the last election five years ago — promised to redraw Iraq’s political landscape. The turnout delivered Sunnis their most articulated voice yet on the national stage, seven years after the American-led invasion ended their dominance.

Yet the act of their empowerment Sunday may make that landscape even more combustible, possibly even risking a revival of sectarian conflict. The demands of Sunni voters, from securing the presidency for a Sunni to diluting Iran’s influence, could make the already formidable task in Iraq of forming a coalition government even more difficult.

At polling stations near cratered buildings, past blast walls that still bore the pockmarks of bullets, the sentiments of voters who largely boycotted Iraq’s national elections in 2005 illustrated that divide.

Even as many cast ballots for the slate of Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and former prime minister, they condemned religious Shiite parties. With the invective once reserved for Americans, voters now attacked Iran, seen here as the patron of Iraq’s Shiite-led government.

“There’s no more war, it’s true, but we’re still not free,” Riyadh Khalaf, 47, a laborer, said as he stood near a polling station in the neighborhood of Andalus, where distant bombings reverberated through the morning. “We have an American occupation and an Iranian administration.”

A civil defense worker, Raad Mustafa, shouted, “We have to save our country.”

Ammar Ali, a police officer, interrupted them.

“We want someone who lives with us, someone who is from Iraq,” he said, carrying his rifle. “We don’t want the politicians who spend the night in Iran.”

In a day of remarkable images, none may have been more startling than those in Anbar Province, where just 3,375 people voted in January 2005, out of fear of insurgent threats or in protest of the occupation. People often cast the boycott then as a matter of survival, refusal to participate in an order that disenfranchised them. Similar words in another context were heard Sunday; failure to vote would amount to surrender.

“I voted for the sake of the generations to come,” said Yunus Adel, 22, a student. “My vote is going to determine my destiny. We have to have a voice.”

In another neighborhood, Mohammed Hatem walked past Martyrs School where, on April 28, 2003, American soldiers, saying they had been shot at, fired on a protest and killed 15 people, a seminal moment in unleashing an insurgency that would not end for five years. The school, on this day, was a polling station.

“The memories remain,” Mr. Hatem said. “But if you have the right, you have to exercise it.”

Voters in the Jolan neighborhood, the scene of some of the most intense fighting in 2004, barely flinched at blasts, which killed no one. Mosques that once served as refuge for insurgents blared messages imploring voters to defy the bombings.

Politics in Anbar are not for the faint-hearted. They tend toward the nasty, brutish and loud, where even nuances are conveyed as shouts. The governor lost his hand in an attack in December. A candidate near Falluja talked of the 11 attempts on his life as he might about car wrecks. Unfortunate, but they happen.

Nevertheless, in Anbar, as in predominantly Sunni regions elsewhere, politics have become far more diverse since the days when the Iraqi Islamic Party, a descendant of the venerable Muslim Brotherhood, dominated the regions. Since 2009, the province’s other currents — neo-Baathist and tribal — have rallied around lists loyal to Mr. Allawi and Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, another secular Shiite.

“Everyone in Anbar — no, in Iraq — knows that the Islamic Party is lying,” said Sheik Aiffan Saadoun al-Aiffan, a tribal leader and candidate on Mr. Bolani’s list. “They deal with Iran, they steal money and they’ve lost the support of the people.”

Mr. Aiffan is part of a new breed of politician here, as traditional as he is worldly, with a kinetic energy that helped him, on a recent day, hit the campaign trail in the afternoon, greet a procession of relatives wearing what amounts to Anbar chic — headdress, sunglasses and bandolier — at night, then run an hour on the treadmill until 3:40 a.m.

He speaks with the entitlement of inherited power. “I’ll win, sure,” he said, with a touch of humor. “People like me, and God is with me.” And in a province where conversation, hours and hours of it, is the favorite pastime, he understands a constituency that deems politics’ ambiguous grays as effeminate.

Mr. Aiffan called the surrender “of even an inch of territory” in the border disputes with Kurds a sacrilege. (“This is our faith,” he said.) He threatened to fight the Islamic Party with guns if there was a hint of vote stealing. (“It could happen.”) And he insisted that the presidency was the right of a Sunni Arab, not a Kurd — someone like his ally, Ahmed Abu Risha, another tribal leader here who leads Mr. Bolani’s list.

“This time, the decisions will be different,” he said. “We can vote for what’s right, who’s good. We’ll make the right choices.” He looked at his computer, next to three cellphones, one of which got 150 text messages in an hour.

“The problem is,” he asked, “who will be with us in Baghdad?”

