November 28, 2009

Iraqi journalists speak out

The crowd was not large, but given the fact that a gathering of outspoken Iraqi journalists is an obvious target for violence here in Baghdad, and that the Muslim world is currently celebrating the Eid al-Adha religious festival, the crowd was large enough.

The scene was Baghdad's Firdos Square, best known to Americans as the place where Iraqis, in a televised event we later learned was stage-managed, pulled down a huge statue of dictator Saddam Hussein after U.S. troops occupied the city in April 2003.

There was nothing stage-managed about today's gathering--a demonstration in response to the near-fatal shooting five days ago of Imad Abadi, a well-known television anchor known for his criticisms of politicians and parties of every stripe, his crusades against corruption, and his aggressive defense of press freedom. Abadi, 36, was wounded in the head and neck, in what the nonprofit group Reporters Without Borders said was clearly a target shooting. He remains in intensive care at a Baghdad hospital.

Investigative journalism is a new phenomenon to Iraqis, and reporting is a dangerous profession. Hundreds of journalists have been killed since 2003. (And, of course, there was no independent media under Saddam's rule). But after talking with a few of Abadi's colleagues and admirers at Firdos Square, I felt their might be hope for the future--at least in the long-term, if not the near-term.

They were eloquent, even without pen and paper, or script and camera.

Abraheem al Khayat, spokesman for Iraq's union of writers, said Abadi had become so outspoken that friends had warned him to be careful. Khayat made an allusion to the silencer presumably on the intended assassin's weapon. "It is a silencer that is required to silence the voices of outspoken people," he said.

Asked whether Abadi was expected to survive, he said: "Maybe he will live, but he cannot work. Maybe he will live, but he will flee" the country.

I asked Muntasar Buzaid, who is affiliated with a private group that defends press freedom, whether he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of journalism in Iraq. "I have a little of both," he replied immediately. "Now, I am writing with an alias. For me, it will be a milestone when I can write what I want to write using my own name."

Mohammed Ali, a photographer who works with Abadi, spoke for journalists the world over devoted to their craft. "This is our line of work," he said. "We have only one life. I'm a journalist. What can we do? Should I become a farmer?"

Given their bravery, I felt more than a little ashamed that I could spend only 25-20 minutes at the protest because Western reporters, due to security concerns, are advised not to linger in public places too long.

November 21, 2009

North of the "border"

Flew up from Baghdad to the northern Iraqi city of Suleimaniyah this afternoon, crossing the "border" between Arab Iraq and Kurdish Iraq. There is of course, no border there - Iraqi Kurdistan is part of Iraq, de jure if not always de facto.

You have to show your passport when you prepare to leave Baghdad International Airport and again when you arrive in Sul-y, as some people call it for short, even though it's an internal domestic flight. In Sul-y, there are no pictures of Arab politicians. The face of Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president and head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, and of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, are much in evidence.

We drove into the city, down well-lit avenues with nice shops and restauarants. After three weeks in Baghdad, I marveled at the lack of checkpoints and armed, at least publicly armed, men. It's like a different country. The Kurds would like it to be, and frictions between Kurds, Arabs and other minorities have made volatile "disputed areas" out of a belt of territories between Kurdistan proper and the rest of Iraq.

As we arrived near our downtown hotel, we had to get out and walk 30 yards or so because the road was torn up by construction. The key word here is "construction." I must have counted a half-dozen construction cranes on the drive into the airport, in various stages of building apartment buildings and other structures.

What a contrast. There is no construction worth mentioning in Baghdad. Trash piles up in the street. Roads are blocked. Despite the emergence of some normal life since the worst violence of 2005-2007, the city still has a stultifying feel, mixed with lots of edginess. The only construction I noticed of note in Baghdad is a huge building that I was told will be a guest house under the control of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his succesors. It, of course, is in the protected Green Zone.

I feel sad for Baghdad, a proud city of immense historical importance. But for tonight, it feels nice to be able to walk down city streets like a normal person.

November 18, 2009

It's raining in Baghdad

I woke last night to the sound of thunder, as Bob Seger used to sing, and whether it was an explosion, I sat and wondered.

It wasn't. It was a precursor to rain. Rain! It doesn't precipitate much in Baghdad, to say the least, and the cool drops brought a welcome change. The temperature dropped, the air cleared, the dust settled. People seemed to smile just a little bit more. At least I did.

The rain started Monday evening and continued, off and on, through the day Tuesday and into Wednesday. Puddles formed. Raindrops pattered. Steps became slippery.

What's the big deal with a little rain, you ask? Baghdad gets an average of 2.7 inches per year, according to this website. (I've tried to do the centimeters-to-inches conversion for you, dear reader). The average rainfall for July is: zero. The weather here tends to be unchangeable, deadeningly predictable, in fact. It's burning hot in summer; dry, sunny and dusty the rest of the year. Winter, which is just setting in, brings cooler temperatures, occasional clouds and, like Monday and Tuesday, a bit of rain. It actually snowed, just a dash, here in January 2008, the first anyone can remember.

The rain this week was the longest continuous rainfall in recent years, my Iraqi colleagues say. It was especially good news for Iraq, which has been suffering under a years-long drought. It has harmed the date industry, one of Iraq's main agricultural exports, and sent water levels dropping.

