Iraqi Shiites protest Maliki's government

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By Qais Mizher
Monday, December 28, 2009; A09

KARBALA, IRAQ -- A group of 5,000 Iraqi Shiite demonstrators in the city of Karbala turned the religious observance of Ashura into a political protest against the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday, expressing wide-ranging criticisms as the country prepares for a critical national election in early March.

The protesters gathered outside the Imam Hussein shrine to greet the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who had descended on the city. "We don't vote for people who steal public money," the protesters shouted.

The anti-government overtones surrounding the religious holiday, banned under Saddam Hussein's regime, were a marked change from recent years.

After the U.S. invasion, the day had been embraced by the country's Shiite majority as a moment to express solidarity in their newfound political power and long-frustrated religious freedom.

This year, Ashura fell at the beginning of the campaign season for the March 7 national election, which is to decide the face of the Iraqi government during and after the U.S. withdrawal. Tens of thousands of Iraqi security forces were deployed on the streets to prevent possible violence that would further weaken the credibility of Maliki's government, which has been severely tested by a string of deadly bombings.

On Saturday in Baghdad, Shiite leader Amar al-Hakim, head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, offered thinly veiled criticisms of the government during a speech commemorating Ashura, comparing what he claimed were the struggles of Imam Hussein's fight against corruption to the present day.

Ashura is the day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Shiite saint whose death in the 7th century sealed the rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over the succession of the prophet Muhammad.

"We can see that history is repeating itself. We can see the political money, temptations and seductions," Hakim said at the Kihlani mosque in central Baghdad. "Iraqi people don't want the promises to disappear after the elections. People will not obey any extortions."

The political potential of Ashura was exactly why Saddam Hussein had so feared it, according to Shakir al-Najjar, a 70-year-old poet who helped organize the protests in Karbala.

"We had believed that Maliki's government and most of the politicians were a part of us, and we used to support them, especially after they executed Saddam," he said. "But finally we discovered that they don't represent us, so we decided to protest against them for the first time on Ashura this year."

In Baghdad on Sunday, tens of thousands of pilgrims marched toward the al-Kadihmiyia mosque, braving the threat of bombings and violence, and shedding their own blood with cuts on their foreheads to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein.

"The politicians want to associate themselves with such a great leader as Imam Hussein," said 29-year-old shopkeeper Bajir Hassan.

Red Crescent tents were set up to deal with pilgrims who had passed out from loss of blood and dehydration.

Although Shiite pilgrims had been the target of multiple attacks over the past week, there was only one major bombing on Sunday, in Kirkuk, killing four pilgrims and injuring 18, according to police officials.

Mizher is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Michael Hastings contributed to this report.

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US pullout in doubt after day of slaughter on streets of Baghdad

Extremists struck at the Iraqi Government with a wave of bombings and mortar attacks, killing at least 95 people and injuring more than 560 and raising new doubts about the withdrawal of US soldiers from the country.

The bombings were directed against the main centres of power, including the ministries of finance, foreign affairs, health, education and housing, as well as the parliament and cabinet buildings.

A lorry packed with explosives that went off within 30ft of the Foreign Ministry is reported to have killed up to 59 people and injured 250. The ministry’s compound wall was flattened and the ten-storey building all but destroyed. Cars and buildings in the vicinity were devastated and houses five miles away were shaken.

The bomb left a crater in the road 10 feet deep and 25 feet wide; it was filled with charred bodies. The heat of the ensuing fire melted debris into the torn asphalt. Dozens of buildings were damaged, including the Rasheed Hotel, on the edge of the fortified green zone. John Tipple, a British solicitor, said: “The windows were blown out — even the door frames went. If I had been in my room I would have been seriously injured or worse. Everything is locked down now. Nobody can move anywhere.”

No group has said that it was behind the attack but it is likely to have been the work of Sunni radicals trying to undermine the Shia-led Government, to reignite sectarian warfare of two years ago. Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, said: “These attacks represent a reaction to the opening of streets and bridges and the lifting of barriers inside the residential areas.”

The date of the attacks was symbolic: today was the sixth anniversary of the bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including the UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. That atrocity prompted the UN to suspend its operations in Iraq and signalled a deadly increase in the insurgency.

Since US troops began to pull out of the cities, a rise in attacks has led to fears of a resurgence of violence before the elections to be held by the end of January.

In a reference to the party of Saddam Hussein, Major-General Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Iraqi Army’s Baghdad operations, said “We accuse the Baathist alliance of executing these terrorist operations.”

Today Baghdad was again enveloped by chaos and fear. Abu Mazen, a 39-year-old police officer, said: “I came home and found all my neighbours crying and my wife crying, then I saw the kids. They were injured in the heads and hands.”

A bystander, Abu Mohammed, 45, said: “I saw a body fly through the air and land next to me. I saw 40 burnt bodies being taken out of the Foreign Ministry — they needed an industrial vehicle with a big shovel to remove them. The bodies were still burning and we poured water on them. There is blood everywhere.”

A woman staggered past him outside the Foreign Ministry, bleeding from the head but insistent that she did not need help. Apartment blocks hundreds of metres away showed cracks in the walls.

Faris, a 28-year-old resident, said: “This is the biggest explosion we have seen since the invasion. I fear we are returning to the bad old days.”

Like many others he blamed careless Iraqi security guards who replaced US soldiers: “How can you drive a lorry filled with explosives right up to the entrance of the ministry?”

Blast walls that might have limited the damage were removed two months ago as part of “normalisation” by the Iraqi Government after US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities on June 30.

Iraq May Hold Vote on Early U.S. Withdrawal

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 -- U.S. troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country's north.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.

The Maliki government's announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here.

Gen. Ray Odierno said American troops would partner with contingents of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish regional government's paramilitary force, marking the first organized effort to pair U.S. forces with the militia, known as the pesh merga. Iraqi army and Kurdish forces nearly came to blows recently, and there is deep-seated animosity between them, owing to a decades-long fight over ancestry, land and oil.

If Iraqi lawmakers sign off on Maliki's initiative to hold a referendum in January on the withdrawal timeline, a majority of voters could annul a standing U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, forcing the military to pull out completely by January 2011 under the terms of a previous law.

It is unclear whether parliament, which is in recess until next month, would approve the referendum. Lawmakers have yet to pass a measure laying the basic ground rules for the Jan. 16 national election, their top legislative priority for the remainder of 2009.

Before signing off on the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement last year, Iraqi lawmakers demanded that voters get to weigh in on the pact in a referendum that was to take place no later than last month. Because it did not happen, American officials assumed the plebiscite was a dead issue.

U.S. officials say they have no way to know how the referendum would turn out, but they worry that many Iraqis are likely to vote against the pact. Maliki billed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from urban areas at the end of June as a "great victory" for Iraqis, and his government has since markedly curbed the authority and mobility of U.S. forces.

Senior Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Odierno probably will make an announcement later this week or early next week the accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which now stand at 130,000, by one or two brigades between now and the end of the year. Each brigade consists of about 5,000 troops. Odierno said Monday that he has not decided whether to speed up the plan, which he said remains on schedule.

The acceleration would still be much slower than if the referendum nullified the agreement.

Still, senior Pentagon officials played down Maliki's announcement, saying it was an expected part of Iraq's political process. Senior Iraqi officials did not raise the possibility of the referendum with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates when he visited the country earlier this month, Pentagon officials said.

