Iraq: al-Qaida 75 Percent Gone

By BRADLEY BROOKS – 1 day ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s interior ministry spokesman said Saturday that 75 percent of al-Qaida in Iraq’s terrorist network had been destroyed this year, but the top American commander in the country said the terror group remained his chief concern.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf said the disruption of the terrorist network was due to improvements in the Iraqi security forces, which he said had made strides in weeding out commanders and officers with ties to militias or who were involved in criminal activities.

He also credited the rise of anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups, mostly made up of Sunni fighters the Shiite-dominated government has cautiously begun to embrace. Additionally, an increase in American troops since June has been credited with pushing many militants out of Baghdad.

Khalaf’s assertion that three-fourths of al-Qaida in Iraq had been destroyed could not be independently verified and he did not elaborate on how the percentage was determined.

But violence in Iraq has dropped significantly since June — the U.S. military says it is down 60 percent nationwide — demonstrating success in fighting the terrorist network.

Separately, Iraq’s chief military spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said Saturday that two senior insurgents linked to al-Qaida were arrested the day before near Baghdad.

Ahmed Turky Abbas, the “defense minister” of the Islamic State of Iraq — an al-Qaida front group — was arrested in a village near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, al-Moussawi said. Not far from Mahmoudiya in Latifiyah, the Iraqi army also arrested Hussein Ali Turky, considered a local religious leader for al-Qaida in Iraq.

Khalaf said such pressure on extremists has helped contain their activities.

“Their activity is now limited to certain places north of Baghdad,” he said at a news conference. “We’re working on pursuing those groups, that is the coming fight.”

Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told a small group of Western reporters on Saturday that despite the success against al-Qaida in Iraq, destroying the group is still a top concern for the U.S. military.

“We still regard al-Qaida as the biggest threat,” Petraeus said. “We regard them as the most significant challenge facing Iraq.”

After nearly five years of war, American military commanders have learned to couch even optimistic reports in cautious terms. They have repeatedly said that the fight against extremists in Iraq is far from over, noting that they still have the capacity to carry out large attacks.

But the impact of U.S. and Iraqi military success against the group has been reflected in decreased civilian deaths.

According to an Associated Press count, civilian deaths in Iraq have steadily dropped in the second half of 2007 after seeing a high of 2,155 killed in May. Through Friday, deaths in December stood at 691, the lowest for the year and much lower than the 2,309 killed in December 2006.

AP figures on civilian deaths are compiled from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths are not included. Other counts differ and some have given higher civilian death tolls.

Meanwhile, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday called for reconciliation between his followers and Iraqi security forces in the holy city of Karbala, according to al-Sadr aide Sheik Mohannad al-Gharrawi.

In August, followers of al-Sadr and fighters loyal to the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council led by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim clashed in Karbala during a religious festival, killing 52 people. Since then, al-Sadr loyalists have been targeted in a crackdown by Iraqi security forces.

“This initiative comes as a response to the events that took place in Karbala, when more than 50 pilgrims died,” al-Gharrawi said.

After that fighting, al-Sadr announced he was freezing the activities of his Mahdi Army militia for six months — a move that both Iraqi and American officials have said has had a big impact on the reduction in violence.

Associated Press writers Patrick Quinn, Sinan Salaheddin, Hamid Ahmed and Diaa Hadid in Baghdad and the AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.

Surge 101
Lessons from Iraq.

By Michael Barone

There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq.

Lesson one is that just about no mission is impossible for the United States military. A year ago it was widely thought, not just by the new Democratic leaders in Congress but also in many parts of the Pentagon, that containing the violence in Iraq was impossible. Now we have seen it done.

We have seen this before in American history. George Washington’s forces seemed on the brink of defeat many times in the agonizing years before Yorktown. Abraham Lincoln’s generals seemed so unsuccessful in the Civil War that in August 1864 it was widely believed he would be defeated for re-election. But finally Lincoln found the right generals. Sherman took Atlanta and marched to the sea; Grant pressed forward in Virginia.

Franklin Roosevelt picked the right generals and admirals from the start in World War II, but the first years of the war were filled with errors and mistakes. Even Vietnam is not necessarily a counterexample. As Lewis Sorley argues persuasively in A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, Gen. Creighton Abrams came up with a winning strategy by 1972. South Vietnam fell three years later when the North Vietnamese army attacked en masse, and Congress refused to allow the aid the U.S. had promised.

George W. Bush, like Lincoln, took his time finding the right generals. But it’s clear now that the forward-moving surge strategy devised by Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno has succeeded where the stand-aside strategy employed by their predecessors failed. American troops are surely the most capable military force in history. They just need to be given the right orders.

Lesson two is that societies can more easily be transformed from the bottom up than from the top down. Bush’s critics are still concentrating on the failure of the central Iraqi government to reach agreement on important issues — even though the oil revenues are already being distributed to the provinces. We persuaded the Iraqis to elect their parliament from national party lists (reportedly so that it would include more women) rather than to elect them from single-member districts that would have elected community leaders more in touch with local opinion.