Like virtually everything else in Iraq, the storm drainage system doesn't work very well, especially on little side roads and alleys. Large puddles collected in the middle of roads. Some, even in a protected compound where parliament members and other VIPs live, smelled a bit, well, odiferous.

I didn't mind too much. It rained!

November 15, 2009

The other war: fighting corruption in Iraq

November 17 update: Transparency International today released its 2009 version of the Corruption Perceptions Index. Iraq moved up slightly in the rankings, from 178 to 176 out of 180. The other country where tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops are deployed, Afghanistan, was at 179. The United States ranked 19th.

TAJI AIR BASE, Iraq--Iraqi Col. Waleed Khadem Aboub had a typically local solution to the rampant problem of corruption in his country. "Every month, if they execute somebody in every (province) who steals Iraqis' money, I give you my word, nobody's going to do that," Aboub boomed from the back of the class during a question-and-answer session with the American visitor.

"If you hang him up in the street, no one's going to steal again," he concluded.

Corruption has become pervasive in post-war Iraq, from the small bribes that Iraqis must pay to get papers stamped and cases attended to, to the millions allegedly bilked by senior officials. Iraq's former trade minister, facing allegations that his relatives had received hefty kickbacks from import contracts, was arrested in Baghdad airport in May after the aircraft that was taking him out of the country was turned around.

Corruption was exactly what Ambassador Joseph Stafford, anti-corruption coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, wanted to talk about. At the invitation of MNSTC-I, the military command responsible for training up Iraqi security forces, I joined Stafford for a Thursday morning visit to the Iraqi Counter-Insurgency School at Taji. The school was established in 2006 with U.S. assistance.

Stafford got a fair and polite hearing. He spent about an hour in the office of school's commander, Col. Ahmed Salim Jessem, and then spoke to a class of 32 Iraqi brigade and batallion commanders going through a three-week counter-insurgency course.

The colonel said he believed that ethics were an important part of officer training, but that his chain of command didn't always agree on making it a priority.

Indeed, it was clear that the Iraqi army has a lot else on its mind these days. Iraqi security forces increasingly are taking over from the U.S. military, with serious questions about how ready they are to fill the gap.

In rooms near where Stafford spoke to the class, preparations were underway for a major two-day computer simulation later in November in which large numbers of troops move in to Baghdad to help secure national parliamentary elections scheduled for January. In the simulation, and in real life, they'll have to learn how to coordinate with local civil authorities; protect infrastructure; deal with aggressive journalists; and respond to bombings or other outbreaks of violence.

"We're training them now for the important time, which is the election time," Col. Salim told Stafford.

He was open about problems with the Iraqi army. He said its image among the Iraqi people is much improved from years past, when officers were called "double agents" for working with foreign troops. But, he said the army was rebuilt "in a rush" after the United States disbanded it in 2003. Now, he said, many officers who were loyal to late dictator Saddam Hussein have rejoined. "They are back in the army. And they work like invisible hands."

U.S. military officers and contractors working at the school say the Iraqi military, while improved, still has a long way to go.

As the United States turns the "battlespace" over to Iraqis, often "they don't know what to do," said Army. Lt. Col. Patrick J. Christian, an American advisor to the school.

"Are they serving the population? Are they protecting infrastructure? Do they even know what infrastructure to protect? Are they protecting IDPs (internally displaced persons)?" Christian said, adding that the force lacks the "corporate management" that is second-nature to the American military.

Back in the classroom, Stafford, a former U.S. ambaassador to The Gambia, spoke in Arabic to the Iraqi officers and heard lots of complaints about corruption. Even in the military, one student said, it's necessary to pay a small bribe to get yout papers processed in an hour instead of, say, three days. 

Stafford told them he sees more and more media reports of Iraqis investigated for corruption. And he explained steps the goverment of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, with U.S. help, is taking, including establishment of inspector generals in every ministry and yearly finance reports.

"Maybe you'll say this is a small thing, it's not important," he said, according to the translation. "But in my evaluation, it's a movement forward."

In an interview afterwards, Stafford said the questions he received made clear the Iraqis' recognition "that Iraq has a way to go in terms of a strong anti-corruption regime." But, he said, "they've also taken some important steps."

The private group Transparency International last year ranked Iraq 178 out of 180 countries in public perceptions of corruption, ahead of only Burma and Somalia.

U.S. officials say the study fails to account for steps Iraq has taken recently to establish institutions to battle corruption. They point to a study by another group, Washington-based Global Integrity. That study put Iraq in the lowest category, but on a par with another major Arab country, Egypt, and ahead of Morroco.

November 10, 2009

These are a few of my favorite signs

Well, this is no doubt old hat to my veteran journalistic colleagues here in Baghdad, not to mention diplomats, aid workers, contractors and, most importantly, Iraqis themselves, but first impressions are important.

I know 40 or so words of Arabic, so here in Baghdad, my eye is naturally drawn to any English-language sign that one happens to see. And one happens to see a lot, because moving (rather, trying to move) around Iraq's capital means spending endless hours waiting at checkpoints, moving through checkpoints, cursing at checkpoints. One of my Iraqi colleagues likened the whole business to a real-life version of the "Tomb Raider" video game.

