Recently in Iraq Category

Hello all. I’ll be in the Northern Arabian Gulf for a few days starting tomorrow to check out the training of the Iraqi Navy, the two oil terminals there (which supply Iraq with 90%+ of its income) and maybe I’ll even bump up against some Iranians. Stay tuned…

One of the things writing the U.S. media roundup on IraqSlogger allows me to do is get a high dudgeon up over the crap that passes for analysis on op-ed pages … or sloppy writing in the middle of reporting. (Michael Gordon of the New York Times has been raked over the coals for his indiscriminate use of “al Qaeda” to describe most Iraqis with a Kalashnikov, but thankfully that seems to have been reined in.)

Others have been less careful. On Friday, Leslie Sabbagh of the Christian Science Monitor writes that Petraeus warned of “greatly increased sectarian violence” if the U.S. pulls out too soon. It’s a fairly run-of-the mill story, with stats showing a drop in attacks against civilians and an increase against U.S. troops. Pretty much what you’d expect, but there is some sloppy language in here. Sabbagh writes of a “quick withdrawal,” but few people in Washington are talking about anything hasty. They’re talking about the start of a withdrawal sooner rather than later — one that might take six months, a year, whatever — not a pell-mell rush to the border.

Sabbagh does it again, writing, “The prospect of any hasty removal of US troops has (Petraeus) concerned.” But the general actually said, “If we pull out there will be greatly increased sectarian violence, humanitarian concerns….” Petraeus makes no mention of the speed of the pullout; he questions the wisdom of a pullout altogether. The military command and the Bush White House seem to be envisioning a long-term presence in Iraq that will last years, but reporters are thinking of a evacuation, Saigon style. Those are two very different ideas. Reporters need to let the readers know when Petraeus, Bush, et al. are trying to reframe the debate as a choice between a hasty, unplanned retreat and an indefinite presence. What’s actually being talked about is either an indefinite presence or an orderly withdrawal with proper force-protection over a period of time, but which begins sooner rather than never.

But for an egregious example of high weirdness, check out the Monitor’s publication of an op-ed by Andrew Roberts, author of “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.” In this extraordinary op-ed, Roberts argues that “the English-speaking peoples” (ESPs) of the world are the ones best able to stand up to radical, totalitarian Islam because Anglophones have never been invaded or fallen under the sway of fascism or communism. “Countries in which English is the primary language are culturally, politically, and militarily different” — read, “better” — “from the rest of ‘the West,’” he writes. “They stand for modernity, religious and sexual toleration, capitalism, diversity, women’s rights, representative institutions — in a word, the future.” Yeah! Suck it, Germany, Spain and Italy! (Who have all committed troops and suffered casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere since 9/11.)

Seriously, this offensively nativist tract must come as a surprise to the those non-English-speaking peoples of the world (poor sods), but maybe they’ll be content to bask in the warm protectorate of the US-Canadian-British-ANZ imperium. There is just so much wrong with this op-ed — such as saying the invasion of South Korea by North Korea was a “surprise” attack for the world’s ESPs when it sounds like it was more a surprise to the South Koreans. And his repetition of the whole ESP phrase is grating. Finally, he just up and ignores the contributions of German soldiers in Afghanistan and the French Navy in patrolling the vital sea lanes throughout the Arabian and Indian oceans. And he trots out the old, “Al Qaeda can’t be appeased because the French would have already done so” trope. WTF? Is this a joke?

There’s much more — so much more. I’m leaving out the pablum from such luminaries as Bill Kristol — “the Bush presidency will be seen as a sucess” — and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I mean, we all know what’s the score with those guys. But I expected a bit more from the Monitor.

Finally, my latest column for Spot-on.com is available. In it, I take up — what else? — the 1st anniversary of the Israel-Hezbollah war. (Some people call it the July War, but since half of it happened in August, I’ll stick with my appellation, thanks.)

That’s all. More to come!

A story I wrote appeared Monday in the Newark Star-Ledger, a great smaller paper that cares about foreign news. The story dealt with the plight of the Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

Lives suspended by war
AMMAN, Jordan—Rana crosses her legs on the threadbare carpet in her living room in this poor Palestinian section of town and watches as her three children light a candle. The kids are having a pretend birthday party without a cake or presents, but their faces are painted a magnificent shade of gold by the candlelight.

Across town, Hasa and his family sit in their richly-appointed apartment, with all the modern conveniences and bedrooms for everyone. The kitchen is especially bright and clean.

Rana and Hasa live in separate worlds, but have much in common.

