Checkpoint Baghdad

Baghdad Gets a Bank

2008-05-03T14:49:47Z

Residents of Baghdad’s Green Zone who have had to keep wads of cash on hand and listen to the grumbling of Iraqi staff unhappy to be paid with wrinkled American dollars are getting some relief. The zone’s first real commercial bank is open for business: A branch of the Iraqi chain, Warka Bank, is now offering a range of services including savings, checking, Visa credit cards, ATM facilities, even online and mobile-phone banking. External wire transfers are available, at a cost of $50. Dollar savings accounts earn 4 percent a year. Certificates of deposit earn 4.5 to 5.5 percent on U.S. dollars and 12 to 14 percent on Iraqi dinars, depending on duration.

The branch is set up in a converted former residence, conveniently--or perhaps strategically--located down the street from the Karadat Maryam police station and inevitably, hidden behind a bank of high concrete barriers. “This place was in ruins and it took months to accomplish this,” says one of the managers, waving at the front office with its new computers and faux leather furniture. Asked if it had been difficult to get the venture going, another manager shrugs. “Everything in Iraq is complicated, even the weather,” he says.

The zone has had only one working bank, located in the Ministry of Defense, and many consider it hard to find. It is used mostly by ministry employees. Warka Bank, part of a chain founded in 1999 that now boasts more than 100 branches around the country, hopes to attract Iraqis, expatriates and corporate customers. The banking system is traditional commercial, not Islamic, which prohibits usury and investing in businesses considered haraam, or unlawful, such as those that sell pork or alcohol.

“This is such a relief for those of us who live and work here,” says a German businessman. “Nobody wants to have to go to Karada [in the Red Zone] or always use currency brokers to get money.”

But the managers remember well that the Iraq conflict persists, and does seep into the Green Zone despite all the safety precautions. They are negotiating with security companies to protect the facility as much as is possible. And none of the men who spoke to NEWSWEEK about the bank would allow his name to be used. “I’m really excited, but this is Baghdad,” says one manager. “I’m also a poet. Maybe you can do a story about that--and then you can use my name.”

-- Lennox Samuels

Marla Ruzicka: Lessons and a Legacy

2008-04-16T19:46:08Z

Three years ago today, April 16, 2005, a suicide car bomber killed 28-year-old Marla Ruzicka and her colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, on the capital's airport road. It's worth noting this anniversary along with the others that recently marked the American invasion and fall of the Iraqi government five years ago.

Ruzicka founded and headed CIVIC – the Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict, which tries to hold governments accountable for compensating the victims of wars. Though she's often called an "aid" worker, she once corrected me on the label saying her group advocated for victims, bringing their suffering to the public, and did not provide direct aid. Much of her whole, short life had been as an advocate for various causes and her work in war showed how awareness, that overworked concept, can actually affect people lives.

Indeed, far from maintaining the aid worker profile of big budgets, SUVs and villas, Ruzicka worked on shoestring funding, bumming rides and accommodations from those she met along the way. Her main weapon was an iron-willed determination wrapped in a sunny – some might say relentless – charm. She worked extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq (along with other places) and reporters looked on in amazement as she would talk her way through checkpoints and closed doors we could never open. She was often disheveled and scattered -- even waifish. But when she was asked about her work, she could deftly cite names, laws and figures in detail from memory.

She often hung out with reporters in part because, like us, she was in that very small group of Westerners in Iraq who were not employed by the U.S. government or its contractors, without access to things like embassy housing. She would throw parties or, more likely, convince others to host parties she wanted to throw since she usually had no living quarters of her own. She had ups and downs – personal baggage she would sometimes discuss. But in all the talk about her – and there is a lot of talk in the cliquish ranks of Westerners in Baghdad – I never heard anyone ever suggest that Ruzicka had done anything insincere or malicious. A biography of Ruzicka, titled "Sweet Relief" was published in 2006 and a Hollywood movie about her has been in the works. In other words, she is already legendary.

Ruzicka's work was turning an important corner at the time she was killed. Her persistence had wrung important information about civilian casualties from the American military and the cause had been getting increased attention in Washington. According to CIVIC, a U.S. government fund spearheaded by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy has so far been budgeted $50 million to give medical care and vocational training to Iraqis wounded by U.S. troops and another fund for Afghanistan war victims has received $34 million.

Ruzicka brushed off friends' advice to avoid Iraq as it descended into chaotic mayhem. And in Iraq, she took risks – though not wildly – to get close to war victims so she could hear and document their plight as well as give them hugs and make friends of many. She would come back to the reporter hotels with stories of specific people needing help or exposure and do the same later with political and military officials.

