January 26, 2007
Iraq Leader and Sunni Officials in Sectarian Clash on Security

By MARC SANTORA
BAGHDAD, Jan. 25 — Iraq’s Shiite prime minister and Sunni lawmakers hurled insults at one another during a raucous session of Parliament on Thursday, with the prime minister threatening a Sunni lawmaker with arrest and the Sunni speaker of Parliament threatening to quit.

The uproar revolved around the new Baghdad security plan, but it came as the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, is under increasing pressure to demonstrate even-handedness. President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq hinges in large measure on the Iraqi government’s ability to rein in both Shiite and Sunni militants.

In Parliament on Thursday, Mr. Maliki focused his anger on Sunni lawmakers, accusing one of being involved in sectarian kidnappings. The confrontation erupted after Mr. Maliki described the outlines of the new Baghdad security plan and pledged there would be no “safe haven” for militants.

The leader of a powerful Sunni bloc, Abdul Nasir al-Janabi, provoked Mr. Maliki, saying over jeers from Shiite politicians, “We cannot trust the office of the prime minister.”

His microphone was quickly shut off, and Mr. Maliki lashed into him, essentially accusing him of being one of the outlaws he had just said would not be granted sanctuary.

“I will show you,” Mr. Maliki said, waving his finger in the air. “I will turn over the documents we have,” implying that the legislator was guilty of crimes.

While the politicians battled in Parliament, the sectarian battle on the streets went on unabated, with 25 people killed in a suicide car bomb in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad.

It was the latest in a series of attacks directed at Shiites, claiming more than 200 lives in little more than a week and increasing pressure on Mr. Maliki to restrain his supporters from exacting revenge. Sunni leaders and critics of the administration’s strategy remain deeply skeptical about Mr. Maliki’s ability or desire to confront the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army of Moktada al-Sadr, one of his most important political backers.

American military officers say they have seen evidence in the past of the Maliki government using its influence with Iraq’s security forces to further a sectarian agenda, turning a blind eye to Shiite militia death squads while cracking down on Sunni insurgents.

Mr. Maliki spent much of his speech before Parliament trying to counter that image, going further than he has before by promising to stop sectarian militias from driving rivals from their neighborhoods and to return houses to their rightful owners. It is a daunting challenge given that the map of Baghdad has been almost completely redrawn along sectarian lines over the past year, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

“Let it be known today or tomorrow, we will start arresting anybody who took by force the house of a displaced family,” he said.

The prime minister’s claims were challenged by Mr. Janabi, who leads the Sunni-dominated Tawafiq Party.

Mr. Janabi, over jeers from the Shiite politicians in the room, said that the government should suspend executions, which he said were being used for political purposes, and called for parliamentary oversight of the new security plan to be sure Sunnis were not unfairly singled out.

It was when he questioned Mr. Maliki’s trustworthiness that the prime minister issued his vague threat to turn over incriminating information about Mr. Janabi. With that, the speaker of the Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, slammed his gavel down and condemned the prime minister and those who applauded him.

“That is unacceptable, Mr. prime minister,” Mr. Mashhadani said over the tumult. “It is unacceptable, Mr. prime minister, to make such accusations against a lawmaker under the dome of Parliament.”

But Mr. Maliki pressed on.

“What about the 150 people kidnapped near Al Bairaat?” he said, referring to an area by a lake south of the Baghdad where Mr. Janabi has his base of support.

Mr. Janabi could not be reached for comment but another member of his party, Dhafer al-Ani, said Mr. Maliki was trying to “terrify” his opponents into silence. “If there are documents against him showing crimes, why were they not revealed until this session?” he said in an interview. “What kept him silent all this time?”

In the Parliament room, politicians shouted over one another trying to be heard. Mr. Mashhadani finally yelled for everyone to “shut up.” He then used an ancient Arabic phrase, literally meaning to “put your stuff on the camel,” which roughly translates as, “We expect more of this body.” He said in disgust, “I cannot see how it is possible that a new security plan can work.”

The session of Parliament was attended by nearly all members, a rarity in recent months, and was broadcast live on Iraqi national television.

The lawmakers had their shouting match while sitting beneath a banner with a phrase from the Koran that extols the importance of a civil debate in making good decisions.

Shatha al-Mousawi, a lawmaker from the Mr. Maliki’s leading Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, said some politicians were simply grandstanding for the cameras. But she said the fighting continued after Mr. Mashhadani abruptly called an end to the session and the cameras were turned off.