Both families are Iraqi refugees facing an uncertain future in a foreign country. Both want to return to their shattered country. And both agreed to be interviewed and photographed for this story only if their real names would not be used because they fear deportation from Jordan and retribution in Iraq.

Driven from their homes by violence and threats of death, Rana and Hasa also provide rare portraits of the refugee life facing many Iraqis. The two families are among the 750,000 Iraqi refugees estimated to be living in Jordan, a country about the size of Pennsylvania and choking on the staggering burden of its new population. (The Iraqis account for about 15 percent of the people living in Jordan.)

Rana’s family is struggling to fit in and faces discrimination from other Iraqis, Jordanians and Palestinians. Jordanians, Rana says, complain to her that “you’re not wearing a hijab, you’re wearing tight jeans, you’re leaving the house.” Palestinians, meanwhile, say, “You killed Saddam.”

Hasa’s family, while well off, faces difficult circumstances as well. From their plush perch overlooking the local mosque, they made a comfortable life here after arriving in 2003.

Things have changed, though.

Hasa now complains government regulations make it impossible for him to run his businesses here or in Iraq, and his life savings is being bled dry.

At the same time, he rages at the U.S. government.

“We are in such a state that we who welcomed America now hate it, and hate the people as much as we hate the politics,” he says. “This isn’t the freedom we expected. This isn’t what we wanted.”

Two families in a country where they don’t want to be.

Two families in a country that really doesn’t want them. ...

Please read the whole thing. It should be noted that two days after the story appeared, the UNHCR raised the number of Iraqis who are displaced or refugees to 4.4 million -- almost twice the numbers that were available to me at the time of my reporting. That's 16 percent of the entire Iraqi population, making it the largest human catastrophe to hit the Middle East in recorded history. It dwarfs the Palestinian displacements in 1948 and 1967. If something isn't done about this, it will further destabilize an already volatile region.

By the way, can someone recommend a good server host? Yahoo! is terrible and I keep getting 500 Server Errors preventing me from getting into the blog, rebuilding it, etc.

OK. This is odd. My new go-to site on Iraq, IraqSlogger.com, is reporting conflicting reports of a Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan/Northern Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK fighters.

AP has been reporting that "thousands" of Turkish troops have crossed the border, but various officials are denying it.

Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who operate from bases there, two "senior security officials" told the AP.

"It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands," one of the officials, based in southeast Turkey, told The Associated Press by telephone. The officials did not say where the Turkish force was operating in northern Iraq, nor did he say how long they would be there.

The AP has scaled back its estimate, and now says "hundreds" of troops.

DEBKA (grain of salt required) says 50,000 Turkish troops have invaded. The Kurds, obviously, are not pleased.

Massoud Barzani, had sent a personal emissary, Safin Dizai, to Ankara with an urgent warning. Turkish tanks would not be allowed to cross into northern Iraq, he said. The Kurdish peshmerga would repel them. “The people of Kurdistan,“ said the messenger, “would not stand by as spectators if Turkish tanks and panzers entered Kirkuk."

Is this true? I can't tell yet, but I've got some emails and calls out to friends in Kurdistan and I'm waiting to hear. Will let you know if I can find out more.

In the meantime, some thoughts on this: If this report is true -- a big "if" at this point -- it's a marked escalation in the region, obviously. As with most things in the Middle East, there are many, many threads and few things are so clear-cut as many in the West would imagine them to be. ("If A happens, then B must result.")

But, with that caveat, if the Turks really have crossed with hundreds of troops or more, I believe it's a response to the Kurds' threats of pulling out of Iraq because of the oil law, rather than any pretense of chasing the PKK. It's also likely tied up somehow with the current dispute between the military and Erdoğan's soft-Islamist government in Ankara.

But could the US have approved this? If so, the only reason might be to persuade the Kurds to buckle under to Iraq's new oil law. However, If the US agreed to this, they're playing with fire. Like the Iranians next door, who think they can carefully stoke the civil war as a means of bogging down the US, the Americans likely believe they can keep the Turks in check and the Kurds from attacking Turkish forces. But I know the peshmerga, and they're not going to take a few hundred Turkish soldiers in a "security zone" lightly. It will get ugly and out of control quickly.

• If the US didn't agree to this, it's a nightmare scenario. Who to ally with? Turkey as a NATO ally fighting terrorism? The Kurds, who are the only real success story in the Iraqi narrative? If the US takes no side and instead diverts forces to the north to stand between the two sides, where will these troops come from? Baghdad? Anbar? What happens when the US troops leave those areas?

• I expect another Kurdish insurgency in Turkey is in the works. We all know how well that worked out last time.

