The International Herald Tribune reported last week that the US is turning security control over the Anbar Province to Iraqi security forces.  As you may remember, Anbar has been a violent area in the past, once serving as a stronghold for Sunni insurgents.  This is a big development for the both countries, as Anbar is the first province bordering Baghdad to be turned over to Iraq.

BBC reported Thursday that a US jury acquitted a US ex-marine charged with voluntary manslaughter and assault during a 2004 battle in Falluja.  Other marines had claimed to witness Jose Luis Nazario kill two prisoners while their house was being searched, and further, ordered two marines to shoot two other unarmed prisoners.  Nazario was acquitted when the marine witnesses refused to testify. 

Muqtada al-Sadr, influential Shi’a leader, indefinitely extended a ceasefire last week.  In a written statement, Sadr claimed that anyone in violation of the ceasefire would no longer be considered part of his militia, the Mahdi army.  Instead, he is urging his followers to peacefully protest each year on the first Friday of Ramadan until US forces leave.  He did not, however, specify if his militia would disarm. 

The BBC also reported last week that a group of Nepalese citizens are suing the US company KBR for human trafficking.  One man and the relatives of 12 others claim that the firm recruited the men to work in a hotel in Jordan.  However, their passports were later seized, and they were told that they would have to work on a US Air Force base in Iraq, providing menial labor.  12 of the men were kidnapped and killed by Islamic militants, and the 13th was still forced to work at the base against his will. 

Iraq has signed an oil deal with the China National Petroleum Corporation worth up to $3 billion.  The New York Times reported Thursday that this is the first major Iraqi oil deal with a foreign country since 2003.  However, the contract still needs to be approved by the Iraqi cabinet.  This is considered an extension of a 22-year deal signed in 1997 under Saddam Hussain, and Iraq is slated to provide some security for Chinese workers.  The contract further states that China will be paid in money, not oil. 

Finally, I leave you with the newest edition to the Baghdad Bureau blog from The New York Times.  Anwar Ali, an Iraqi journalist for the Times, describes his experience traveling in and out of Iraq.  While Americans are hearing that security conditions have drastically improved, this blog entry shows that this may not be the case.  I’m still not sure what to believe about safety for Iraqi civilians. 

Good news!  Iraq will be going to China next month, and sending four athletes: a men's rowing double, a discus thrower and their sprinter, Dana Hussain (their archer may also have the chance to compete, as long as his spot is still available after entries are completed by other countries.)  USA Today reports that the IOC cleared the Iraqi athletes late Tuesday after the government's promise to uphold their assigned National Olympic Committee.  CNN states that Iraq will be able to hold their own election for a new national committee as late as November, 2008.  Because of the missed deadline last week, a few athletes will not participate, however, all media outlets are reporting that Iraqis are thrilled to be able to compete in China.  “We look forward to seeing the Iraqi flag in Beijing,” said IOC President, Jacques Rogge. 

Bush has agreed to “a general time horizon,” as The New York Times announced last week.  Many believe this is due to the pressure from the Iraqi government regarding a future US military presence in the country.  Unfortunately, we can't celebrate just yet, as the Bush Administration continues to be vague on the matter.  However, some of this decision will rest on Iraqi military capability, and the White House has stated that further troop reductions could come with increasingly better conditions.  Some officials claim that Iraqis should be taking charge of security by 2009, with a complete independence from the US by 2012.  Senator Obama responded to the news by saying it's ”a step in the right direction,” but believes the Administration is still being too vague.  Senator McCain continues to back Bush, stating that the timeline is proof of the success of the surge. 

After the bombing and riots in Kirkuk on Monday, which left 51 dead and over 250 injured (The Washington Post), Iraqi lawmakers have called for a special session to discuss disputes over the city, as reported by USA Today.  Kirkuk, an oil-rich and valuable area, has long been fought over by Arabs, Turkomen and Kurds.  The Kurds currently hold most of the power on the provincial council, and current tensions are coming from a new law that would require equal seats for all three groups.  Another aspect of this problem, and one that has been plaguing Iraq for many years now, are the Kurdish claims to Kirkuk as being a part of their semi-autonomous region.  However, Turkomen and Arabs, along with the rest of the Iraqi population, want to keep Kirkuk and its oil fields under central control and contributing to Iraqi finances.  The bombing, which attacked Kurds protesting the bill, set off sectarian violence on Monday as the Kurds then rioted at a Turkoman political site, blaming them for the attack. 

Here's an interesting op-ed by Fouad Ajami in today's Wall Street Journal. An ardent supporter of the Iraq war since the beginning, Ajami harshly criticizes Scott McClellan's accusations towards the Bush administration. He also says, “With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.”

Another piece in the Christian Science Monitor by Monica Duffy Toft argues that Iraq's civil discord is, at its core, religious. She points to the Shi’ite-Sunni divide, and the intra-Shi’ite rivalries that this blog has chronicled. She goes into more detail about the possible end-games for how the majority Arabs could be able to unite, but in the end, she says, “The idea of victory versus failure is really a false dichotomy, however. The real choice for US and British policymakers is between the more costly failure that will obtain from current policy and the less costly failure that might obtain from a well- thought-out and well-executed withdrawal.”