Bahaa Hassan, who owns a mobile phone store in Najaf, south of Baghdad, said he would vote for a speedier withdrawal.

"We want to get rid of the American influence in Iraq, because we suffer from it politically and economically," he said. "We will vote against it so Iraq will be in the hands of Iraqis again."

But many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis and Kurds, consider the presence of the U.S. military a key deterrent to abuses of power by the Shiite-led government.

"After six years of Shiite rule and struggle, we still have no electricity, so what will happen if Americans leave?" said Dhirgham Talib, a government employee in Najaf. "The field will be left to the Shiite parties to do whatever they want with no fear from anybody."

A poll commissioned by the U.S. military earlier this year found that Iraqis expressed far less confidence in American troops than in the Iraqi government or any of its security forces. Twenty-seven percent of Iraqis polled said they had confidence in U.S. forces, according to a Pentagon report presented to Congress last month. By contrast, 72 percent expressed confidence in the national government.

Zainab Karim, a Shiite lawmaker from the Sadrist movement, the most ardently anti-American faction, said she was pleasantly surprised that the government is backing the referendum.

"I consider this a good thing," she said. "But we have to wait and see whether the government is honest about this or whether it is electoral propaganda."

As the Iraqi government took steps to force U.S. troops out earlier than planned, Odierno said Monday that he would like to deploy American forces to villages along disputed areas in northern Iraq to defuse tension between Kurdish troops and forces controlled by the Shiite Arab-led government in Baghdad.

"We're working very hard to come up with a security architecture in the disputed territories that would reduce tension," Odierno told reporters. "They just all feel more comfortable if we're there."

Scores of Iraqis have been killed in recent weeks in villages along the 300-mile frontier south of the Kurdish region. U.S. military officials say the attacks bear the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, but local leaders have traded accusations to bolster their positions on whether specific areas should be under the control of Baghdad or the autonomous government of Kurdistan.

The pesh merga currently controls some villages that are nominally outside the three-province Kurdish region. The expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Iraq has prompted Maliki to deploy more troops loyal to Baghdad to northern provinces south of Kurdistan. The new provincial leadership in Nineveh province, the most restive among them, has made curbing Kurdish expansion its top priority and has called for the expulsion of pesh merga forces.

The tension, Odierno said, has created a security vacuum that has emboldened al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group that he said was almost certainly responsible for recent sensational bombings in the province. The number of civilian casualties in Iraq has increased since the urban pullout, Odierno said, largely as a result of attacks in the disputed territories.

"What we have is al-Qaeda exploiting this fissure between the Arabs and the Kurds," he said. "What we're trying to do is close that fissure."

Staff writers Greg Jaffe and Scott Wilson in Washington and special correspondents Zaid Sabah and Aziz Alwan in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and Dlovan Brwari in Mosul contributed to this report.

Iraqi Journalists Protesting in Baghdad Say the Government Is Trying to Censor Them

By SAM DAGHER

BAGHDAD — Nearly 100 Iraqi journalists, news media workers and their supporters protested in Baghdad on Friday against what they said was a growing push by the country’s governing Shiite political parties to muzzle them.

“No, no to muzzling!” they shouted as they marched down Mutanabi Street. “Yes, yes to freedom!”

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to censor certain publications and books, block Web sites it deems offensive and pass a new media law that would clamp down on journalists in the name of protecting them.

The proposed law, which was sent to Parliament last month, offers government grants to journalists and their families if they are disabled or killed because of “a terror act.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 167 Iraqi reporters and media support workers were killed in Iraq between March 2003 and July 2008. But the bill also defines what the government considers “moral” and sound journalistic practices.

Zuhair al-Jezairy, editor in chief of the Aswat Al Iraq news agency, who was in attendance, said that while the journalists’ grievances were legitimate, their message was diluted by the fact that most of them still viewed the government as their patron. “There are journalists who expect guns, land and salaries from the government,” he said.

Mr. Jezairy said that many Iraqi journalists — employed by outlets owned by the government, political parties and even neighboring countries with agendas in Iraq — had been turned into tools in the political struggle. There were abundant signs of this at the demonstration itself, which seemed to have as much to do with a recent spat over a bank robbery as with press freedom.

Sheik Jalaleddin al-Saghir, a Shiite cleric and member of Parliament from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Party, lashed out last week at news media reports that he said insinuated that his party was behind the robbery, in which eight billion dinars, or $7 million, was stolen and eight people were killed. He said many of the journalists were members of Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath Party and promised to punish the offenders.

Among those leading Friday’s protest were two Shiite politicians who are rivals of Mr. Saghir’s. As the event got under way, word spread that the journalists who organized it were in the camp of the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, who has ambitions of becoming the next prime minister. And the event was boycotted by the Iraqi journalists’ union, which was promised plots of land for its members earlier this year by Mr. Maliki.

One journalist in particular, Ahmed Abdul-Hussein, was the target of much of Sheik Saghir’s wrath. In a recent Op-Ed article in the state-owned newspaper Al-Sabah, which is loyal to Mr. Maliki, Mr. Abdul-Hussein wrote that “we know, that they know, that we know” that the party that stole the money was going to use it to bribe people in the national elections next year. He offered no proof and did not name the party.

“How many blankets can you buy with eight billion dinars?” he wrote. Sheik Saghir took that as a reference to his party, which distributed blankets and electric heaters to voters during the provincial elections last January.

Iraq’s Shiites Show Restraint After Attacks

By ROD NORDLAND

BAGHDAD — Shiite clerics and politicians have been successfully urging their followers not to retaliate against a fierce campaign of sectarian bombings, in which Shiites have accounted for most of the 566 Iraqis killed since American troops pulled out of Iraq’s cities on June 30.

“Let them kill us,” said Sheik Khudair al-Allawi, the imam of a mosque bombed recently. “It’s a waste of their time. The sectarian card is an old card and no one is going to play it anymore. We know what they want, and we’ll just be patient. But they will all go to hell.”

The patience of the Shiites today is in extraordinary contrast to Iraq’s recent past. With a demographic majority of 60 percent and control of the government, power is theirs for the first time in a thousand years. Going back to sectarian war is, as both Sunni extremists and Shiite victims know, the one way they could lose all that, especially if they were to drag their Sunni Arab neighbors into a messy regional conflict.

It is a far cry from 2006, when a bomb set off at the sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra killed no one, but ignited a fury at the sacrilege that set off two years of sectarian warfare.

This year the equally important shrine of Kadhimiya in Baghdad, the tomb of two revered Shiite imams, was attacked by suicide bombers twice, in January and April. More than a hundred people were killed, but there was no retaliation.

Bombing Shiite mosques has become so common that Sunni extremists have been forced to look elsewhere to provoke outrage — much as they did in 2005, when Shiites similarly showed patience when attacked. They have attacked groups of Shiite refugees waiting for food rations, children gathering for handouts of candy, lines of unemployed men hoping for a day’s work, school buses, religious pilgrimages, weddings, marketplaces and hospitals in Shiite areas and even the funerals of their victims from the day before.

Iraq’s Shiites, counseled by their political and religious leaders and habituated to suffering by centuries as the region’s underclass, have refused to rise to the bait — for now. Instead, they have made a virtue of forbearance and have convinced their followers that they win by not responding with violence. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has brought once violent Shiite militiamen into the fold, while the Shiites’ spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has forbidden any sort of violent reprisals.

“I wouldn’t look for this to become a repeat of 2006,” said the American ambassador to Iraq, Christopher R. Hill. “It’s very different.”