• I don't think the Turkish government will collapse or a military coup will result. I think instead, the Turkish population will rally around whatever action the Turks take and the government led by Erdoğan will follow the lead and lend its full-throated support.

UPDATE June 7, 11:03:44 AM +0200 GMT: Spencer at TPMmuckracker doesn't buy it, and blames DEBKAfile, which is fair enough. But AP is still sticking to its, er, guns and now characterizes the operation as "hundreds" of Turkish troops in "raids." Curiouser and curiouser.

So many implications. And so little information.

Also, donations are working again, and covering this place ain’t cheap. Fixers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and freelancing for newspapers only covers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blogging the developments in Lebanon’s latest crisis, please consider dropping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.

One of the commenters in the post about Dmitry below wanted to know how many journalists who had died in Iraq were foreign and how many were Iraqi. Well, the Committee to Protect Journalists has just such a list.

Of the 101 journalists killed in Iraq, 79 were Iraqi. The others included 12 Europeans, three from other Arab countries, two from the United States and five from all other countries.

That the vast majority of journalists killed -- as well as the 38 media workers, which includes translators and the like -- are Iraqi is significant. Like the Iraqi civilians, the local journalists there are the ones who are most affected by the violence that permeates their country.

Fourteen journalists died in 2003, the year of the invasion and the trajectory has been mostly pointing up in the number of deaths each year: 24 in 2004, 23 in 2005, 32 in 2006 and now 8 in 2007.

For a capsule account of each journalist who was killed, here are the links:

• for 2007
• for 2006
• for 2005
• for 2004
• for 2003

(Note, the links include journalists killed in places other than Iraq as well.)

It's been a fatal weekend for foreign correspondents.

On Sunday, the day the plane carrying Anthony Mitchell of AP was found, Dmitry Chebotayev, a Russian photographer for EPA and Russian Newsweek was killed in Diyala province along with six U.S. soldiers, with whom he was embedded.

As the Committee to Project Journalists said in a statement,

The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death on Sunday of Dmitry Chebotayev, the first Russian journalist to be killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Chebotayev, a freelance photographer embedded with U.S. forces, was killed along with six American soldiers when a roadside bomb struck a U.S. military vehicle in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

Chebotayev was on assignment for the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine, reporting on the efforts of U.S. forces to control roads in Diyala province, Leonid Parfyonov, editor of the magazine's Russian edition, told CPJ. Chebotayev had been in Iraq for more than two months.

...

Chebotayev, 29, had freelanced for several news agencies, including the German-based European Pressphoto Agency and the independent Moscow daily Kommersant. A sampling of his photos can be viewed on his Lightstalkers profile page. Lightstalkers is an online network of photographers and other visual journalists that serves as a directory, database, and resource center.

At least 101 journalists and 38 media support staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ's 26-year history. Seven embedded journalists have been killed since the war began.

He last logged into Lightstalkers five days ago. His location is listed as Baqoubah, Iraq, and his travel log shows that he worked in Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Chechnya and Iraq. My friend Bill Putnam, another photographer, offered advice to him regarding embedding in Iraq. It's another sad day for journalists in the tight-knit world of Middle East coverage, after the loss of Anthony on Saturday.

Six soldiers and a journalist killed in one blast makes me suspect it was an awfully big IED that hit a Bradley fighting vehicle, rather than a humvee, which holds five guys, tops. I'm just speculating, though.

I hope I don't have to do any more posts like this. Rest in peace, Dmitry and Anthony. You will be missed.

George Packer has another great and heartbreaking story out in this week's New Yorker. It's about the Iraqi translators and workers who signed up for the American rebuilding project in Iraq but who are now being thrown to the wolves by the United States. I mentioned this a couple of posts back, but George's full story is worth a full and thoughtful read.

As he puts it:

Between October, 2005, and September, 2006, the United States admitted two hundred and two Iraqis as refugees, most of them from the years under Saddam. Last year, the Bush Administration increased the allotment to five hundred. By the end of 2006, there were almost two million Iraqis living as refugees outside their country -- most of them in Syria and Jordan. American policy held that these Iraqis were not refugees, that they would go back to their country as soon as it was stabilized. The U.S. Embassies in Damascus and Amman continued to turn down almost all visa applications from Iraqis. So the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world remained hidden, receiving little attention other than in a few reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch and Refugees International.

Of course, the reason the Iraqis are being treated like this is because the Bush administration refuses to admit that Iraq isn't a abattoir of its making. And there is insult to the injury the Iraqis are facing. At least one Iraqi employee of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was refused entry to the U.S. because he had paid a ransom to kidnappers, violating the "material support" clause of the Patriot Act.

