The hospitals are empty and the generator is down…
24 Sep 2006
A peek at Iraq’s hospitals and the country’s “people power.” An Iraqi doctor reflects on “a doctor’s life in Baghdad” and the New York times looks at “probably the most vilified figure in Iraqi society after Saddam Hussein”: the “generator man.”

The Intimacies of War: A Personal Reflection on a Global Tragedy
20 Sep 2006
Sister Rihab Mousa, a member of the St. Catherine of Sienna Dominicans based in Mosul, Iraq, has lived in Springfield, Illinois since 2002. In this moving piece, her very personal commemoration of the International Day of Peace and Global Ceasefire, she remembers her hometown and her friends and family living a world away in a country engulfed in violence.

An Iraq where “no one dares to help.”
20 Sep 2006
As civilian deaths in Iraq skyrocket, the wounded are left to die in the streets. An Iraqi journalist tells of watching a wounded man die in the street, and writes of his guilt for not helping—and the reason why.

Home raids, hearts and minds
20 Sep 2006
Every month, joint U.S. and Iraqi forces are kicking many thousands of doors, frightening families, making new enemies in an attempt to defeat existing enemies. Dahr Jamil and Ali al-Fadhily provide a “hearts and minds” report on these home raids—long a source of furious contention for Iraqis.

Iranian shelling of northern Iraq causes families to flee
20 Sep 2006
Humanitarian organizations and local authorities in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region have expressed concerns over the living conditions of more than 900 families who have been displaced from their villages on the border strip between Iran and Iraq as a result of heavy artillery shelling by Iranian forces.

Death squad murders soaring
18 Sep 2006
Iraqi Shi’ite death squads are in the headlines daily. More than 200 Iraqis have reportedly been killed by Shi’ite death squads in the last week. Often, the victims of Shi’ite death squads are Sunni’s said to be suspected of violence against Shia. Reprisal killings. Not surprisingly, there is talk of Sunni death squads planning reprisal killings to answer reprisal killings.

TV correspondent murdered in Ramadi
17 Sep 2006
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder today in Iraq of Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli, a correspondent for Baghdad TV. Six gunmen in two Opel cars shot the reporter/cameraman as he chatted with friends after midday prayers outside a mosque in the town of Ramadi, CPJ sources said. Al-Karbouli, 25, had received numerous death threats from insurgents over the past four months warning him to leave the satellite channel. Baghdad TV is owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political group in the country. The party joined the U.S.-backed Iraqi government earlier this year.

Over the weekend…
17 Sep 2006
A roundup of weekend developments in Iraq.

AP photographer held by U.S. military for months without charge
16 Sep 2006
The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news that a Pulitzer Prize-winning freelance photojournalist working for The Associated Press in Iraq has been held by U.S. military forces for five months without charge. “U.S. authorities who have detained Bilal Hussein in Iraq must either charge him or release him from custody,” said Joel Simon, CPJ executive director. “This is not an isolated incident. In the last 18 months alone, seven Iraqi journalists were detained for periods of many weeks or months before being released. No charges were substantiated in any of these cases.

12 Pentagon Steps to a Misfit Military
14 Sep 2006
While the Secretary of Defense’s longstanding goal of transforming the planet’s most powerful military into its highest tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post’s David Von Drehle, “melted away,” the very makeup of the Armed Forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America.

Two journalists shot and killed in separate attacks
14 Sep 2006
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of an Iraqi photographer today in Baghdad and a journalist in Diyala province on September 13th by unidentified gunmen.

Armed conflict depriving youth of education, report says
13 Sep 2006
With violence and poverty on the rise in Iraq, schools are increasingly deserted. The UK-based charity organisation Save the Children has launched a global report exposing the devastating consequences of armed conflict on education in 30 countries. As the only country in the Middle East assessed, Iraq is singled out as one of the most recent problem areas.

Would you choose thief or highway robber?
12 Sep 2006
Is federalism dead? Would you choose thief or highway robber? Were the bodies found bound, tortured and shot the victims of Sunni or Shi’ite militias? These questions may be too advanced for an American audience…according to a recent study, Americans are still stuck on “was there a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda?” A full 43% still say yes.

“This is the age of cellphone love…”
11 Sep 2006
Iraqis who resist using the term “civil war” to describe the sectarian violence in Iraq often cite a long history Sunni-Shi’ite intermarriage in Iraq as evidence that Iraqis, though segregated along sectarian lines in some areas of Iraq, are ultimately too intertwined to slip into civil war. It is a compelling and hopeful argument, but one that takes a direct hit from a phenomena reported in the Washington Post today.

A day in the life of an ordinary Iraqi
10 Sep 2006
These are tough times for Mustafa Kubaissy, a 48-year-old shopkeeper in Baghdad. He has been leading a troubled life for the past three years since the US-led invasion of Iraq which ousted former president Saddam Hussein.

The ever growing list of 9/11 victims…
10 Sep 2006
Donald Rumsfeld’s business is war. And on September 11th, not surprisingly, the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America was planning for war. And so it was that five hours after the incalculably cruel attacks on the morning of September 11th, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld was dictating his strategy to his aides as his Pentagon burned. “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” In Iraq today, Iraqi’s are surely too close to their own monumental national tragedy to direct too much thought to the events of 9/11, even as their fate has been linked both directly and indirectly to that day.

Palestinians in Iraq under attack, but unable to flee
9 Sep 2006
Amid widespread sectarian violence in Iraq, Palestinian refugees in Iraq face particularly grave security threats, including targeted killings by mostly Shi’a militant groups and harassment by the Iraqi government, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.