Naturally, this leaves a lot of time to look at the warning signs posted everywhere. I mean, a visit to the heavily fortified international enclave known as the Green Zone (the rest of Iraq, every bit of it, is known as - you guessed it - the Red Zone) can mean a dozen ID checks, four pat-down searches, removing the battery from your cell phone(s), an airport-type luggage scan, maybe even a sniffer dog. The guards are Iraqi, Peruvian, or Ugandan, the latter employed by the security contractor Triple Canopy.

The Ugandans somehow manage to import and retain their infectious African smiles to this dusty, barricaded city. "You live in the Red Zone?" one female guard asked me incredulously yesterday. "Is it safe?" I gave the only reply I could think of in a moment's notice: "Inshallah." God willing. It's an Arabic cliche, made more poignant by the capriciousness of life in Iraqi circa 2009. 

On our way to an interview at the heavily guarded Independent High Election Commission (IHEC) today, an obvious terrorist target since it will organize and conduct January's national elections, I encountered a security firm I had never heard of: Blue Hackle. They have nice polo shorts, with cool logos.

OK, back to the signs. Deadly Force is Authorized doesn't even phase me anymore. It's like the electricity that goes out every 90 minutes. Freaked me out at first. Now I just listen for the generators to kick in. Ten days in Baghdad will do that to you. Deadly Force is About to Be Used would probably get my attention.

But what about No Long Weapons Allowed?? I saw that sign at IHEC. Presumably, pistols and sawed-off shotguns are OK? How about a cross-bow? Poison blow-gun?

There are plenty of admonitions in the vein of "wait here," "do this," "don't do that," "don't even think of using your cell phone here." But I thought Do Not Enter or You May Be Shot was a bit direct, impolite even.

Near Nisoor Square, where in September 2006, employees of U.S. security firm Blackwater killed 17 Iraqi civilians (case still in court, last I checked), there is a sign that, belatedly perhaps, lays down the law to private security contractors. It tells them to slow down their vehicles, use No Sirens and that, if they fail to comply, they could have their driver's license, or even their company's operating license, revoked.

The notice announcing that everyone will be searched Females Included was a bit superfluous, I thought, since everyone is searched, repeatedly.

But I guess the prize goes to the sign that reflected that worst of American imports, the cheerfully insipid alliteration that is meant to inspire in corporate cubicles 'cross country: Polite, it read. Professional. Prepared to Help. Prepared to Capture Criminals.

PS: Don't Even Think of Parking Here.

November 06, 2009

Baghdad, plus 7

It was a shock today to see Saddam Hussein's old Ministry of Information, on the West side of the Tigris in central Baghdad. In more recent times, the building has been known as the headquarters of the Baghdad Provinical Council. Until October 25, that is, when the building was shattered in one of three massive suicide bombings that killed 155 Iraqis.

It's been seven years since I've been to Baghdad--I don't count two quick in-and-out visits in the protective bubble accompanying secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in 2004 and 2006 respectively--and the city is utterly transformed, both physically and in less obvious ways. In between, there's been a U.S. invasion, an insurgency, unspeakable violence, and Iraq's halting attempts at democratic politics. A lifetime--several lifetimes--in other words.

The idea of a terrorist bombing against a government building in dowtown Baghdad was virtually unthinkable under Saddam's regime. There was violence aplenty, to be sure, but almost all of it emanated from a single source--Saddam--who slaughtered Shi'ites, gassed and displaced Kurds, and jailed, tortured and murdered anyone deemed to be even a remote threat. Such was Saddam's cult that it used to be said that you could not be in any public place in Iraq without seeing his image somewhere. And, I can tell you, it was damn near true.

The pendulum between chaos and dictatorship is one that is all too familiar to the modern Middle East. It's been either the strong-man dictator or the failing state. Today, as 2009 edges toward a close, Iraq seems to be flailing about somewhere in the middle--closer to disorder, with authoritarian tendencies revealing themselves quite a bit, and with Iraqis trying to see if they can make democratic politics work. The latter is no sure bet.

And the blocky white Ministry of Information building--imagine a really ugly government building a tad in the old socialist style, and you got it--is evidence that Iraq's state remains anemic. One end is buckled and mangled from the explosion. Terrorists, probably from Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI), have been systematically targeting the pillars of government, and are expected to keep doing so.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Information Ministry, although I can't imagine why. It was the place where the few Western reporters in Saddam Hussein's Iraq would go to get the endless permissions needed to operate in the country, and find a local assistant/translator and driver (who doubled as spying eyes for the regime) to work with. (I don't blame them. They had no choice). For the privilege, we handed over large sums of U.S. hard currency and waited endlessly, smoking cigarettes (I smoked backed then) in the dingy press area.

One thing hasn't changed in 7 years. America's attention wavers. While the United States still has 120,000 servicemen and servicewomen here, and has invested enormous blood and treasure, it's hard to find Iraq on U.S. TV screens or newspaper front pages unless there's a terrorist spectacular. In December 1998, I was in Baghdad covering President Bill Clinton's four-day bombing campaign, called Operation Desert Fox, in response to Saddam's refusal to allow full U.N. weapons inspections. In the middle of this huge event, what did we see on CNN as we sat, waiting, on the Information Ministry's first floor? The Clinton impeachment debate, and the suprise admission by Republican House Speaker-elect Robert Livingston that he, too, had had an extramarital affair.

