Introduction
19 Mar 2007
Electronic Iraq is a news portal committed to providing a uniquely comprehensive look at Iraq and the violence that has engulfed it. eIraq was launched in February 2003 to provide a humanitarian perspective on the looming conflict in Iraq. The site quickly became a respected and vital resource unparalleled in its track record of providing news and analysis with a fresh and unique focus on the experiences of the Iraqi people enduring the daily tragedy and chaos of war.

Four Candles Blown Out
19 Mar 2007
Iraqi blogger Baghdad Treasure, now studying in the US, writes of a flood of memories and feelings on this fourth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq: “Four years of my life. I didn’t feel them. They ran so quickly. I recalled the end of my college senior year, my job, my father’s return from Libya, my sister’s wedding, my mother’s car bomb survival, my friend’s mother car bomb death, my friend’s desperation, Saddam’s execution, the elections, the referendum…above all I remembered the sense of fear.”

On 4th anniversary, press marks deadliest toll
19 Mar 2007
Four years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for the press as local journalists continue to suffer disproportionately from the violence, research by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows.

Iraqis Increasingly Pessimistic, Anti-US
19 Mar 2007
“Four years after the U.S.-led invasion,” writes Jim Lobe, “Iraqis have never been more pessimistic about their lives and antagonistic toward their purported liberators, according to a major new poll released Monday. Nearly two out of three Iraqis said they were concerned ‘a great deal’ that either they or someone living in their household might become a victim of violence in the country.”

Frustration Marks Another War Anniversary
19 Mar 2007
The growing anti-war movement in the United States has sent another strong signal to the George W. Bush administration and the Congressional leadership that it is unwilling to accept mere cosmetic changes in the current U.S. policy on Iraq. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in major cities across the country demanding immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and an end to the continued military occupation of Iraq. Marking the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, launched on Mar. 21, 2003, protesters in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and other cities also denounced potential U.S. plans to attack Iran.

Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster
18 Mar 2007
Anthony Arnove looks at the numbing numbers four years in to the war and puts them next to the better – and equally numbing – numbers in Darfur. Looking closely at what the US attack on Iraq unleashed, Arnove notes: “The focus on Darfur serves to legitimize the idea of US intervention at the very moment when the carnage that such intervention causes is all too visible and is being widely repudiated around the globe.”

Four years on
15 Mar 2007
Blogger and Christian Science Monitor columnist Helena Cobban looks back on four years of war in Iraq, beginning with a review of her own warnings and appeals penned in the months before the invasion. Cobban traces an unbroken line from the unheeded warnings of 2003 to the to the unstable and unpredictable realities we see in Iraq, the region, and the international community today.

Iraq-Jordan: Authorities consider imposing visas on Iraqis
15 Mar 2007
Jordan has taken several measures that make it harder for Iraqi asylum seekers to get into the kingdom, such as preventing the entry of those between the ages of 20 and 40 and those who carry an older version of Iraqi passport. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that there are up to 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan and up to one million in Syria. Economists and members of Jordan’s parliament have said they resent the Iraqi refugees, alleging that the prices of basic commodities as well as housing have tripled over the past three years because of the Iraqis.

Seymour Hersh: A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder And No One Notices
14 Mar 2007
Tom Engelhardt wonders if he’s the only person who’s reading Seymour Hersh. “If Hersh is to be believed, the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. As a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years Hersh certainly deserves to be taken seriously.”

Iraqis place hope in local politics
14 Mar 2007
“Iraqis have tried kings, communists, Arab nationalists, dictators and now Islamists,” says an Iraqi analyst in Ali al-Fadhily’s report, “but have never found a system that could tap the huge potential of Iraq in a way that fulfills people’s hopes for a developed and safe country.” In this piece, Fadhily presents a brief history of Iraqi politics since the fall of Saddam Hussein and traces a power-shift in Iraq from national to local politics.

Children’s education gravely affected by conflict
13 Mar 2007
According to a report released last year by NGO Save the Children, 818,000 primary school-aged children, representing 22 percent of Iraq’s student population, were not attending school. A joint study by the Iraqi Ministry of Education and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that of those who do not attend school, 74 percent are female. Aid agencies estimate that thousands of Iraqi parents do not send their daughters to school for cultural reasons and because of the general insecurity in the country. Mohammed Abdul-Aziz, a statistician at the Ministry of Education, told IRIN last week that at least 110 children had been killed and 95 injured since 2005 in attacks on schools. These numbers do not include children killed or injured on their way to or from school. Last September, the Ministry of Education increased teachers’ salaries by 20 to 50 percent in an attempt to entice teachers to stay in their jobs. More recently, the government hired 13,000 guards to protect schools and universities.