One of the heroes of the story is a USAID worker named Kirk Johnson, who grew disillusioned with life in the Green Zone and asked to be transferred to Fallujah. I think I met Johnson when I was in Fallujah in Nov. 2005, but I'm not sure. Regardless, he has been a driving force in getting the U.S. to open its doors more to Iraqi refugees, with the highest priority given to those who worked for the U.S. and are now in the most danger.

“This is the brink right now, where our partners over there are running for their lives,” he said to George. “I defy anyone to give me the counter-argument for why we shouldn’t let these people in.” He then quoted something President Gerald Ford once said regarding his decision to admit a hundred and thirty thousand Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon: “To do less would have added moral shame to humiliation."

A former translator in Iraq, Dustin Langan, wrote me today to tip me off about an interesting read in Radar, about the lack of good translators in Iraq. He was recruited by MZM Inc., one of the companies connected with the "Duke" Cunningham corruption scandal, to work in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, and he has some good points to make.

One that is personally dear to me is the treatment of the Iraqi translators. As he says:

[Iraqi translators] have been treated terribly. They've been killed. They have not been protected. They have not received visas or anything. They're being killed at very high rates. The result is many people now in Iraq think if you work with the coalition you're an idiot, because you're working with someone who doesn't care about you, and then you're killed.

I've known a few 'terps, as they're called, and my friend George Packer has made this one of his major concerns. It should be one that makes every feeling American -- whether you supported the war or not -- ashamed at how we're treating these people.

Anyway, it's a good interview. Thanks for the tip, Dustin!

Just before 11 p.m. Beirut time (GMT +0200), Saddam Hussein was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

"Long live the people, down with the traitors, down with the conquerers!" shouted Saddam Hussein after the verdict was read. "Damn you and your court."

Right this moment, Baghdad is under an uneasy and indefinite curfew. I just spoke with my old TIME colleagues who are there, and they reported a lot of violence around them. However, CNN is reporting only sporadic, celebratory gunfire. The two bureaus are in different parts of Baghdad, however, so they may both be right.

Anyway, yippee. I guess we can all agree the invasion, the destruction, the looting, the thousands of Americans slain, the tens of thousands wounded, and the possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, the destruction of the Iraqi state, the collapse of Iraqi society were all worth it.

Well, if the GOP maintains its edge in Congress, I'm sure someone in Washington will think it was worth it. (I'm looking at you, Karl Rove.) But they may be the only ones on the planet.

Did anyone really think this would come out any other way? I covered this trial for a bit before I quit the Mesopotamian charnel house, neé Iraq, in March and the Americans have stage-managed this trial from the get-go. The trial is considered a joke in Iraq and around the region. No one took it seriously. And now, Saddam Hussein, a man who no doubt deserves harsh punishment for his crimes, will be brought to American-brokered justice. I can not emphasize enough how many Iraqis will see this as either revenge by Saddam's enemies and an unjust, preordained outcome (most Sunnis), or a process that took too long and could have been avoided if the bastard had just been strung up when the Americans caught him in December 2003 (pretty much everyone else in Iraq.)

Not much room in there for a celebration of the Iraq's shiny new rule of law.

And now, two days before the American midterm elections, Saddam gets the death sentence. Already celebratory gunfire is echoing across Baghdad, but soon after, Iraq will likely be an orgy of violence and blood as insurgents and supporters of Saddam respond. Will the verdict be worth the deaths from that violence, too?

So, to review: Americans invade Iraq, destroy the government, catch a butcher and put him in a show trial that was already marked by interference and showboating by all sides, and then watch gleefully as he's sentenced to death two days before the political party that started this fiasco face almost certain defeat.

Several questions: For Iraqis, the question now is what happens in the appeal process. An automatic appeal starts 10 days from today, and will likely take a couple of months. Then, 30 days after the end of the appeal process, Saddam will die by hanging. (I don't expect his appeal to be successful.)

For Americans, there needs to be some soul-searching, starting with the question I asked above: Was this verdict, as satisfying as it may be to some, worth the disaster that is Iraq? Are Americans still willing to send their sons and daughters there to keep Iraqis from each others' throats for a few months more?

For the White House, they're now anxiously watching the voters, asking the question, Do Americans still feel Saddam was a enough of a threat to reward the GOP now for getting this verdict? Will it rally the GOP faithful? Possibly. The whole GOTV thing, for me, is the big variable in this election. I just don't know what will or won't motivate GOP and Democratic voters to get out there.