But the impetus for change has come from the bottom up, from tribal sheiks in Anbar province who got tired of the violence and oppression of al Qaeda in Iraq, from Shiites and Sunnis who, once confident of the protection of American forces and of the new Iraqi military, decided to quit killing each other. They did not wait for orders from Baghdad or for legislation to be passed with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

Our own recent history should have taught us that bottom-up transformation, in local laboratories of reform, can often achieve results that seemed impossible to national leaders. At the beginning of the 1990s we seemed to have intractable problems of high crime and welfare dependency. Experts argued that we couldn’t hope for improvement. But state and local leaders got to work and showed that change for the better was possible. They included Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson on welfare and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on crime control and many others, mostly Republicans but many Democrats as well. The federal government came charging in only after success was achieved in states and cities across the country. By now welfare dependency and crime have fallen by more than half, and they have virtually disappeared as political issues.

Lesson three is that it doesn’t pay to bet against America. As Walter Russell Mead explains in his trenchant (and entertaining) God and Gold: Britain and America and the Making of the Modern World, first Britain and then America have built the most prosperous and creative economies the world has ever seen and have prevailed in every major military conflict (except when they fought each other) since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Many of those victories have been achieved in conflicts far more grueling than what we have faced in Iraq.

Some of George W. Bush’s critics seem to have relished the prospect of American defeat and some refuse to acknowledge the success that has been achieved. But it appears that they have “misunderestimated” him once again, and have “misunderestimated” the competence of the American military and of free peoples working from the bottom up to transform their societies for the better. It’s something to be thankful for as the new year begins.

© 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

The American Legion Magazine
January, 2008

Treasured Trip
Series of coin exchanges makes for a memorable mission.

By Air Force Tech. Sgt. (sel) Raelene Amaya

ON JULY 10, I was assigned to a mission that from the get-go was special because the chief master sergeant of the Air Force was on it. Chief Rodney McKinley had been at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, for a visit and wanted to go back on an aerovac mission to see what we do. Ours was the one he chose. I was the third technician that day, so my assigned seat was all the way forward, left side. The chief sat right next to me, and over the course of an 8-hour trip we got to talk a lot. Just as I suspected, he is a humble, down-to-earth man. It was an honor to chat it up with him.

About halfway through the mission, I asked him if he collected coins. (I wanted to give him mine.) He kind of laughed and said he had about 1,300 of them. These coins are a military tradition of pride. Every squadron has its own design. They make good souvenirs. Of course, being the chief master sergeant of the Air Force, McKinley had his own coin, along with dozens of others. He pulled out a bag and showed me a handful just from the few days he had been at Ramstein. I was like a little kid looking at candy. I asked him if he had received a coin from my squadron. He said no. I always keep a squadron coin in the patch on my sleeve, so I pulled off my patch and gave it to him so he would remember our mission, which involved transporting back to the United States about 25 wounded warriors who had just come out of the war. I was putting the patch back on my arm when he said, “Wait a minute. We have to replace it. How about I give you mine? I think that’s a fair trade.” He pulled out his coin and handed it to me, and for a minute I couldn’t say a word. I tried not to smile too much.

When we arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, the load master came over to the chief and told him that there was a ramp freeze, which means no movement on the runway or taxiways. Lightning also had been sighted within five miles. After we sat a while, the load master announced over the loudspeaker that everyone needed to sit back down because we were going to be moving. Air Force One had just landed, and we were in its parking space.

We all sat back down, and after about five minutes, the engines shut off. The load master came back to the chief and announced to him, “Sir, the president is coming on board.”

My eyes widened with amazement and disbelief. I was beginning to believe that maybe this was a false alarm and the president wasn’t actually going to board. I went to the back of the jet to prepare to unload the bags and luggage. I looked out the window, and sure enough, a motorcade of black cars was coming toward us. I finished what I was doing and walked back up toward the front. President Bush came aboard.

All this was totally unexpected. For the patients, it was the greatest, especially seeing all their faces light up with smiles. They, too, couldn’t believe it. I can honestly say I saw firsthand the compassion of the president. I was in awe at how he went around shaking all the patients’ hands and giving each of them, yes, his coin! The coin of all coins. I was so happy for them. Surrounded by Secret Service agents, Bush had his photographer take a picture of him with each excited patient.

I was standing at the end of the litter stanchions, trying to stay out of the way. After all, the president was there to see the patients. Three patients were in the stanchion next to me. The patient on the bottom was sleeping, and when the president moved over to him, he said he didn’t want to wake him up. He then looked over at me and asked, “Can you be sure he gets this coin?”

“Yes, sir, I sure can!” I replied.

He shook my hand with the coin in it. He then turned to his assistant. “Give me another one,” he said. “Here, you get one, too.”

I couldn’t believe it. The president shook my hand, put his arm around me and turned me so that we could face his photographer. We smiled for a picture, and then he looked at me and said, “Thank you for serving.” By this time I could feel my face reddening. I could barely believe it.

“Thank you, sir,” I managed to say. “It’s an honor to meet you.” I completely forgot to salute him. The president then went on meeting with patients, talking with them and even sitting on the floor to take pictures with them. It was an awesome experience. The look in his eyes when he saw the critical-care patients on ventilators – it got to him. I could see his sense of hurt. It was an unforgettable moment.