Her irrepressible cheerfulness, along with her petite physical stature, makes the thought of her so-brutal death all the more jarring and incongruous. Many pointed out the fact that she was a non-combatant killed like those for whom she sought to speak – mothers, fathers, children, innocents devastated by war, so often noted but unprotected. Her death also highlighted a less-obvious horror worth considering any time armed conflict is option. War often draws in extremely rare individuals acting selflessly on their own initiative and kills them.

Parsing the Bombing Upsurge

2008-04-15T15:36:45Z

It's starting to look like the bad old days again. A series of bombings in Baghdad, Baquba, Mosul and Ramadi today killed nearly 60 people and wounded more than 100. Multiple bombings are often the work of Al Qaeda in Iraq and have been rare in recent months, largely because many former insurgents in Sunni-dominated areas are now on the U.S. payroll. The worst attack today was a car bomb near a courthouse in Baquba which, according to the U.S. military, killed 36 and wounded 67. The large bomb wiped out three buses and damaged 10 shops in the area.

The timing of these attacks is hardly a coincidence. The Iraqi security forces are still reeling from a botched foray into Basra three weeks ago and are currently bogged down with sporadic fighting in Sadr City. The fighting against Moqtada al-Sadr's militant Shiite Mahdi Army and various splinter factions has also drawn in the U.S. military, who have logged the highest casualty count of the year--approximately 20 soldiers killed in the past 10 days alone, mostly from IEDs. So what better time for the Al Qaeda jihadis to make themselves heard? U.S. military officials, including top commander General David Petraeus, have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI in military shorthand, hasn't been knocked out and is likely plotting "spectacular attacks." At a briefing yesterday, a senior U.S. military official said he frequently tells his soldiers, "Don't get fooled. Don't think for a second [AQI is] anything more than disrupted." The bombings today, as well as a handful of bombings in northern Iraq which killed 18 people yesterday, are ample proof of that.

So are these bombings a sign that AQI is back on the scene in their typically brutal fashion? The U.S. military takes great pains to track trends of violence in Iraq and there really haven't been any similarly large bombings in more than two months. At the briefing yesterday, the senior U.S. military commander even rolled out a series of graphs to show that violence levels in Baghdad had dropped after a spike linked to the fighting against Shia militia elements in late March and early April. These graphics have become such a regular part of the U.S. military's briefings on Iraq that they were lampooned on the Daily Show last week. One of the faux-reporters doing a standup from Baghdad agreed to replace disturbing footage of wounded Iraqis and burning cars with innocuous graphs to make his report more palatable. Still, the graphs and charts do show low attack levels prior to the recent fighting with the Shia militias. A spokesman quoted in the U.S. military's release on the Baquba bombing today noted, "Although attacks such as today's event are tragic, it is not indicative of the overall security situation in Baquba." And that's one trend line that few Iraqis or American soldiers want to see change.

Which Iraqis Are Coming Home?

2008-04-10T15:04:51Z

While the rate of Iraqis fleeing their homes has been lower in the last several months than before, it still looks like only the biggest risk-takers or those with the shortest journeys are ready to bet on a return. They face tough conditions in their old homes--including poor services and low employment, but many say they feel safe.

A new report from the Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration (www.iom-iraq.net/idp.html), perhaps the best record-keepers of these things, says they have counted about 80,000 Iraqis (13,030 families multiplied by their standard six per family for 78,180 individuals) who have returned to their original neighborhoods from around Iraq or abroad. The report notes that these figures are likely the "majority" of those who have returned, but there's no comprehensive registry of these movements. So the real figure could be more than 150,000 – a sizable amount but just a fraction of the more than 3 million who have fled their homes or country since 2003. The bulk of the movement since 2003 came in 2006 with the escalation in sectarian killing.

The group interviewed 900 returning families. It's not a fully representative sampling of all returnees and there are some puzzling trends. For example, the number of returns for March, 2007, is much higher than any month before or after. But it looks like those coming back are probably the most fearless--they stuck it out longer in their homes and returned sooner. Here are some of the hints the survey offers about those braving a return to Iraq:

    --46 percent of those returning were only out of the country three to six months, meaning they had stayed long into the violence and came back amid the first indications that bloodshed was decreasing.

    --53 percent said they left for specific threats against them or the expulsion from their property. Others cited less specific worries, such as generalized violence, armed conflict or fear.

    --Only about 8 percent were returning from bordering countries, meaning most of are making the trip back from temporary homes in Iraq.