That said, I think I know what they're telling themselves in the West Wing, but I suspect (naïvely hope?) that most voters kind of figured what the verdict would be and have already factored that into their political choices. This electorally-timed verdict will do little to change their minds. Nor will it do anything to change the dynamic on the ground in Iraq. In fact, look for the violence to get worse in the next few day as Sunni insurgents weigh in with their opinion on the verdict and Shi'ite death squads respond.

Some bad news of a personal nature out of Iraq today. A scientist friend of my former fixer in Iraq was shot and killed in traffic Monday:

BAGHDAD -- A leading Iraqi academic and prominent hardline Sunni political activist was fatally shot by three gunmen Monday as he was leaving his Baghdad home, police said.

The killers escaped in a car after gunning down Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, according to police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq.

The association is a Sunni organization believed to have links to the insurgency raging against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. The group has boycotted elections and stood aside from the political process.

An association official confirmed the killing of al-Rawi, a geologist, saying he was behind the wheel of his car and had just left his home for the drive to work at Baghdad University accompanied by two bodyguards.

The gunmen drove in front of al-Rawi's car, forced it to stop, then sprayed it with automatic weapons fire, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal. One of al-Rawi's bodyguards was killed and the other was wounded, the official said.

I wrote about Dr. Al-Rawi in June 2004 for Seed Magazine, shortly after I got back to Iraq. I don't remember if the story ever ran or not as there was a payment dispute, but here's the story I wrote:

The scientists among the shell casings

BAGHDAD — Dr. Isam al-Rawi, a geologist at Baghdad University, sweeps his hand over a set of dog-eared journals. The arc of his gesture continues on to include a bare laboratory with a few slices of rock samples, a sagging chair and a dripping sink. The room is mean, long and narrow, with barely enough room for a colleague to squeeze past al-Rawi carrying a tray of glasses filled to their chipped rims with Sprite. Finally his hand returns to the journals and books, and he points an accusing finger at them.

"I am a university professor," he says. "I need books!"

Indeed, he needs a lot more than that, but few things sum up the current state of Iraq's scientific crisis more than its lack of books and journals. Al-Rawi's most recent acquisition is a photocopied version of the 1998 edition of the Atlas of Rock Forming Minerals, which he bought in Libya on his last trip outside Iraq. His most recent journal, a copy of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, dates to August 1985. To a one, his books and journals are old, out of date and falling apart, much like the country's scientific community itself.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's scientists were some of the most respected in the region and they made a good living. The country's universities churned out engineers, technicians and Ph.D.s. They often did post-graduate work in the West and had access to the world's scientific literature. They traveled to scientific conferences all over the world.

But things started to get bad in the mid-1980s when the Iran-Iraq war was raging; Saddam Hussein began restricting access to scientific journals. After the disastrous 1991 war and the impositions of sanctions, things took an even graver turn. Salaries plummeted. Al-Rawi's monthly income went from about $2,000 a month before the 1991 war to about $400 a month. New scientists and professors earned about $100 a month. They could not travel; they could not subscribe to periodicals, as they were forbidden by the sanctions regime. New books were too expensive. Much needed equipment, which was often marked as "dual use," was prevented from entering the country. The Middle East's most advanced scientific community was effectively sealed up in a time capsule.

But now, even with most of the restrictions gone, things are still hard 15 months after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. While scientists are no longer prevented from ordering new books and journals and are allowed to leave the country, they often can't for the simple reason that they have no money to do so. And a sinister series of killings has terrified and decimated the scientific community. In mid-June, Sabri Al-Bayati, professor of telecommunications at the college of Science and Education at Baghdad University was shot dead near his home in the Bab Al-Athamiya area in central Baghdad.‏ A few days previously, a physician, Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Faleh al-Rawi (no relation), was killed while sitting in traffic. Their deaths are just two of about 250 university professors, medical doctors and engineers who have been killed since May 1, 2003.

"No one knows why, no one knows who," al-Rawi says, and flicked his prayer beads back and forth.

In such an environment, there is no work on new research, says Dr. Nuhad Ali, a mechanical engineer at the university. The only money being spent is to keep up the salaries of the professors, and the only new equipment are some computers paid for with the now-defunct oil-for-food program. The universities aren't even accepting new graduate students, Ali says. All current graduate students, who used to receive a monthly stipend, were enrolled before the war.

But not all is hopeless, two solid state physicists, Dr. Izzat al-Essa and Dr. Raed al-Haddend, says they had been able to attend the Saudi Solid State Physics conference in Riyadh in March. The praised the lifting of travel restrictions, but says it was still very expensive.

Baghdad University was also lucky. Almost every other university in the country was looted in the civil unrest following the fall of Baghdad. But American troops decided to bivouac on the campuses of Baghdad University and the nearby Al-Nahrain University neé Saddam Hussein University. Their presence prevented the wholesale looting of everything down to electrical fixtures that was going on just across town at al-Mustansiriya University.