An American Identity Crisis in a Losing War
12 Mar 2007
“The Iraq syndrome is headed our way,” writes Ira Chernus. “A clear and growing majority of Americans now tell pollsters that that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, that it’s a bad idea to ‘surge’ more troops into Baghdad, that we need a definite timeline for removing all our troops. The nation seems to be remembering a lesson of the Vietnam War: We can’t get security by sending military power abroad. Every time we try to control another country by force of arms, we only end up more troubled and less secure. But the Iraq syndrome is a two-edged sword, and there is no telling which way it will cut in the end. Remember the ‘Vietnam syndrome,’ which made its appearance soon after the actual war ended in defeat. It did restrain our appetite for military interventions overseas – but only briefly. By the late 1970s, it had already begun to boomerang. Conservatives denounced the syndrome as evidence of a paralyzing, Vietnam-induced surrender to national weakness. Their cries of alarm stimulated broad public support for an endless military build-up and, of course, yet more imperial interventions. The very idea of such a ‘syndrome’ implied that what the Vietnam War had devastated was not so much the Vietnamese or their ruined land as the traumatized American psyche. As a concept, it served to mask, if not obliterate, many of the realities of the actual war.”

Politics created the Shi’a-Sunni split, not theology
12 Mar 2007
“Religion, sometimes, is a continuation of politics by other means. Growing Shi’a-Sunni tensions in the Middle East provide further proof this is so,” writes Jon B. Alterman in a new report. “Politics, not theology, was at the root of the Shi’a-Sunni split to start with. The Prophet Muhammad was both a religious and political leader, and he left no clear heir. Shi’a argued that leadership should be reserved to members of the Prophet Muhammad’s family. Sunnis argued that it should be the most capable among the leadership, regardless of parentage. Doctrinal differences have emerged since having to do with things such as the assessment of charitable responsibilities, inheritance laws, the position of one’s hands during prayer, and other practical issues but those differences came after the schism. Politics created the Shi’a-Sunni split, not theology.”

Security Conference Produces Statements, Draws Mortars, Brings Little Hope
12 Mar 2007
The security conference held last Saturday in Baghdad produced statements, drew mortar fire, and brought little hope of security. The conference attended by representatives from 13 countries including Syria, Iran and the United States was held inside the heavily fortified “green zone” in central Baghdad. Representatives from Iraq’s six neighboring countries (Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Syria) and delegates from the five permanent UN Security Council countries (the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France) were present along with several Arab representatives. Iraqi President Jalal Talibani was reported to have observed the conference on video from his bed at the al-Hussein Medical City in Amman, Jordan. International media were invited to show that the meeting was intent on bringing security to Iraq. That plan backfired after mortar shells landed within 50 meters of the conference center, shattering glass panes in the building.

Iraqi returnees find it difficult to resume their old lives
11 Mar 2007
Ali Tofiq, 29, didn’t want to leave Iraq for Syria, but he felt he had no other option. He hoped to start a new life with his family – but things did not go according to plan. A former army officer, Tofiq lost his job when the army was dissolved in 2003 and became a taxi driver. In March last year, he sold his car and all his family furniture to scrape together the money to take his wife and four children to Syria. However, nine months after emigrating, he was still without a job. He had run out of money and felt he had no choice but to return home to Iraq. Since he cannot afford to rent a house of his own, Tofiq and his family live with his parents in al-Ilam in eastern Baghdad. Their only source of income is Tofiq’s meager pension of 55 US dollars a month. Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families have fled to escape the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country. According to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, around 1.8 million Iraqis have left the country since 2003 and around 1.6 million have been internally displaced. The majority have settled in Syria and Jordan.

Kurds Fear a New War
11 Mar 2007
The fragile quiet in this no-man’s-land is broken by a young fighter shooting into the air at a regular morning ceremony to “commemorate martyrs”. The firing is more than ceremonial. A new threat of war is looming in this mountain range in the north of Iraq, cutting into Turkey and Iran. All three countries have large Kurdish populations, and the governments of all three are worried about a Kurdish uprising for a separate homeland. Only in Iraq do Kurds have an autonomous region of their own. Over the past few months Turkey and Iran have been threatening to sweep positions held by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party of Turkey (PKK) off these mountains. They accuse the PKK of launching cross-border operations from Iraq’s soil into Turkey and Iran. The PKK announced unilateral ceasefire Oct. 1 last year, symbolically on world peace day, but it was rejected by the Turkish government.

End of Cowboy Diplomacy, Part II?
11 Mar 2007
It was just nine months ago when Newsweek spoke for the conventional wisdom at that moment when it pronounced “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy”. The phrase signaled the apparent victory—at last—of the State Department-led “realist” wing over hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld in gaining control over the foreign policy of President George W. Bush. One month later, however, war broke out between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, and the hawks, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld, enjoyed a strong resurgence. Bush not only spurned the pleas of Washington’s European and Arab allies to press the Jewish state for a ceasefire, but his top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, reportedly encouraged it to expand the war into Syria, much to the horror of both his State Department colleagues and his Israeli interlocutors.