August 03, 2009

Ten Lessons Learned from War

Forty years ago last week I landed in Vietnam as a soldier.

I covered the war in Iraq for the last six weeks as a correspondent.

Bookends.

Several volumes between them -- a dustup in Belize with Guatemala; South Korea's street fights for democracy; the Persian Gulf War; the L.A. riots; Somalia; Bosnia; Kosovo; Iraq last year. Not a large library. Some of them more CliffsNotes than books. But they've all left their mark on me, the way some songs, novels, photographs, paintings and poems haunt you.

The U.S. military leaves formal footprints behind in a war. They're called "lessons learned" and "after-action reports."

This is a personal after-action report.

In the Editor's Note to our Merced Sun-Star's 2007 Special Report, "The War Comes to Merced," we quoted Plato: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." That's Lesson No. 1. As I've found over four decades, from carrying a rifle to carrying a pen, war will always be with us.

Young reporters, like our Corinne Reilly, who twice has covered the war in Iraq in sterling fashion, can count on a war coming along sometime during their careers. Fewer, it seems, want to bear battlefield witness today than my generation and earlier ones did. But if some Twitter dude or lady blogger wants to don the battle-rattle, good on 'em. It'll make them better journalists. And Americans need someone on the ground, watching and listening for them in the most important decision any human society ever makes.

Lesson No. 2 is that we Americans don't learn from our mistakes. Vietnam was a mistake. This war in Iraq was a mistake. We'll get out of it with fewer than the 58,257 dead from Nam. And the Iraqis probably won't lose 2-3 million, as the Vietnamese did. But we won't leave behind a functioning democracy or even, over time, a U.S. ally. As with Vietnam, the so-called leaders who sent our young people across the seas to fight failed to understand both the enemy and the nature of the war.

Lesson No. 3 is that few of those leaders will ever have to pay the price of their folly. The 4,300-plus American dead, 31,000-plus American wounded, hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis have paid the cost. But not the McNamaras or the Bundys or the Cheneys or the Wolfowitzes or the Johnsons or Nixons or Bushes. They get medals and money. The ones who made the ultimate sacrifice get lost in the pages of history. Five of their names are carved in granite at Courthouse Park in Merced.

A learning curve leads to Lesson No. 4. By the time I got to Vietnam, America knew it was losing. The late Walter Cronkite had called it "a stalemate" the year before I stepped onto the tropical tarmac at Tan Son Nhut Airbase. Americans don't do stalemates. Before Tet in '68, American soldiers and Marines -- like those in Gen. Hal Moore's and Joe Galloway's book, "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" -- believed in their mission. By the time the guys in my company landed there, all we wanted was to get home alive.

Lesson No. 4 is that from the Persian Gulf War onward, the quality of soldiers -- and that includes all branches of the service -- has gotten better each year. The volunteer army has produced smart and brave studs, male and female. Each trooper I met over the last 18 years impressed me more each time. From technology to leadership to commitment, the modern American soldier is somebody we can all be proud of.

My dad taught me the next lesson. It may seem to contradict No. 4, but they're opposite sides of the same coin of our realm. National service should be mandatory. My dad said people shouldn't get to vote unless they'd performed two years of national service. Like him, I don't think it has to be only military service. But every able-bodied, able-minded youngster over 18 should be made to serve the country in a way that helps our society. Lesson No. 5 is that the same virtues and values I've found in young soldiers can be applied to peacetime problems right here at home. Sign 'em up and watch what happens -- to our crumbling bridges; to our weak grade schools; to our understaffed hospices; to our trashed national parks.

Another two-sided coin for Lesson No. 6. Take care of our casualties. All you patriots with the bumper stickers and yellow flags and Old Glory on a pole outside your house -- when's the last time you visited somebody in a VA hospital? Or sent a CARE package to troops in harm's way? Or told somebody in uniform, "Thanks for your service"? Or wrote your congressional rep or senator and told them to vote for more money to take care of veterans? Or voted them out if they didn't?

Side two is the Iraqis. We've taken in a grand total of 20,000 out of 2 million Iraqi refugees, let alone the millions we killed, hurt, uprooted and ruined. We need to do as good or better a job with Iraqi refugees as we did with Vietnamese, Hmong, Lao, Cambodians, Bosnians, Somalis. We owe them. I know three personally we can help. Contact me and I'll put you in touch with them.

Lesson No. 7: Obama is making the same mistake in Afghanistan that Bush did in Iraq. It's called "the graveyard of empires" for a reason. We can't fight our way to victory in a land that sucked in and spit out Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union. A couple of excellent counterinsurgency manuals give us blueprints on how to contain al-Qaida, the Taliban, the takfiri Muslims who violate the precepts of the Koran by killing nonbelievers of their warped creed. Launching Hellfire missiles into Afghan wedding parties ain't in either manual.

