Iraq - Tag Search

As many as 150,000 Iraqi security personnel were unable to vote early, while other reports of fraud and intimidation blackened the first days of Iraq's second post-invasion parliamentary election, according to Loveday Morris of the National.

Early voting in Iraq for security forces, hospital staff, prisoners and the disabled began on Thursday, but thousands of staff members from government agencies such as the ministries of interior and defense arrived at polling stations to find that their names had been left off the voting lists, Morris wrote.

Amid fears that this year's simultaneous observance of Christmas and Ashura would lead to coordinated terrorist attacks, Iraqi worshipers have been greeted by two days of bombings but, so far, relatively low casualties.

On Thursday, multiple explosions in the southern city of Hilla killed more than 20 Shiite worshipers and wounded many times that number. Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said 25 people died and 62 were wounded, while the Ministry of Health said only 14 died but 70 were wounded, according to CNN. Among the dead was Nama Hamza al-Bakr, a member of the Babil provincial council.

Middle East watchers were buzzing this morning about an Iranian incursion into southeastern Iraq. Headlines made the maneuver seem ominous: "Iranian forces take over Iraq oil well," AFP said. Some news reports had trouble pinning down the exact location of the incident, adding to the confusion.

Turns out this kind of thing happens fairly often, according to an American brigade commander based nearby.

"What happens is, periodically, about every three or four months, the oil ministry guys from Iraq will go ... to fix something or do some maintenance. They'll paint it in Iraqi colors and throw an Iraqi flag up," said Colonel Peter Newell, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. "They'll hang out there for a while, until they get tired, and as soon as they go away, the Iranians come down the hill and paint it Iranian colors and raise an Iranian flag. It happened about three months ago and it will probably happen again."

A couple of news items in the past two days demonstrate the ways in which technology and mathematics are increasingly playing a role in 21st century warfare and, incidentally, how some reporting might misunderstand some technical - but important - details. Today, the Wall Street Journal broke a story about how insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have "hacked" into U.S. Predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf technology and "intercepted live video feeds" from the Predators' cameras.

Only, I don't see how that's actually possible. The three-member WSJ reporting team led by Siobhan Gorman only mentions one program, the Russian-made SkyGrabber, and although their wording suggests other software might be in play, SkyGrabber doesn't seem capable of intercepting and relaying live video feeds.

The New York Times adds another data point to the ongoing saga of Blackwater, reporting today that the company's private mercenaries have participated in CIA "snatch and grab" raids in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater expert-in-residence at the Nation, reported last month that an ongoing Blackwater operation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is helping plan and possibly execute U.S. military operations against Taliban and Islamist insurgents in those two countries.

More recently, Vanity Fair reporter Adam Ciralsky has written that Blackwater CEO Erik Prince was actually a CIA asset - an agent on the payrolls.

Combined, the press is starting to put together a pretty frightening story - a private branch of the military and intelligence communities, available for hire but not subject to oversight or governmental regulation. What does it mean when a country outsources its lethal force, and should I, as a U.S. citizen, be troubled that this work is being carried out in my name, though I have very little power to stop it?

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who blogs about the Levant at Across the Bay, tried the other day to summarize the state of play regarding Syria's thawing relationship with the West and Bashar al-Assad's involvement in the ubiquitous "peace process," which Gregg has viewed, perhaps rightly, with some cynicism.

Badran's conclusion: the "Syrian track" is a relic of "the delusional 1990s," and Syria will not relinquish influential allies such as Iran and Hizballah in exchange for peace with Israel.

I'm always curious about stories like this one, filed by reporter Rod Nordland on Tuesday in the New York Times. They seem too perfect, too absurd, too much of an amazing journalistic find to be true. So part of me says that the reporters who write these stories must have had to cut corners or shade the facts to make them so great.

And yet, I know that's probably not true. I know that, in all likelihood, the government of Iraq really has spent nearly $100 million purchasing thousands of hand-held wands and really has implemented them for routine use at hundreds of checkpoints to screen for bombs and guns in lieu of physical inspections, despite the retired and active U.S. military personnel who say they have "no confidence" in the wands, and that the devices function "on the same principle as Ouija board."

According to Nordland, Iraqi officials can't get enough of the things:

"Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs," said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives.
...
"I don't care about [DOD equipment tester] Sandia [Labs] or the Department of Justice or any of them," General Jabiri said. "I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."

What do those blogger folks call this? A mental health break? Anyway, here's a video (h/t to a couple guys I know on Facebook) of some U.S. soldiers ghostriding in Iraq.

Ghostriding, for our more staid readers who don't know, is when you set a car in motion, and then put it in neutral (or drive), leave the car, and dance around it or on top of it. It originated in the Bay Area, though sadly, in my two-plus years out here, I've never actually seen it. (Here's the video these guys are copycatting.)

I should also say, in the interest of journalistic integrity, that there's no real way to verify where this video came from. That said, my favorite part comes at 54 seconds in.

Anthony Shadid, the famed Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post, is jumping ship (along with his wife) for the New York Times.

Shadid, the Post's Baghdad bureau chief, and Nada Bakri, his wife and a Post Baghdad staffer, will join the Times' Baghdad bureau in January, according to the Editor & Publisher blog "E&P Pub" (h/t Media Bistro).