This video is a few days old, but it's still very interesting. Thank you to Robert Nolan of FPA for pointing this out to me. It's several of our beloved news anchors such as Katie Couric and other NBC anchors discussing Scott McClellan's accusations that the media did not do their job in properly asking enough questions of the Bush administration. Ms. Couric points out that the White House Press Secretary told an executive producer at NBC that they didn't like the 'tone’ of the interview that Couric had conducted, and that the White House would block NBC's access to the Iraq war. Couric, in the video above, refers to this as ‘insidious pressure’. I would say that's more than just ‘insidious’ pressure, Katie. That's astounding and disgraceful.

A recent article by Steven Simon in the Foreign Affairs journal is quite an interesting read. It can be read here at RealClearPolitics.

The main points of the article are as follows:

• There should be a distinction made between the Iraqi Sunni insurgents who are nationalists and Al-Qaeda members who poured in from foreign countries at the start of the US invasion. Initially it was a ‘marriage of convenience’ as Simon put it, but eventually the two factions broke off from each other. This was mostly due to the fact that AQ had hijacked the nationalist movement and advance their leadership of the Sunni movement (of Iraq) in general. When AQ created the Islamic State of Iraq to separate and isolate the Sunni movement, the Sunni nationalists balked. This political isolation from the rest of Iraq would cut them off from the oil revenues (by cutting them off from the central government) and also spur the secessionist aims of the Shi’ites and Kurds.
• The surge, as enacted by the United States, has revitalized tribalism by empowering sheikhs and other tribal leaders. This allows them to contest state authority and therefore weakens the central government in Baghdad. The United States has not brought the tribes into the fold properly.
• The US arming of the Sunni tribes has been perceived by the Sunnis as the US re-empowering them and restoring them to their former supremacy. Once they realize that reconciliation means different things to them than to the Kurds and the Shi’ites, they may well turn on the US.
• “Public commitment to a phased withdrawal” by the US may draw the international community to truly help stabilize and bring Iraq forward. Such a commitment where the international community engages in multilateral efforts not overtly “stage-managed” (as Simon puts it) by the US could have the influence needed to revitalize top down political dialogue.
• A remedial effort may be to hold provincial elections as soon as possible to to solidify tribal leaders empowered by the US and bring them to connect with the federal government in Baghdad. Most of all, the tribes must be “weaned” off of US support and have them fully dependent on Baghdad as their source of support and patronage. This is vital in subordinating the tribe to the state.

The article makes several good points, and has a good argument for troop withdrawal although it's still very risky. I agree with the point that short term stability in Iraq is no indicator of the long term or even near term future. It can be argued that the lull in violence is pretty much over as of 2008.

If anyone has scanned the great cartoon depictions of the Sunni/Shi’ite/AQ/US timeline, please let me know. I looked on the Foreign Affairs website and couldn't find them. The drawings are great visuals of how the sectarian violence has progressed and the US’ involvement in the mix.

The New York Times has a great piece on the dismissal of 1,300 soldiers and policemen in the wake of the Basra offensive. Stephen Farrell writes that there have been revelations “more than 1,000 members of the security forces had laid down their weapons during the fight“. There were a multitude of reasons behind the refusals to fight: basically, it is impossible to say that all of these policemen and soldiers were on the sympathetic to the Mehdi Army (although some invariably were). The highest rank dismissed was brigadier general, according to the report.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (a remarkably quiet NSA when compared with his predecessor) has joined the chorus of voices from the Bush administration condemning Iran's influence in Iraq. According to Hadley, “I think that one of the interesting developments of Prime Minister Maliki's offensive in Basra is that it has revealed to the Shia, particularly, in the Iraqi government, the level of Iranian malign influence in the south and on their economic heartline through Basra”. He was speaking on Fox News Sunday (a full transcript of the interview is available here).

The video I’m posting is of the Iraq Town Hall that was put on by the Foreign Policy Association, last week in New York City. The panelists are Dr. Fred Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in defense issues and the US military. He is a military historian and taught at West Point. Dr. Richard Norton is a professor at Boston University in international relations and anthropology. He's a retired Army Colonel and also taught at West Point. The moderator is Dr. Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the  Center for American Progress. He's a former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan in the early 80's.

The two panelists brought starkly different views to the table, with Dr. Kagan positing that the surge has been a success and that with the new elections in October of 2008 and again in 2009, there will be ‘a sea change in the nature of Iraqi political discourse’. Al Qaeda in Iraq is still a day-to-day danger, but has been defeated in the sense that they have no chance of establishing an Islamic state supported by the people, according to Dr. Kagan. Although in a 'transformative period’, there is still no way to pull out below 15 brigades this summer, he argues.