The Electronic Iraq Team
9 Mar 2007
Meet the eIraq team: Jeff Severns Guntzel, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, Bitta Mostofi and Noah Merrill.

Democrats Seek Iraq Withdrawal by End 2008
8 Mar 2007
After several weeks of internal wrangling, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives Thursday proposed legislation that, if enacted, would require all U.S. combat troops in Iraq to be withdrawn by Oct. 1, 2008. The measure, which will take the form of an amendment to a pending 100- billion-dollar supplemental defense appropriations bill, also requires President George W. Bush to begin such a withdrawal as early as July of this year unless he certifies that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is making progress toward achieving national reconciliation and ending sectarian violence there. The proposed amendment, the first concrete effort to set a specific timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, faces an uncertain future. With all but a handful of Republican lawmakers likely to oppose it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have to rally her party’s right- and left-wing factions in order to ensure its passage.

Women’s Lives Unraveling in Occupied Iraq
7 Mar 2007
Amid the chaos and violence of U.S.-occupied Iraq, the significance of widespread gender-based violence has been largely overlooked, according to a groundbreaking report released here today by MADRE, an internationally active women’s human rights organization. Iraqi women are enduring unprecedented levels of assault in the public sphere, including widespread abductions, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, honor killings, domestic abuse, torture in detention, beheadings, shootings and public hangings, said the report titled “Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the U.S. War on Iraq”. “Women are not only being targeted because they are members of the civilian population, women – in particular those who are perceived to pose a challenge to the political aspirations of their attackers – have increasingly been targeted simply because they are women,” said Houzan Mahmoud, a representative of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, at a panel discussion here that coincided with the report’s launch.

Malnutrition among children under five
7 Mar 2007
Apart from dodging bombs and bullets in their schools and neighborhoods, children in Iraq are suffering from worryingly high levels of malnourishment, according to specialists. Poverty and insecurity are said to be the main causes of the children’s deteriorating diets. Despite efforts by NGOs and the Iraqi government, violence and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people are making it very difficult for monthly food rations to reach those families that need them most. According to the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), about one in 10 children under five in Iraq are underweight and one in five are short for their age.

Another million people could flee homes this year
6 Mar 2007
The United Nations and international agencies have warned that if sectarian violence in Iraq does not abate, up to a million new people could become displaced in 2007, putting an increasing burden on the country’s infrastructure and resources. “At the current rate of 40,000 to 50,000 a month, up to 2.3 million might be permanently displaced by the end of this year,” Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told the Arab League in Cairo on Sunday. He added that of Iraq’s population of about 27 million, 1.8 million people had already been displaced within the country and another two million had fled its borders, with one million having gone to Syria, 750,000 to Jordan and 150,000 to Egypt. The UN itself chose to leave Iraq in 2003, after its Baghdad headquarters were bombed twice, killing 25 people, mostly UN staff. Since then, UN agencies have handled Iraq from Amman, Jordan but are stepping up efforts to address the country’s multifaceted humanitarian problem.

Hostages to Policy: What We Know About Waste and War in Iraq
6 Mar 2007
Let’s start with the obvious waste. We know that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives since the Bush administration invaded their country in March 2003, that almost two million may have fled to other countries, and that possibly millions more have been displaced from their homes in ethnic-cleansing campaigns. We also know that an estimated 4.5 million Iraqi children are now malnourished and that this is but “the tip of the iceberg” in a country where diets are generally deteriorating, while children are dying of preventable diseases in significant numbers; that the Iraqi economy is in ruins and its oil industry functioning at levels significantly below its worst moments in Saddam Hussein’s day – and that there is no end in sight for any of this. We know that, while the new crew of American military officials in Baghdad are starting to tout the “successes” of the President’s “surge” plan, they actually fear a collapse of support at home within the next half-year, believe they lack the forces necessary to carry out their own plan, and doubt its ultimate success. What a tragic waste.

Two journalists murdered in Baghdad, a third kidnapped in Kirkuk
5 Mar 2007
Reporters Without Borders has learned of the death of two journalists in Baghdad, bringing to 152 the number of media personnel murdered in Iraq since the start of the conflict in March 2003. A journalist has also been kidnapped in the northern town of Kirkuk.

UN: 4.5 Million Iraqi Children Malnourished
4 Mar 2007
Apart from dodging bombs and bullets in their schools and neighborhoods, children in Iraq are suffering from worryingly high levels of malnourishment, according to specialists. Poverty and insecurity are said to be the main causes of the children’s deteriorating diets. Despite efforts by NGOs and the Iraqi government, violence and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people are making it very difficult for monthly food rations to reach those families that need them most. According to the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), about one in 10 children under five in Iraq are underweight and one in five are short for their age. This means that some 4.5 million children in the country are under-nourished.