Even before the voting ended, politicians and voters speculated about the fragility of coalitions, in particular Mr. Allawi’s, which seemed to enjoy a groundswell of support as the one force that could counter Iraq’s religious Shiite parties. Some speculated that Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi’s candidates might leave it and return to the Iraqi Islamic Party, from which they split.

Others wondered whether Mr. Allawi, with his reputation for high-handedness, could keep the loyalty of emerging Sunni figures like Saleh al-Mutlaq, a member of Parliament banned from the election for ties to the Baath Party, and Rafea al-Issawi, a deputy prime minister who hails from one of Anbar’s biggest tribes.

“We won’t have a war, but it will be a conflict,” predicted Mohammed Zaal, an engineer in Falluja. “It will be a political conflict of Sunni against Sunni and Shiite against Shiite. Once they lose power, they’ll look for other ways to keep their influence.”

“I’m still optimistic,” he added, “but even in the civil war, I was optimistic.”

Mar 7, 2010

As Iraq votes, U.S. content to keep its distance

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 7, 2010; A01

As Obama administration officials tried in recent weeks to anticipate what could go wrong in Sunday's elections in Iraq, they realized with some relief that they are largely powerless to control what happens.

In twice-daily meetings leading up to the vote and in a final preelection videoconference Thursday with the U.S. ambassador and military commander on the ground, officials contemplated the possibilities. Violence, intimidation or fraud might limit turnout or mar the legitimacy of the vote. Post-election political jockeying could delay the formation of a government for months and leave a dangerous power vacuum. Iran could create mischief, or worse.

But beneath the last-minute activity in Washington, officials have recognized that the electoral contest and its aftermath are in the hands of the Iraqis. Nearly seven years after U.S.-led troops took over Iraq, the administration appears content with its changing role there.

Committed to halving the contingent of nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by summer's end as he escalates a red-hot war in Afghanistan, President Obama has set a high bar for intervening -- or even acknowledging serious concern about the future.

In a briefing at the White House last week, senior advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity hammered home two messages: "We can't and we will not tell them how to conduct their affairs," an official said of the Iraqis. "That's up to them." In addition, he said, "we see nothing that would divert us from the track we're on . . . to end the combat mission in August," even in the face of sectarian violence.

Iraq's last national elections, in December 2005, took place under U.S. occupation; political discord and a five-month delay in forming a government led to an explosion of sectarian violence and a surge in American troop levels that then-Sens. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. opposed. Two years later, the George W. Bush administration began negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on agreements to gradually withdraw all U.S. forces and establish a long-term strategic relationship.

The pullout agreements -- including a July 2009 deadline for turning urban security over to the Iraqi military and the departure of all U.S. military forces by December 2011 -- were signed two months before Obama's inauguration. In one of his first major foreign policy decisions, Obama inserted an interim withdrawal date, pledging to remove all designated U.S. "combat" forces by August this year, with 50,000 troops remaining to carry out training, diplomatic security and select counterinsurgency missions with Iraqi counterparts for 16 months.

Democrats and Republicans alike have a vested interest in declaring today's Iraq a democratic success unprecedented in the region and claiming credit for it. "This could be one of the great achievements of this administration," Vice President Biden, Obama's designated point man in Iraq, said last month. "You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney took issue with Biden's assertion, calling it "a little strange" because both Biden and Obama had opposed the troop surge. Any credit to Obama, Cheney said, "ought to go with a healthy dose of 'Thank you, George Bush.' "

Biden, who had the last word against Cheney in dueling, mid-February talk-show appearances, accused the Bush administration of leaving a "mess" in Iraq. The U.S. military may have succeeded in "settling things down," he said, but it was the Obama administration that developed a plan to guide the Iraqis toward true democracy.

In four trips there as vice president, Biden said, "I have met with every single solitary one of the players in Iraq -- Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Christian. And we have been able to be a catalyst for them, moving . . . from the battlefield to the political arena" to settle their differences.

Although some U.S. officials, including Gen. Ray Odierno, the military commander in Iraq, have voiced concern about what they call Iranian dirty tricks and politically motivated violence, the dominant attitude has been laid-back: "That's just Iraq."

"Certainly there is a lot of wrangling over power and influence and who gets to do what," Odierno's predecessor, Gen. David H. Petraeus, told television interviewer Charlie Rose last week. "But again, some of that is Iraqi politics. It's 'Iraqracy,' we say sometimes."

