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Bananas for Ramadan

September 25, 2007 6:52 PM

September 25, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A Matter of Life or Death

September 20, 2007 2:59 PM

I met a man today who has the power to condemn others to death -- and yet he is afraid for his own life.  He is one of the senior judges in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, the CCCI.  He is a softly-spoken, cultured man, works long hours and has bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.  He didn’t even want us to use his real name, and when we filmed an interview, we shot him from behind so his face would not be recognized.  He has reason to be cautious -- 30 of his colleagues on the bench have been killed since 2003.

His job is very weighty.  The CCCI is the main court in Baghdad for trying terrorism and organized crime cases.  Most of the defendants are being held on charges that potentially carry the death penalty under the Iraqi legal code.   

It is a forbidding place, occupying a former museum in which Saddam Hussein displayed gifts from foreign leaders and other trinkets of his three decades of rule.  Now that the material spoils of the dictator have been removed – mostly by looters immediately after the invasion – the vicious results of his dictatorship are brought here and put on display, in the courtroom.  Brutalized by Saddam’s rule, many Iraqis instinctively turned to violence once his iron grip was released.  Some of the men we saw walking around in yellow jumpsuits with manacles and shackles were insurgents, but others were simple gangsters, accused of kidnapping for money, robbery or murder.

They knew the gravity of their situation.  All walked with their heads hung low, broken by the detention system that shows little mercy.

The judge now lives with his family in the Green Zone under U.S. protection, but he fears that his parents and extended family will be targeted if his identity becomes known.  Other judges who are not so lucky to live in the Green Zone, or who don’t want to move, have to live double lives.  In the court they dress formally, with collar and tie -- but when they go home they put on jeans and t-shirts and tell nobody what their job is.  Some of the judges actually sleep in their offices -- we saw the beds made up in the corner of their rooms, opposite their desks.  Five nights a week they sleep in the courthouse, then sneak home for the weekend with their families.

Why, I asked, did he stay in Iraq and do this very dangerous job, when a man of his education and experience could surely find work overseas?  He seemed almost perplexed at the question.  He had to do his job, he said, otherwise Iraq would never return to peace.  People needed to know that they would be held accountable for bad actions, and that they would be taken to court --  not simply shot in the street.  Justice needed to be seen to be done in Iraq, as anywhere else...  And that was what kept this brave man coming to work.

September 20, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Military Detains Suspect in Sunni Sheikh’s Murder

September 16, 2007 2:46 PM

The U.S. military says that it has detained the suspected killer of a key Sunni sheikh who had been cooperating in the fight in Anbar province against al Qaeda. 

Sheikh Abdul Sattar abu Risha died on Thursday when the car he was traveling in was destroyed by a roadside bomb close to his house in Ramadi. 

U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox said the suspected killer, Fallah al-Jumayli, was captured near Balad, north of Baghdad -- just two days after the assassination. 

He is said to be affiliated with al Qaeda, and was supposedly planning further attacks on other Sunni sheikhs who have been working with the United States in Anbar province.

Abu Risha was the first Sunni sheikh to come over to the U.S. side in Anbar, after eight of his family members including his father and two brothers, were killed by extremists. 

Initially, the United States parked an M-1 tank outside his house to protect him and his family. Other sheikhs followed his lead, and now levels of violence have dropped sharply in Anbar as Sunni tribes help U.S. troops to marginalize al Qaeda militants.

There is some speculation about how the sheikh’s killers could have gotten so close to his house to plant the bomb -- some think it might have been an inside job.  Abu Risha had aroused some enmity from other sheikhs by seeming to hog the limelight and putting himself forward as the overall leader of the so-called Awakening of the Sunni tribes in Anbar.

The United States has been trying to extend its successes with Sunni tribes in Anbar to other parts of Iraq. Some commanders are anxious that the assassination of Abu Risha might make other sheikhs reluctant to cooperate with American forces, which is why it was important to them to catch his killer as quickly as possible.

September 16, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Changing Checkpoints

September 15, 2007 1:28 PM

Most Americans don’t have to stop their cars at all on the way to work -– except perhaps at a toll gate onto a freeway or at the entry to a tunnel or bridge.  But in Baghdad a half hour drive to work can involve being stopped at a dozen or more checkpoints.

I talk to our local Iraqi staff about their daily commutes, as a way of keeping tabs on the general security situation in Baghdad.  And lately they have been telling me that the checkpoint landscape has been changing in the city.   