    --About 72 percent were Shiite Muslim Arabs and about 25 percent Sunni Arabs. Only one returning family of the 900 questioned was Christian, though Christians have fled the country in large numbers.

    --55 percent said they "consistently" feel safe in the places they went back to and 43 percent said they "sometimes" feel safe.

    --10 percent said the homes they fled are still occupied by others (the returnees are in their neighborhoods but not their original homes). Polls of those still displaced have shown about a third of them saying their homes were occupied.

    --About 76 percent said they have 10 hours or less of electricity in the homes they returned to, including 37 percent with two hours or less.

    --Of the married men who are heads of households, 48 percent said they were unemployed.

Decoding Al-Sadr’s Protest Politics

2008-04-08T22:00:07Z

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Getty Images
Iraqi men work to extinguish a blaze said to have been caused by a
U.S. rocket attack in Sadr City on April 8, 2008

Why has Moqtada al-Sadr cancelled his planned “Million Person” march against the U.S. presence in Iraq? Anyone who sees it as a sign of declining tensions between the radical Shiite leader’s Mahdi army and the American and U.S. forces would be wrong. Nor has al-Sadr’s decision to call off the April 9 protest done much to ease fears in a capital city that is still on the edge. The Iraqi government has ordered a curfew throughout Baghdad for Wednesday. Local residents hustled to buy bread and vegetables for what they fear could end up being an extended time indoors. In the Green Zone, the American Embassy told its staff to sleep in inside their large office building rather than risk rocket barrages in the flimsy trailers where they live.

Sadr’s protest plans are hardly new. The cleric calls annually for marches on April 9, the date in 2003 when U.S. troops drove into central Baghdad and the last vestiges of Saddam Hussein's regime dissolved. Typically, the demonstrations have had mixed success. They're always called with little time for preparation and have probably never reached a real million, in part because of active efforts to foil them. I remember walking in Firdos Square, where the Marines had yanked down the statue of Saddam, on the first anniversary in 2004. Sadr's Mahdi Army had just unleashed a violent uprising against American troops and was planning a march in the square. U.S. troops declared the area a closed "military zone," setting it off with barbed wire while a Humvee circled slowly, blaring heavy metal out of loudspeakers to the frustration of weary residents living along the route. Sadrists stayed away but their movement grew.

This time Sadr blamed interference as one of the reasons for canceling the demonstrations. In a statement Tuesday, he said government forces were blocking followers trying to get to Baghdad to join in. "The government is still under the occupation pressure and its deceiving policies, therefore it is trying to prevent the million-person annual demonstration," the statement read. He said he was calling off the march for the safety of his supporters. In fact, there have been three days of fighting in the stronghold of Sadr City and some of its entrances are blocked by wire and Iraqi security forces guard towers. He compared it to the way Saddam used to prevent movement. And, while calling off the march, he congratulated his supporters for their resistance: "Allah salutes your efforts, and jihad and resistance of the occupation who violated our lands and sanctities, killed our youth and elderly, bombed our cities and took over our territories." Late Tuesday, the government announced that the curfew would still allow for an anti-occupation rally in one square in Sadr City, providing a little relief valve--though the ban on vehicle movement will prevent many others from attending.

Sadr may be seeking to avoid, for now, clashes with security forces that would create the impression that his followers were at fault. Members of his Mahdi Army militia have just fought government forces to a draw in the southern port city of Basra. (The standoff prompted repeated questions from U.S. Senators grilling U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus in Washington on Tuesday.) But, as the cliché goes, Sadr knows he can win the battle and still lose the war. Each assertion of militia power also alienates conservative Shiite Muslims who look down on Sadr's movement as a power-crazed rabble. And the other Shiite parties in the government, led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, seem to be unified among themselves and in an alliance with powerful Kurdish factions in standing up to Sadr. That has opened the door for the Iraqi and U.S. military to press into militia areas and provoked the recent fighting in Baghdad, killing scores and causing hundreds to flee Sadr City for safer neighborhoods.

Sadr knows he is in a long-term power struggle with fellow Shiites even as Shiites in general crave unity. While those fighting against his militia wear government uniforms, they are largely loyal to rival Shiite parties in alliance with Maliki. It's as much about politics and power as it is about law and order. Maliki has made an unprecedented call for Sadr to disband the militia or risk having his movement disqualified from the local elections later this year. As things stand now, Sadr's partisans are expected to do well and the rival parties are expected to lose seats in those elections, which might take place by December.

