Iraq analysis

[Al-khiyal]

Fifteen wounded in Baghdad blast

BAGHDAD, July 4, 2009 (KUNA) -- Up to 15 people were wounded on Saturday when a booby-trapped car exploded in southern Baghdad, police reported. An Iraqi police source told KUNA that the booby-trapped car was detonated in Al Doura district, southern Baghdad. The source said that 15 people suffered wounds of varying severity, adding that all had been taken to hospital for treatment. The condition of some was said to be critical.

[Al-khiyal]

Si la violence ethnique reprend en Irak,
Washington menace de se désengager

Dimanche 5 Juillet 2009 -- Le vice-président américain Joe Biden, en visite à Bagdad, a menacé vendredi ses interlocuteurs irakiens d'un désengagement politique du pays si la violence confessionnelle ou ethnique reprenait en Irak, a indiqué à la presse un haut responsable américain. M. Biden, qui a rencontré dans la soirée le Premier ministre Nouri al-Maliki, a affirmé que si “la violence reprenait, cela changerait la nature de notre engagement. Il a été très direct sur ce point”, a affirmé le haut responsable à la presse. “Si, en raison des actions de différentes parties en Irak, le pays devait replonger dans la violence confessionnelle ou tomber dans la violence ethnique, alors ce n'est pas une chose qui nous permettrait de rester engagé car ce ne serait pas dans l'intérêt du peuple américain”, a-t-il ajouté. Interrogé pour savoir s'il s'agissait d'une menace, le responsable a affirmé : “Cela est une description de la réalité.” “Des quantités énormes de sang ont coulé, des ressources ont été dépensées pour aider l'Irak à se relever. Nous voulions que cela arrive, mais il n'y a aucune volonté de recoller les pots cassés encore une fois si, par l'action de certains, l'Irak devait s'effondrer”, a insisté le haut responsable. Le responsable a reconnu que Washington exerçait une “pression” sur Bagdad. Mais, a-t-il estimé, cette menace “crée une importante motivation” pour les Irakiens. Selon lui, les responsables irakiens sont d'accord sur les problèmes à régler en priorité pour stabiliser le pays, comme l'intégration de toutes les composantes ethniques et confessionnelles dans le processus politique et le statut de la ville de Kirkouk (Nord). La question de Kirkouk est liée à la répartition des richesses pétrolières : la “Constitution” kurde, qui devrait être ratifiée fin juillet, stipule que la province multiethnique de Kirkouk doit être annexée au Kurdistan, ce que le gouvernement central rejette fermement. “Le président (Barack Obama) et moi-même sommes heureux du long chemin parcouru par l'Irak depuis un an, mais la voie menant à la paix et la stabilité est encore difficile. Ce n'est pas encore fini”, a affirmé plus tôt M. Biden à des journalistes après l'entretien avec M. Maliki. “Les Irakiens doivent prendre des mesures politiques et utiliser le processus politique pour résoudre leurs différends et faire avancer leur intérêt national”, a ajouté M. Biden. Il a assuré que les États-Unis “restent prêts, si l’on nous le demande, à aider dans ce processus”. Il a également qualifié le retrait des troupes américaines des villes irakiennes, le 30 juin, “d'étape très importante sur le chemin d'un Irak stable, sûr et autonome”. Le Premier ministre irakien a de son côté estimé que le retrait américain des villes “confirme la crédibilité des accords” signés avec les États-Unis. “Ces accords sont fidèlement respectés”, a-t-il insisté, en référence à l'accord de sécurité signé en novembre dernier qui a ouvert la voie au désengagement total des forces américaines en 2011.

[Al-khiyal]

Sandstorms plague Iraq and are getting worse

BAGHDAD, July 5, 2009 — Shamal. Accented on the second syllable, that means the ill wind that blows in summer across Iraq, and other countries in the region, stirring sandstorms in its wake. Vice President Joe Biden found out late last week what 25 million Iraqis have known for a long time-everybody talks about them, but nobody can do anything about them. His chopper flight from a U.S. base to the International Zone was canceled when a shamal turned the skies over Baghdad and beyond the same color as Biden's khaki desert boots. He wound up donning body armor and a helmet for a caravan to his meetings with Iraqi leaders and others. Several NFL coaches visiting troops in Iraq also found their plane to Kuwait delayed a day.