Even if the elections proceed with minimal disruption, however, significant challenges lie ahead. Of the five major political groups participating, none is expected to win a majority, or perhaps even a plurality, of the vote. Getting a government in place will be arduous and time-consuming at best. The Iraqi constitution allows lengthy challenges to the vote count before the new parliament convenes to choose a president. After that, it could take months for a coalition to amass enough seats to form a government, which the parliament must approve.

Regardless of whether Maliki is reelected, his government will remain as caretaker during the transition, a time when the U.S. presence in Iraq will be shifting. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, already the largest in the world, will take over many functions now performed by the military, including training Iraq's police force.

Administration officials insist that the United States will retain significant influence with the new government, no matter who forms it. "Iraqis will continue to want our help in resolving their outstanding problems," including constitutional reform, disputes over internal boundaries and distribution of oil revenue, a senior administration official said in an interview.

"There are also things they want from us," the official noted. Under the Bush-era strategic agreement, the United States is committed to helping Iraq remove remaining U.N. restrictions on its oil revenue, as well as reparations to Kuwait for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion, and to encouraging U.S. investment, trade and educational exchanges.

Despite the prospects of sectarian violence and Iranian influence, the administration is counting on Iraqis to pull back from potentially destructive detours out of self-interest. "If Iraq were to fall backward into some kind of chaos," the administration official said, "in the first instance it would be bad for the Iraqis."

"Given the huge investment that was made in troops and treasure over the years, I imagine some would say we need to do something to prevent it," he said, adding that there are contingency plans for slowing or reconfiguring the U.S. withdrawal. "But I don't think there'd be any great appetite for going back in."

Mar 4, 2010

U.S. Fears Election Strife in Iraq Could Affect Pullout

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — The deadly suicide bombings in Iraq on Wednesday highlight the central quandary facing President Obama as he tries to fulfill his campaign pledge to end the war there: Will parliamentary elections, scheduled for Sunday, throw the country back into the sectarian strife that flared in 2004 and delay the planned American withdrawal?

Senior Obama administration officials maintained in interviews this week that Mr. Obama’s plan to withdraw all American combat troops by Sept. 1 would remain on track regardless of who cobbles together a governing coalition after the election. Under the plan, no more than 50,000 American forces would stay behind, mostly in advisory roles. (Now there are slightly more than 90,000 troops in the country, down from 124,000 in September.)

But administration officials also acknowledged that the bigger worry for the United States was not who would win the elections, but the possibility that the elections — and their almost certainly messy aftermath — could ignite violence that would, at the least, complicate the planned withdrawal.

In part for that reason, “we’re not leaving behind cooks and quartermasters,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Wednesday in a telephone interview. The bulk of the remaining American troops, he said, “will still be guys who can shoot straight and go get bad guys.”

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American military commander in Iraq, has drawn up a contingency plan that would keep a combat brigade in northern Iraq beyond the Sept. 1 deadline, should conditions warrant, administration officials said. Kirkuk and the restive Kurdish area in the north remain major concerns for American military planners.

Beyond that, military and administration officials say they are prepared to use the remaining American noncombat troops for combat missions, if things heat up.

For Mr. Obama, however, such a sleight of hand could have huge political repercussions back in Washington. The centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy platform when he ran for president — and indeed, the reason many political experts say he was able to wrest a primary victory from Hillary Rodham Clinton — was his opposition to the Iraq war from the start.

At a time when Mr. Obama has already angered his liberal base by ramping up the number of American troops in Afghanistan and missing his own deadline to shut down the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even the appearance that he has fudged the troop drawdown in Iraq could set off a rebellion as Democrats face difficult midterm elections.

There is also concern that the administration has been so preoccupied by Afghanistan and Pakistan that Iraq has gotten less attention from top policy-makers in the State Department or the National Security Council, according to administration officials and outside experts.

Ten months ago, Mr. Obama effectively handed Mr. Biden the administration’s Iraq portfolio, and the vice president has been to Iraq several times since then to cajole, prod and push Iraqi political leaders to compromise — often using the looming American troop pullout as a warning to the politicians that they will not have an American security blanket forever.

Mr. Biden has led monthly meetings in the White House Situation Room and recruited other agencies, like the Treasury and Agriculture Departments to help with Iraqi reconstruction.

But below Mr. Biden, the main Iraq working group consists of five relatively junior officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, one administration official said. Other officials counter that senior policymakers, including Antony Blinken, the vice president’s chief foreign policy adviser and Puneet Talwar, a senior director in the National Security Council, are both heavily involved in Iraq.

Still, with Mr. Biden also juggling other duties, some experts contend that the administration could use more senior-level officials whose primary focus is developing Iraq policy.