The prospect of winning a sweep of southern governorships is a goal Sadr wants to preserve and he has to make sure his militia is not seen as the aggressor in an intra-Shiite war. Instead of just rejecting the call to disband the Mehdi Army (and no one who wants to be a player in Iraq wants to disband his militia), he said he would consult with high religious authorities who are backed by all the Shiites. Those consultations might go better for Sadr if the militia is not seen causing trouble in the streets. In the meantime, he threatens to end the general ceasefire he called for his militia to follow since August. So a pronouncement calling off the march will help him look like a peacemaker even if he's not ready to put down the guns.

One Basra Militia Leader Taken Down

2008-04-05T17:44:42Z

There's one less player now on the chaotic streets of Basra, where the Iraqi government and contending parties and gangs are scrapping for control of Iraq's oil-rich second city. Reports have emerged in the last couple of days that government forces have detained Yussef al-Mussawi, leader of a shadowy fundamentalist group, Thar-Allah–"God's Revenge." Newsweek wrote about Mussawi last October, describing how local warlords exert more authority than the central government. He worked from a compound on the edge of the city, surrounded by his heavily armed aides.

Government officials say he is behind a string of assassinations, including the killings of professionals and women, the latter apparently because they were not maintaining strict codes for modest dress and behavior. They also accuse Mussawi of ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. But some see the recent wave of arrests as an attempt by leading government Shiite parties to neutralize Shiite rivals.

Light-Up Saddam Available for Cheap

2008-04-02T17:00:39Z

credit: Larry Kaplow

Iraqis still nostalgic for Saddam Hussein--and you find them fairly often--have a secret way to sneak a peak at the old dictator. Cheap cigarette lighters on sale in his hometown Tikrit, apparently just in the last few months, have small flashlight projectors in the end that illuminate the leader in his classic poses. Point it toward a wall or the ground and you can see the strongman in his heyday, firing a pistol.

Stall owners selling the items say they come from "China," which could mean from anywhere in Asia. More innocuous models offer pictures of Iraqi soccer heroes.

Shia Tensions Provoke Fresh Clashes

2008-03-25T22:46:30Z

It looks like the ceasefire is off. After nearly seven months of standing down, Shiite hardline fighters from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army clashed with Iraqi security forces in Basra today. The reaction in Baghdad was almost immediate: the Green Zone was pounded with mortars or rockets throughout the day and at least one office of the rival Badr organization was torched. Clashes were also reported in Kut and a handful of smaller cities in the Shia-dominated south. By sundown, a curfew was in place in Basra, Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya and Sadr City to keep the violence from spreading.

The fighting comes as little surprise. For months, there has been a tense standoff in Basra between the Mahdi fighters loyal to cleric al-Sadr, the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) and the Fadhila party, an offshoot of the Sadrists. They have carefully carved out their turf: the Mahdi fighters have infiltrated the police force, the ISCI Shiites control a handful of posts on the local governorate council and the Fadhila party holds the Basra governor post and dominates the security forces which protect the oil fields, Iraq's largest. There are nearly half a dozen smaller militant Shia groups, like Jundallah, who also claim influence in the city. In the past year, the tension between these groups has repeatedly spilled over to street violence. And, after British forces withdrew from their base within Basra last December, it was inevitable that the militias would clash with the Iraqi security forces who replaced them. The latest reports indicate that today's fighting has left at least 15 people dead and dozens more wounded.

The fighting kicked off early on Tuesday morning and appears to have been well-planned: Prime Minister Nuri Maliki, along with the ministers of interior and defense, were on hand in Basra to oversee the operation. With the British taking a backseat role, the operation could be one of the first decisive battles to determine how well the Iraqi security forces can stand up on their own. According to Basra residents, Iraqi security forces moved into a handful of neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army, perhaps to set up small combat outposts similar to the ones American troops have built in hostile neighborhoods in Baghdad. Fighters quickly fanned out on nearby rooftops with AKs, RPGs and BKC heavy machine guns. Sharqiya TV showed footage of fighters with their faces wrapped in checked keffiyah scarves shooting mortars from city streets and running through alleys with sniper rifles. Baha al Araji, a prominent Sadrist parliamentarian, compared the government security operation to Saddam's crackdown on the Shia uprising in 1991. His boss, Sadr, issued a clear warning in a statement: "We call all Iraqis to strike as a first step and if the government doesn't respect the demands of the people we call for civil disobedience in Baghdad and other cities. Then we wait for the third step which comes when it is needed."