That same storm still hovers over the capital. It coats parked cars in a tan frosting. It seeps under windowsills and doorways. It grits the teeth and stings the eyes. It clogs rifles and etches scrimshaw across sniper scopes. And it kills people. Three in Diyala Province this week, where 800 others were hospitalized with breathing and related ailments. Dr. Jeleel al Shammeri, head of the health department in Karkh in west Baghdad, said 13 major hospitals and 84 clinics had received several thousand patients over the last two days, many of them children. Dr. Ali Bustan, head of the health department in Rusafa in eastern Baghdad , said ERs had taken in 800 to 900 patients since Saturday night. "Thank God, we have not run out of medication," he said.

Sandstorms pose diplomatic as well as medical and weather problems. Baghdad negotiators are locked in a battle with Istanbul over how much water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers - which start in Turkey - its neighbor is willing to release to the southwest for Iraqi farms and factories. A lack of irrigation water has caused thousands of acres of agricultural land to dry up. Just this week, the government signed an agreement with an Iranian delegation to limit such "desertification."

Sandstorms and their duststorm cousins are nothing new in these parts, of course. Iraq averages only 4 to just over 6 { inches of rainfall a year. The Sahara Desert, which is the size of the United States, is just a short jet stream hop to the west. Iraq itself is half desert.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the shamal causing the storms combines two separate weather systems. One is a sub-tropical jet stream pushing north from Arabia, the other a polar jet stream shoving south from Europe . When they meet, they form a northwest wind that fills the sky with sand and dust. Two of the ancients' elements, earth and air, become one. Gusts can reach 50 miles an hour. Sometimes, as happened last year and much more often in recent years, the sandstorms balloon into fronts tens of miles wide, maybe a half-mile high, that blot out the sun. For days. Or, in recent years, longer.

Evidence is mounting that today's sandstorms are worse than in the past. Ibrahim Shareef , head of the desertification department in the Ministry of the Environment , notes that dusty days like Saturday in Iraq used to total only about eight times a year. Now it's one or two days a week. Like other experts, he blames a five-year-long regional drought and urban expansion into areas that once grew crops. "Military operations also have had some role," he adds, "as their vehicles travel across our deserts and to some extent remove the upper crust of sand."

U.S. Air Force meteorologists at Multi-National Corps Iraq say trends from last year till now "show a significant increase in the occurrence and duration" of sand and dust storms compared to 2003-07. "The sandstorms here are not the high-powered, sand-blaster clouds of fast-moving gravel and grit like in the movies," says Air Force Capt. Noah Rich , a meteorologist. "They are more like a fog of extremely fine dust powder that hangs in the air and gets into everything."

The director general of counter-desertification in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fadhil al Faraji , says it's trying to establish grazing stations in western deserts, set up large nurseries to transplant greenery in the deserts and build oases. However, "it will take decades to complete all these projects," he says. "There is no hope to stop these storms but for the drought to end."

The 1991 Persian Gulf War's saturation bombing destroyed much of Iraq's electric power generation. Families in Fallujah , for example, were forced to cut down trees in and around their city for fires to bake bread. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, electric power in Iraq has been intermittent at best, non-existent at its worst.

Today's sandstorms visit hardship on ordinary Iraqis almost like a biblical plague. Vendors now peddle cloth medical masks at traffic circles. Jassim Chiad, 46, bought one. "They're worse than in the '80s or '90s," he says of the brown haze that restricts visibility to a few blocks. "We don't have electricity, so we can't stay home. We haven't had running water for a week."

Rahgad Qassim, 32, a partner in Anaqty (My Elegance), a shop that sells colorful cloth for robes and veils, thinks the sandstorms have hurt business. But she sees the glass as half full - even of sand. "Thank God for the storms," she says. "No car bombs."

[Al-khiyal]

Baghdad rejects Biden's offer on national reconciliation

Baghdad, July 5, 2009: The Iraqi government spokesman publicly rejected the American vice-president's offer to help with national reconciliation, saying it is an internal affair. Government's spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh's comments on Saturday were in response to an appeal Joseph Biden made a day earlier for Iraqis to do more to bring the country's deeply divided factions together and his offer of U.S. help. Biden also warned on Friday that U.S. assistance may not be forthcoming if the country reverts to ethnic and sectarian violence.