The president stayed aboard the jet a good 20 minutes. All of us felt the energy and motivation he left behind. I can really say that this was the highlight of my military career. To be personally thanked by the president and to receive his coin and the chief’s in the same day, I still can’t believe it. I am humbled and blessed to have had such an experience and, of course, to have something to show for it.

The American Legion Magazine
January, 2008

Fresh Paint
Infantry sergeant bears witness to Ramadi’s historic transformation

BY U.S. ARMY SGT. 1ST CLASS JACK ROBISON

Just over a year ago, my platoon boarded a plane in Kuwait for my first trip into Iraq. We were bound for Al Taqaddum Airfield, and after a few days there would be flying to Camp Corregidor, on the eastern edge of Ar Ramadi. More than half of my soldiers had already spent a year in Ramadi with the 1-503rd Infantry (we were later re-designated 1-9 Infantry at Fort Carson, Colo.), and we knew what we were in for.

We had spent the previous year training as hard as we could. Starting with the basics – discipline, marksmanship, first aid and physical training – we threw more and more complicated situations at ourselves until company and combined arms live-fire exercises were normal. If we needed something, we found a way to get it. If we didn’t have a range complex enough for us, we built it. If there was a piece of gear that might make us marginally more lethal or better protected in combat, we bought it.

Once our fighting ability was beyond question, we started to focus on the finer points of modern warfare that would allow us to accomplish our overall mission. Without the tools to rebuild and reverse the chaos, we could never be more than partially successful, so we trained on how to gather our own intelligence on the ground, how to exploit that intelligence, how to work with other units and other services, and how to avoid cultural problems that would alienate the people and compound our difficulties. We learned how to open doors with respect if we could, and how to open them with demolitions and shotguns if we couldn’t. We learned how to transition between cautious dialogue one minute and explosive violence the next.

At that time, Ramadi was still one of the most vicious fights in Iraq, a rubbled city of more than 250,000 people, primarily Sunni, and a traditional stronghold of al-Qaeda and several other hardcore insurgent groups. The police force had all either quit or been killed. The Iraqi Army and a battalion from the 101st Airborne were under siege in their camps with only a few roads in the sector that could be consistently traveled, even in armored vehicles. Entire districts of the city hadn’t seen U.S. soldiers on the ground in months.

I read once that war can be defined as long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of terror, or something to that effect. In reality, the periods of boredom weren’t all that long here. Between October and March, we were fighting somewhere in the city nearly every day. My platoon was in contact three or four times a week at a minimum for a while, usually more often when we were downtown at OP Eagle’s Nest, and it was fairly common for the battalion to have several fights going on at once. Our headquarters became very good at juggling tanks, aircraft and indirect fire, and handling multiple situations simultaneously in a snarl of tense radio traffic.

Six months ago, we knew we had turned a corner in our efforts to dislodge al-Qaeda from its traditional stronghold in Ar Ramadi. For Task Force 1-9, the tipping point might have been the house-by-house clearance of the insurgent-infested Malaab and Al Iskan districts. One of the most significant actions was sending our soldiers to the aid of a local sheik who found himself and his tribe in a gunfight with al-Qaeda.

That night literally turned into a game of “shirts and skins.” With no way to distinguish between the sheik’s people and the insurgents, and with everyone running around shooting in the dark, we had to revert to the old pick-up football game method of telling people apart, and had the sheik’s guys take off their shirts. As the saying goes, “If it’s stupid, but it works, it’s not stupid.”

That gesture of support, combined with our history of seeking out and engaging local leadership who could influence the population, indirectly led to a chain reaction of sheiks who, faced with an either/or decision, threw their lot in with the coalition and began to support our efforts to rebuild the police force and get the local government back on its feet. After a series of operations that cleared virtually every house in central and eastern Ramadi, assisted by an increasingly competent Iraqi army and the first group of trained policemen in over a year, the ultra-violence that had permeated Ar Ramadi for several years just stopped.

To say that the silence was deafening wouldn’t be far off the mark. After fighting so consistently, for so long, I don’t think anybody really believed that the fragile peace could last for long. Where a day without significant violence had been an exception in the past, now the days stretched into a tense week, and then a month, until it became more and more obvious that this might not be a coincidence. Not that there weren’t isolated incidents of violence; there were six small-arms attacks in our area in May, and we found 12 IEDs, although none of them detonated. But when you consider the fact that between February and March, our two busiest months, there were a total of 43 IED strikes, another 119 IEDs found before they detonated, 144 enemy attacks with small-arms fire and 56 RPGs fired at us, the change in environment was almost disorienting.

The trend has continued downward without exception. In September – the first month of Ramadan, traditionally marked by a serious spike in violence here – we found one IED that did not detonate. That’s it. No small arms, no RPGs, no IED strikes. So far in October, as I write this, there have been none.

Task Force 1-9 wasted no time taking advantage of the more permissive environment. There had already been significant and ongoing political, civic and social efforts to change Ramadi for the better, but Lt. Col. Chuck Ferry, Col. John Charlton (commander of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade, operating on the western side of the city), and others now had a small window of opportunity to try to sustain what had been started.