Mr. Mashhadani demanded that the prime minister apologize to Mr. Janabi. Members of Mr. Maliki’s party said Mr. Janabi was the one who should apologize, Ms. Mousawi said.

Mr. Mashhadani then threatened to quit.

“Someone said you do not need to quit, we will dismiss you,” she said.

Mr. Mashhadani called a Shiite politician a “psychopath,” as the bitter exchanges continued.

Eventually, though, the tensions eased and the Parliament approved the security plan.

No sooner had they finished their business than three rockets exploded in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the Parliament is housed. Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the United State Embassy, said that no one was killed in the attacks.

The car bomb attack occurred just outside the Green Zone, ripping apart a market area in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Karrada.

Um Mohammed, a woman who lives across the street from the site of the bombing, said she saw two buses full of people burn with the passengers trapped inside, dying agonizing deaths.

The attack occurred as people were leaving work, the streets crowded with traffic and local clothes stores packed with customers.

Her neighbor had just sent her 9-year-old boy, Amar Ali Habib, out to play with friends, she said.

“He took his ball and left the house.”

Moments later, he was dead. The explosion was so powerful, she said, that pieces of one man’s body were blown about 50 yards from where the car detonated.

Afterward, she said, many young men took to the streets. Some called for vengeance against Sunnis while others condemned the government for failing to do anything.

Qais Mizher, Abdul Razzaq al-Saedi and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

January 25, 2007 Edition > Section: Opinion > Printer-Friendly Version

Daniels In the Lions' Den

BY DANIEL JOHNSON
January 25, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47399

Last Saturday many thousands of Londoners — plus a small but determined corps of Americans — came to Westminster to debate the clash of civilizations. Ken Livingstone, the notoriously pro-Islamist mayor of London, had invited Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, to be the neoconservative fall guy.

Not only Mr. Livingstone, but also almost everybody else expected the professor to be eaten alive by the politician. Mr. Pipes was warned by his British friends that he was walking into a trap.

But it didn't turn out that way. The audience — eccentrically attired and coiffed, sporting cranky badges and sandals — were atypical political activists, and to judge from their questions, heavily inclined to the left. "This is liberal hell!" muttered one New Yorker, contemplating the "Free Palestine" and anti-racism stalls to which the mayor was giving house room. Yet the loudest cheers were not for him, but for the Daniel who had ventured into this lions' den.

As soon as the self-styled "young British mom" in a hijab who was seconding the mayor, Salma Yaqoob, referred to the July 7 London suicide bombings as "reprisal events," I felt the audience shudder. There was another shudder when Ms. Yaqoob refused to utter the word "Israel."

Then the biographer of Winston Churchill, Sir Martin Gilbert, rose. "My son was on the subway when these ‘reprisal events' took place on 7/7. Would you mind telling me what these reprisals were for?" Ms. Yaqoob had no answer. What could she say to him? A great historian who has done the British state some service, who happens to be a Zionist? How could she justify the killing of scores of innocent people, and the attempted murder of countless others, including his son, as a "reprisal event"?

The mayor himself seemed taken aback by the lack of enthusiasm for his side. It is fashionable to describe figures like Mr. Livingstone as "former" Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, or whatever. But there was nothing in his demagoguery to indicate that he has really changed his mind about anything for 40 years. His heroes are Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. The only difference is that instead of Marx, he now quotes Mill — though he couldn't resist reprimanding that great advocate of women's emancipation for failing to write "he or she."

Mr. Livingstone's world is one gigantic conspiracy, with American neoconservatives pulling the strings. The Cold War was, he said, a conspiracy cooked up in Washington in 1943, just as the war on terror was devised by a "nexus around the White House and Wall Street." He stopped short of claiming that the CIA had ordered the September 11 attacks, but they had certainly created Al Qaeda. The state of Israel was an American conspiracy too: It "should never have been created" but the Americans, who of course control the United Nations, set it up on Arab land because they and the British were too anti-Semitic to accept Jewish refugees in their own countries. This is pretty rich coming from Mr. Livingstone — the mayor who was censured by his own party for abusing a Jewish reporter as a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Such fantasies are as commonplace as his assertions of moral equivalence between the "crude Islamophobia" of American neoconservatives and Islamist terrorists. But when Mr. Pipes pointed out that the Americans would have been mad to invade Iraq for the sake of oil, since the predictable effect had been to raise oil prices, the mayor replied that "the people in the White House were mad" and went on to make the apocalyptic prediction that if the war on terror continued, there would be "casualties in the tens of millions." The audience did not know what to make of this, and gave the mayor a distinctly muted response.