Dozens of Sadr supporters took to the streets of Baghdad earlier today in what was billed as a protest against the government's unfair crackdown on the movement. Some protestors carried signs that read, "No, no to government militias," a swipe at the rival ISCI and Dawa parties who dominate the security forces in the capital. Tensions have increased between rival Shia groups in the past week since a provincial election law was passed. The elections, scheduled for October, could redistribute the balance of power across the Shia south. "The ISCI and the Dawa parties are trying very hard to drag us into a confrontation with the occupation or the government forces," says Ali Mayali, a Sadrist parliamentarian who maintains that the movement's ceasefire is still in place. "The Sadr trend has been targeted since the beginning of the occupation. And now that the provincial elections are coming, the need to hurt us and our followers has increased. If legal elections would take place, the trend will prevail and they know that."

It's unclear how the fighting in Basra will play out but it is unlikely that the Mahdi Army, or any of the other militias in the city, will give up their turf without a tough fight. A fight that some city residents say is worth the cost. "I feel it is good for us to see the security forces cleaning the city from the armed groups," says Walid Abdul Hamid, a 31-year old medical tech in Basra. "I don't care if these groups are from the Mahdi Army or not. It is good to finish these fighters so we don't see them again in Basra."

With reporting by Iraqi staff

Are Rockets a Message from Al-Sadr?

2008-03-24T21:00:55Z

Khalid Mohammed / AP
Attack Aftermath: Smoke rises from the Green Zone

By Larry Kaplow

One of the most visible improvements in the security situation here in recent months was the steep, almost total, decrease in insurgent rocket attacks. That lull has now been shattered. As Shiite militias appear be backsliding on a ceasefire dating back to last August, rocket attacks have resumed, taking a deadly and ominous toll.

Multiple rocket barrages reportedly killed about 13 Iraqis in the capital on Sunday—a day that saw an estimated 58 Iraqis and four U.S. soldiers die in a spate of attacks nationwide. The Baghdad rockets were apparently fired toward the Green Zone, which is headquarters for the Iraqi government, the U.S. military and the U.S. embassy. But many somehow fell short and landed in neighborhoods outside the fortified area, killing Iraqis. Inside, as the embassy alarm sounded, two U.S. government employees, including an American citizen and a Jordanian, were seriously wounded, while about six others received medical treatment for lighter wounds, according to an embassy official. He did not know if others not working for the United States were injured.

Rocket attacks are one form of lethal communications by Shiite hardliners; this time they may be signaling that supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr are ready to resume violence to gain more political power. If so, the prize at stake would be local elections expected much later this year. Most governorships and provincial councils in the south are now controlled by the Islamic Dawa Party or the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) simply because these two Shiite groups entered the political process early on. Since then Sadr has become a surging grass-roots phenomenon. His supporters are expected to win seats throughout the south if and when there is a vote. But they worry about the very real possibility that the government parties will stall or rig the elections. Worse, they fear that the government parties could be trying to smash the Sadr movement before the vote.

Those fears were likely strengthened by a series of recent government raids on Sadr offices in the south. The militias may be pushing back. It’s always murky trying to determine whether those fighting are doing so with Sadr’s blessing. But a local newspaper reported Sadr spokesmen threatening a “disobedience” campaign against raids by Iraqi and U.S. forces. That call was for peaceful protest—like closing shops—but in the past Sadr disputes with rival Shiites have seen increased rocket fire at U.S. installations, presumably because the United States is closely allied to the mainstream Shiites. When they fire at the Green Zone, they rattle both the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

The push might be especially violent from those under the Sadr umbrella who have Iranian backing. Gen. David Petraeus, in an interview broadcast by the BBC Monday, accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of training and funding the Iraqi Shiite rocket teams targeting the Green Zone. (Some of Sunday’s other attacks, like the car bombs in Mosul and Baghdad, seem to be unrelated incidents carried out by Sunnis.) Rockets, by the way, are difficult to counter, since they can be fired by remote control or timers from homemade launchers—the triggermen long gone even before liftoff. In the same vein, military officials told NEWSWEEK that the roadside bomb that killed four U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi translators Sunday night—bringing the number of American service members killed in the war to 4,000—was the kind of sophisticated device preferred by Shiite militias and allegedly brought from Iran. (Another attack that killed three soldiers last week just north of Baghdad was a “deep-buried” bomb typical of Sunni insurgents allied with the Iraqi version of Al Qaeda.)

The rockets could be Sadr’s way of announcing that his militias will revert to the mayhem they’ve caused in the past if they don’t get their share of local power. The vote isn’t even supposed to be held until October and will probably be delayed beyond that. It’s looking to be a bloody campaign.