Vote the rascals out. Or don't vote for them in the first place. Lesson No. 8 is maybe the easiest to learn. War is a team blood sport. It takes both the executive and legislative branches to declare and to wage. We pay for both, in KIA/WIA/MIA, tax dollars and moral stature in the world. Vote for women and men who understand that war should be the last resort of a democratic republic -- not the first.

Lesson No. 9 is like unto No. 8. Teach your children well. Parents, teachers, coaches, Scout leaders, clerics -- all of you charged with instructing our kids should also talk with them about war. Helping them understand better about war is at least as important as teaching them how not to have babies, multiplication tables, the two-handed chest pass, a bowline knot and whether angels are real.

Finally, Lesson No. 10. I'm done. I'm not leaving my home in Merced except for vacation. No more will I walk to the sound of guns. This was my last war. I would not trade what I've learned and felt for gold or fame. Covering wars has let me make friends for life. War has shown me the face of evil -- and the heart and soul of courage and loyalty and honor.

But it's over for me. Now it's for memories and dreams. And for younger reporters.

Thus endeth the lessons.

                                                                                   --Mike Tharp

Endstate: Win or Lose? Was It Worth It?

Endstate.

That's the U.S. military's strategic term to describe their "commander's intent" --their goal -- before they leave Iraq in 2011.

For most Americans, the fancy word will help answer two key questions: 1) Did we win or lose? 2) Was it worth it?

Three tours in Iraq -- six weeks this year, six weeks last year, 100 hours in 1991 with "visa" provided by the sappers of Fort Bragg's 37th Engineer Battalion -- don't make an expert. But there are several reasons to try to answer, even with limited expertise, those questions.

Five reasons are the names inscribed in granite at Merced, California's Courthouse Park, the Mercedians who died in Iraq. Other reasons include the vets who came back whole, more or less, to live and work among us. They returned home with scars and wounds, mostly inside, that they never talk about but carry with them every day.

The Twitter Generation, the Thumb Tribe -- kids today in high school and below -- need answers because they'll be the next to go to the next war. Finally, there's you -- Mercedians and other Americans who are paying for this war and the one in Afghanistan. Paying money most of you can't afford. Money that could be spent well here. You'll pay it if you believe it has been spent to make you safer.

To answer the two questions, we need to look at Iraq now and over the next 28 months. At the end of 2011, U.S. troops must leave Iraq, under terms of last year's Status of Forces Agreement, unless the government of Iraq asks them to stay.

One important measuring stick, especially if you live in Iraq, is the level of violence. It's been falling for almost two years. Each week, 60 to 80 Iraqis are killed and a couple hundred wounded, but U.S. KIA/WIA have dropped to their lowest point since the 2003 U.S. invasion. (In June more Iraqi civilians were killed than in any month over the past year.)

The drop-off in dead and maimed has continued after the historic pullback of U.S. combat forces from major Iraqi cities on June 30. That bodes well for Iraqis and Americans alike, if it can be sustained.

The violence metric -- another military term of art -- suggests that the insurgency which brought Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007 is losing. But only if you look at the insurgents as a monolith, as were the Viet Cong. They are not. They are tribes still fighting centuries-old blood feuds. They are Shia, who see their chance to run a country surrounded by Sunni-led regimes (except Iran). They are Sunni, outsiders now after dominating Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And they are Kurds, the ancient Indo-European millions who live in a crescent encompassing Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and feel displaced wherever they are.

All of them have buried fire extinguishers filled with ammonium nitrate. All of them have forced their neighbors of a slightly different creed to leave their homes in the dark of night at the point of a gun. All of them have attacked and killed one another -- and Americans.

So is the insurgency losing? Parts of it are. Parts of it, such as al-Qaida in Iraq, are regrouping, biding their time, keeping their IEDs dry. They're waiting to see what the Iraqi security forces do. And what the Americans do, or don't do.

Shia gunmen are lying low. For them, things couldn't be better. They control the government, the security forces and the Americans are leaving. For Sunnis, there's a lingering fear that as Americans withdraw, Shia groups like Jaysh al Mahdi will return to sectarian violence. The Kurds fear their loss of autonomy.

Most Sunnis believe faith-based slaughter won't happen again because so many Iraqis are just plain tired of violence. But they also worry they'll be discriminated against by the government and security forces when the Americans pull out. The issue is whether they can tolerate this discrimination.

Some already have given their answer: No. There was an uptick in July in Sunni-related violence by Jaysh al Islami, the 1920s Revolutionary brigade and outsiders. On the ground, where the questions will be answered, it's clear that the government of Iraq is serious about the new "no Americans in cities" orders. Several U.S. patrols have been turned around, says a soldier who used to go out on them. Unless a patrol is with one of the new Transition Teams, which include Iraqi forces, or unless Iraq's Baghdad Operations Center greenlights them, Americans are confined to their perimeter bases. "Logpack" or supply convoys can move on their own from midnight to 4 or 5 a.m.

Some Americans, especially those who served earlier tours when they were the Jolly Tan Giants and could run passenger cars off the roads, don't like the new rules. "If some higher-ups are trying to get around them (the rules), it's because they are used to having their own way," says this soldier. "Arrogance, in my very, very quiet opinion."