Civil Affairs. When the battle is going on, destruction is part of our business. We do what we can not to cause unnecessary damage, but when thousands of bullets are flying and massive explosions are just another part of clocking in, a few windows are bound to get broken, to say the least. The difference between us and the insurgents, who couldn’t seem to care less what they destroy, is that we follow the you-break-it-you-buy-it rule. If the infantry is the tip of the spear during a hot war, it can be said that civil affairs is the tip of the spear – or shovel or bucket loader – after the hot war cools down. These soldiers work hard during the fighting, clearing sectors while attached to the infantry, working with local institutions and assisting the population. But they really step up once the dust settles. After assessing the sewage, water, electrical, academic and trash situations, they begin to prioritize and plan the reconstruction of the city.

For soldiers of B Company, 486th Civil Affairs Battalion, a reserve unit out of Tulsa, Okla., the establishment of Civil Military Operations Centers, or CMOCs, became one of their most prominent missions. The CMOC is the most common point of contact for the local population in need of assistance or looking for some restitution for destroyed or damaged property. In addition to helping the Iraqis, the battalion helped us by providing better answers for disgruntled civilians.

When an Iraqi starts flailing his arms and talking 1,000 miles an hour while pointing to a .50-caliber bullet hole in his Mercedes, an infantry platoon doesn’t have any way to fix his problem on the spot. Directing him to the CMOC, where he can talk to interpreters and soldiers who are accustomed to handling these types of situations, allows us to move on with our primary mission while still building some good will for the long run. In a society all too accustomed to injustice, a situation like this can highlight the difference between us and the enemy.

In addition to establishing the CMOC, civil-affairs teams coordinate with local leaders to establish or repair civic and government systems and restore the basic needs of civilization to the local population. For a good civil-affairs team, this doesn’t always mean throwing money onto the fire and taking the easy way out. The Iraqis are always willing to accept coalition money, but sometimes the less obvious solution is the better one.

Recently, when two local leaders requested a new water-treatment plant be built in their area, they were directed to the 486th CA. Instead of writing a blank check, Master Sgt. Charles Smith of Stillwater, Okla., went out to do an assessment. He discovered that the locals already had a $2 million treatment plant; it just wasn’t working. After inspecting the plant to determine the source of the problem, he realized the people didn’t need a new plant; they just needed additional diesel fuel to run the generators at the existing plant. Once the root of the problem was addressed, the Iraqis had their plant without wasting unnecessary U.S. tax dollars.

A sure way to cultivate trouble is to have multitudes of young men hanging around without gainful employment. One of the first orders of business was to begin a job-creation program, and invest the working-age population in Ramadi. Both the CA team and company commanders were encouraged to be proactive in starting work projects that would both benefit the local population and provide work, bringing reconstruction money into the economy and giving some military-age males an incentive to stay on the right track.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that if a senior commander looks at a PowerPoint slide and sees a huge amount of money spent in an area, that always equals huge results. Money spent for the sake of spending money is equated by 1st Lt. Morgan Ashworth, a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University when he is not on active duty, to the method of marksmanship sometimes used by low-level insurgents in Iraq: “If you shove an AK-47 around a corner and spray 100 bullets, that’s not the same as aiming carefully and hitting 10 targets with 10 bullets.” By carefully targeting the money spent, and considering second- and third-order effects, you’re going to see a much better result without wasting precious resources.

Weaning the Iraqis from dependence on U.S. guidance and assistance is just as important as weaning them from U.S. money. If they get used to taking the easy route and asking the Americans to do things for them, they never learn to use their own government systems and follow the proper channels to get projects off the ground.

As in so many other things, it starts with boots on the ground. “The average Iraqi citizen wants our presence more than our presents,” he said. “Of course, they’ll take our presents, too.”

Intangible benefits matter. A U.S. soldier wearing 80 pounds of gear, bristling with weapons and night vision, covered head to toe with dark sunglasses, gloves and armor, can be an intimidating presence in a man’s home. Once security is established, it is vital that the leaders on the ground reveal their humanity.

Taking off their eye protection and Kevlar when it’s safe to do so, removing gloves before shaking hands – all these little things transform us from faceless stormtroopers to a bunch of sweaty guys out doing a hard job. Add a little Arabic into the mix, or an interpreter with a simple message of “We’re here to help … we need you to help us,” and then follow that up by respecting their family and possessions as much as possible, and some, though not all, people will begin to help us. This in turn sets up civil affairs for success and leads to long-term mission accomplishment. It is virtually impossible to defeat an insurgency without the support of at least some of the population, and it’s very hard to get that support if they don’t see you as a human being.

Working hand in hand with 1-9 Infantry, and giving much of the credit to mature and intelligent leadership on the ground, the 486th has been tremendously effective in Ramadi. When soldiers arrived, they found a city largely in ruins. Approximately 20 percent of the houses in our sector were able to get electricity, and only around 10 percent had running water. Today, those numbers are around 90 percent for running water, and nearly everyone gets electricity for at least part of the day.

Ramadi General Hospital is functioning, as are smaller clinics in the area. This doesn’t mean that they are functioning on the same level that we would expect back home. There is a shortage of good doctors, since almost anyone who could get away in previous years has already fled to other parts of Iraq, or to neighboring countries. Corruption also plays a part, hindering the flow of supplies. All in all, the medical situation today is much better than it has been through most of the war, but still has a long way to go.