So now the scientific community must rebuild with limited financial resources in a security vacuum. It's no wonder there's an abiding sense of hopelessness among the professors. Al-Essa and al-Haddend dream of X-ray machines, electron microscopes and FT-IR spectrometers. Al-Rawi wants to replace his 1974 X-ray fluorescence machine so he can analyze some rock sections he recently took near Perispike in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. Dr. Emad T. Bakir, an industrial chemist with a specialty in polymers, hopes for research assistants, catalysts and solvents.

But the money is simply not there. The former administrator for the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer III was found of saying, "Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor." The new government is inheriting many of Iraq's old debts, including $29.8 billion for war reparations to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but the Transitional Administrative Law, which is the working constitution for the interim government, forbids deficit spending. All ministries, including the Ministry of Higher Education, headed by Dr. Taher Khalaf Jabur al-Bakaa, are feeling the vice grip of national poverty. The minister doesn't even have a bullet-proof vest; he can't afford one.

But if Iraqis are good at anything, it's hoping. The scientific community is no exception. Fueling this hope is a promise promise from Bremer. Before he left June 28, he said he would attempt to increase communications between American scientists at universities and their Iraqi counterparts. An Iraqi delegation recently returned from the University of Oklahoma whose president Bremer went to school with.

"We hope our friends in America and England will come to see what has happened to us," says al-Rawi.

It should be noted that almost all of the murders of university professors have gone unsolved. Al-Rawi was working to change that when he became a victim himself.

Muhammad over at Iraq the Model blogs on the seven (or six) insurgent groups coming in from the desert and proposing a truce.

He doesn't really add much to my previous post, but he does have an interesting comment:

So far, everybody in Iraq feels good about Maliki's plan and expressed their hopes for it to meet success and ease the suffering of the Iraqi people; everybody except for the Sadrists and the association of Muslim scholars who both criticized the plan and said it wasn't acceptable and expected it to fail.

I'm not in Baghdad anymore so I have no idea if "everybody feels good" about the plan. I doubt that's true, but I'm sure most people want to feel good about it. That's not my point. What's interesting is the point he makes about the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is also the Muslim Clerics Association I mentioned previously. The MCA, headed by Harith al-Dhari has alleged connections to the 1920 Revolution Brigades through al-Dhari's son, Muthanna, and which is allegedly one of the groups seeking a truce. What gives?

I'm not sure at this point, but I suspect al-Dhari's playing both sides of the field at this point, withholding his group's support for more concessions from the government, while dangling the 1920 Revolution Brigades as a tease. Politics in Iraq are like haggling in a bazaar: outrageous demands, emotional appeals, walking away... all just before agreeing on a final deal. Middle Easterners love this stuff.

Moqtada al-Sadr, who commands the loyalty the Mahdi Army, is certainly doing the same thing. If anyone wants to be declared a legitimate, national resistance who should get amnesty for killing U.S. troops, it's those guys. Not only are they guilty of killing American Marines in Najaf, they're also heavily enmeshed in the Shi'a-on-Shi'a violence in Basra as they jockey for position against their rivals, the Badr Organization and the Fadullah Party. Have they killed Iraqis? Yes. Will they get their amnesty? Answer hazy; ask again later.

Interesting. The day after PM Nouri al-Maliki introduced his plan for national reconciliation, seven insurgent groups from the Ba'athist/Nationalist side of the insurgency have reportedly contacted the Iraqi government in order to offer a truce.

The groups include the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Muhammad Army (jaysh al-Muhammad), Abtal al-Iraq (Heroes of Iraq), the 9th of April Group, al-Fatah Brigades, and the Brigades of the General Command of the Armed Forces. The seventh group was not named by the Shi'ite legislator who says these groups are seeking the cease-fire.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades is allegedly led by Muthanna al-Dhari, son of Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, who is head of the Muslim Clerics Association, a hard-line Sunni group. Harith al-Dhari's grandfather was a leading figure in the 1920 revolution and allegedly shot the English Col. Gerard Leachman, sparking the uprising against the British in the west. I've written about jaysh al-Muhammad before, and you can read about its place in the greater insurgency.

And here's a chart from IntelCenter showing the linkages between the various groups (283KB .jpg).

As for the four other groups, I confess I don't have a lot of data on them.

BEIRUT -- So, anyone have a link to the English version of Maliki's reconciliation plan? I'd like to actually, you know, read it before shooting off from the hip.