No longer are there tit-for-tat bombings of Sunni mosques after Shiite mosques are hit.

Now, even some of the most violent of Shiite extremists of past years are clamoring to join the political process. Last week, the Maliki government announced that Asa’ib al-Haq, one of the so-called special groups that continued to fight after other Shiites had stopped in 2008, now had renounced violence against Iraqis.

To some extent, the recent attacks against Shiites were expected, as many Iraqis braced for a general increase in violence after the American military withdrawal from towns and cities on June 30. On Monday, several bombs went off around Baghdad, and two huge truck bombs destroyed an entire village of Shiites from the Shabak minority near Mosul, in the north.

Ten days earlier, five mosques were bombed during Friday Prayer in poor areas around Baghdad, where followers of the anti-American cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, are numerous. In the bloodiest attack, at the Shoroufi mosque in the Shaab area, a car bomb hit an outdoor prayer area, killing 41 of Mr. Sadr’s followers.

More mosque bombings followed during Friday Prayer last week, and on Tuesday night, at least eight people were killed in twin bombings at a cafe and a mosque in the predominantly Shiite Al Amin area of the capital.

Sheik Allawi, the imam at Al Shoroufi, recounted the lesson another preacher gave a week after the bombing there. “He reminded them of Imam Hussein and drew a connection between his suffering and the Shoroufi bombing,” he said. “Blood will spill on the ground until the Mahdi shows up.”

Shiite Islam is all about patience and the long view, waiting for the hidden 12th imam, the Mahdi, to return and redeem the faith’s followers. And it is also about enduring suffering, as illustrated by the annual and always passionate commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the seventh-century Shiite saint, when many flagellate themselves in bloody displays of regret.

Anger after such bombings is common, but now it is more likely to be directed against failures by Iraqi security forces, not against Sunnis.

In 2006, people had little confidence in the security forces to protect them, so they turned to the militias instead. “The Iraqi Army is not the one people worried about three years ago,” said Ambassador Hill. “They were considered part of the problem a few years ago; now it’s an army that is broadly understood not to be engaged in sectarian violence.”

Militias got a bad name during that period, even among the people they were supposed to protect. Many were blamed for extorting money from their neighborhoods and carrying out kidnappings for profit. “The time of the militias is over and they will not come back,” said Sheik Abdullah al-Shimary, leader of the Shiite Al Shimer tribe in Diyala. “There are security forces now, and they are the ones who have the responsibility to control our areas.”

Another important factor is the influence the Shiite clerical leadership has over its followers, with Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other members of the howza, the top religious leadership, condemning any sort of violent reprisals.

“Sayid Moktada al-Sadr has told us in his instructions that we have to follow the orders of the howza,” said Sheik Jalil al-Sarkhey, the deputy head of the Sadr office in Sadr City, the huge Shiite slum in Baghdad. “We are all agreed; there will be no spilling of Iraqi blood.”

Another important difference has been the rejection by Sunni politicians of attacks on the Shiites, which was rarely heard in 2006. “The Sunnis openly and clearly are condemning these attacks,” said Ghassan al-Atiyyah, a political analyst who directs the Iraq Foundation for Democracy and Development. “And they’re all emphasizing that this is trying to stir up sectarian violence.”

Majid al-Asadi, a cleric in Najaf, said, “We will not react against these efforts to ignite sectarian conflict because that is exactly what our enemies want and not what our Iraqi people want.”

Still, some Shiite leaders warn that their patience will not be infinite. “As human beings, every person has his limits,” Sheik Sarkhey said. “So we ask God to protect us from any sectarian war.”

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Basra, Karbala, Diyala and Baghdad.

Iraq's Maliki Seeks Tighter Media Grip

By CHARLES LEVINSON

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has proposed a series of laws that lawmakers, Western officials and nongovernmental organizations say could curb democratic freedoms in Iraq.

If successful, the push would tighten government control over political parties, NGOs and the media, aiding Mr. Maliki's efforts to centralize authority over the country as the U.S. role in Iraq dwindles.

"Maliki is using all his political power to push through constitutional changes that will centralize power in his hands under the umbrella of security," said Julia Pataki, an adviser to Iraq's parliament working for the U.S. State Department-funded Institute for International Law and Human Rights. "These laws show Maliki appears to have a well-defined strategy and vision for Iraq, but they send mixed messages about just how democratic that vision is."

The prime minister's office says many of the new laws are necessary to confront security challenges and to minimize the influence of Iraq's neighbors.

Reuters

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, right, with President Jalal Talabani, visited Kurdish leaders on Aug. 2 to address renewed territorial conflicts.

In a reminder of just how daunting those security challenges remain, a series of bombs targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 36 people in Mosul and Baghdad on Friday.

The bombings, which hit a Shiite mosque in Mosul and several minibuses ferrying Shiite pilgrims back to the capital Baghdad, appeared to be the latest attempt by insurgents to rekindle the sectarian warfare that shook the country in 2006 and 2007.

"We are fully committed to making Iraq a free and democratic country," an aide to Mr. Maliki said. "But we also face some of the most extraordinary security threats of any country in the world and have to be prepared to confront these threats on every level."

Mr. Maliki and his allies in government have submitted the proposed laws to parliament. Many of the bills are unlikely to be passed by the stalemated legislature before national elections in January. Mr. Maliki has a lot of political jockeying to do if he hopes to muster adequate support for them within parliament.

The bills include a proposal to give official legal status and expanded powers to a controversial body called the State Ministry for National Security, creating a "political crimes directorate" to monitor political parties and nongovernmental organizations, among other things, according to a draft of the law reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Maliki established the ministry in 2005 -- in what U.S. officials complained was an effort to circumvent the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi intelligence chief. But parliament stripped the ministry of its funding this year, saying Iraq's constitution doesn't allow such a body.

The aide to Mr. Maliki said the ministry has had a number of significant security achievements, including preventing assassination attempts against senior officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to comment on Mr. Maliki's proposals.

Another proposed law would give the government extraordinary control over Iraqi NGOs, such as requiring government approval of every donation and project, and every new office opened.

The law was drawn up by the Minister for Civil Society Thamer al-Zubaidi, a close Maliki ally and member of the prime minister's Islamic Dawa Party. A spokesman for Mr. Zubaidi says the legislation is intended to fight rampant corruption among Iraq's 6,000 registered NGOs.

Hundreds of Iraqi NGOs are fictitious or surreptitiously funded by terrorist organizations, foreign governments or corrupt politicians, the spokesman said.

NGO leaders say they fear the government will also use the law to quash the activities of groups critical of the government, or pursuing agendas, such as women's rights, that some powerful Islamist parties oppose.

Critics say the draft ignores recommendations from a two-year project by the United Nations, Iraqi lawmakers and civil society leaders to frame new legislation on the issue.

"So many articles in this law go against what it means to have a free civil society, against the fundamental principles of liberty, and even against our own constitution," says Kurdish lawmaker Alaa Talibani, who heads the NGO committee in parliament and was part of the project.

Another draft law before parliament would put hefty restrictions on the media, requiring all journalists to be licensed by a quasigovernmental body that would also have final say over all hiring of journalists by domestic media organizations.

The proposed law also would restrict the use of anonymous sources and forbid the publication of articles that "compromise the security and stability of the country."

Mr. Maliki's office said in a statement that the government is committed to protecting press freedoms in Iraq and said the law is aimed at protecting journalists from violence.