For his part, Mr. Biden said that while the administration was worried about trouble spots, particularly in the north, he was confident that Iraqi violence would not reach the levels it did during the last election in 2005. He said that was in part because Iraq’s quarreling sects had realized that they could achieve more working within the political process than by lobbing grenades from the outside.

“Politics has broken out in Iraq,” Mr. Biden said.

For the Obama administration, the best strategy could be to remind the Iraqis that they must conduct a responsible election if they want a long-term relationship with the United States, experts said.

“You can effectively say to any Iraqi, ‘Barack Obama was not elected to keep the United States in Iraq; if you guys are going to do something that does not serve American interests there, his incentive will be to cut his losses,’ ” said Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The American ambassador to Baghdad, Christopher R. Hill, has been meeting with party leaders to deliver the message that the United States wants a clean election. While he said the administration recognized the danger of uncertainty after the vote, he said Iraq had shown it could navigate such periods peacefully.

“We can draw comfort from the fact that Iraq politicians have always pulled back from the brink,” he said in a telephone interview. “We believe they fully understand the risks of a protracted government formation period.”

With no party expected to get a majority, or even a strong plurality, analysts foresee intense horse trading, with factions like the Kurds trying to play kingmaker as diverse groups attempt to cobble together coalitions.

Mr. Hill emphasized that the United States did not want to get drawn into postelection wrangling among Kurdish, Shiite or Sunni parties. He and General Odierno have already been criticized in some quarters in Iraq for speaking about Iran’s influence in the election process.

“Assuming that everything is going to go off fine, we will execute our withdrawal as we advertised,” Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, said Tuesday in an interview. It would take a “proactive national decision” by Mr. Obama to divert from the withdrawal plan, he said, adding, “The military always thinks through different options in how we might react.”

Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.

Murky Candidacy Stokes Iraq’s Sectarian Fears

Image via Wikipedia

By MARC SANTORA and MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD — A politician widely accused of running death squads might not be expected to have an easy time running for public office.

But this is Iraq. In a nation sadly inured to years of sectarian bloodletting, Hakim al-Zamili not only has a place on a prominent Shiite election slate, but stands poised to win a place in the Parliament, as early voting began Thursday morning for the infirm, people with special needs and members of the military and the police.

It is an astonishing turnabout that shows the limits of political reconciliation. While some Sunni candidates have been barred from running in the election for their alleged support of the Baath Party, Mr. Zamili’s candidacy has provoked nary a protest from the nation’s leading Shiite politicians. That runs the risk that Shiite leaders will be seen as taking steps against only those who persecuted Shiites, not Sunnis.

Mr. Zamili’s new political role has heightened concerns that for all the talk of cross-sectarian alliances among some Shiite and Sunni factions, Iraq may be unable to firmly break with its troubled past.

The embrace of his candidacy “sends the worst possible message to loyal Iraqis,” said one American official who was involved in a fruitless effort to convict Mr. Zamili at a high-profile trialin 2008. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified because he was not authorized to comment on Iraqi political developments.

Sitting inside his ramshackle campaign headquarters in Sadr City, Mr. Zamili insisted that the charges against him were no more than politically motivated fabrications. But he was unapologetic about the attacks that Shiite militias like Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army carried out in past years against the Americans and Sunni insurgents.

“Many people in politics understand that resistance was our right because we were occupied,” he said. “We had a duty to protect the people from the U.S. forces and the attacks of terrorists.”

Now that American troops are withdrawing, Mr. Zamili, the dark circles under his eyes giving him a worn look even when he smiles, said it was time to abandon armed struggle. As candidate No. 15 on the Iraqi National Alliance slate, he is part of a coalition that includes Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former prime minister, and Ahmed Chalabi, the longtime political survivor who led the effort to disbar Sunni candidates and who draws support, American officials charge, from Iran.

“They thought they would end the Sadrist movement, but we persevered,” Mr. Zamili said.

Several years ago Mr. Zamili was a protagonist in a very different drama. The Ministry of Health and the hospitals that it oversaw were some of the first institutions that Mr. Sadr’s supporters controlled after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Zamili, American officials say, was appointed to his ministry post with Mr. Sadr’s backing.

According to the inquiry that led to Mr. Zamili’s trial, the ministry’s protection service was used as a private militia to kidnap and kill hundreds of Sunnis from 2005 to early 2007. A deputy health minister, Ammar al-Saffar, who was gathering data on abuses at the ministry, disappeared before he could turn over his findings to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. He vanished after telling associates that Mr. Zamili had threatened him.