Checkpoints come in many different varieties.  Most meticulous are the US checkpoints at the entry gates to the Green Zone.  They stop every car, require the passengers to show their badges which give them the right to enter the Green Zone, and on top of that most vehicles are searched by a sniffer dog looking for explosives.  Often the passengers are also given body searches.  Entering the Green Zone is a privilege –- ordinary Iraqis are not allowed into the 3 square mile area unless they have a US-issued badge, and that has not changed.

Outside on the city streets the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police set up checkpoints on main roads, bridges, and at large government buildings.   These checkpoints –- usually involving about a dozen men, some in trucks with heavy machine guns and a few out on the street inspecting the passing cars, have been increased in recent months, to coincide with the US troop surge into the city.

The ostensible purpose of these checkpoints is to stop car bombers and suicide bombers.  The cops are on the lookout for cars with license plates from provinces outside Baghdad –- most car bombs are made outside the city and driven in by a suicide bomber on the day of planned detonation.  But of course the bombers know about the license plates and are well practiced in stealing cars –- or plates –- from Baghdad to pass these visual checks.

With the number of Iraqi security forces who have been killed by suicide bombers, some officers on the checkpoints are simply scared to look too closely, and quickly wave on cars.  Others are more vigilant –- a couple of weeks ago policemen in Sadr City became suspicious of a car headed towards a market, and shot at it when it refused to stop.  The car detonated, killing 11, but was still on the fringes of the busy shopping area, and had the policemen not engaged it many more would have died.

Then there are the unofficial checkpoints -– and these are what scare Baghdadis the most.  Usually a handful of young men with guns, sometimes their faces half covered with bandanas, standing in the middle of the street with a hastily stretched coil of wire, flagging cars to stop and asking the drivers for their identity cards.  This strikes terror into many, because although Iraqi ID cards do not state whether the bearer is Sunni or Shiite, this can often be guessed by the name or the place where the person lives.  And should the checkpoint thugs be from the other sect, they may abduct and kill the people in the car.

It is these checkpoints that now seem to be disappearing from the streets of many neighborhoods in the city.  Nobody knows for sure why, but it appears to be a combination of increased US patrols who are always on the look-out for illicit militia activity, a call by Moqtada al Sadr for his much-feared Mahdi Army militiamen to stand down for the next six months, and also the greater presence of legitimate Iraqi Army units around the city. 

Of course nobody knows whether they will come back, and many people are still nervous of driving too far outside their own neighborhood, particularly in the late afternoon and early evening when the streets start to empty out.  In a city at war, checkpoints –- meant to bring security -- are often still a source of fear. 

September 15, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

SURFING THE SURGE

September 10, 2007 9:03 PM

In the run-up to the report that  General Petraeus was preparing for Congress on the progress or lack thereof of the surge, we decided to poll Iraqis to get their views.  And they were overwhelmingly negative -- most Iraqis told us they thought the surge if anything was making matters worse, saw little hope of an improvement in their lives over the next year, and felt security in their own neighborhoods had either gotten worse or at best stayed the same in the past six months.

At first I was surprised -- living in Baghdad and talking to people here it is clear that the overall level of violence has come down, and so I automatically assumed people would feel better about life.  Then I read an interview one of our Iraqi staff did with a grocer called Qassim Kadhum in Sadr City in the east of Baghdad.  Qassim was asked what security meant to him, and he replied “security is when I can go to my work and my children can go to school and get back safely without me worrying about them.  Now I must take them to school myself because there is no security.”

I realized that reeling off a list of statistics about how violence has gone down is not enough to make a war-scarred population feel safe again.  If a father is worried that his child might be hurt on the way to school -- even if the last car bomb in the area was some months ago –- then he is not going to feel secure.  It is easy to take away peoples’ sense of security, hard to give it back.

Last week I spent some time talking to a woman, Zainab Naeem, who is trying to support 5 children and an invalid husband on a tiny income from a shop she is trying to establish on Abu Nu’as Street, down by the Tigris.  The U.S. has been patrolling this street intensively, so security is relatively good.  Last year she worried so much about her children going to school that she would call them every hour on her cell phone – “I spent more money on phone cards than on schoolbooks for them,” she says.  Now she does not worry that much about the trip to school, which is close by and within the US security cordon.  But still life is tough for her.  There is almost no electricity in her area, and no water.  Sometimes she says they scoop up irrigation water from the flower beds in the public park opposite her store -- they put in two purification tablets, and that is what they drink.

Iraqis are right out on the edge of the precipice.  They need more than a statistical blip in violence trends to make them feel better about their lives.

September 10, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

A SERGEANT'S VIEW

September 07, 2007 6:28 PM

The soldier’s name was Tony, and he was picking at a guitar as we spoke on the porch outside his patrol base one evening recently.  It had been a long hot day, a dust storm had kicked up in the afternoon keeping helicopter traffic out, and neither of us were going anywhere in a hurry.  Tony had been in the army -- 10th Mountain Division -- for 10 years, and was thinking to stay another 10 to get a good retirement package.  He wasn’t sure what he would do after that – he said he didn’t have much of a skill base to find another job.