Another American soldier in Baghdad says that "most combat units, where I am, are spending time training. No one is sitting idly by. No one wants to be caught with their pants down and are training to keep from getting too complacent." Hashim Ammar, a 31-year-old government employee, speaks for many Iraqis about the June 30 handover of security to Iraqi forces: "I feel the situation is a little bit better, but my hope is not to see them (Americans) in Ir aq at all." Most Iraqis want us gone.

For all the soccer balls handed out to Iraqi street kids by American grunts--the "soft power" the best analysts say is required for a successful counterinsurgency--nearly every Iraqi has been touched by American "hard power." Nearly every Iraqi knows someone who has been killed or wounded by an American. They see Americans as occupiers. They want the occupiers out.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, the strongest leader since Saddam, must balance all these competing domestic interests, plus the U.S., plus Iran. So far, he's done better than most anybody would have predicted. One sheikh who's dealt with him described him as a man holding a pen with all eight fingers and two thumbs. "Can this pen ever write anything useful?" he asked.

But let's say, as author Tom Ricks does in his latest book, "The Gamble," that we're only about halfway through the Iraq adventure. That means men and forces we don't even know about today can influence or determine Iraq's destiny.

After eight years of Bush administration bluster about missions accomplished, and eight months of Obama's vaporous hope and change, it's best to remain skeptical about official pronouncements.

But it's clear that Iraq is now at a crossroads, a tipping point. Iraqis are in charge. Americans are leaving. Can tribal sheikhs control sectarian violence through the traditional blood-money compensation system? Can they reconcile past and present grievances before they spin out of control, as happened two years ago? Can Maliki's administration keep the Kurds from seceding in the north? Can it keep Iran's influence benign?

Historically, says one American army officer, "The hardest part in winning any battle is conducting a successful pursuit to exploit an unexpected victory. The first step is recognizing when is the time to begin the pursuit. Is it time to begin the pursuit?"

Some bright people are optimistic. Iraq's ambassador to the U.S., Samir Sumaida'ie, said in June that he was. "Iraq will come out right," he told a conference sponsored by the Center for a New American Security. "The alternative is just too awful to contemplate -- a collapse, a failed state." Retired Gen. Jack Keane told the conference that Iraq "wants a relationship with the Iranians, to be sure -- but they want to be an ally of the United States of America." And however patchy elections in Iraq have been, the nation remains the only elected Arab Muslim government in the region. John Nagl, president of the center and a former infantry officer, believes the Iraqi army and federal police "are a good foundation on which to build."

Twelve weeks plus 100 hours in Iraq lead to this answer: Unless the military foundation laid by the U.S. become the framework for enough stability to jump-start Iraq's non-oil economy, the endstate will be too awful to contemplate. With 30-40 percent joblessness among young Iraqi men, burying a bomb for $300 looks like a good deal.

Sometime in 2007 one of McClatchy's Iraqi Baghdad reporters had to cross checkpoints at both ends of a bridge across the Tigris River. Guards at one end asked drivers and passengers if they were Sunni. If they were, they were killed or disappeared. At the checkpoint at the other end, the question was, are you Shia? If they were, the result was the same as at the other end of the bridge.

Sometimes the guards at each end were the same men.

They were killing for money.

So to answer the first two questions, a third one must be posed: "Is this what victory in a foreign counterinsurgency looks like?" asks the American officer in Baghdad. "We've been involved in this war for so long that for many people, it's simply hard to imagine what victory looks like." The last time the U.S. won a foreign counterinsurgency was in the Philippines in the early 1900s, so the officer adds, "Nobody is quite sure just what victory looks like in this type of war."

Will it look like Iraq under Saddam when he was defanged by sanctions and inspections, a threat to nobody outside his borders? Will it look like Lebanon, with religious factions running their own rigged games? Or Iran, with a nutty political figurehead, rising middle-class and boisterous young people still under the thumb of black-turbaned mullahs? Or Israel, another Middle Eastern political theocracy, except Iraq won't have Israel's nuclear weapons?

Somebody once said the commonest form of human stupidity is forgetting what we set out to do.

1) Did we win or lose?

2) Was it worth it?

Historians will answer both questions with far more information and perspective on which to base their judgments.

As of today, based on 12 weeks plus 100 hours, the answers are:

1) A draw.

2) No.

That's the endstate for both Iraq and America. 

                                                                                        --Mike Tharp

July 18, 2009

The Command Post of the Future

The Command Post of the Future isn’t. I

It’s already here, today. Up and running.

And it’s one of the main ways U.S. forces in Iraq are performing their “assist and support” role for their Iraqi counterparts since June 30. That’s when the new security agreement kicked in, and U.S. combat forces withdrew to perimeter bases from major Iraqi cities.

(The “combat forces” designation is curious at best, misleading at worst. In the six years of this war, cooks, drivers, clerks and medics have all been attacked—mostly by homemade bombs—and nearly everybody in uniform has had to be a trigger-puller at one point or another. “Major cities” raises another question mark, one answered so far by strategic ambiguity.)

In any case, the “Onstar option” is now policy, except those who answer the Iraqis’ radio calls are armed with M4 rifles, up-armored vehicles and missile-equipped helicopters. So far, though, the Iraqis haven’t felt much need to call Americans, preferring to rely on their own army, the newly named federal police and checkpoint cops. “They get the fight. They get the lead. We’re here to support,” one American officer acknowledged.