But: An amnesty for people who haven't done any killing of Iraqis or other "terroristic activities" "terrorist acts" isn't much of an amnesty at all.

UPDATE: Well, thanks to a friend at the Embassy in Baghdad, I found a BBC media monitor translation/summary of the main points of the plan. It's exasperatingly vague:

1. Amnesty for detainees not involved in terrorist acts, war crimes or crimes against humanity, as long as they condemn violence and pledge to respect the law. [This seems to exclude quite a lot, but it's so vague. This might not be so bad, though as it allows plenty of room for, ah, practicality in deciding to whom to grant amnesty. -- CA]
2. Negotiations with the US-led coalition to prevent the violation of human and civil rights in military operations.
3. Compensation for those harmed by terrorism, military operations and violence.
4. Preventing human rights violations, reforming prisons and punishing those responsible for acts of torture.
5. Ensuring that Iraq's justice system is solely responsible for punishing members of the Saddam regime, terrorists and gangs guilty of killings and kidnappings.
6. Ensuring that military operations take place in accordance with judicial orders and do not breach human rights.
7. Compensation for civilian government employees who lost their jobs after the fall of the Saddam regime.
8. Measures to improve public services. [Possibly the most popular aspect of the plan for Iraqis -- CA]
9. Measures to strengthen Iraq's armed forces so they are ready to take over responsibility for national security from the multinational forces.
10. Review of the armed forces to ensure they run on "professional and patriotic" principles. [Militias, he's lookin' at you. -- CA]
11. Ensuring the political neutrality of Iraq's armed forces and tackling Iraq's militia groups. [Ditto -- CA]
12. Insistence that Iraq's elected bodies, including the government and parliament, are solely responsible for decisions on Iraq's sovereignty and the presence of multinational troops.
13. Insistence that all political groups involved in government must reject terrorism and the former Saddam regime.
14. Return of displaced people to their homes and compensation for any losses they have suffered. [This one's going to be tricky. The Kurds have been demanding a settlement on Kirkuk for ages and the various Shi'ite governments have been dragging their feet on this. At the same time, the Kurds have been ejecting Arabs from Kirkuk and I've heard reports of Shi'ites ejecting Kurds from some neighborhoods in Baghdad. -- CA]
15. Improved compensation for victims of the Saddam regime and deprived people throughout the country.
16. Formation of a National Council for the Reconciliation and National Dialogue Plan, including representatives of the government and parliament as well as religious authorities and tribes. [Talk to Nicholas Haysom, former/current head of UNAMI's constitutional advisory board in Baghdad. He was instrumental in helping write South Africa's constitution and developing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that seemed to work well there. -- CA]
17. Creation of National Council subcommittees at regional level
18. Creation of "field committees" to follow up on the progress of the reconciliation process.
19. A series of conferences of tribal leaders, religious scholars, political groups and other members of civil society will be held to back the reconciliation process. The conference of religious scholars is expected to issue fatwas supporting the policy. [Whoa. I know the clerics wanted a tight bond between the government and the mosques, but I don't think they expected the government telling them what fatwas to issue. -- CA]
20. Talks with other Arab and Islamic governments, especially those that support the terrorists, to inform them about what is happening in Iraq.
21. Adoption of a "rational" discourse by the government and political parties to restore mutual trust and ensure the media are neutral. [But not independent? -- CA]
22. National dialogue including all the opinions of those involved in the political process.
23. Adoption of constitutional and legal legitimacy in resolving the country's problems, including extra-judicial killings.
24. Review of the de-Baathification committee to ensure it respects the law. [This is long overdue. Schoolteachers who were forced to join the party should not still be paying the price. -- CA]
25. Co-operation with the United Nations and the Arab League to pursue the work of the Cairo Conference for National Reconciliation.
26. Making it easier for Iraqi citizens or groups to work on rebuilding the country, as long as they have not committed any crimes or been banned from the political process.
27. Taking a united stand regarding the terrorists and other hostile elements. [Well, duh. -- CA]
28. Starting work on a large-scale development campaign for the whole country, which will also tackle the problem of unemployment.

Well, it certainly doesn't lack for ambition. I would like to see a better translation before making any (more) snap judgments, though.

Details are very sketchy, obviously, as this is breaking now, but Maliki, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and American commander Gen. George Casey said a reliable tip on Zarqawi's location came in and allowed the U.S. to call in the bombers. The attack occurred last night at about 6 p.m., BBC says, and he may have been betrayed by someone in his inner circle. Zarqawi's body was identified by facial recognition, Casey said.