Mr. Pipes, however, was rewarded for his sweet reasonableness — which contrasted sharply with the malevolent extremism of Mr. Livingstone and Ms. Yaqoob — with hearty rounds of applause. He got a few laughs, too, as when he told one of his critics that Hezbollah "did not get to eliminate Israel this time round — I give you my condolences." Much of the audience having never seen a real, live American neoconservative in the flesh before and doubtless surprised that he had neither horns nor a tail, listened with rapt attention to what he had to say.

In essence, Mr. Pipes had a warning for Londoners: Thanks to the multicultural policies of politicians like Mayor Livingstone, "your city is a threat to the rest of the world." He listed 15 countries in which Islamists from Britain had carried out terrorist attacks, ranging from Pakistan to America. Since last weekend he could have added a 16th — Somalia. Britain, he said, was now regarded by some experts as the biggest threat to American security.

British audiences aren't usually told this. They aren't told that "the Islamists have declared war on us," let alone have the war aim stated clearly: victory. They need to hear the likes of Daniel Pipes much more often. If the State Department won't send them over, let the think tanks do it. We want to hear them echo George Cohan's 1917 song, "Over There": "The Yanks are coming/ … We'll be over, we're coming over/ And we won't come back till it's over/ Over there."

43 Insurgents Detained, Weapons Found, Captives Freed
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2007 – In a string of operations across Iraq over the past four days, Iraqi and coalition forces detained 43 suspected terrorists, found several weapons caches, stopped an illegal checkpoint, and freed three captives, military officials reported.

-- In Karmah, Iraq, coalition forces detained 12 suspected terrorists today. Intelligence reports indicate the detainees have key logistical ties to the al Qaeda in Iraq network and to improvised explosive device production. Reports indicate that they are responsible for the recent increase in IED attacks in the Karmah area. During the raid, coalition forces found several AK-47s and ammunition.

-- In Mosul, coalition forces captured a foreign fighter facilitator with ties to a senior al Qaeda leader responsible for bringing large numbers of suicide bombers into Iraq.

-- Special Iraqi police forces captured five members of an illegally armed militia and detained seven others during operations with coalition advisors yesterday near Kawam, south of Baghdad. The suspects are allegedly responsible for coordinating and carrying out numerous IED and other attacks against Iraqi police, Iraqi security forces and coalition forces in the Babil province.

-- A tip from a local citizen to an Iraqi army unit enabled soldiers to stop an illegal checkpoint in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah yesterday. Shortly after noon, an unidentified Iraqi phoned Company C, 4th Battalion, 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, stating that a number of men had set up an illegal checkpoint in a southern Ghazaliyah neighborhood. A patrol was dispatched to the area and upon arrival was engaged by AK-47 and pistol fire. The patrol returned fire but was unable to prevent the escape of the terrorists.

-- Coalition and Iraqi army soldiers detained 10 suspects and seized four caches in the Al-Doura district as part of Operation Wolverine Feast yesterday. The operation began as witnesses reported seeing several men load a mortar tube and ammunition into the trunk of a car. Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division's Company C, 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, and 3rd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, were alerted and cordoned off the target area. In the first objective they captured one wanted man with an 82 mm mortar system, two AK-47 assault rifles, a 9 mm pistol and two hand grenades. A sweep of a second targeted area uncovered six men with 10 120 mm mortar rounds. The third cache contained a 60 mm mortar system and various rocket-propelled grenade launchers and RPG rounds. Three men were detained at this location. The last cache contained several RPG rockets and accelerators.

-- Coalition forces detained three suspected terrorists and found weapons during a combat operation in Mahmudiyah Jan. 23. Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, worked with troops from the 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, during Operation Black Eagle II, aimed at denying insurgents sanctuary within the Mahmudiyah area. Two AK-47 bandoleers and two Katusha rocket casings were found during the operation.

-- Four suspected insurgents were detained after a raid on a suspected insurgent safe house south of Baghdad Jan. 23. Iraqi army troops and paratroopers from the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment, conducted the raid on the suspected terrorist safe house, which was believed to be used to hide insurgents and store weapons.