Academically, the city has undergone some success. Returning the primary and secondary schools to a working state has been largely accomplished. Classes at Anbar University have continued, and students who couldn’t get to class for months are taking advantage of the more secure situation. Ramadi could benefit greatly if many of the educated citizens and professionals who fled the country would return. It remains to be seen if they will have the inclination or the means to come back.

Police Training. That the Iraqi police force exists at all is a major improvement, but further training and equipment are necessary if they are going to be more than a temporary solution. In April, Lt. Col. Ferry tasked Dog Company with the establishment of the East Ramadi Iraqi Army and Police Training Academy. There, police trainees who might have been shopkeepers or farmers a few months ago are learning how to do more than fire their weapons.

Beginning with the police-force leadership, U.S. Army, Marine and civilian forces began instructing classes on marksmanship, individual and team movement, police ethics, detainee handling and processing, searching personnel and vehicles, checkpoint operations, evidence processing, and many more of the finer points of police work. Selected individuals then complete a detective’s course across town.

The police forces are criticized in the media for having been infiltrated by the insurgency. That is surely true in parts of Iraq, but it’s hard to doubt the motivation of some recruits. Between classes on detainee processing, I was practicing my limited Arabic with a few of them when one mentioned that he remembered seeing me down in the Malaab district. This often means that I kicked in his front door at one time or another – which isn’t as bad as it sounds, since we’ve kicked in a lot of doors in our efforts to clear out the insurgents, and the Iraqis know it’s nothing personal – but this time it turns out that his dad was “Red Turban Guy.”

I really liked Red Turban Guy. He was an old man whose name we did not know at first who would always talk to us on our patrols and offer us cigarettes while he worked outside his house with his grown sons. I guess this guy remembered me from one of my conversations with his dad.

The insurgents beheaded Red Turban Guy a few months after we arrived. He had spoken critically about them to his neighbors. I think it’s safe to assume that the water in his son’s eyes when I told him I was sorry to hear about his dad was genuine, and I doubt that he would knowingly work alongside his father’s murderers. When this balding, middle-aged man tells me he wants to fight al’Qaeda, I believe him.

Today, police officers in clean blue uniforms man checkpoints and roll by our convoys in new blue-and-white trucks with machine guns mounted in the beds. They wave. I wave back. It’s possible some of them were shooting at us a year ago, but they’re not shooting at us now, and that’s all I can afford to care about. If we had to kill everybody who had ever shot at us in the past, we would never get out of here. A lot of them would probably shoot at us again if it were in their best interest, just as we would kill them without remorse if they rejoined the insurgency, but it’s become obvious that it is in neither of our best interests.

Yesterday I took a convoy across the city to Camp Ramadi, a large installation on the west side of the city that is home to the Marine headquarters here as well as the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division. As we traveled down Route Michigan, once known as the most dangerous stretch of highway in Iraq, the changes were obvious and remarkable.

Groups of men and boys work alongside the road. One bunch has collected up enormous piles of twisted rebar from buildings demolished by tanks, missiles and explosions. A young man in a track suit and sandals uses a sledgehammer to straighten the iron while another group removes busted concrete from an emptying lot. There’s no telling what will be here in a year, but at least it won’t be a demolished building looking like something from the final scene of “Saving Private Ryan.”

Among the most common sights in Iraq are the huge concrete barriers that line every road and surround every installation. They are known as Alaska, Texas or Jersey barriers, depending on their relative size. Most scattered through the city are of the waist-high Jersey type, redirecting traffic and blocking roads and entrances. Iraqi flags, plants and flowers, pro-Iraqi slogans, and decoration and designs on white backgrounds now cover the dirty gray concrete, although they can’t completely cover the bullet holes.

Across the highway, people have strung wires with dozens of Iraqi flags flapping and twisting in the wind. Iraqis are sometimes said to lack a strong sense of national identity. You would never think that of Ramadi. Even the curbs are now painted. For miles outside the city, the median is an alternating yellow and white, adding color – and a visible sign of progress – to a city that desperately needed it.

As I walked between the guard posts tonight, the audio speakers across the city issued the nightly call to prayer, stretching “Allahu Akbar” into 15 or 20 undulating syllables. Call me crazy, and I know a lot of guys hate it, but I like the sound sometimes, especially in the evening as the sun sets. It’s a haunting, exotic sound, and to me it sounds sad and lonely and eternally associated with warfare. The power is on across most of the city, and the mosques are strung with thousands of lights for Ramadan. It’s the first Ramadan in recent memory that hasn’t been a nightmare of blood, violence and death here in Ramadi. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison is a U.S. Army infantry platoon sergeant with D Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, deployed to Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

The American Legion has distributed or processed 1,000 grants to disabled veterans this holiday season thanks to a $500,000 donation from the The Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes.

“The grants are gone, but the need to care for those who have borne the cost of battle remains,” said National Commander Marty Conatser. “I am grateful to the Coalition for this generous gift. These vets certainly deserve it.”

Any veteran who incurred a 30-percent or more disability while serving in the theater of operations during Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom was eligible for a $500 grant. The American Legion assumed all distribution and administrative costs so the entire Coalition donation was awarded to the veterans.