Mr. Maliki also asked the Ministry of Communications to start blocking pornographic Web sites in Iraq, the first such restriction on the Internet here, raising alarms among free-speech advocates.

"We are afraid that once the government starts blocking Web sites to protect the morality of society, or taking other small steps to restrict democratic liberties, it is sure to soon include others," said Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Archives and Library.

Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com

Billion-Dollar Mystery in Iraq

posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 08/04/2009

A multi-billion dollar mystery is unfolding in Iraq, and it may reach to the highest levels of the Iraqi government.

It involves what the New York Times calls an "extremist Shiite group" that has now reconciled with Prime Minister Maliki and his regime. The group is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of five British contractors who, according to the Guardian, were installing a sophisticated financial tracking system in Iraq's ministry of finance in 2007.

The story so far:

Today, the Times reports:

"An extremist Shiite group that has boasted of killing five American soldiers and of kidnapping five British contractors has agreed to renounce violence against fellow Iraqis, after meeting with Iraq's prime minister.

"The prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, met with members of the group, Asa'ib al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, over the weekend, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the prime minister, confirming reports. 'They decided they are no longer using violence, and we welcome them,' he said in a telephone interview.

"Mr. Dabbagh first revealed the negotiations in remarks on Monday to Al Iraqiya, the state television network. 'We have reached an agreement to resolve all problems, especially regarding detainees who do not have Iraqi blood on their hands,' he said. He did not say anything about British victims of the group."

In other words, Maliki met with a bunch of Shiite terrorists, welcomed them with open arms. Why would he do that?

In addition, the Times reports, the terrorists have a "liaison to the government." By coincidence, his name is also Maliki, and he wants to get into the government's favor and take part in the "political process":

"Salam al-Maliki, the insurgent group's liaison to the government, said in a telephone interview that the group had not renounced fighting the Americans. 'Of course we want to get into the political process, because circumstances have improved, and the United States is out right now,' said Mr. Maliki, who is not related to the prime minister. 'We told the government anyone who has Iraqi blood on their hands, you should keep him in jail. We are only fighting the United States.'"

The Guardian, in a related story, suggests that the kidnapping of the five Britons was carried out with government collusion by a team of 80 to 100 men, dressed as Interior Ministry police officials and driving a convoy of 19 white SUVs. Here's the Guardian story:

"An investigation into the kidnapping of five British men in Iraq has uncovered evidence of possible collusion by Iraqi government officials in their abduction, and a possible motive – to keep secret the whereabouts of billions of dollars in embezzled funds.

"A former high-level Iraqi intelligence operative and a current senior government minister, who has been negotiating directly with the hostage takers, have told the Guardian that the kidnapping of IT specialist Peter Moore and his four bodyguards in 2007 was not a simple snatch by a band of militants but a sophisticated operation, almost certainly with inside help. Only Moore is thought still to be alive.

"Witnesses to the extraordinary operation which led to the abductions have also told us that they have been warned by superiors to keep quiet."

And this crucial piece:

"Moore was employed to install a new computer tracking system which would have followed billions of dollars of oil and foreign aid money through the ministry of finance. The 'Iraq Financial Management Information System' was nearly complete and about to go online at the time of the kidnap.

"The senior intelligence source said: 'Many people don't want a high level of corruption to be revealed. Remember this is the information technology centre [at the ministry of finance], this is the place where all the money to do with Iraq and all Iraq's financial matters are housed.'"

The Times story, which notes that the terrorist group also killed five US soldiers, says that the five British contractors were seized in retaliation for the detention of some of the group's leaders, after the killing of the Americans. But that makes no sense. Why would they organize and carry out a 19-SUV, 80-person raid on the finance ministry just as retaliation? And could this group have done so? As the Guardian points out, only a government agency could have pulled off the attack.

You can watch a 12-minute video on the case at the Guardian site.

Curiously, the Times report adds: "American military officials say the group is supported by Iran."

I tried getting some background on the League of the Righteous, and I found a posting on the Long War Journal about them, including alleged ties to Iran's Qods Force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guards.

There's more background here, too, at the Long War Journal.

Maliki Keeps Allies, Critics Guessing With Aggressive Moves Aimed at Reelection

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 1, 2009

BAGHDAD -- With a raid this week on a camp of Iranian dissidents once sheltered by the United States, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has again demonstrated a knack for surprising both foes and allies in his attempt to emerge as the victor in crucial parliamentary elections in January.

So far, he has ordered attacks on militiamen in Basra against the advice of the U.S. military, turned the June 30 deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities into an orchestrated celebration of Iraqi independence and rigorously tried to conceal the U.S. presence that remains, fearful that Iraqis will see the withdrawal as a charade.

Maliki's government had for months contemplated a move against the Iranian exiles, who are members of a group called the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, promising the U.S. government that it would treat the more than 3,000 camp residents humanely and not force any of them to return to Iran. But the raid Tuesday caught U.S. military officials, diplomats and even some Iraqi officers by surprise. Iran, which has called for action against the group, lauded the operation.

Taken together, the moves demonstrate an eagerness on Maliki's part to do what was unthinkable when he took office three years ago -- create an image of himself as an independent leader in a country that still hosts 130,000 U.S. troops. But his penchant for unilateral action, often backed with the force of arms, has created enemies across the spectrum, many of them determined to block his reelection.

"He wants to turn himself into a national symbol, and he is willing to use power and force to promote himself as one," said Salim Abdullah, a Sunni lawmaker and part of a bloc in parliament that has opposed Maliki in the past. "He is determined to break through anything that can get in the way of him becoming prime minister again."

Challenges Loom Large

Maliki faces an array of challenges as he heads toward elections in January that will choose a parliament and eventually lead to a new cabinet and prime minister. Few expect him to continue to enjoy the remarkable convergence of luck and fortune that has helped transform him from a compromise choice as prime minister, whose weakness made him appealing to more powerful forces, into the axis today around which Iraqi politics have begun to revolve.

Violence remains a feature of the landscape here, threatening to undo what Maliki, fairly or unfairly, has touted as his greatest accomplishment: a restoration of a semblance of calm in Baghdad and other war-wrecked towns and cities.

On Friday, car bombings near five Shiite mosques in Baghdad killed at least 29 people, underscoring insurgents' continued ability to strike at the heart of the fortified capital.

Perhaps even more challenging to Maliki are the frenetic negotiations that have become a parlor game in Baghdad. Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, blamed for some of the worst sectarian bloodletting, have ventured to Anbar province, once the cradle of the Sunni insurgency. A procession of politicians -- Kurd and Arab, secular and religious -- has visited Abdel-Aziz Hakim, a Shiite leader stricken with cancer, at his hospital room in Tehran. He remains lucid, though he often converses with guests while receiving oxygen, visitors say.

Politicians say Ibrahim al-Jafari, a former prime minister, has coined a phrase for the talks: "There are no guarantees for anyone, and there are no exclusions for anyone."

Since the spring, Maliki has courted Sunni leaders, including Saleh al-Mutlak, who counts former Baathists among his constituency, and Ahmed Abu Risha, probably the most powerful tribal sheik in Anbar. Abu Risha has declared his intention to ally with Maliki.

"If he considers you a friend, he keeps you as a friend," Abu Risha said.

