Barbarians at the gate?
26 Oct 2006
In his latest eIraq op-ed, Adam Elkus considers barbarism in Iraq. “What makes actions like televised decapitations so horrifying to us?” Elkus asks. “Life went on in the Cold War despite the fact that the Soviet Union had the power to end the world. Why do the disgusting actions of a small group of fanatics cause us to shake and tremble? The answer, unfortunately, lies in our own method of waging war.”

Curfew in Amarah cripples daily life
25 Oct 2006
Residents of Amarah, a half-million strong city in south-eastern Iraq, say they are being severely restricted by an indefinite daily 20-hour curfew. Imposed by the Iraqi government on Monday after clashes between militia fighters and the Iraqi army intensified, the curfew is crippling daily life. “We cannot access medical facilities. My two children are sick with high fever and when I tried to take them to hospital, they [Iraqi Army] just forced me back into my house,” said mother-of-three Hamidiya Bint al-Hussein, 32. Dozens have been killed in clashes between the Shiite Mehdi Army and police since Thursday. Authorities said the curfew was urgently needed to prevent violence and deaths from increasing. Although there are no reliable statistics, local NGOs believe that dozens of families have fled the violence that has broken out in Amarah.

Nobody is safe…
25 Oct 2006
Iraqi blogger Zappy gives us a snapshot of life in Iraq through a series of short diary entries. “If you track the news coming out of Iraq, you probably get a clear Idea of what’s going on, and you would certainly reach the conclusion that nobody living inside the borders of this country is safe…My Wife just called. My firstborn survived a close explosion on her way to school this morning. ‘They’ planted a Bomb near the school…I have seen things that, if I were to post here, even though I post anonymously, could get me in trouble.”

Sex traffickers target women in war-torn Iraq
25 Oct 2006
Thousands of Iraqi women are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous sex worker traffickers seeking to exploit young girls’ desperate socio-economic situation for profit, United Nations agencies have reported. Mariam, 16, relives the day her father in Baghdad sold her off as a domestic worker in one of the prosperous Gulf nations. Instead, she was forced into the sex trade. Mariam was taken to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and kept in a house with 20 young girls, all of them sex workers, she said.

An Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq
25 Oct 2006
Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.

Maliki, Bush and Sadr
25 Oct 2006
Bush’s rhetorical evolution, a battle on Sadr’s turf, and Maliki in the middle. Today we review yesterday’s news: a battle, including air stirkes, in Sadr City following a joint US-Iraqi raid happens without Prime Minister Maliki’s knowledge and Maliki addresses the press and the nation in an attempt to distance himself from the Americans. Meanwhile, Bush continues his rhetorical evolution on Iraq, holding a press conference and announcing: “I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq; I’m not satisfied, either.”

“I wish I had my camera…”
24 Oct 2006
Iraqi blogger Fatima came across a bunch of young men gathered in an empty lot under a bridge in Baghdad recently. They were racing. “What was so unusual? This is the first in three years that I have seen a large celebratory-type gathering in Baghdad (not including people gathering for Eid prayer in the mosque and not including the Shiite Husseini mourning on Ashura). This was the first time I saw anything of the kind…these men had been able to gather for fun.”

“I will only leave this house in a coffin”
24 Oct 2006
“Iraqis want us to leave their country. Militias started to target us and force us out from our houses accusing us of being Saddam’s followers. Sometimes I work as a vegetable seller to get some money since I lost my job and my family needs to eat. I am desperate and do not have a choice and don’t know where to go. ... They [militias] killed my father, brother, sister and two nephews because they refused to leave their home and I am sure that soon they will come after me. What will I do having four children to look after, without a job and without money? God bless us, the landless Palestinians.”

The Bush Administration’s War of the Images
24 Oct 2006
Responding to Thomas Friedman calling recent violence in Iraq the “Iraqi equivalent of the Tet Offensive,” President Bush said “he might be right.” In response, Tom Engelhardt wrtes: “If this is, in any sense, a turning-point moment, then it’s important to take another look at aspects of the war on the home front that this administration has fought so relentlessly these last years and is now losing—the first being its image wars in regard to Iraq and the second, the numbers games it’s played when it came to deaths in that country.”

Baghdad’s “field hospital for the civil war”
24 Oct 2006
Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital has known every stage of Iraq’s violence intimately. When U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad in 2003, they rolled right by Yarmouk-and the looters came. During the bombing just prior to the invasion, the ceiling of a room in the maternity ward had been pierced by a piece of falling debris-from an American missile or from Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. Then there were the victims of crime and car bombings. Now, says one of Yarmuk’s doctors, who has just finished a documentary on the hospital, Yarmouk has become a “field hospital in a civil war.”

From Bad to Worse
23 Oct 2006
Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, traces a “bad to worse” trend that has ” persisted through each of the many ‘turning points’ announced by the Bush administration and its handpicked Iraqi clients, and then duly reported by a still overly deferential establishment media.” If it were up to Iraqis, Arnove writes, siting recent polls, “the occupation would end.” Instead, he says, the administration continues down a path of chaos, death and destruction in Iraq.

Amarah, a coup, and the Iraqi sense of humor
23 Oct 2006
We followup on recent posts and feature a story on Iraq’s TV comedy. There is more violence in Amarah, and a curfew. UPI quotes sources saying Iraqi army officers recently visited Washington to discuss plans for replacing the government of Nouri al-Maliki. And switching gears, a story about TV comedy that is uniquely Iraqi.

We have done as much harm to Iraqis as Saddam
22 Oct 2006
On Saturday, I spent 10 hours watching The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Henry VI parts I, II and III in Stratford. This tour de force swept us through battles between the French and the English, courtier plots against a sweetly pious and weak Henry, popular dissent, the Wars of the Roses and the breakdown of words, trust and society itself. Killings ravaged the land until the endgame. In the final scene the victorious Edward IV’s white train turns red with blood sloshing on the floor. He doesn’t notice the spreading stain, so occupied is he with his crown and with power.

Three million uprooted Iraqis face “bleak future”, UNHCR says
22 Oct 2006
*IMAGE1:RIGHT*More than three million Iraqis forced to flee their homes to other areas of Iraq and to neighbouring countries are facing what the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) describes as a “very bleak future” after the agency’s budget for offices across the region was halved for the coming year.

Baghdadi Gays Fear for Their Lives
22 Oct 2006
Homosexuals across the capital are being hunted down and murdered by Islamic militants and even the police. In Iraq, where religious radicals consider homosexuality a sin punishable by death, gays have good reason to worry about being outed. The legal situation for gays in Iraq today remains vague. According to research by Sdertrn University in Stockholm, it is unclear to date whether a new law on the family, approved by the Interim Governing Council in December 2003, prohibits homosexual activities. In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no official authority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed by militiamen.

Ramadan
22 Oct 2006
“This Ramadan is different,” writes Iraqi blogger Hala S., “My family cannot deny their fears and worries anymore. The total collapse of public services and security turned their Ramadan to hell. My brother is jobless and my nephew cannot reach his school anymore (my two nieces go on and off). Most of our neighbors have left Baghdad, so no exchange of food or late gatherings. My sister-in-law speaks of the silence – the lack of any conversation in our household. ‘If it wasn’t for the children and the atmosphere they make, I would have lost it long time ago,’ she says.”

Washington’s new strategy: Plan Z
22 Oct 2006
Is Washington’s “new strategy” really all that new? And is an Iraq coup coming?We look at today’s reports of Washington’s new strategy in Iraq…and find that it doesn’t look very different from the old strategies. Also, we consider the possibility of a coup to oust the government of Nouri al-Maliki.