Exceptions: U.S. medevac helicopters can fly to help Americans in trouble anytime. And the double-secret-probation Special Forces can still run around the country on their Ninja ops without Iraqi clearance. Supply convoys travel at night with a green light from the Iraqis.

Other commanders and grunts may feel like Maytag repairmen, all dressed in up in battle-rattle and no place to go. It all seems part of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s effort to cast himself as a nationalist first, a Shiite second, in the run-up to January elections. In a televised speech the night before the new orders went into effect, for instance, he didn’t even mention American troops.

A few days later he told Vice President Joe Biden thanks but no thanks when Biden offered to intervene to help break the political logjam in parliament. In-fighting has stalled progress on such key issues as Kurdistan’s efforts at self-rule in the north, a bill on how to divvy up the petroleum pie and a national census to determine just who is an Iraqi, anyway.

Maliki’s stance comes during a spike in violence. In the week ended July16, 94 Iraqis, not counting insurgents, were killed in 31 “significant incidents”; 30 to 80 KIA constituted a typical week in recent months. Baghdad witnessed the highest number of bombings of any week this year.

Back in the Command Post of the Future, the now base-bound Americans continue to march. In front of their laptops, six or seven soldiers sit around a long three-sided wooden table, watching an array of video screens on the wall that any Hollywood producer would envy. Most of them show real-time images of earthbound and aerial surveillance of the outfit’s area of operations. A “battle captain,” who may be a noncommissioned officer, runs the show.

The commander sits at the right corner where two tables meet and reads a “story board” prepared by his staff. It lists in words, photos, graphs and charts all the incidents over the past several hours that have happened in the neighborhoods for which he’s responsible. During the night, for example, if an eye in the sky—a helicopter, blimp, unmanned aerial vehicle or satellite—saw suspicious activity, the soldiers in that room would alert the unit closest to the scene. That would be in the story board.

Maybe guys digging on or near a road. Maybe a rusted-out beater that looks abandoned. Maybe a fast-moving BMW, favored by suicide bombers. Maybe a group of gunmen loitering in a neighborhood where a family of a different faith has just resettled. Maybe an insurgent painting a wall with a death threat for “collaborators.”

Now Iraqis as well as Americans get to share in that intel. Since June 30, Joint Security Stations have surrendered to Joint Operations Centers. Americans and Iraqis don’t quite sit cheek to jowl, but only a doorway separates the Americans’ superior sigint--surveillance technology--from the Iraqis’ superior humint--human intelligence gleaned from knowing who lives in an area, who’s a stranger, who’s a pimp, who’s a tattle-tale.

One typical swap for a 24-hour period might go like this: eight searches; 11 weapons confiscated; one family resettled; no detentions. Iraqi operations officers from both the army and police would get glossy-paper pages in Arabic, most of them with color photographs of cars that might be used by insurgents.

Some of the Yankees’ data remain low-tech but useful: info from sniffer dogs and metal detectors.

Like the FBI with the mob, informants have become crucial to both sides. Say a guy tips off an Iraqi cop about another guy he thinks is assembling bomb-making materials. Good lead. But then a local militiaman threatens the tipster. The Americans and Iraqis have to figure out how to protect their informant so he can testify in front of an Iraqi judge so the judge will issue a warrant for the supposed bomb-maker and the Iraqi cops can arrest him.

Warrant-based prosecution is the flavor of the month to help prevent political arrests and brutal treatment of detainees.

This is a case when the Command Post of the Future can step in and use its hidden cameras to track both the suspect and the informant. In sharing the intel, the U.S. give the Iraqis “tear lines,” readouts that don’t show how the Americans got the info. Classic protection of sources and methods.

Two technical glitches slow the process. One is that Americans are digital, the Iraqis mostly still analog. Basic e-mails can be complicated. The other is that Iraqi units sometimes don’t communicate with one another. That means the Americans have to get on the horn and tell one Iraqi commander what another is doing. Even that gets confusing.  The Americans might call a road Route Irish, the Iraqis Shari al Matar--the highway to Baghdad International Airport.  A lot of streets don't have any names at all, and many neighborhoods lack address numbers.

Politics can also interfere with a righteous bust. Maybe an Iraqi cop, after weeks of meeting informants and getting surveillance pictures from the Americans, is ready to make his move on a bad guy. But when he goes to get the warrant, he learns that the target has “wasta,” influence, with somebody with clout in one of the parties or a high-ranking officer. “That will happen more when the Americans are out of Iraq,” predicts one noncommissioned police officer.

More Iraqi federal police headquarters and other stations are now equipped with CCTV cameras, like the closed-circuit monitors all over Britain. One recent afternoon, color flat screens showed the popular Mansour shopping district from a dozen angles.

On the day itself when the Iraqis took over, a U.S. captain on patrol in his Humvee looked around the corner into the new future. “Now that our time is running out,” he said, “we can focus on equipment and maintenance, as well as continuing our partnership (with the Iraqis). If we’re not going out and conducting missions, we’ll still stay sharp with training in classrooms. We’ve got a lot of good leaders who’ll make sure the soldiers stay vigilant.”