"We are determined not to return to sectarianism because it's the root of all our problems," the prime minister said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Critics accuse Maliki of courting those Sunni politicians to put pressure on his Shiite colleagues in negotiations to reconstitute the pan-Shiite alliance that competed in elections in 2005. This time, Maliki would have the upper hand in the bloc, and he has sought promises that he would enjoy the coalition's backing to become prime minister again.

He has yet to win that pledge. And Shiite politicians, wary of what they see as Maliki's authoritarian streak, have demanded more transparency in a government dominated by a circle of advisers from his Dawa party -- in particular Tarek Nijm Abdullah, who directs the office of the prime minister. If Maliki becomes prime minister again, the politicians have vowed to retain a say in cabinet appointments, reserve the right to review his policies and curb attempts to concentrate control of the military in his hands.

Still, as one politician noted, "promises before the election aren't worth much."

Others insist that Maliki has simply earned too many enemies to become prime minister again, however well he does in the elections. This week, Sunni leaders criticized Maliki's raid on the camp of Iranian dissidents, suggesting that he was doing the bidding of neighboring Iran. Some Kurdish officials say they will never support his return -- as have followers of Sadr and a leading Sunni party. But in today's climate, it is rarely clear where bargaining ends and principle begins.

"He needs other powers to support him, and it will not be easy to win them over," said Jalaleddin Sagheer, a lawmaker and leader of a rival Shiite party. "His policy was never to have allies. He solved crises by creating enemies. He lost politicians' trust."

Changing Dynamic

Maliki seems to be playing an aggressive game with the Americans as well. No one missed the fact that the raid on the camp began as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Iraq -- either a sign of poor planning on Maliki's part or disregard for the U.S. reaction. The raid is the most dramatic of a growing list of moves that suggest Maliki is increasingly willing to act against American interests.

Hours before a bilateral security agreement went into effect Jan. 1, he demanded that U.S. diplomats vacate before midnight a building they had used as an embassy since the war began, forcing them to scramble. On his orders, Iraqi commanders sharply restricted the movement and authority of U.S. troops in Baghdad and other cities after the withdrawal deadline of June 30. And he has ordered that U.S. soldiers stop manning checkpoints in the capital's Green Zone.

No one questions that Americans still carry tremendous influence here. Through a phone call, diplomats say, Vice President Biden was able to help delay a vote on a Kurdish constitution that some Arab officials saw as provocative. But even amid signs of divisions in U.S. policy -- critics describe it as lacking direction -- there remains a sense in Iraq at least that the Americans would like to see Maliki consolidate control as the most expedient way to ensure stability while most U.S. combat troops pull out of Iraq by August 2010.

"I think they're turning the keys over. And that's unfortunate," said an Iraqi official who has been critical of Maliki. "Turning the keys over means that we're creating another strongman in Iraq, and that's just bad for Iraq."

Correspondents Ernesto Londoño and Nada Bakri in Baghdad, special correspondents Othman al-Mukhtar in Fallujah and Hasan Shammari in Baqubah, and staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq - Time ‘to Go Home’

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON — A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

The memo offers a look at tensions that emerged between Iraqi and American military officers at a sensitive moment when American combat troops met a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraq’s cities, the first step toward an advisory role. The Iraqi government’s forceful moves to assert authority have concerned some American officers, though senior American officials insisted that cooperation had improved.

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum details Iraqi military weaknesses in scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist Shiite political pressure. Extending the American military presence beyond August 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling growing resentment of Americans.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

Those conclusions are not shared by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and his recommendation for an accelerated troop withdrawal is at odds with the timetable approved by President Obama.

A spokeswoman for General Odierno said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the United States military and was not intended for a broad audience, and that some of the problems the memo referred to had been solved since its writing in early July.

Still, the memo opens a rare window into a debate among American military officers about how active the American role should be in Iraq and for how long. While some in the military endorse Colonel Reese’s assessment, other officers say that American forces need to stay in Iraq for the next couple of years as the Iraqis struggle with heightened tensions between the Kurds and Arabs, insurgent attacks in and around Mosul and checking authoritarian tendencies of the Iraqi government.

“We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race,” Colonel Reese wrote. “And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground.”

Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.

As an adviser to the Baghdad Operations Command, which is led by an Iraqi general, Abud Qanbar, Colonel Reese drew examples from Baghdad Province, which is less volatile than the area near Mosul in northern Iraq, where the Sunni insurgency is strongest. But he noted that he had read military reports from other regions and that he believed that there were similar dynamics nationwide.

Colonel Reese, who could not be reached for comment, submitted his paper to General Odierno’s command, but copies have circulated among active-duty and retired military officers and been posted on at least one military-oriented Web site.

Colonel Reese’s memo lists a number of problems that have emerged since the withdrawal of American combat troops from Baghdad, completed June 30. They include, he wrote, a “sudden coolness” to American advisers and the “forcible takeover” of a checkpoint in the Green Zone. Iraqi units, he added, are much less willing to conduct joint operations with their American counterparts “to go after targets the U.S. considers high value.”

The Iraqi Ground Forces Command, Colonel Reese wrote, has imposed “unilateral restrictions” on American military operations that “violate the most basic aspects” of the security agreement that governs American and Iraqi military relations.

“The Iraqi legal system in the Rusafa side of Baghdad has demonstrated a recent willingness to release individuals originally detained by the U.S. for attacks on the U.S.,” he added.

A spokeswoman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, said of the memo: “The e-mail reflects one person’s personal view at the time we were first implementing the Security Agreement post-30 June. Since that time many of the initial issues have been resolved and our partnerships with Iraqi Security Forces and G.O.I. partners now are even stronger than before 30 June.” G.O.I. is the abbreviation for the government of Iraq; the Iraqi Security Forces are sometimes referred to as the I.S.F.

Colonel Reese appears to have anonymously circulated a less detailed version of his memo on a blog called “The Enchanter’s Corner.” The author, listed on the site as “Tim the Enchanter,” is described as an active-duty Army officer serving as an adviser in Iraq who is “passionate about political issues.” That post on Iraq, along with one criticizing President Obama’s health care proposals, has been removed but can be found in cached versions.

Under the plan developed by General Odierno, the vast majority of the approximately 130,000 American forces in Iraq will remain through Iraq’s national elections, which are expected to be held next January. After the elections and the formation of a new Iraqi government, there will be rapid reductions in American forces. By the end of August 2010, the United States would have no more than 50,000 troops in Iraq, which would include six brigades whose primary role would be to advise and train Iraqi troops.

Some experts, like Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus, have argued that this timetable may be too fast “Renewed violence in Iraq is not inevitable, but it is a serious risk,” Mr. Biddle wrote in a recent paper. “The most effective option for prevention is to go slow in drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Measures to maximize U.S. leverage on important Iraqi leaders — especially Maliki,” he added, referring to Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “— can be helpful in steering Iraqis away from confrontation and violence, but U.S. leverage is a function of U.S. presence.”

During a recent appearance at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based research organization, Mr. Maliki appeared to be contemplating a possible role for American forces after the December 2011 deadline for the removal of all American troops under the security agreement.

But while General Odierno has drawn up detailed plans for a substantial advisory role, Colonel Reese argued in favor of a more limited — and shorter — effort, and recommended that all American forces be withdrawn by August 2010.