“These grants were just a small token of appreciation for the sacrifices made by so many of America’s men and women in uniform,” said Thomas J. Palma, general manager of the Coalition. “The American Legion is a well-respected organization with a presence in communities across America. Legion service officers did a great job in finding deserving veterans and processing the grants.” It was not the first time that the two organizations have teamed up to award grants to disabled veterans. The American Legion distributed checks for the Coalition in 2005.

“The program was so successful two years ago that The American Legion’s National Executive Committee unanimously passed a resolution at our last convention authorizing our assistance in this great endeavor,” Conatser said.

The awards were appreciated by many of the recipients. “I recently received a grant from the Legion. You have no idea what this has meant to me. It has been a great aid to my family and it just puts special warmth in me to know that there are good people out there that appreciate the sacrifice and work young and old people have given to preserve what is good about our home,” said one recipient from Mt. Laurel, N.J. “I was not expecting this and it is with a joyful heart that I give you all my sincerest thanks, you made my family’s Christmas. May God bless all of you.”

The Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes, www.saluteheroes.org, is a nonprofit organization that was created to provide a way for individuals, corporations and others to help severely wounded and disabled Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans and their families rebuild their lives.

The American Legion, www.legion.org, was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and patriotic youth programs. The Legion’s 2.7 million wartime veterans work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.

Baghdad’s book market comes back to life Posted: Friday, November 30, 2007 7:55 AM
Filed Under: Baghdad, Iraq
By Michele Neubert, NBC News Producer
“It’s an old disease in Iraq – people spend their money on books, not on food. Iraqi intellectuals are very poor because of it,” our NBC News translator* said as he carried an armful of books into the office after a shoot at the Al Mutanabi book market.

“Your wife will kill you,” I teased him, remembering how concerned he’d been after already spending a good proportion of his salary on books only the week before.

“I know, but I just couldn’t help it. It’s so fascinating there right now. I even saw some Harry Potter books,” he joked. His face was flush with the unaccustomed exposure to sunlight after the months and years that he, like most Iraqis, spent being cooped up inside.

As the security situation improves, our local staff seems increasingly hungry for action, volunteering to dash out all over the place. Our translator’s love of books made him the natural choice to go and check the pulse of Baghdad’s legendary Al Mutanabi book market (the area is still not safe enough for Western TV crews to wander around).

We’d heard that the Al Mutanabi book market – the longtime literary and creative nucleus of Baghdad until it was attacked by a suicide car bomber in March – was coming back to life.

Book market – intellectual heart of the city
The book market has always been a favorite for international TV crews. In Saddam’s days, it was the place of choice for thoughtful interviews and good English.While there, we’d often rummage through the fascinating array of new and second hand books.

Sometimes, amid the stock-in-trade Iraqi government propaganda, we’d come across a favorite old out-of-print paperback or a must have memento, like an elegantly illustrated book of Arab love poetry that I found one day.

After the fall of Saddam, the book market became a perfect place to test the ever-changing mood of the city. We would marvel at the quirky mix of all the new titles flooding in along with the technicolor posters of revered Shiite leaders, forbidden under the old regime.

But the insurgent attack on the book market in March that killed 38 people really ripped the heart out of Baghdad’s intellectual and artistic soul.

Our translator had been there the week before and returned like a person transformed.

“I’ve had conversations there I haven’t been able to have for years. It’s just so free. It’s brilliant,” he beamed.

By the time he returned from the shoot, seven hours after we’d sent him out with a camera crew, our translator was so excited I decided not to ask what on earth he’d been doing all that time. Instead, I inquired about the pile of books now on his desk.

A flood of memories
“I bought two novels about dictatorship and torture in prisons in the Middle East and some other books on extremism and the changing political face of Iraq,” he replied. Harry Potter was clearly not for him.

“The novels on torture are exactly the same ones I read after I was released from prison back in 1993, when I was only 17 years old,” he said. “I found it really comforting back then to read how other people had been through the same thing as I had.”

We’d never spoken about this before.

“So you were imprisoned and tortured?” I asked, tentatively.

“Oh yes, there were five of us who were arrested for a so-called coup against the government. It wasn’t true of course. We were all kept in a dark, damp room dressed only in our underwear and chained to the wall. We were beaten regularly with thick cables, which hurt like hell, but don’t leave scars.”

Our translator says his friends didn’t survive captivity – one committed suicide and the rest were hanged years after being arrested. He said that his friend’s families only learned their fate when Iraqi authorities sent them a letter and asked them to pay for the rope they were hanged with.

“I was really lucky, though, and was released three weeks [after being arrested]. To this day, I still don’t know why,” he said.

He said he’s suffered from the trauma of the experience, as well as survivor’s guilt.

“I’ve tried and tried to write about it, but just can’t,” he said. “Yet books have been my escape.”

Judging from the popularity of the long revered book market and the push to bring it back to life, it seems he is not alone and that many Iraqis look to books as an escape from the harsh reality of life.

* The names of local journalists are not used to protect their identity.