He was a sergeant, and I said it seemed to me that anyone who had the ability and the authority to lead 20 men down a road where they might get shot at had some people skills that could be very valuable in civilian life.  Tony was 27 but he spoke about life with the wisdom of a much older man.  His dad and his two brothers are all in the military -- at one stage all four of them were in Iraq at the same time, with different units.

Tony’s thoughts were mostly about his wife that evening.  He said she waited up every night until 10 pm, nervous that they would send someone to notify her that her husband had been killed in Iraq.  Then she went to bed, judging the military wouldn’t send anyone to her house after 10 o’clock at night.  She had let all the tradesmen and even Fedex and UPS know that they were to call her before driving up to her house -- she didn’t want any unexpected visits since they would make her fear the worst.  But even though she worries about him all the time and the war keeps him away from home for long periods, their marriage is still strong.  “She is the light of my life,” he said, “the best thing I have”.

He didn’t think much of this war -- like most sergeants he is too close to things on the ground, and knows that what the generals promise and the colonels seek to implement is a million miles away from the reality on the ground.  His AO -- area of operations – is relatively peaceful now, but he doesn’t have much hope for it staying that way when his soldiers leave and the Iraqi forces are supposed to take over.

I have met soldiers like Tony before -- tough, long-suffering, decent men, a little troubled at life sometimes, openly scornful but privately grateful for the structure that military life imposes on their lives.  They are the men that have to put themselves in harm’s way practically every day in this war -- out patrolling, doing house searches, seeking out roadside bombs -– and so they acquire a type of understanding of life that is very different to their senior officers who are not on the frontline.  They are good men to be around.

When we finished talking I went back into the main building, leaving Tony playing his guitar.  Several minutes later Tony tapped me on the shoulder.  He was holding my notebook, which must have fallen out of my pocket and into the dirt as we spoke.  Another good thing about men like Tony.  They have your back.

September 7, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

BAGHDAD VIA BANGALORE

September 03, 2007 4:08 PM

Baghdad via Bangalore?  Sounds like a travel agent booboo, but no – last Wednesday afternoon I got on a plane in Los Angeles, and after one stopover in Frankfurt I landed Thursday near midnight in Bangalore, high-tech capital of southern India.  The plan was to interview a group of Iraqis who have been studying yoga and breathing techniques at an ashram outside Bangalore.  After a day talking to these aspiring students of breath-controlled enlightenment, it was back to the airport, on to Mumbai, Dubai, Amman and finally Baghdad airport on Sunday night.

The travel was worth it.  The first thing that struck me on meeting the ten Iraqi men and women at the Art of Living ashram is that they were all smiling, most of the time.  Very rare to see such unbridled happiness in Baghdad these days.  They were a mixed bunch -a railway engineer, a newspaper editor, several middle-ranking government officials – one of the women ran her own NGO in Baghdad.  Most knew little about yoga before they arrived at the ashram, which is set in very pretty and lush countryside just outside Bangalore.  But after a few days they got into the cosmic flow, and were able to sit cross-legged, close their eyes and marshall their breathing with little difficulty.  Of course it helped that the sounds outside were limited to birdsong and the wind blowing through the trees: no gunshots or explosions here to worry about.

The guru of the ashram, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, is a globe-trotting advocate of yoga and meditation techniques as ways of countering stress, even in war zones.  He likes to see people smiling.  He visited Baghdad last May to find “much anger”, and was determined to teach his techniques to at least some Iraqis.  He is strongly opposed to religious extremism, and told me “every child should know a little about all the world’s wisdoms.”

The Iraqis told me they loved the life style at the Ashram, the peaceful environment, and also the opportunity to mix with many other people from other countries.  One thing that they found hard to get used to – the diet.  One man, Haider Abbas, told me he was losing weight.  Knowing India’s hygiene challenges, I assumed he was suffering from a bad gut.  But no – the problem was the ashram was vegetarian.  Iraqis are famously huge meat eaters.  Haider said after four days his pants were already too big for him.

Ali Hammadi, the railway engineer, was one of the few who had been practing yoga for several years.  He tries to get his staff to join in, and tells them it helps reduce stress.  “We hope we bring a smile back to Baghdad,” he said.  It works with me, at least – every time I think of these 10 Iraqis living in the ashram, far away from the stresses of Baghdad, eating dal and rice, a broad smile instantly comes across my lips.

September 3, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)