War Years Take Their Toll

2008-03-19T22:40:02Z

Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty Images
Residue of Conflict: A bombed building in Baghdad

He looked more than five years older, his face drawn and his once-considerable belly now barely noticeable. I think I was more thrilled to find him than he was to see me, there on the same street corner where we met in 2003 as American troops were pushing their way toward the capital from southern Iraq. But he did permit himself a crooked grin and to say, "I know you," in his stilted English as he turned toward me from the domino players on the little lip of sidewalk outside his small restaurant. The war years have been tough for Falah Hassan, and things are still too dangerous for an out-in-the-open talk with an American, so he led me back into his empty restaurant for a furtive chat.

The first time I met Hassan, I was talking to people on the street in central Baghdad about the approaching troops. He had joined in a group of men parroting the official line--that Iraq would turn back the invaders, that Saddam Hussein was a great patriot. I was with my Iraqi Ministry of Information minder at the time, and I remembered that Hassan had made a comment curiously open to double entendre, something like, "What else would we say?" About a week later, it was the morning of April 9, and U.S. troops were just outside the city, so close that the ubiquitous secret police were receding from the streets. I still had my minder but the minute Hassan saw me, he smiled and said he could finally speak freely. He told me that he had gone to jail years earlier for dodging the draft during the Iran-Iraq War and his brother had been killed by members of Saddam's extended family. The Marines hadn't set foot downtown yet, but it was at that moment that I knew the regime had truly fallen. I'd see him now and then as I passed his restaurant in my work. I ate there once or twice but then that got too dangerous for foreigners. I walked by one day and noticed him walking through his doorway with a Kalashnikov rifle--something that had become a fairly normal and legal tool of self defense for business owners.

There's been little public recognition of the anniversary in Baghdad or in local media. (Actually, for Iraqis the anniversary would be on Thursday since the first missiles struck a few hours after midnight local time March 20.) Hassan did not know until we reminded him that the date was anything special. Now in his mid-50s, it's been a long five years for him. He recounted the bombings that had narrowly missed his small grill--there were three on the same block over the years and he said they'd decimated his business. On the plus side, his family was safe. He had sent one grown son to live in Sweden and a daughter was studying in the university locally.

He started a lament about American mistakes in Iraq. "We have many people who did nothing but are in [American] prisons," he said, adding that on the street people believe the Americans are in a secret alliance with Al Qaeda to allow the bombings. That’s a fairly common conspiracy theory put forward amid frustration over the relentless attacks. "The Americans must be good with people, build their trust," he said. If they can't manage that, he said, they should leave the country. "They should go but not now," he said, saying U.S. troops--if they can correct their ways--will be needed for a few years more. He allowed that security has improved of late, as could be heard in the dominoes slapping down on tables outside. The games were going into late afternoon-much later than they were able during the mayhem taking place months ago.

As I sat on the plastic chairs, huddled over the table so my English would not be too audible, I thought about how it seems like we've all aged more than five years since 2003. Hassan was grayer and worn. I know I've lost a lot of hair and picked up the weight it appeared he'd shed. As it happened, when I returned to our office I flipped on CNN to see Gen. David Petraeus in an interview saying how he felt everyone--it’s not clear who he meant--had aged beyond the years that have passed. It's a matter of all the ups and downs, everything we've thought and relearned, the shocking attacks and affronts that happened so much they stopped shocking us.

The city shows its age too, its very topography changed with the roadblocks, blast walls, garbage heaps. Walls and street signs are plastered with the faded posters from elections filled with hopes that went largely unfulfilled. Posters, commissioned under the guidance of U.S. psychological operations specialists urge steadfastness with an almost Orwellian wishful tone: "Al Qaeda has no place to hide in Iraq," and "Iraq is big and our disagreements small."

Wanted: More Than a Band-Aid

2008-03-05T19:46:08Z

At first glance on a sunny day, Yarmouk Hospital looks like any medical center in the Middle East. But that impression only lasted until a woman in an abaya approached U.S. Army Maj. Amit Bhavsar, the division surgeon of the Second Brigade, 101st Airborne. Bhavsar was in the Baghdad facility to deliver one of a series of talks that he has arranged on topics like facial trauma and burn treatment. But just before he reached the lecture room, the mother showed him her son, a 2-year-old with disfiguring burn scars all over his back, neck and scalp that were causing his hair to grow in uneven patches. She claimed the injury was the result of an unspecified military operation and she begged for Bhavsar's help in getting her child the necessary treatment and medicine. The doctors at the hospital were unable to offer him either.