By Mussab Al-Khairalla

Reuters

updated 11:21 a.m. CT, Wed., Dec. 26, 2007

BAGHDAD - Behind concrete blast walls and battling a flickering power supply, Baghdad’s international film festival opened in a hotel on Wednesday in another sign of how improved security is bringing life back to the city.

There was even a red carpet rolled out, but guests to the event last held in 2005 had to be body-searched three times before they were allowed to walk down it.

Despite a sharp drop in violence in Iraq since June, the directors of the 40 foreign films at the festival stayed away. Some were keen to come but were discouraged by organizers, anxious to avoid any risk of the event grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons.

“Some of the directors wanted to come because of Baghdad’s improved security, but we don’t want to be surprised (by an attack). Hopefully they will attend in the future,” Ammar al- Aradi, the event’s organizer, told Reuters.

A security crackdown by U.S. and Iraqi forces has helped to curb violence between majority Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims that turned the city’s streets into sectarian killing fields. People have begun to venture out again, going to restaurants and parks.

Baghdad once had more than a dozen popular cinemas, where families went to see movies. After decades of international sanctions and wars under Saddam Hussein movie-going went into decline. Since the 2003 invasion most cinemas remain boarded up.

Out of the 61 films competing for medals at the biennial film festival, there are 21 Iraqi entries, mostly short films and documentaries, many of which portray Iraq’s woes.

Some of the films portray aspects of the sectarian violence that left the country on the verge of civil war last year, while several documentaries focus on ancient archaeological sites and the state of Iraq’s southern marshlands.

POWER CUT

The film festival, which includes films by French and Belgian directors, was held in the Palestine hotel in central Baghdad and attracted several hundred people and more than a dozen media channels.

The hotel is surrounded by concrete blast walls and guests were frisked three times before reaching the large conference hall where the event was held.

But organizers had other worries besides security on their minds.

Midway through the screening of the first film, a short Iraqi production about a man paranoid of the violence that surrounds him, one of Baghdad’s frequent power cuts left the audience in the dark for a few minutes.

The festival was organized on a shoestring budget and well-known Iraqi actor Mazin Mohammed Mustafa said more funding was needed for local film-makers to develop Iraqi cinema.

“We need financial support for the festival so we can overcome all these difficulties and provide quality cinema that can express our opinions and show our problems,” he said.

Director Sura Abbas said she hoped her documentary about children leaving school in search of menial, poorly paid jobs to help their families would be recognized with an award.

“We had difficulties in filming because there were many explosions on the day we shot the scenes,” she said.

“I know there are many great foreign films in this category but I hope the judges consider the difficult circumstances we worked under.” (Writing by Mussab Al-Khairalla; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22399166/

Tuesday , December 25, 2007

BAGHDAD — 

Iraq has been enjoying one of its most peaceful holiday seasons in years; but fear of violence persists, and the country’s first cardinal made a Christmas appeal for Iraqis who have fled to return and help rebuild their shattered country.Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the ancient Chaldean Church, told The Associated Press at his guarded compound in west Baghdad on Monday that his message was one of love and for “charity towards everyone.

“And for the emigrants to return home, to work for the good of their country and their homeland despite the situation which their country is in — that is my hope.”

Sectarian violence in the country has declined largely because of a surge by thousands of U.S. troops, the help of Sunni Arab fighters who have turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq and are now funded by the U.S., and a cease-fire by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

The issue of how to reintegrate the growing number of Sunni Arabs joining the volunteer forces looms for 2008. There are about 70,000 members of groups known as Awakening Councils, and their numbers are increasing fast. The Shiite-dominated government is deeply concerned about the groups, many of which are made up of former Sunni insurgents who once battled both the American forces and their Shiite allies.

But failing to bring them into the fold of Iraq’s security forces could jeopardize the recent improvements in security, the country’s Sunni Arab vice president said Monday.

“This experience should not be lost because of national discord on how to absorb these Awakening (Councils). Those people, I say very clearly, should not be ignored by the government,” Tareq al-Hashemi said at a news conference in northern Iraq.

“These people have offered themselves as targets to fight terrorism, voluntarily. They must have the government’s support,” he added.

One road could be political empowerment. In Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, Awakening Council leaders, the provincial governor, local officials and politicians formed an advisory group to help draw up policy for the region.

A document forming the “The Supreme Anbar Council” was signed by six leading figures in the province, including Ahmed Bizayie Abu Risha, the brother of Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha who founded the awakening movement. He was killed by a bomb in September, 10 days after meeting President George W. Bush at a U.S. base in Anbar.

Abu Risha told reporters the council would seek to represent “represent the province in talks with the central government.”

So far the holiday season has been peaceful. Last December, more than 2,300 people died in war-related violence compared to about 540 so far this month, according to an Associated Press count.

Violence has fallen across the country by 60 percent since June, according to U.S. military figures. But security is still poor and few Iraqis dare stray too far from home. The threat of kidnapping, car bombs and suicide bombers is never far, and the dead bodies of tortured kidnap victims still turn up almost daily along river banks or dumped on the streets.

As Shiites celebrated the end of Eid al-Adha Monday, one of the Muslim calendar’s most important holidays, members of Iraq’s small Catholic community gathered in churches for Midnight Mass — held in the middle of the afternoon because few people dare venture out after dark. Eid ended for Sunnis on Sunday.