“If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past,” he wrote. “U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it. The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the I.S.F. is incapable of change in the current environment.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/world/middleeast/31adviser.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Worries About A Kurdish-Arab Conflict Move To Fore in Iraq

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 27, 2009

QARAQOSH, Iraq -- Louis Khno is a city councilman whose city is beyond his control. In his barricaded streets are militiamen -- in baseball caps and jeans, wielding Kalashnikov rifles, with the safeties switched off. They answer to someone else. Leaders of his police force give their loyalty to their ethnic brethren -- be they Kurd or Arab. Clergy in the town pledge themselves to the former. Khno and his colleagues to the latter.

"We're far from the conflict, but now we've become the heart of the conflict between Kurds and Arabs," Khno said. "We're now stuck in between them."

Khno called the town "the line of engagement," one stop along an amorphous frontier in northern Iraq shaped by contested history, geography and authority. Dividing the Kurdish autonomous region from the rest of the country, that frontier represents the most combustible fault line in Iraq today, where Arab and Kurd forces may have come to blows last month along hills of harvested wheat. Kurdish officials suggest that another confrontation is inevitable, with halfhearted negotiations already stalled, and U.S. officials acknowledge that only their intervention has prevented bloodshed.

Since 2003, when U.S. forces barreled into Baghdad, toppling Saddam Hussein, inspiring a Shiite revival and unleashing a Sunni insurgency that drew on a communal sense of siege, the war in Iraq has been in large part a sectarian conflict that pitted Sunni Arab against Shiite Arab. That war has subsided, even if bitterness remains.

For months, there were fears that the sectarian battle might reignite, as the United States withdrew its combat forces. Today, that looks less likely. Rather, U.S. officials say, the biggest threat to Iraq in the years ahead is the ethnic conflict, Kurds in the north against the Arab-dominated government in Baghdad, a still-unresolved struggle that has helped shape Iraq's history since the British inherited the land after World War I.

Already, the conflict has redrawn alliances, helping bring a Shiite prime minister into the arms of a powerful Sunni sheik in Anbar province, once the cradle of the insurgency. It has stoked long-standing Kurdish fears of a resurgent government in Baghdad bent on curbing the power of its regional government, which held an election Saturday for a president and new parliament. And it has plunged border towns like Qaraqosh into an increasingly nasty struggle that some fear may end in bloodshed.

"There may not be war. We're tired of wars," said Atheel al-Nujaifi, the Sunni Arab governor of northern Iraq's Nineveh province. "But there will definitely be clashes and fights here and there."

Animosity in Sunni Anbar

It was not so long ago when talk in Anbar, the sprawling province west of Baghdad, dwelt on lynching Americans, smiting infidels and driving Shiite politicians and their Iranian sponsors from Baghdad. Talk there is anything but subtle.

These days, there is a new refrain.

"The Kurds are most dangerous because they live among us as Iraqi citizens," declared Raad al-Alwani, a blunt-speaking sheik in Ramadi whose fondness for scotch competes with his affection for two $20,000 falcons tethered in his front yard. "They should remember that someday there will be a strong government in Baghdad again."

"In the old days, one policeman would have kicked all the Kurds out," added his cousin, Khalid Abdullah al-Fahad, dragging on a cigarette and sipping tea.

Another cousin, Skander Hussein Mohammed, chimed in.

"Our children will kick them out if we can't," he vowed.

With an ear tuned to Iraqi politics, along with the legacies that shape them, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cultivated those resentments to fashion himself into a nationalist leader. He has staked out an identity as a defender of Iraq's unity and its Arab identity. He has insisted on a strong central government and changes in the constitution that are anathema to Kurds who see that document as their bulwark against an emboldened Baghdad. Since last year, he has dispatched the Iraqi army to the disputed border areas, many of them -- not incidentally -- home to potentially vast reserves of oil and gas.

That has played well in Anbar, where Maliki, a Shiite, has proposed an alliance with Ahmed Abu Risha, perhaps the most powerful Sunni sheik in the province, whose brother led the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq until he was assassinated in September 2007.

"He's someone who wants a united Iraq," Abu Risha said of the prime minister. "Our points of view, our perspectives are very close."

To call Iraqi politics transparent is to suggest Abu Risha's Rolex is imitation. It's not. And the parlor game in Baghdad these days is discerning Maliki's true motivations. Is he the nationalist strongman so many here desire, bent on defending the territorial integrity of Iraq from the reach of Kurdish ambitions? Or is he covertly sectarian, trying to stoke Arab fears to distract from his imposition of Shiite hegemony in Baghdad?

In Anbar province, Alwani insisted that Maliki's tough line on the Kurds was a gambit to gather Arab votes for parliamentary elections in January. Another sheik, Hamid al-Hais, praised Maliki's stand on the Kurds but insisted he must be tougher. To the nods of fellow tribesmen, Hais offered his own solution to Kirkuk, a city contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens: "If they try to take it, we wipe it off the face of the map."

Suspicions Among Kurds

There is a suspicion that colors almost every conversation in the Kurdish autonomous region, a majestic stretch of ranges, interspersed with rivers and fertile valleys. It is fostered by a fight with Baghdad that dates to the British era, and reinforced by the massacres Hussein unleashed at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.

"Is their policy of procrastination and delay for the sake of [allowing] them to get stronger to impose their will on us?" asked Falah Mustafa Bakir, a Kurdish minister.

Maliki has dispatched two delegations to Irbil, the Kurdish capital, ostensibly to break the deadlock in relations between the Baghdad government and the Kurdish government. But he has not spoken with Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish president, in a year, a clear sign that their once amiable relationship has fallen apart.

As one official termed it, "there's a lot of poison in the air."

U.S. officials acknowledge that the disputed boundary has become the most pressing issue in a slew of unresolved conflicts in Iraq -- from national reconciliation to an oil law on sharing revenue and managing the country's enormous reserves.

For years, that boundary was known as the Green Line, drawn as Iraqi forces withdrew from northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It served as the border until 2003, when Kurdish forces, known as pesh merga, crossed the frontier with U.S. approval. Since last year, Maliki has pushed back, sending the Iraqi army to confront pesh merga in the border town of Khanaqin, which has a Kurdish majority, and deploying thousands more troops in Kirkuk. Fearing tension, the U.S. military has bolstered its presence in Kirkuk.

For months, though, the U.S. Embassy has abdicated the lead role in resolving the border issue to the United Nations, which has made little headway. Timing is bad, too. These days, Kurdish attentions are focused on the results of Saturday's election for a regional president and parliament, in which opposition parties did surprisingly well. Forming a government may take until September. With the campaign for national elections beginning in November, little time is left for real negotiation.

As in Arab Iraq, some are also suspicious of the motivations involved in fanning the conflict.

"Internal consumption," said Muhammad Tofiq, a Kurdish opposition politician. To him, the dispute is a way to divert attention from the corruption and failures of the region's ruling parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "To them, an oil well is more important than Sinjar and Khanaqin," two contested cities.

But old suspicions die hard here, as evidenced by a confrontation between Iraqi army and Kurdish forces that probably would have erupted last month in Makhmur, a disputed town controlled by Kurds, had U.S. forces not been present.

A round of late-night calls by the U.S. military and others averted a clash. "But when will it happen again?" asked Nechirvan Barzani, the Kurdish prime minister. "There is still the logic of who is powerful and who is weak."

Town of Divided Loyalties

The first question at the checkpoint on the edge of Qaraqosh, the Christian town along the disputed border, was standard. "Where are you coming from?" barked a militiaman in street clothes, armed and paid by a benefactor loyal to the Kurds.

The questions that followed weren't.

"Are you Christian?" he asked. "Are you Kurdish? Are you Arab?"