Shadid won a Pulitzer Prize for the Post in 2004 for his reporting from Iraq and was a finalist in 2007. He also wrote some of the most informative stories about the 2006 Israel-Hizballah conflict in Lebanon, at least of those that were appearing in Western media.

Shadid is a big snag for the Times, which evidently wanted him on board badly enough to hire both him and his wife as staff writers. Shadid adds to the Times' already stacked foreign correspondents corps, which includes Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Nazila Fathi and Ethan Bronner.

The Central Intelligence Agency is sending enough manpower to Afghanistan to make its presence there "rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday. The Times says that the Agency already has nearly 700 personnel in the country.

The United States expanded its share of the global arms market in 2008, signing weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion, or about two-thirds of all weapons trade, the New York Times reports. Despite a worldwide decrease of 7.6 percent from 2007, the U.S. actually saw its sales increased by about 48 percent. To give you a sense of scale, the second biggest arms dealer was Italy, with $3.8 billion.

Meanwhile, four major players in the Middle East are planning on spending a combined $100 billion on defense budgets over the course of the next five years. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Iraq are on course to become the top defense spenders in the region, Al-Shorfa, the CENTOM-funded news agency, reports (h/t The Arabist). Of course, a not-insignificant amount of their money will go to buy U.S.-made weapons.

Al-Shorfa suggests that this ramp-up comes in response to fears about Iran's nuclear program and regional ambition.

Happy Labor Day to all our U.S. readers, and to those of you abroad who'd like to have a Labor Day of your own. The Majlis will be taking it pretty easy today and resting our weary fingers. For now, here's your dose of timely news.

Iraq experienced its worst month of violence in more than a year in August, BBC News reports. The Iraqi government estimates that 393 people were killed, including 60 police officers and soldiers. You can view our map tracking the recent violence here. The death toll in August was far below the violence seen in 2006 and 2007, when more than 2,000 civilians were killed every month, but the rising disorder makes posts like these seem somewhat incoherent.

Steven Dale Green, the former U.S. Army private who was convicted of raping and murdering 14-year-old Abeer Al-Janabi, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, Al-Arabiya reports.

Green and other members of his squad, who were based in the city of Al-Mahmudiyah, went to Al-Janabi's house in March 2006, murdered her parents and 6-year-old sister, then gang raped her. Green then set fire to the lower part of Al-Janabi's body.

Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty, but the jury couldn't agree. Four other soldiers who participated in the planning or the attack itself were tried in military courts. Three will be eligible for parole in seven years and one has already been released.

Residents of Al-Mahmudiyah had called for Green to received the death penalty. After the attacks became known in June 2006, an insurgent group in Iraq claimed that the kidnapping and beheaded of two other soldiers from Green's unit came in retaliation for Al-Janabi's rape and murder. Green will not be eligible for parole, though his sentence could change on appeal, or in the highly unlikely event of a presidential pardon.

Update appended at the bottom.

Saturday finds the young guns of Foreign Policy Watch duking it out with Syria Today founder Andrew Tabler, who published an article on the Web site of Foreign Policy (the magazine) on Friday blaming Syria for holding up positive developments in negotiations with the United States.

Reuters video shows mourners carrying Al-Hakim's casket through Baghdad on Friday. He is scheduled to be buried today.

The New York Times is beginning to write about a trend we here at The Majlis identified more than two months ago - an increase in Iraqi violence since around the time of the official U.S. withdrawal from the cities in June.

Maliki is getting criticism for decisions he has made about security that seem to reflect his political desires rather than on-the-ground necessities, like removing protective T-barriers, the Times reports.

Money quote: "The prime minister and the Iraqi people paid the price for their reach exceeding their grasp," said John A. Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert and president of the Center for a New American Security, a research institution in Washington. "The insurgency is not over."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak granted an interview in Cairo with PBS' Charlie Rose. As the two sit in the splendor of Mubarak's palace in Heliopolis, let's see if Rose asks the probing questions we all want to hear.

Atlantic writer and foreign affairs correspondent extraordinaire Robert Kaplan made quite the definitive statement today on his magazine's Web site.

Kaplan wrote that Christopher Hill, the career diplomat selected by Obama to be ambassador to Iraq, "is not the best man for this particular job." He went on to say that Obama's choice "may come back to haunt" his administration.

More bombings in Shi'a neighborhoods in Iraq today, including two -- near a cafe and an apartment building -- that killed eight people and wounded at least 30.

I'm impressed that Shi'a groups haven't committed any reprisals so far, since more than 90 people have been killed in bombings in Shi'a areas since July 31. But you have to wonder how long that patience will last.

"The Sheik Down," by Berkeley graduate and (kidnapped) freelance journalist Shane Bauer, is a well-written, probing and humorous look at the United States military's "make-a-sheik" program, whereby America hands out hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to Sunni sheiks for ostensible reconstruction projects.

The project was a major part of the Sahwa, or "Awakening," when Sunni tribes in the violent Anbar province decided to ally with American troops against Al-Qaeda (also Sunni) and other insurgents, Bauer reports.

Much of the money flows through the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which allows battalion-level U.S. officers to dole out projects worth up to $500,000 without seeking approval. That allows previously unheard of local leaders, like Bauer's subject, Eifan Saddun al-Isawi, to reap up to 80 percent profits and keep influence over communities through graft.

This is a good read. Let's hope Bauer and his friends, captured by Iran while hiking near the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, make it out safely and soon.