[ADD 2:57:40 PM +0200 GMT: Intriguing detail: Jordanian intelligence was involved, apparently. No friend of AMZ they, seeing as they had a number of scores to settle with the guy. But considering Jordan's ties with the Ba'athist insurgency, which mostly hated AMZ, this looks more and more like the Ba'athists saw the time had come to turn in AMZ to cement the political deal in Baghdad.]

If true, and this should be a very big conditional, This is a big, big success for the Iraqis and the Americans. Zarqawi wasn't the sole force behind the insurgency, but he was the driving personality behind the jihad aspect of the Sunni fighting, which has much larger influence within the Iraqi insurgency than the size of its roster would suggest. It was his connections that brought in a lot of money from the Gulf, and with that cash and influence was able to bleed off some of the Ba'athists and Iraqi Islamists to his part of the insurgency.

Also, this indicates that bringing the Sunnis into the government seems to has worked. One of the gambles of bringing the Sunnis in was to see if they could start ramping down the violence through tips, turn-ins and general cooperation. That has always been the central question: Do the Sunnis in government have control over their factions in the insurgency? I've argued here that they don't, but if today's news is true, I may very well need to admit I was wrong on that. Gut feeling is that I was.

Casey said they got information on the safehouse where Zarqawi was hiding from local tips, so that indicates the Sunnis have started cooperating with Maliki's government, which means this government may hold up after all. But it is important to realize that this will not end the insurgency. It has numerous factions, not all who are loyal to Zarqawi (obviously, since someone tipped the Americans off.) And it won't end the sectarian violence, because Shi'ite death squads are still operating out of the Interior ministry and other police forces and many Sunni insurgents are not foreign jihadis. They have their own fight with the mainly Shi'ite Maliki government, which they see as a tool of Iran. Remember how happy everyone was after Saddam was captured? And remember how it just kept getting worse and worse?

But it is also significant that Maliki says he will announce his new Defense, National Security and Interior minister later today. (He declined to give their names at the press conference on Zarqawai, saying that would wait until the parliamentary meeting in the afternoon.) This indicates to me that the Defense and Interior slots have been being held open as a carrot for Sunnis to start bringing their fighters to heel. Now that the Sunnis have delivered a big prize in Zarqawi's alleged corpse, it's time to reward them with a big post. Will they get both Interior and Defense? No. In fact, Reuters is already reporting that Interior will go to Shi'ite Jawaad al-Bolani, formerly of the Fadhilla Party, and Defense will go to Sunni Gen. Abdel Qader Jassim.

Al-Bolani is an interesting choice, because he is reportedly a former Army colonel under Saddam and has been affiliated with numerous factions in Shi'a politics, including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and Sheikh Karim Al-Mohammadawi, the "Prince of the Marshes," a local Shi'ite boss in the south opposed to Iran, Chalabi and sometimes -- but unreliably -- allied with Moqtada al-Sadr. Mohammadawi is reliably in favor of Mohammadawi. Jassim, a Sunni, is currently the commander of the Iraqi ground forces and has worked closely with the Americans. He also was the general who advised Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait in 1991, further endearing him to Washington.

Both choices seem likely to be approved, or at least not opposed, will be supported by the Sunnis, as neither is closely tied to Iran. (The former Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, was tied with the Badr Organization neé Corps, which is still closely connected with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.)

[ADD 2:18:08 PM +0200 GMT: Going back through some old notes, I found a brief interview I did with al-Bolani in January 2005, before the first elections, when he was president of the Shi'a Political Council, a rival group to the United Iraqi Alliance. At the time, he said he didn't think the constitution will be based on Islamic shari'a, even though Islamic parties are calling for this. "Democracy is a strange idea in Iraq, but democracy is a demand of everyone," he said. "I can assure you there are many Islamic political movements that don't want government like Iran's. But this Islamic identity and the Islamic traditions cannot be removed from this country. … So I think the Iranian system will never happen in Iraq, and most Islamic movements agree wth me on that." That will please the Sunnis and the Americans.]

So now we'll have to wait and see what happens in the coming days and weeks. There will no doubt be a flare of violence thaht could last up to a week or so, but after that, If the level of violence starts to decrease, then that means the Sunnis are playing ball. Now it is time for the Shi'ites to curb their militias; that's the deal. If that doesn't happen, expect the Sunnis to let their fighters loose again.

[UPDATE 5:49:39 PM +0200 GMT: DefenseTech has a good roundup of news on Zarqawi, including links to the video of the bombing run.]

[UPDATE 6:18:34 PM +0200 GMT: The story I did for TIME Magazine is here.]

[UPDATE 7:05:36 PM +0200 GMT: Right on schedule. Several suicide car bombs have gone off in Baghdad killing an unknown number of civilians.]