These days in Qaraqosh, it matters.

Residents seem to resist the idea of being joined to Kurdistan, as the Kurds refer to their autonomous region. Many of the Christians here pronounce a pride in belonging to an ancient community of Mesopotamia. Others resent the heavy-handedness of Kurdish security, which residents say has hauled away scores of people in the past few years to prisons in Irbil and, farther north, in Aqrah.

"When they return," one politician said, "they have to keep their mouth shut."

Qaraqosh is consumed in a claustrophobic conflict over space and borders, a grinding attempt to lay claim -- politically, psychologically and socially -- to everything from the authority of the police to the rebuilding of a church.

The native language of the deputy police chief is Kurdish. So is his loyalty, critics say. His boss speaks Arabic. Members of the city council pledge loyalty to Gov. Nujaifi's Arab-dominated government in Mosul, which provides Qaraqosh meager water and electricity. More generous is the money that has poured in from a benefactor, Sarkis Aghajan, a wealthy Christian who once served as Kurdish finance minister. Credited to him are buses for students, renovations of orphanages and monasteries, and even generators for electricity. Officials say he is behind the militia, too, which numbers 1,200 fighters in Qaraqosh and two other Christian towns.

"We have an order from the state," said Ghadeer Salem, one of the commanders.

Baghdad? he was asked.

"No," he replied. "Kurdistan."

Special correspondent Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.

Maliki Faults Iraqi Officer's Detention of U.S. Troops After Shootout

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 26, 2009

An Iraqi officer who ordered the detention of U.S. soldiers last week after they killed three Iraqis while pursuing insurgents acted in error and was "out of line," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday.

The officer "did not understand the agreement" governing U.S. military activities since American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities last month, Maliki said in an interview, adding that it "clearly states that American forces have the right to defend themselves, and that's what they did." Four Iraqis, including two children, also were wounded when U.S. forces returned fire and raided nearby houses after insurgents attacked their convoy.

Maliki, at the end of a week-long U.S. visit, said he had telephoned Baghdad and "made clear that they understand that this demand of handing over the people who killed the Iraqis was wrong."

The incident, which occurred Tuesday in the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, marked a potential escalation of tensions between both countries' military forces as they struggle with differing interpretations of the six-month-old military agreement. The accord, which went into effect Jan. 1, turns over all security responsibility to the Iraqi forces, and it provides for a phased U.S. withdrawal, including last month's pullout from urban areas and the complete departure of American forces by the end of 2011.

Both governments have tried to play down talk of friction between them, and senior commanders have said they are working on clearer guidelines. On the ground, however, the Americans have chafed at the restrictions and said their security is at risk.

During his four days in Washington, Maliki has consistently described U.S.-Iraq relations as being at a positive turning point, with insurgent violence substantially reduced and bilateral attention shifting from security matters to more "normal" economic, diplomatic and cultural issues. Maliki, who met with President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, senior lawmakers and business representatives, dismissed reports that Iraq is feeling slighted by the Obama administration's shift in attention to the war in Afghanistan.

"It is true that we had more frequent and continual relationships with the Bush administration," he said, including weekly video and telephone conversations with President George W. Bush. "But that was because of the circumstances of that period. It was not an indication that it was stronger then and weaker now."

Maliki said he was pleased with talks with U.S. officials and especially gratified by a meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that he said would lead to a major international Iraq investment conference in October. He also signed an agreement for up to 10,000 Iraqi students to study abroad annually -- including in the United States -- over the next five years and a deal under which Ohio will offer Iraqi students in-state tuition and benefits.

The Obama administration, concerned that ongoing sectarian strife will endanger political and economic progress in Iraq as U.S. troops draw down, has used Maliki's visit to press for quicker and greater progress on reconciliation among the Shiite majority, Sunnis and Kurds. During his White House meeting with Maliki on Wednesday, Obama told reporters, "I reiterated my belief that Iraq will be more secure and more successful if there is a place for all Iraqi citizens to thrive, including all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups. That's why America continues to support efforts to integrate all Iraqis into Iraq's government and security forces."

Leaders in the autonomous Kurdish region said last week that armed conflict between local militia troops and Iraqi army forces has been avoided only by the presence of the U.S. military. Issues of contention include control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk and delineation of the territorial boundary between Kurdish and Arab Iraq.

Maliki's power, and his prospects for returning to office after January elections, are seen as greatly enhanced by overall security improvements. The Kurdish problem, and any escalation in sporadic attacks by Shiite and Sunni insurgents elsewhere in Iraq, could undermine his standing. At the same time, however, he must take care not to alienate his principal Shiite constituency.

At every venue during his U.S. visit, Maliki has insisted that no one wants reconciliation more than he does. "We are determined not to go back to sectarianism," he said in the interview, adding that it was the "root of all problems" in Iraq.

The role of U.S. forces after their withdrawal from Iraqi cities poses a related problem for Maliki. What he has called a "victory" for Iraq required U.S. troops to pull back to their bases outside urban areas except in specific circumstances outlined in the agreement.

"It gave a very positive image to the Iraqi people, it supported the credibility of the Americans, it vouched for their good intentions, it created an atmosphere which is conducive to long-term relations," Maliki said of the pullback, which was completed June 30. "It embarrassed all those who cast doubt on this relationship."

But many Iraqis -- including within the security forces -- interpret the agreement to mean that American troops are prohibited from any military operations. Some in the U.S. military say the Iraqis have been overzealous in imposing restrictions while continuing to rely on the Americans for training, combat backup, intelligence and logistical support, including fuel and bullets.

Maliki said Saturday that the self-defense clause outlined in the agreement was "difficult to define" but "obvious."

"It is self-evident that American forces are now confined to their bases and camps," he said. "They are there lawfully. Therefore, if they are attacked by any group, according to the agreement, they can return fire, they can defend themselves."

"More than that, if they have intelligence that a certain group is planning an attack on them, they have the right to move, in coordination with Iraqi forces . . . to move and act and attack," after consulting with Iraqi liaison officers, who are stationed in every U.S. encampment.

"The liaison officers decide on each separate incident, whether it is the Americans who take action, or the Iraqi forces, or a joint force," Maliki said. "We generally prefer that we take action, unless we need support from them."

Iraqi PM Hints He is Open to Longer US Stay

By VOA News 24 July 2009

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has hinted that he is open to the presence of U.S. troops beyond December 31, 2011, a firm deadline set by both countries for the withdrawal of all American soldiers from Iraq.

Speaking in Washington Thursday, Mr. Maliki suggested that the withdrawal deadline may be reconsidered if "Iraqi forces required further training and further support."

The Iraqi leader spoke to an audience in Arabic and according to an interpreter's translation said Iraq will consider the deadline "based on the needs of Iraq."

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Maliki stood by President Barack Obama at the White House as Mr. Obama said despite "tough days" ahead for Iraq, the United States is on schedule to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Mr. Maliki is scheduled for more talks in Washington Friday, when he will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden.

On Thursday, the Iraqi prime minister met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who vowed to speed up U.S. military sales to Iraq to help the country improve its security forces more quickly.

U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities on June 30 and transferred security responsibilities in those areas to Iraqi forces.