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Iraq Violence Stats Update

2008-03-05T01:37:17Z

These three charts provided to NEWSWEEK by the military last week give a rough idea of how the violence in Iraq today compares to other times during the war. The military still does not attach figures to the charts but it is more forthcoming with comprehensive trends--released in close-to-real-time--than it used to be.

This chart shows that weekly attacks are in a low, nearly four-month plateau with fewer than 600 attacks of all kinds across the country per week. Attacks haven't been down at those levels for a sustained period since about spring 2005 (and they surpassed 1,500 attacks a week back in June of last year), according to the military's information.

This chart shows violent civilian deaths down in January to just above 500 a month, the lowest figure in about two years:

The third shows Iraqi security forces and U.S. military deaths per month--with an uptick for U.S. deaths in January while Iraqi deaths dropped:

One Shiite Muslim’s Journey

2008-02-28T20:41:02Z

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala this year to celebrate Arba'inya, the end of the 40-day mourning period following the anniversary of the death of Imam al-Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad. Despite tightened security measures, which included the deployment of 40,000 security personnel, a suicide bomber managed to kill 40 people in Iskandariyah on Feb. 24. One of those taking part in the religious ritual, Jalal Abdul Aal, 41, who walked 70 miles from Baghdad with four friends, shared his recollections from the journey:

This is the first time I've gone on foot to Arba'inya. I usually go by car, but this year was special. I wanted to challenge the Wahabi Sunnis, who have attacked pilgrims in the past. At 7 a.m. on Monday morning [Feb. 25], I left Baghdad with four of my friends, Musa, Ahmad, Muhammad and Basim. We took some bottles of water and carried the picture of the Imam, Al-Hussein, and two flags, one green and one black to honor him. There were thousands of pilgrims filling the streets toward Karbala, and tents set up everywhere along the road to feed us. Some handed out cans of Pepsi and slices of cake. Others prepared rice and soup for us to eat and tea and water to drink. I heard from those who walk on foot every year that it is a good idea to drink lots of water and tea and take [medicine] for headaches and ointment for your feet. Every couple of miles, we rested and prayed. Basim, who we call Mr. Funny, told lots of jokes.

It took us three days to reach Karbala. I was tired, but it was nothing compared to what our Imam did to save our religion. He is the symbol of sacrifice, and we need him now to save our country from these hard times. It was not easy for me to keep going, but if you saw those old people and kids walking with the souls of fighters to continue all the way to Karbala, you would feel the power inside you to do the same.

Sometimes we sung along the way to ease the tension in areas like Iskandariyah. Because it was dangerous, we had to stick to the road and stay close to other pilgrims. We tried to talk most of the time to make it pass quickly. My feet hurt so much, I had to rest every hour. At one point Basim started to seem tired and stopped being fun. I asked him why he was not saying anything, and he answered that he would tell everyone I was a Wahabi if I do not shut up. Musa said that he was going to tell the soldiers that we were all wearing explosive belts. We laughed and tried to sing some more and tell each other jokes.

On Wednesday night, we arrived to Karbala. It was raining and cold, and we could not find a place to spend the night. Most of the hotels we tried to get a room at were full with pilgrims from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. We knocked on the door of a house and asked if they could host us for the night, but it was full too. Basim joked that it was an omen that God was not going to accept our trip. We laughed. The people in the house gave us two blankets, so we slept on one and used the second to cover ourselves.

In Karbala, everything was black. The streets were decorated with black clothing and black flags. All the people were wearing black, even the children and the old men and women. All I could see was black. Everyone was weeping and singing religious songs, and the crowds made it very hard to move around. Can you imagine what it looks like to see seven million pilgrims all doing the same thing? I felt the soul of the religion there. Arba'inya means a lot. It is an opportunity to renew our oath to Imam Al-Hussein to follow his path. It is also an opportunity to tell the Wahabis that whatever they do, no one can prevent us from going to visit our Imam. I hope that next year there are 20 million pilgrims because all the Sunnis turn Shiite. Just kidding.

─As told to Silvia Spring and Hussam Ali

Avoiding Ahmadinejad

2008-02-26T20:18:47Z

Atta Kenare / AFP-Getty Images

From Tehran to Baghdad: Ahmadinejad
will visit the Iraqi capital in March

So far U.S. officials say they won't be attending any events during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's planned visit to Baghdad March 2. And the Iranian president might make it easy for them to avoid the awkwardness of bumping into each other in the Green Zone–-say, at an embassy "Salsa Night" or the "Liberty" pool. Iraqis planning the itinerary say that their guest has asked to stay outside the fortified area in a riverside compound belonging to his official host, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Ahmadinejad is expected to sleep over one night and hold meetings with Iraqi officials, maybe sign an agreement or two, and hold a joint press conference with Talabani. Naseer al-Ani, director of the Iraqi Presidency office (remember, there's a president and two vice-presidents from the different ethnic and religious factions) told NEWSWEEK the plan now is to not rely on any U.S. assistance for security or other logistics–-though that could change.