Mr. Zamili was arrested in early 2007 after Mr. Maliki had a falling out with Mr. Sadr. American officials worked closely with Iraqi officials to build a case that Mr. Zamili was involved in murder, kidnapping and corruption. His trial was to be the first of a high-ranking Shiite official for sectarian crimes — an event, one American official asserted, that would be as important in establishing the rule of law in Iraq as the trial of Saddam Hussein.

After a two-day trial, marred by accusations of witness intimidation, the charges were dropped and Mr. Zamili was freed after spending more than a year in American custody.

Mr. Zamili denied in the interview that he had ever orchestrated the kidnappings and killings. “They accused me of fueling the violence,” he said. “Each and every person resisting and opposed to the occupation is a terrorist, a thief, a criminal,” he said dismissively.

As it turns out, he said, his arrest actually was a political boon. He has trumpeted his position at the Health Ministry in his campaign. Quoting Gandhi, he has portrayed himself as a political martyr. “It was a benefit to me because people related to me,” he said. “They saw me suffering. And suffering is good for the soul.”

The families of those he stood accused of ordering murdered say they are aghast. Ali al-Saffar, Mr. Saffar’s son, said in a telephone interview from London that Mr. Jaafari had been a family friend and that when he met with the former prime minister three years ago Mr. Jaafari acknowledged receiving information linking Mr. Zamili to his father’s disappearance.

“Despite their emphasis on personal morality, they have sadly shown they are willing to forfeit their ideals in the pursuit of power, including by welcoming into their ranks people like Hakim al-Zamili,” Mr. Saffar said, referring to the Iraqi National Alliance slate.

Manal Finjan, a candidate in the election and a spokeswoman for Mr. Jaafari’s list, said the courts had exonerated Mr. Zamili, and he should therefore be treated like any other candidate.

“We actually deal with people on the basis of evidence and documents,” she said. “He was acquitted by the court, and anybody who has evidence against him could go to the proper authorities.”

While Mr. Zamili is now a player in the political game, he did not rule out the possibility that the militias might be once again called on to defend the people. “If there were a bad situation, an increase in attacks, the continuation of unjust arrests, they will force us to defend ourselves and our leaders,” he said.

This may be a bit of bravado. Support for the Sadrists drained as Iraqis tired of violence and sectarian killings. But judging by the mood of the dozens of young men in the muddied track suits that were once the unofficial uniform of the Mahdi Army, some seem willing to return to the fight.

Before Mr. Zamili arrived, they had just received news — later denied by aides to Mr. Maliki — that a court had reissued an arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, should he return to Iraq. As angry denunciations rang in the smoke-filled room, one burly young man made it clear that Sadrists would not stand for any such action.

“We had Maliki surrounded in Basra when he visited and could not get him,” he said. “But this time, if this report is true, we will go to the Green Zone and pull him out by his head and roll him in the street.”

Feb 27, 2010

Ahmed Chalabi's renewed influence in Iraq concerns U.S.

By Ernesto Londoño and Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 27, 2010; A01

BAGHDAD -- Ahmed Chalabi, the onetime U.S. ally, is in the limelight again, and his actions are proving no less controversial than they did years ago.

On the eve of Iraq's parliamentary elections, Chalabi is driving an effort aimed at weeding out candidates tied to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Chalabi is reprising a role he played after the U.S.-led invasion -- which many critics believe he helped facilitate with faulty intelligence -- and, in the process, is infuriating American officials and some Iraqis, who suspect his motive is to bolster his own political bloc.

Chalabi, a Shiite, has defended the work of the commission he is leading as legal and crucial during a period of transition to Iraq's first sovereign government. But his reemergence on the political scene has rankled U.S. officials and fueled concerns that Sunnis and other secular Iraqis will be marginalized.

Some Iraqi and U.S. officials think Chalabi might have his eyes on the ultimate prize, however unlikely he can attain it.

"Even if it kills him, he's going to stay in Iraq to try to become prime minister," said Ezzat Shahbandar, a Shiite lawmaker from a competing slate who has known Chalabi for more than 20 years. "This issue is the only tool he has, because he has nothing else going for him."

Chalabi fell out of favor with the Americans in 2004, after they accused him of spying for Iran. The year before, though, he had been appointed to head a U.S.-formed commission to rid the government of officials tied to Hussein's regime.

The hasty, wholesale purge that the commission conducted is now widely seen as a catalyst of the insurgency and Iraq's sectarian war. Today, however, Chalabi remains at the helm of a similar "de-Baathification" panel, the Justice and Accountability Commission, because parliament has not appointed new members.

When the commission recently announced the disqualification of nearly 500 candidates from the March 7 parliamentary elections, critics noted that candidates from Sunni-led and mixed secular coalitions were disproportionately targeted. Many of those ousted were rivals of Chalabi's bloc.