-- Coalition forces and Iraq army troops detained eight suspected terrorists and seized weapons during a combat patrol northwest of Lutifiyah Jan. 23. Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, and the 6th Iraqi Army Division's 1st Battalion, 4th Brigade, were on a combat patrol when they came under small-arms fire attack from a canal. The troops called in for aviation support, and one insurgent died in the aerial attack. The remaining four insurgents tried to escape down a canal and were killed by Iraqi troops. Following the firefight, troops searched the area for more insurgents. They found nine Iraqis hiding in a nearby house. Eight of the nine were detained, all wanted for suspected terrorist acts. The search also turned up a weapons cache consisting of three medium machine guns, two AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun and a sniper rifle with a scope.

-- Coalition forces discovered a building with blood-stained walls southeast of Fallujah on Jan. 22 and rescued three Iraqis found shackled inside. One of the victims was badly beaten and had broken limbs. He was examined and quickly evacuated by coalition forces to receive life-saving medical care. During their patrol, soldiers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 136th Infantry Regiment, discovered multiple weapons caches in other nearby houses. The discovery included a mortar targeting system and a sniper rifle with scope, as well as a Bongo truck with a mounted anti-aircraft gun and another vehicle rigged as a car bomb. Once the hostages were rescued from the house, the suspected "torture house" was destroyed by coalition forces.

(Compiled from Multinational Corps Iraq news releases.)

Related Sites:
Multinational Corps Iraq

Iraqis Celebrate School Reopening, Forces Provide Aid to Citizens
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2007 – An Iraqi neighborhood north of Ramadi celebrated the reopening of its school Jan. 23, U.S. and Iraqi forces provided aid to citizens in Adhamiyah this week, and students in Tal Afar received cold weather gear from Iraqi forces Jan. 22, military officials reported.

Visiting Iraqi army soldiers and coalition forces attended the celebration for the school reopening north of Ramadi. Community leaders asked Maj. Derek Horst, civil affairs team leader with the 4th Civil Affairs Group, to cut the ribbon for the Al Haitham School, which provides classes for the Abu Jassim tribe.

The school was temporarily closed in November for renovations. Tribal leader Sheik Taher, who oversaw the renovations, led a group of community leaders and military personnel on a brief tour of the building after the ribbon cutting.

"We're making progress day after day," said 1st Lt. Stuart Barnes, civil affairs team leader with Company B, 486th Civil Affairs Battalion. Barnes said attendance at the school shows that stability in the area continues to increase.

The school, which began holding classes again earlier this month, hosts an estimated 200 to 300 students, Barnes said.

In other news, residents of the Adhamiyah section of eastern Baghdad picked up needed supplies this week following a visit by soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team and their Iraqi army counterparts.

In coordination with the Adhamiyah district council, U.S. and Iraqi troops delivered clothes, toys, vitamins and toiletries to more than 500 residents in a local theater. Especially popular with the youth were soccer balls and comic books. Also, a U.S. medic treated a woman with low blood sugar.

It would have been impossible to deliver the goods without U.S.-Iraqi cooperation, according to Capt. Drew Corbin, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment.

"The Iraqi police were very helpful today," he said. "They provided security and helped distribute the humanitarian assistance bags."

The humanitarian assistance drop is part of a U.S.-Iraqi effort to reduce sectarian violence and help bring security to Baghdad.

In another operation in Tal Afar, students from the Kawla and Darar Primary schools received an assortment of winter clothing, school supplies, and additional treats from Tal Afar's Mayor Najim, Iraqi police officers, and soldiers of the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, during Operation Warm-Up Jan. 22.

Mayor Najim and the delegation traveled from classroom to classroom, providing the students with winter clothing and Iraqi flags. In addition, the school headmaster at each location was provided a first-aid kit with instructions for medication.

The total items distributed included 280 items of winter clothing, 650 pencils, 250 pens, 200 erasers, 60 spiral notebooks and 30 folders. Every child received school supplies and candy.

Operation Warm-Up was a targeted mission conducted as part of the ongoing Iraqi police and coalition humanitarian assistance program Operation Kids.

(Compiled from Multinational Force Iraq news releases.)