A U.S. Embassy official said that America will offer any logistical help the Iraqis request–-as the Americans have when other dignitaries have visited. Iran and Iraq share a long border and many common issues and interests, so the embassy is treating it as a routine summit between two heads of state–-though the other neighboring rulers haven't dropped by yet. Given that Iraq has traditionally had bitter relations with all its bordering nations–-Turkey is currently invading the north–-Iran is probably the friendliest neighbor to Iraq's Shiite-led government and its Kurds, if not for its Sunni Arabs).

A remaining question is whether there are any guarantees that U.S. troops won't spoil the party by arresting Ahmadinejad–-as they have other Iranian diplomatic guests who they accused of funneling assistance to anti-American forces. Al-Ani, stunned into momentary silence when asked about this, said, "I don't know what to say. It can't happen," Yeah, probably not. After all, the Iranian president has already visited New York for a United Nations summit and made it out safely. He should be able to thread his way through the western contractors and U.S. troops surrounding the Baghdad International Airport.

No Snow, But Weather Glitches Complicate Travel in Iraq

2008-02-19T19:58:10Z

It's dust storm season in Iraq and the unruly weather is knotting up the vital helicopter travel in ways that rival the effects snows have on North American commercial aviation. Over the past week there has often been an ugly slate sheen on the skies, with low-visibility, winds that whip the palms around and the fine sand that leaves cars, windows and plants with a thin coat of beige. You can smell and taste the dirt, even inside.

True, in Iraq they don't make you sit for hours in your helicopter waiting for take off like a big airliner might, but things can get inconvenient or even interfere with military operations. It was five years ago during the invasion that the march of U.S. troops toward Baghdad was briefly suspended for dust storms. Tonight we can tell from the unusual silence around the capital that the helicopters that support troops on the ground have been grounded for hours.

One of the similarities between interruptions in helicopter travel here and airline travel in the United States is that passengers rarely know what's going on--though it seems somewhat more excusable in a war. Last night NEWSWEEK colleague Silvia Spring and an Iraqi photographer were headed to embed with a Marine unit in western Iraq. Their "show time," the military equivalent of a check in time, was 9:30 p.m. (flights usually leave an hour or two later). She was skeptical they would make it out. When they arrived to the helicopter landing zone inside the Green Zone--an expansive pavement with a few hangers and a trailer for a check-in office--it was the quietest she'd ever seen. The benches outside, usually packed with soldiers and their gear, were empty, and the small indoor office and waiting area were also quiet. The white board used for tracking flights was wiped clean of schedules, and scrawled across it was "ALL FLIGHTS ON WEATHER HOLD." They were told that they wouldn't know for sure that their delayed flight was canceled until 4 a.m.

It was time to settle in for some satellite television. Appropriately, a cop movie called "Murphy's Law" came on. At least it had Arabic subtitles so our photographer could follow along. The desk manager told Spring, "If it was an Army flight, I'd tell you to go home right now . . . But with the Marines, you never know." One of the three soldiers still hoping for flights had already taken the only US Weekly in the pile of old magazines, leaving a September issue of NEWSWEEK. At 12:30, the desk manager put "Casino Royale" in the DVD player. Just after 2 a.m., salvation came in the form of a new weather warning that would almost surely ground all flights the following day as well. She could at least come back to the bureau for some sleep.

I was in a similar jam at an Army base in the Iraqi north last week. Soldiers on patrol were keeping track on their radios for whether they could count on helicopters to keep an eye on their routes or evacuate them if injured. I heard about other reporters in limbo at various bases or, for those at air bases, being wait-listed on airplane flights that were also getting packed with stranded would-be helicopter fliers. Some were waiting days. My flight out was in doubt.

Two generals, including Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a senior Army spokesman, came to visit the small base. They ended up getting grounded for the evening. That meant I had to give up my guest trailer for them and move into a small wood shack with a bed and some piles of boxes – and a good heater, fortunately. But it was all worth it. In the morning I was able to hitch a ride with Bergner back to Baghdad, who had extra seats (they were talking about bumping someone for my other route out). On arrival, the landing pad was crowded with soldiers and contractors trying to score a flight amid a short break in the weather.