A court impaneled to review the cases carried out a cursory review behind closed doors. Candidates were allowed to submit written appeals but were never told the specific nature of the allegations against them. The court disqualified 145 candidates; most others dropped out or their parties replaced them.

Now the disqualifications are widening sectarian and religious divides in Iraq, even as it continues to reel from decades of authoritarian rule, occupation and bloodshed. This week, in an apparent attempt to allay some of the bitterness, the government said it would reinstate 20,000 former army officers ousted because of their ties to Hussein.

But the political disqualifications threaten to undermine the elections, overshadowing campaign issues such as security, unemployment and basic services.

At the center of it all is Chalabi.

In campaign posters, Chalabi, a onetime Iraqi exile, bills himself as "the Destroyer of the symbols of the Baath." Placards for other candidates on his political slate, the Iraqi National Alliance, are graced with the words "No space for the Baath," written in crimson letters that suggest blood.

The alliance is a Shiite coalition of parties whose most prominent figures are former Iraqi exiles in the current government. Those parties did poorly in provincial elections in January 2009.

"The provincial elections showed the limits of the appeal of sectarianism," a senior Western diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid analysis. By fanning fears of the return of the Baathists, the official added, "they may be hoping that Baathism will help them get past that limit."

Chalabi, 65, comes from an elite Baghdad family. He formed the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group, in the early 1990s with U.S. backing.

He has long had a strong relationship with Iran. But he became close to the CIA and the Pentagon in the run-up to the invasion, as U.S. officials used his group to muster opposition against Hussein. The U.S. government funneled millions to his group, which provided it with intelligence reports that later proved to be erroneous. In 2004, Chalabi was a guest of President George W. Bush at the State of the Union address.

Many Iraqi Shiite politicians have little regard for Chalabi because he left in the late 1950s, avoiding authoritarian rule. Many of his peers were imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile.

Despite his lack of popular support, Chalabi has remained relevant. Even his rivals allow that he has keen political instincts, a sharp mind and a knack for influencing powerful people. He also does not shy from controversy.

This week, his deputy on the commission, Ali Faisal al-Lami, said hundreds of officials in Iraq's intelligence, army and police agencies are subject to dismissal for links to the Baath Party.

"We believe there are thousands of others who will be found," he said in an interview. "These measures will seriously enhance security in Iraq by dismissing any bad elements that carry the Baath ideology."

If that effort gains traction in the weeks ahead, U.S. officials say, political violence could very well follow. U.S. commanders could also suddenly lose key Iraqi officers who they have trained and mentored over the years.

"They will try to get rid of pro-U.S. generals, but more importantly, they are stacking the deck with pro-Iranian officers, which will damage U.S. long-term interests in the long run," a senior U.S. military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to reporters. "This is why many neighboring Arab countries aren't so happy about us modernizing the Iraqi military with some of the latest equipment."

Chalabi did not respond to calls, e-mails and text messages seeking an interview. In a recent statement, he said his commission was "carrying out its legal, moral and nationalistic duty to protect the political process against infiltration by the Saddamist Baathists."

Ryan C. Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 until last year, said Chalabi is no one's "agent."

"He's an opportunist and he's a nationalist," Crocker said, "and he will use whatever vehicle or platform that presents itself to further his own agenda."

Special correspondent K.I. Ibrahim contributed to this report.

Iraqi Sunnis Pin Their Hopes on Elections

By MARC SANTORA

BAQUBA, Iraq — Here in Diyala, a quarter of provincial council members, all Sunnis, have warrants against them. Most don’t show up for votes, fearing they will be jailed. The leading Sunni candidate was arrested this month on what supporters call trumped-up terrorism charges. Crushing poverty is the norm. So is mistrust of a central government and the Shiite-dominated security forces.

Yet Sunnis here say they are determined to participate in the March 7 national parliamentary elections. Even after a call last week by a national Sunni political party to boycott — a call it later rescinded — Sunnis continued to hang banners of their preferred candidates, including those barred from running.

In some ways, it is an inspiring measure of progress in Iraq that Sunni Muslims, the minority that long ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein, are trusting in the ballot box to improve their fortunes.

But the hope they place in politics also reflects weakness: how sharply Sunnis’ choices have narrowed after nearly seven years of war. Past boycotts denied them electoral positions they might have won and deprived them of the spoils of power. Violence drew deadly retribution, from both American soldiers and Shiite death squads. Now elections seem the only way to forge a more formal and enduring political role.