On the other hand, Dr. Norton acknowledges that although the surge is 'technically a success’, the war in general has been a ‘horrible failure on many levels’. He discusses the military being at the breaking point, and the lack of media attention paid to this fact because it is truly frightening. He discusses the long term effects on the military, with the junior officers and future leadership draining away. Another interesting point that the professor brought up was the nature of civil wars in general. He believes that there is one going on in Iraq, but the character of a civil war changes day to day. The nature of it changes with the economy and with groups having a vested interest in the continuation of the war, etc. The civil war in Iraq is quiet right now, excepting Basra, he posits.

In Part One, I discussed the likelihood of the British contingent staying on in Basra past their pull-out dates because of continuing instability in the province and city.

The big parties that are fighting for dominance are the Fadhila party (a smaller Shi’ite party), the Sadrists, and the followers of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. Fadhila's Muhammed al-Waeli is governor of Basra.

Basra is located in southern Iraq, and is important for many reasons. It is a port city, with the Umm Qasr port being the country's only gateway into the Persian Gulf. Also, it is sitting on massive oil reserves, mostly untapped. It is a flower waiting to bloom. Control over Basra does and will continue to have far-reaching ramifications for Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. Sam Dagher for the Christian Science Monitor has done a wonderful article detailing the intricacies of the vacuum that has opened up since the fall of Saddam. Basra's port is not very efficient, it needs massive reconstruction to be working at full capacity. Basically, Basra is a huge prize. It has oil, it has Iraq's only port, it is providing massive amounts of money to the central government, and right now, it is under the control of the militias.

The violence towards the British and the violence towards ordinary residents rivals that of Baghdad and Mosul. Many of the jobs at the port (a major source of employment) are controlled by the Shi’ite militias in local government and are given to those who join the militias. They regularly hold oil production hostage if their demands are not met. Recently, some high ranking Iraqi officials visited the port city in attempt to assess the situation, encourage more investment, and to bring the city under control. It warranted a piece in the New York Times about two weeks ago, and the officials interviewed for the article were quite vague on the details of the offensive that the Independent's piece mentioned. Deputy Prime Minister Barhem Salih said that the Iraqi troops would lead the charge and that a strong military presence was needed to force out the militants. We are now seeing the beginning of the offensive, much earlier than the vaguely posited 'this summer’. As Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said recently, "Whoever gets in the way will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and with no mercy."

What first caught my eye was an article in the UK Daily Mail yesterday (which I think is little more than a tabloid, but occasionally they have a gem or two) that said in its headline ‘Rocket attacks dent hopes of bringing British troops home from Basra‘. As readers of this blog know, we have chronicled the Basra situation before, here and here. This is a very interesting dynamic, as there is a lot of intra-Shi’ite rivalries going on. In September, British troops pulled out of Basra city and retreated to the outskirts of the city, where they remain on the grounds of the airport. They are there and continue to train Iraqi forces. The Brits were forced out by rocket fire last year, and only symbolically handed over power of the province to the Iraqis in December. They had been out for quite some time. With the violence raging in Basra between Iraqi security forces and the militias today, it is an important time to examine this in more depth.

The United Kingdom has been telling its constituency for months that they will significantly reduce their presence in Iraq, and will cut their troop levels from 4100 to 2,500 by April 2008. Secretary of Defense Des Browne has said that many soldiers will be sent home as promised, but they will definitely be replaced. The draw-down is not happening because of the security situation is spiraling out of control, according to all reports. The British are sustaining deadly rocket attacks after a lull in violence after they pulled out of the city in September. Despite being outside the city, the last British base is still facing hostile fire from militants causing coalition casualties. In an article posted by The Independent, Iraqi commanders are planning a major offensive against Shi’ite militants this summer. The British most likely will NOT participate in the offensive, but will provide back up and support if and when needed.

In Part II, I will discuss further the nature of the factions and criminals that are involved in the takeover of Basra, and why Basra is an important part of the country.

64 people were killed and over 100 more were wounded when what are believed to be two female suicide bombers detonated their payloads on Friday morning. The first was in a market in central Baghdad, which killed 46 people and wounded 82, and the second detonated in a market in southeastern Baghdad with 18 killed and 25 wounded.

In other news, rockets were aimed at a British base in Basra, at the airport. Two British soldiers were wounded, and according to Capt. Finn Aldrich, many more Iraqi casualties were reported. There are no numbers on the Iraqis as of yet. The British withdrew from Basra city for the most part back in September of 2007, and only officially handed the entire province back over to the Iraqis on December 16th, 2007. Before the pull out, the province's police chief Major General Khalaf, had warned (dismissing fears for his own safety) that not only were his own ranks infiltrated by sectarian militants, but that the religious officials themselves were not doing enough to stop the bloodshed. He bluntly said that the they needed to encourage the militants to stop the violence. His outspokenness has earned him many assassination attempts, a larger one having wounded four of his guards in November of 2007. More to come on the nature of the intra-sectarian violence that permeates Basra in an upcoming post.