And there’s always the Command Post of the Future.

                                                                                            --Mike Tharp

The World's Largest Cemetery--and a Rice Farm

We drove 234 miles Thursday, round-trip from Baghdad to a village south of Najaf, to interview rice farmers. Along the way we passed the world’s largest cemetery.

Millions have been buried there for a thousand years. The cemetery takes up several square miles in Najaf. There’s a shrine dedicated to Imam Ali, the first of 12 imams revered by Shiite Muslims. Mohammed was orphaned and was brought up by his grandfather, Abd al-Mualib, who died two years later, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. He was then placed in the care of Abu Alib, Mohammed's uncle and the father of Ali, Mohammed's cousin. Later in life Mohammed would repay this kindness by taking Ali into his household, the reference book says. 

Ali was assassinated, according to Shiite theology, in the Kofa mosque in Najaf, the first capital of Muslims in the early years after Mohammed’s death. He was killed in a dispute over some of the earliest arguments about Islam.

Because of their belief in his martyrdom and teachings, millions of Shiites over the centuries have asked to be buried near the Gold Mosque, as it is now called. Behind waist-high tan and gray brick walls stretch mile after mile of graves. Most are topped with a simple brick or concrete structure the size of a dollhouse. Others stretch to the size of a small cabin. People leave flowers and candles and burn incense at the sites.

Outside the walls is a literal cottage industry, small home businesses that wash the bodies, drape them in white cloth and otherwise prepare them for burial. Many family members are buried together over the years. Each ceremony costs about $500.

As a Shiite stronghold, the area became a battleground two and three years ago when sectarian and other kinds of violence peaked. Sunni insurgents, for example, are suspected of bombing a Shiite mosque that killed 180 people in the province.

Today, thankfully, the burial business is slow, or at least normal, because of the decline in deaths and maiming countrywide. So says Assan, a man in his 20s wearing a gray dishdasha, the collar-to-ankle robe favored on hot days by Iraqi men. “A few years ago, it was always busy,” he recalls.

The whole route south, it seems, was once a killing field. In the first town south of Baghdad, Mahmoudiya, up to 15 car bombs slaughtered hundreds. Farther south at Latifiyah, many more Shiites were shot in front of their families, beheaded, their children smashed against walls.

(Shiites, of course, have conducted similar brutality against Sunnis over the last six years, which thrust Iraq into a civil war in 2006-07.)

Today, small-scale fenced-in soccer pitches with artificial turf sit empty as horse-drawn carts clomp on the highway’s shoulder. Orchards of dusty date palm trees are popular because they don’t die and their clusters of dates can be easily cut down. Small pickups hold beds filled with sheep or a single cow. Other cows graze on unfenced land, a lot of it reeds. Skinned lambs hang from outdoor hooks in shops. The Euphrates River snakes across the highway about 60 miles south of the capital.

 On the outskirts of Najaf, we have to detour a half-mile north, then drive back to a busy intersection. That’s so the tightest security inspection yet can be done on cars and IDs. A tin outhouse the size of an old-fashioned phone booth is gravity-powered.

Streaming the other way, south to north, are thousands of pilgrims. Many walk, most in sandals not facing the traffic, while carrying green and black flags. They’re headed to Khadimiya Shrine in northwest Baghdad. That’s the mosque honoring another imam sacred to Shiites, and two to three million people are expected to visit it on July 18. They’ve come from Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and all over Iraq. After the ceremonies, they get to take buses and cars home.

About 20 miles southeast of Najaf, in a village flanking a channel of the Euphrates, we find our rice farmers. We spend two hours listening to conversations about agriculture that would be familiar in Merced or Modesto or Topeka—except these have been going on for 5,000 years.

Anthropologists and archaeologists believe humankind’s first efforts to grow crops started in these parts, Mesopotamia, the Land Between Two Rivers (the Euphrates and Tigris). Two older farmers, one 85, the other 67, complain about the government, the weather, the usual list of gripes when men and women who make their living from the land get a chance to vent to outsiders.

It’s reassuring and familiar to find that the human element transcends distances and differences. Laith, our reporter, interprets as we sit barefoot on carpet runners against the wall in a tiled room. They serve us bottled water, and everybody drinks from the same glass. I kiss the farmers on both cheeks as I shake their hands goodbye, just as they have done to me.

Lunch is lamb burgers and Pepsi at a place in Najaf with our two drivers and three local men who had helped us find the farmers. We each get a bottle of water labeled “Bash.” I’m bringing that home.

On the way back to Baghdad, we stop at a wooden stand selling handmade Iraqi baskets. I’m a basket freak (some of you would say “case”), so I buy a flat one the size of a medium pizza with red, green, purple, blue and straw colors for me and one for Laith’s mother.

Driving on, we pass two wild and crazy wedding caravans—cars draped in flowers and bunting, horns blaring, one dude standing in the sun roof taking video; more pilgrims; and 27 army or police checkpoints—seven fewer than on the trip down.

It’s good to get out of the big city. To see the world’s largest cemetery. And to visit with men who get their hands and feet draped in mud for their kids.

                                                                                                 --Mike Tharp