The United States still has about 130,000 troops in Iraq.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

Mali Ex-Rebels to Tackle al-Qaeda

The main group of Tuareg ex-rebels in Mali has agreed to help the army tackle al-Qaeda's North African branch. Both groups roam across the Sahara Desert and correspondents say the deal could prove significant. The agreement was brokered by Algeria's ambassador to Mali. Algeria is where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb stages most of its attacks. Last month, the group killed a British hostage who was being held in Mali after being seized in Niger. Two weeks later, after the president declared an all-out war on the group, the army said it had seized an al-Qaeda base near the border with Algeria. However, the group remains active in the region and has also staged attacks in Niger and Mauritania. The BBC's Martin Vogl in Mali's capital Bamako says the Malian and Algerian governments will both be pleased to have Tuareg forces as part of their offensive against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The Tuareg know how to operate in the desert perhaps better than anyone else and could be the government's best hope of beating al-Qaeda in the region, he says. US support Under the deal, special units of fighters from the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC) are to be sent to the desert to tackle al-Qaeda. Although the ADC signed a deal to end its rebellion three years ago, one of its factions is still active. The Tuareg, a historically nomadic people living in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa, have had militant groups in Mali and Niger engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades. They have argued that their region has been ignored by the government in the south of the countries. But there has been a history of animosity between the Tuareg groups and al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, Mali, Algeria and Libya have reportedly agreed to work more closely against the group. Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure said he had agreed to share information and military resources with his two counterparts. Correspondents say the US is giving substantial economic and military support to countries of the region which promise to tackle al-Qaeda.

Kurdish Leaders Warn Of Strains With Maliki

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 17, 2009

IRBIL, Iraq, July 16 -- Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and the Iraqi government are closer to war than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Kurdish prime minister said Thursday, in a bleak measure of the tension that has risen along what U.S. officials consider the country's most combustible fault line.

In separate interviews, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the region's president, Massoud Barzani, described a stalemate in attempts to resolve long-standing disputes with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's emboldened government. Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions.

The conflict is one of many that still beset Iraq, even as violence subsides and the U.S. military begins a year-long withdrawal of most combat troops from the country. There remains an active sectarian conflict, exacerbated by insurgent groups that seem bent on reigniting Sunni-Shiite carnage. There is also a contest underway in Baghdad to determine the political coalition that will rule the country after next year's elections. But for months, U.S. officials have warned that the ethnic conflict pitting Kurds against Arabs, or more precisely the Kurdish regional government against Maliki's federal government in Baghdad, poses the greatest threat to Iraq's stability and could persist for years.

In an incident June 28 that underscored the trouble, Kurdish residents and militiamen loyal to the Kurdish regional government faced off with an Arab-led Iraqi army unit approaching Makhmur, a predominantly Kurdish town between the troubled northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Kurds believed the unit was trying to enter the town, and for 24 hours, Kurdish leaders, Iraqi officials in Baghdad and the U.S. military negotiated until the Arab-led Iraqi unit was diverted, the Kurdish prime minister said.

The Kurdish militiamen, who are nominally under the authority of the Iraqi army but give their loyalty to the Kurdish regional government, retained control.

"They sent huge forces to be stationed there to control a disputed area, and our message was clear: We will not allow you to do so," the Kurdish prime minister said.

"Our instructions are clear," Massoud Barzani said in a separate interview. Neither the Iraqi army nor the Kurdish militia has "the unilateral right to move into these areas."

U.S. military officials confirmed the incident but offered differing accounts. Asked if the incident was essentially the Kurdish Iraqi army facing down the Arab Iraqi army, Maj. James Rawlinson, a military spokesman in Kirkuk, replied, "Basically."

A spokesman in the Iraqi Defense Ministry blamed the incident on a misunderstanding. He said the army movement was nothing more than a troop rotation. When residents and others saw the Iraqi army unit's arrival, he said, they feared that the government in Baghdad was sending reinforcements. "They turned it into a big issue when it was a simple operation," he said.

The conflict between the government and the Kurdish region is so explosive because it intersects with the most critical disputes that still endanger the country's stability. They include debate over a hydrocarbon law to share revenue and manage Iraq's enormous oil reserves, some of which are located in areas claimed by the Kurdish government; talks to delineate the border between the Kurdish and Arab regions; and efforts to resolve the fate of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city shared by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens.

Complicating the landscape is the bad blood between two of the key players -- Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish president, and Maliki, whose stature has grown dramatically amid the restoration of a semblance of calm and his Dawa party's success in provincial elections in January. Although two delegations from Maliki's party have visited Irbil, the Kurdish capital, since the spring, the two men have not spoken in a year, Barzani said.

"Everything is frozen," said Prime Minister Barzani, a nephew of the president. "Nothing is moving." He warned that the deadlock was untenable. "If the problems are not solved and we're not sitting down together, then the risk of military confrontation will emerge," he said.

Both have blamed the other side for provocations, often with justification. Kurdish officials see in Maliki's actions a recurrence of what they believe is arrogance from Baghdad stretching back generations. Maliki's allies accuse Kurdish leaders of overreaching in their territorial ambitions and stubbornness in talks.

"If things remain the way they are between the two parties, without solutions and without abiding by the constitution, then unfortunately everything is possible," said Ezzedine Dawla, a Sunni Arab lawmaker from Mosul, Iraq's most restive city.

Last month's standoff was at least the third that involved the Kurdish militia, known as the pesh merga, reaching into land that had been administered by Baghdad until the U.S.-led invasion. With U.S. approval after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, Kurdish leaders dispatched pesh merga past the frontier. In predominantly Kurdish regions, they sent administrative staff and their personnel, as well. Since last year, Maliki has pushed back, sending the Iraqi army to confront pesh merga in the border town of Khanaqin, which has a Kurdish majority, and deploying thousands more troops in Kirkuk. Fearing tension, the U.S. military has bolstered its presence in Kirkuk.

The Kurdish prime minister said the two sides narrowly avoided bloodshed in Makhmur.

He said the Iraqi army headed toward Makhmur, set in a wind-swept region of rolling wheat fields, with the intention of staying in the town. The troops were stopped by about 2,000 pesh merga in a standoff that lasted through the night. A flurry of phone calls continued into the next morning. The Kurdish prime minister said he stayed awake until 4 a.m. as the talks unfolded. "What does that tell you about the seriousness of the situation?" he asked.

American officials offered two accounts of what happened. Rawlinson, the spokesman in Kirkuk, said a battalion from Iraq's 7th Division was headed to station itself in Makhmur. At the nearby town of Debaga, it was stopped by soldiers of the 2nd Division, which is composed of pesh merga units. The U.S. military was alerted at 2:30 a.m., he said. "It was the middle of the night, and people got tense," Rawlinson said.

Maj. Derrick Cheng, a spokesman in Tikrit, said Iraq's 7th Division was headed to Nineveh province for an upcoming operation. "The movement fed fears and rumors," he said, and at least 30 vehicles and 100 people blocked the road. Calls were made, and the Iraqi army troops stopped on the road, then took another route, "bypassing Makhmur completely to avoid any potential conflict that might have resulted," he said. Rawlinson later said he would defer to Cheng's version.

Prime Minister Barzani saw the incident as more provocation than misunderstanding. He insisted that Iraqi army commanders were still imbued with a "military-style mentality of being the Big Brother to impose their will." He warned that the Iraqi army was biding its time until it became stronger, perhaps with tanks from the United States.

"Then what do you expect from us?" he asked. "We just sit down and wait to see it?" Asked whether the pesh merga had tanks, too, he replied, "Oh, yes. Yes, we do."

Correspondent Nada Bakri in Baghdad contributed to this report.