Interviews in this once restive area make clear that Sunni expectations from these elections are high, and that renewed violence may not be far behind electoral disappointment.

“If the government does not change, there will be a problem between the Sunni and the Shia, and it will not be good,” said Sami Dawoud Salman, a local leader of a branch of the Sunni militia that allied with the Americans to do battle with Al Qaeda.

Without a change, he said, “I think the government will hunt down every Sunni person, and the Sunnis will have no choice but to hold their own weapons and defend themselves.”

He plans to vote in any case.

Across Diyala Province, about 17,000 square miles stretching from Baghdad to the Iranian border, the conditions that existed as the fighting subsided have hardened in place. Once mixed villages have either been razed or remain in the control of one sect. Few of those displaced from their homes have returned. Lingering blood feuds bring daily reports of violence.

Shiite towns, like Khalis, bustle with commerce. In Sunni neighborhoods, the shops are fewer, the tension is higher and the uncertainty palpable.

Shiites dominate both the local police and the Iraqi Army in the region, making up about 90 percent of the forces, American officials say, although the population is more than 50 percent Sunni. Sunnis see reminders of Shiite ascendancy and intimidation all around. For instance, during a recent Shiite holiday, nearly every police checkpoint was decorated with portraits of Imam Hussein and Ali, two revered Shiite martyrs.

The mistrust has deepened in recent months as government security forces have staged a series of arrests.

Over three days in December, 101 people were arrested, predominantly Sunni, according to an American intelligence briefing paper.

“Continued, pervasive, and biased targeting by the Iraqi Security Force” raised the possibility militants might have more success in recruiting fighters, according to the report. In recent weeks, there has been evidence that those networks have stepped up their recruitment efforts, American military commanders say.

In the provincial elections last year, Sunnis took control of the local government, which helped ease tensions. However, 7 of the 29 provincial council members have arrest warrants against them. The arrest in early February of Najim al-Harbi, the Diyala leader of the important Sunni political bloc that won six seats, was considered the most recent provocation.

Mr. Harbi, who gained widespread support for his role battling Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has been the frequent target of assassination attempts, and 23 members of his family have been killed by militants. Six months ago, his 6-year-old son was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and killed. His arrest on terrorism charges, with no evidence made public, stirred anger and was viewed as politically motivated, because his slate of candidates poses a serious challenge to both Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s alliance and the candidates of other Shiite parties.

“Of course the sectarian nature of the politics will be reflected on the street,” said Rasam Esmael Hamud, a member of Mr. Harbi’s party. “If we fail to control the politics, then we will fail to control the street.”

There has been hope that the elections would be a step toward reconciliation. But as the campaign has heated up, so has the oratory, with distinct sectarian overtones. The fiery campaign speeches have been coupled with actions by the government security forces and political leaders that are viewed by Sunnis as an attempt to diminish their standing.

For months, Mr. Maliki, who once hoped to court a substantial alliance with powerful Sunni political blocs but was largely rebuffed, has repeatedly raised the specter of the Baath Party to justify a crackdown on Sunni and secular leaders.

Mr. Maliki’s rival, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has been joined by powerful Sunni blocs to pose a serious electoral challenge, has accused the Shiite dominated blocs and the prime minister of being beholden to Iran.

When the Iraqi government pressed ahead with its anti-Baath campaign by seeking to bar more than 500 candidates from running in the election, Mr. Allawi suggested that such heavy-handed tactics could lead to civil war.

With only a little more than a week until the election, though, Sunnis still view the voting booth as the best place to secure influence in Iraq, according to American and Iraqi officials and dozens of interviews with residents.

“We are always facing pressures by the security forces, which are dominated by the Shiite parties,” said Baqir Jalalaldin al-Khashali, a 24-year-old employee of the Education Department in Baquba. “I think that the pressures will be useless, because there is a great desire of Sunnis to participate in the election.”

How they will react once the votes are counted, especially if there is a perception of fraud, is uncertain.

“We have spent a lot of time studying the question: What is the Sunni breaking point?” said Col. David Funk, commander of the Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, which has responsibility for Diyala Province. “It won’t likely be a single event. It will be the slow erosion over time of the belief that they have a role in this country.”

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Diyala Province.

Feb 26, 2010

Iraqi journalist sees threats to press freedom

Image by Walter Parenteau via Flickr

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 26, 2010; A12

Before the U.S.-led invasion, billed as the liberation of Iraqis, newspaper journalist Nadjha Khadum was as close to a trailblazer in her field as the era permitted.