Al Dabbagh said on Iraqi state TV that "the political situation won't accept that the United States intervenes in an internal issue, whether that issue is reconciliation, relations between various Iraqi groups or between the [self-ruled Kurdish] region and Baghdad."

Meanwhile, Biden spent the Fourth of July with his son and other American troops in Iraq on Saturday. Biden took a break from politics and presided over a naturalisation ceremony for 237 U.S. troops from 59 countries in a marble rotunda at one of Saddam Hussain's former palaces at what is now Camp Victory, the U.S. military headquarters on the western outskirts of Baghdad. He then had lunch with the 261st Theatre Tactical Signal Brigade from Delaware, to which his son, Beau, belongs. Biden's unusually long three-day trip to Baghdad, which began late on Thursday, was aimed at fostering political reconciliation after U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities as part of a security pact that calls for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.

"The U.S. administration is concerned about the absence of progress on some political issues in Iraq and this is clear," Al Dabbagh added. "But the Prime Minister [Nouri Al Maliki ] said that these are internal issues and it is the Iraqis who will handle the matter and the interference of non-Iraqis in these issues will create unnecessary complications and problems."

Nouri Al Maliki is trying to use the U.S. withdrawal to build support before January 30 general elections and his spokesman's remarks were likely aimed at an Iraqi public impatient with the American presence. But they also signalled a growing assertiveness by Iraqis as the US dominance in the country wanes with its pullback of troops. Al Maliki's office also said the Iraqi government is committed to the national reconciliation process but excluded Saddam's ousted Baath Party, saying "it is responsible for the destruction inflicted on Iraq".

It was Biden's first visit to Iraq as vice-president and as Obama's new unofficial point man on Iraq, although he has been to the country several times as a senator. Biden planned to fly to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq later on Saturday, but the trip was cancelled due to heavy sandstorms. Biden's visit and his new position overseeing the U.S. administration's Iraq policy reflect growing concern about a recent rise in violence after a series of bombings that killed scores of people.

[Al-khiyal]

Obama warns of difficult days in Iraq

Washington, July 5, 2009: President Barack Obama warned on Saturday "there will be difficult days ahead" in Iraq and said the U.S. will remain a strong partner to Iraq for its security. Obama, speaking to military families at the White House for Independence Day festivities, praised Iraq's independence and thanked troops for their service. Because of the courage, capability and commitment of soldiers who have served in Iraq, the country is now "taking control of its own destiny", he said. "Iraq's future now rests in the hands of its own people. As extraordinary an accomplishment as that is, we know that this transition won't be without problems," he said. "We know there will be difficult days ahead. And that's why we will remain a strong partner to the Iraqi people on behalf of their security and prosperity." The White House invited about 1,200 military families to attend the Fourth of July gathering on the White House South Lawn. Obama told the service members they were "the latest, strongest link in that unbroken chain that stretches back to the Continental Army".

[Al-khiyal]

Insurgent attacks kill 2 in Iraqi cities of Mosul and Baqouba

Baghdad, July 5, 2009: Attackers targeted police patrols in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, killing a police officer with a grenade and injuring 14 people in a car bomb blast, authorities said. Separately, bombs in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, killed one civilian and injured 14 others, police said. The attacks highlight how the two cities remain hubs of insurgent activity despite big security gains in Iraq. American troops completed a withdrawal from Iraqi cities on June 30 ahead of a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011. In Mosul, police and medical officials said one officer died and six other people, including two police, were injured in grenade attacks. The 14 people injured in the car bomb included two police. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

[Al-khiyal]

3 Iraqi troops, 2 police shot dead in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, July 7, 2009: Three Iraqi soldiers and two policemen were gunned down at a security checkpoint in Baghdad, the worst such incident since U.S. combat troops left the city, a defense ministry official said yesterday. The attack occurred just before midnight on Sunday in the western district of Al-Khadrah, which was an Al-Qaeda stronghold at the height of Iraq's deadly insurgency in 2006 and 2007. Iraq's 500,000 police and 250,000 soldiers are now in charge in cities, towns and villages, while most of the 133,000 U.S. troops remaining in the country are based outside urban areas. In the run-up to the U.S. pullback on June 30, Iraq witnessed its highest death toll in 11 months, with 437 people killed according to government ministries. U.S. President Barack Obama, who opposed the 2003 war ordered by his predecessor George W. Bush, hailed the U.S. pullback as an "important milestone" but warned of difficult days of bloodshed and violence ahead.