“Let’s hope that it’s getting better,” said Delly, colorful lights twinkling on a Christmas tree behind him. “But I think that it’s the same because everyone is still afraid to go out … because of the car bombs, etc.,” he said.

The 80-year-old Delly became Iraq’s first cardinal last month.

Less than 3 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people are Christians — the majority of which are Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics. Christians have often been targeted by Islamic extremists, forcing tens of thousands to flee and isolating many of those who remained in neighborhoods protected by barricades and checkpoints.

In violence on Monday, a bomb exploded in a minivan bus near the Baghdad governor’s office, not far from the heavily guarded Green Zone that houses the Iraqi government and several western embassies. Two people were killed and six were wounded.

In northern Iraq, gunmen believed to be members of Ansar al Sunnah, a group linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq, attacked a police customs unit at the Garmek border area near Iran, killing a policeman and injuring three others, said police Brig. Hasan Noori, director of the Sulaimaniyah security department.

Top US officials in Iraq forecast a continued reduction in violence, despite drawdown of US troops

The Associated Press

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

BAGHDAD — U.S. officials cautiously forecast Wednesday that Iraq should see less violence in 2008 despite a planned reduction of American troops. Stronger local forces and a backlash against militants will allow the smaller number of U.S. soldiers to “fight above their weight.”

Kurdish officials, meanwhile, delayed for six months the explosive issue of a referendum to decide if the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk will be incorporated into their self-rule area or remain under the control of the Shiite-dominated central government.

Speaking to reporters in Baghdad, U.S. Embassy spokesman Phil Reeker said the strides made in Iraq this year, particularly in the area of security, could not be doubted and should be acted upon.

“It is pretty clear that 2007 comes to an end in Iraq with Iraq as a substantially better place than were we began the year,” he said.

Both Reeker and U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, who attended the same news conference, said the sharp reduction in violence Iraq has seen since the influx of U.S. troops in June provides a chance for Iraq’s leaders to resolve issues key to longer-term stability.

“What’s important is that the political leaders of Iraq use the mechanisms that they can discover together to move forward, to set aside their differences, to achieve accommodation, compromise and ultimately reconciliation,” Reeker said.

Bergner said the first half of 2008 will be a time of transition for American forces, along with Iraq’s military and government.

Perhaps the most important factor among the developments leading to the likely drawdown of U.S. troops and Iraqis gaining more responsibility over their security has been the explosion of so-called “awakening councils” — anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups that once fought against American and Iraqi troops but who have now turned their guns on extremists.

“As with any transition, there is a need to help build confidence, expand the trust between individuals who at one point had been fighting against Iraqi forces or against the coalition and are now willing to serve alongside them,” Bergner said.

The mostly Sunni awakening groups — of which there are some 300 who have more than 70,000 fighters — worry the Shiite-dominated government, who fear they could become an uncontrollable force that would ignite renewed sectarian fighting.

Bergner said there will undoubtedly be “tension points” as the Iraqi government embarks on a plan to incorporate about 25 percent of the awakening fighters into the military force.

But he argued the Sunni fighters’ role has been so instrumental in a nearly 60-percent reduction in violence since June that solutions will have to be found.

The rise of the awakening councils has had a symbiotic relationship with the “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq, a situation that has been key to tamping down militants’ attacks, Bergner said.

The increase in American troops created the “conditions for local citizens to step forward and better contribute to the security in their neighborhoods” where U.S. and Iraqi forces had not been able to gain control, he noted. As security improved on the backs of the awakening councils, it gave breathing room for Iraqi forces to strengthen and contribute more to the crackdown.

As more Sunni fighters regularize into the Iraqi army — about 5 percent have joined so far — Bergner said it will increase Iraq’s military capacity to further subdue violent areas, in spite of the planned reduction of some 30,000 American troops by July, which will put the American force level at about 135,000.

“Those forces will help coalition forces fight above their weight. They will help offset the reduction in coalition numbers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish regional parliament voted to postpone by six months a debate on holding a referendum over whether Kirkuk will join the semiautonomous region in the north.

There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the referendum was widely expected to be delayed by months.

The Iraqi constitution requires that a referendum on the future status of the city be held by the end of 2007 to determine whether it will remain under Baghdad’s control, become part of Kurdistan or gain autonomy from both. Kirkuk is an especially coveted city for both the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad and the Kurdish one in Irbil, largely because of much of Iraq’s oil wealth lies below it.

The U.S. military said that an insurgent killed last month has been identified as a senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and a former associate of its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — who was slain by U.S. forces last year.

Abu Abdullah, also known as Muhammad Sulayman Shunaythir al-Zubai, was killed by coalition troops north of Baghdad on Nov. 8. He was described in a military statement as “an experienced bomb maker and attack planner who coordinated numerous attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces over the past three years, using a variety of improvised explosive devices combined with small-arms fire.”

The U.S. military said two soldiers were killed during fighting Wednesday in Ninevah province in the north. Three other soldiers were wounded. The names of the soldiers were withheld pending notification of family.

Separately, a bomb explosion in Ninevah killed three children and wounded another two, the U.S. military said, quoting Iraqi police.