During the 1980s war between Iraq and Iran, she was embedded with the Iraqi army and filed dispatches from the front lines. Her 1991 exposé of corruption at the Iraqi tax agency led to a minister's dismissal.

Her latest venture -- launching an independent online news site -- offers a snapshot of the present travails of Iraqis who yearned for basic freedoms during years of dictatorship. As Operation Iraqi Freedom draws to a close, Khadum is finding that the brand of freedom the United States ushered in is at best tenuous, at worst a temporary illusion.

Iraq has been the world's deadliest country for journalists since the war began in 2003. At least 140 have been killed, many of them targeted by militia and insurgent groups, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Although freedom of the press is guaranteed in Iraq's 2005 constitution, lawmakers have not passed legislation to enforce it. Government officials and private citizens have increasingly resorted to litigation to muffle critical reporting. And a commission that reports to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently unveiled guidelines that Iraqi journalists and press freedom advocates call authoritarian.

"This can be described as disastrous," Khadum said, referring to the new rules. "We are now waiting and watching to see who is going to become the first prey."

New guidelines

Before the war, Khadum said, journalists could publish some tough stories if they had evidence. "At that time, nobody would kill someone else over a story without getting caught by the government," she said.

Image by Knight Foundation via Flickr

Last fall, one of Khadum's best friends, journalist Imad Abadi, barely survived an assassination attempt.

"This was an attempt to keep our mouths shut and to derail journalists from their real task," said Abadi, who was shot in the head after publishing stories about government corruption.

In recent years, as political competition intensified, litigation against journalists has also increased, according to Ziad al-Ajili, head of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory. At least 200 such lawsuits have been filed over the past two years, Ajili said, adding, "There is no freedom."

The guidelines that Iraq's Communications and Media Commission issued last month bar journalists from withholding the names of sources and threaten action against those who publish information that incites violence -- a criterion that is ill-defined. The rules also say news organizations must apply for licenses, register equipment with the commission and provide a list of employees.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called the guidelines "an alarming return to authoritarianism."

A commission spokesman, Majed Tofan, said the rules are not an attempt to stifle journalists, but rather a mechanism to regulate an industry that operates in a legal vacuum.

"The situation in the country is still unstable," he said. "There are those in the media who incite violence and promote terrorism."

Pulling punches again

Khadum was one of the few female journalists to cover the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s. After the war, she was tapped for high-profile assignments at her newspaper. Male colleagues referred to her affectionately as "one of the guys."

She was boisterous and opinionated. She smoked in public, which is something few Iraqi women do. And she had a knack for breaking hard-hitting stories without running afoul of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Although journalists operated in a highly restrictive environment, the unspoken rules were reasonably clear. Stories critical of Hussein and his family crossed a red line. Writing sympathetically about Shiite and Kurdish uprisings was out of the question, and the journalists who did disappeared.

Still, there was room for moderate criticism of the government.

One day in fall 1991, Khadum received a tip that officials at the tax agency were taking bribes from taxpayers. The informant told her about a room at the agency where she and a photographer found files containing compromising data. A few days after their exposé was published, the finance minister was fired.

"I was so proud," Khadum said. "It wasn't easy to make a minister lose his job over an article."

The provisional government established by the United States drafted laws to protect press freedom, but the parliament has not passed them, leaving Hussein-era laws in effect.

Soon after the occupation, a lively press corps emerged, with political blocs establishing and funding the most influential newspapers and television stations.

Khadum, who is Shiite, left Iraq in 2006 after her neighborhood -- Adhamiyah, in northern Baghdad -- became one of the main battlegrounds in the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. Adhamiyah is predominantly Sunni.

She returned to Iraq in 2008 as violence ebbed. Last summer, she sold a plot of land in the south for $50,000 and launched the Ur News online news agency, designing the Web site on an old laptop in her bedroom.

Relying on a small network of correspondents around the country, she began filing stories on politics and violence. In the early days, she pulled no punches, naming names and sometimes singling out the corrupt. The site quickly became popular. Since its launch, it has been accessed more than 643,000 times, Khadum said, showing records.

After receiving a few letters and phone calls threatening lawsuits, she became more careful. After her friend was shot, she grew fearful. For now, Khadum said, she limits what she writes. "There are issues I cannot talk about," she said, lowering her voice.

A few weeks ago, she decided to leave her home of 40 years in Adhamiyah. Sectarian vitriol is creeping back into the neighborhood, she said, and killings have resumed.

As she was packing up her belongings to move to a smaller house in the adjacent, mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, neighbors stopped by to say farewell.

"It's very painful to lose you," one said. "But what you're doing is the right thing."

Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Dalya Hassan contributed to this report.