Related Sites:
Multinational Force Iraq

January 25, 2007
In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First

By DAMIEN CAVE and JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 — In the battle for Baghdad, Haifa Street has changed hands so often that it has taken on the feel of a no man’s land, the deadly space between opposing trenches. On Wednesday, as American and Iraqi troops poured in, the street showed why it is such a sensitive gauge of an urban conflict marked by front lines that melt into confusion, enemies with no clear identity and allies who disappear or do not show up at all.

In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.

When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one American soldier, with a shot to the head.

Whether the gunfire was coming from Sunni or Shiite insurgents or militia fighters or some of the Iraqi soldiers who had disappeared into the Gotham-like cityscape, no one could say.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” shouted Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, whose platoon was jammed into a small room off an alley that was being swept by a sniper’s bullets. “Who’s shooting at us? Do we know who they are?”

Just before the platoon tossed smoke bombs and sprinted through the alley to a more secure position, Sergeant Biletski had a moment to reflect on this spot, which the United States has now fought to regain from a mysterious enemy at least three times in the past two years.

“This place is a failure,” Sergeant Biletski said. “Every time we come here, we have to come back.”

He paused, then said, “Well, maybe not a total failure,” since American troops have smashed opposition on Haifa Street each time they have come in.

With that, Sergeant Biletski ran through the billowing yellow smoke and took up a new position.

The Haifa Street operation, involving Bradley Fighting Vehicles as well as the highly mobile Stryker vehicles, is likely to cause plenty of reflection by the commanders in charge of the Baghdad buildup of more than 20,000 troops. Just how those extra troops will be used is not yet known, but it is likely to mirror at least broadly the Haifa Street strategy of working with Iraqi forces to take on unruly groups from both sides of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide.

The commander of the operation, Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division, said his forces were not interested in whether opposition came from bullets fired by Sunnis or by Shiites. He conceded that the cost of letting the Iraqi forces learn on the job was to add to the risk involved in the operation.

“This was an Iraqi-led effort and with that come challenges and risks,” Colonel Smiley said. “It can be organized chaos.”

The American units in the operation began moving up Haifa Street from the south by 2 a.m. on Wednesday. A platoon of B Company in the Stryker Brigade secured the roof of a high rise, where an Eminem poster was stuck on the wall of what appeared to be an Iraqi teenager’s room on the top floor. But in a pattern that would be repeated again and again in a series of buildings, there was no one in the apartment.

Many of the Iraqi units that showed up late never seemed to take the task seriously, searching haphazardly, breaking dishes and rifling through personal CD collections in the apartments. Eventually the Americans realized that the Iraqis were searching no more than half of the apartments; at one point the Iraqis completely disappeared, leaving the American unit working with them flabbergasted.

“Where did they go?” yelled Sgt. Jeri A. Gillett. Another soldier suggested, “I say we just let them go and we do this ourselves.”

Then the gunfire began. It would come from high rises across the street, from behind trash piles and sandbags in alleys and from so many other directions that the soldiers began to worry that the Iraqi soldiers were firing at them. Mortars started dropping from across the Tigris River, to the east, in the direction of a Shiite slum.

The only thing that was clear was that no one knew who the enemy was. “The thing is, we wear uniforms — they don’t,” said Specialist Terry Wilson.

At one point the Americans were forced to jog alongside the Strykers on Haifa Street, sheltering themselves as best they could from the gunfire. The Americans finally found the Iraqis and ended up accompanying them into an extremely dangerous and exposed warren of low-slung hovels behind the high rises as gunfire rained down.

American officers tried to persuade the Iraqi soldiers to leave the slum area for better cover, but the Iraqis refused to risk crossing a lane that was being raked by machine-gun fire. “It’s their show,” said Lt. David Stroud, adding that the Americans have orders to defer to the Iraqis in cases like this.

In this surreal setting, about 20 American soldiers were forced at one point to pull themselves one by one up a canted tin roof by a dangling rubber hose and then shimmy along a ledge to another hut. The soldiers were stunned when a small child suddenly walked out of a darkened doorway and an old man started wheezing and crying somewhere inside.

Ultimately the group made it back to the high rises and escaped the sniper in the alley by throwing out the smoke bombs and sprinting to safety. Even though two Iraqis were struck by gunfire, many of the rest could not stop shouting and guffawing with amusement as they ran through the smoke.

One Iraqi soldier in the alley pointed his rifle at an American reporter and pulled the trigger. There was only a click: the weapon had no ammunition. The soldier laughed at his joke.

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