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By Orville Schell
By Martin Jacques
$19.77
$22
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Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Bahrain’s hospitals are becoming centers of terror and distrust as government officials use them to identify, torture and arrest protesters, doctors and nurses for their involvement in the ongoing uprising against the ruling Al Khalifa family.
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AP / Mary Altaffer
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By Justin Elliott, ProPublica —
ProPublica interviews co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU School of Law Faiza Patel to explore whether New York police crossed the line.
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cnn.com
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At least 63 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday during ceremonies marking the Shiite holiday of Ashura in three different targeted locations, but the majority of the deaths occurred in Kabul. A Pakistani group claimed responsibility for this sudden and ominous outbreak of sectarian violence.
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AP / Murad Sezer
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By Barry Lando — President Obama has ordered his staff to examine how his predecessors handled situations such as the Libyan revolution. One of the most frequently mentioned was a disgraceful episode that reverberates to this day.
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AP / Hameed Rasheed
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While Egypt may be basking in the glow of what it hopes is the dawn of a new democracy, the U.S.-led attempt in Iraq is still in its terrible twos. One of the worst suicide bombings in recent weeks has devastated the city of Samarra, killing 48 people and wounding 80.
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AP / Karim Kadim
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Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has returned home to Iraq from his self-imposed exile in Iran, delivering a speech urging support for the new Maliki government and resistance against the U.S.—but not necessarily through armed struggle.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Shiite-dominated Iran has shifted its stance toward neighboring Iraq, backing Sunni inclusion in a new government in Baghdad and likely putting a damper on current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s attempts to shape the new government.
Posted on Apr 11, 2010
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Jessica J. Wilkes
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Iraq’s recent election was supposed to remove Nouri al-Maliki from power, but the prime minister, sounding rather like a Bond villain, declared “the game is still very much on.” Now a governmental commission created to keep Baathists out of public life says that on the night before the election it banned six candidates who went on to win.
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AP / Karim Kadim
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A female suicide bomber set off an explosives-lined vest in a crowd of pilgrims in northeast Baghdad on Monday, killing 54 people and wounding 109 and fueling fears of more violence before next month’s key elections, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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AP via YouTube
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A suicide bomber struck a procession of Shiite Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan, on Monday as they commemorated the day of Ashura, a traditional day of mourning and remembrance of the Prophet Muhammad’s martyred grandson. According to the Los Angeles Times, 20 people were killed and dozens wounded in the blast—the third attack in three days in Pakistan.
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AP / Hadi Mizban
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On Tuesday, eight people were killed and many more wounded in a series of blasts in Baghdad’s Ameen neighborhood—just a day after 52 died and 250 were injured in explosions set off by al-Qaida, according to Iraqi officials.
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Sarah Furrer
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The Awakening movement isn’t very happy these days. The U.S. has been paying Sunni militants to turn their guns from American soldiers to al-Qaida foreign fighters, a program that has been celebrated for reducing violence in Iraq and is now falling apart. In the words of one Sunni leader who spoke to NPR, “The Americans completely abandoned us.”
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Flickr/Jim Gordon
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A key overlooked fact about the much-ballyhooed “surge is working” argument in Iraq is that the U.S. military actually paid some former insurgents $10 a day to help American troops keep the peace in parts of the country. But what happens when that setup changes in volatile regions like Anbar?
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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Tens of thousands of Iraqis, with remote guidance from Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, joined in a demonstration in Baghdad on Saturday to implore the Iraqi parliament to reject a security pact with the U.S. before the year’s end.
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AP photo / Darko Bandic
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By Robert Fisk — Yesterday [July 16] was the last day of the 2006 Lebanon war, the final chapter of Israel’s folly and Hizbollah’s hubris, a grisly day of corpse-swapping and refrigerated body parts and coffin after bleak wooden coffin on trucks crossing the Israeli border, which left old Ali Ahmed al-Sfeir and his wife, Wahde, stooped and broken with grief.
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AP photo / Francois Mori
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Despite two major challenges to the U.S. from Iraq on Friday—in the form of a breakdown in negotiations between the two nations over long-term plans for U.S. involvement there and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s renewed call to arms against U.S. forces in Iraq—President Bush maintained a positive tone while discussing American-Iraqi relations on the Parisian leg of his current European tour.
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AP photo / Samir Mizban
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As one U.S. soldier tells Truthdig foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen, it’s not entirely a bad sign that residents of Baghdad’s Saidiyah neighborhood are complaining about their meager daily power allotment: A year earlier they were concerned about just staying alive.
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In this first-ever biography of the religious leader many predict will take over Iraq after the Americans leave, Patrick Cockburn, one of the most respected correspondents in the Middle East, provides a dramatic look at a man Paul Bremer denounced as a “Bolshevik Islamist.”
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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April was the cruelest month in seven months in terms of the numbers of both civilians and U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq. A spate of deadly bombings on Wednesday killed four U.S. soldiers, bringing the monthlong total of American dead to 50, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdown on Shiite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr made for more intense violence, particularly in Basra and Sadr City, which contributed to a reported 969 Iraqi civilian deaths.
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abcnews.go.com
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By Patrick Cockburn — The militia leader’s threat of an “open war” between his supporters and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government has ratcheted up tensions in Basra and Baghdad. [In this analysis, columnist Patrick Cockburn of The Independent looks into the current situation in light of Sadr’s history with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.]
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AP photo/ Karim Kadim
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Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued a strong warning to the Iraqi government Saturday, claiming that he and his supporters will “declare a war until liberation” if a crackdown against his Mahdi Army continues.
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nytimes.com / Joao Silva
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Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood turned refuge for Iraqi insurgents, is getting a infrastructural makeover this week as workers begin building a wall to isolate the area from the rest of the capital city. U.S. forces say the construction is a security measure to stem anti-U.S. and anti-coalition activity.
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By Eugene Robinson — No, it’s not your imagination: The “debate” about Iraq, and I use the word loosely, becomes ever more surreal as the occupation drags on.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then—as it would be to repeat the charge now.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, just a day after some tough talk, has caved on his promise to disarm militant Iraqis. The news that the Iraqi government would no longer pursue “people who carry weapons” comes on the heels of an Iran-backed truce with rival Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
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Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faced a crisis last week when 1,000 to 1,500 of his troops, including from several dozen to more than 100 officers, refused to fight in the battle against Shiite militia members in Basra, raising questions about Iraqi security force readiness.
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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By Patrick Cockburn — A new civil war may be looming in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces battle Shiite militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.
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AP photo / Nabil al-Jurani
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Iraqi forces on Tuesday launched an offensive targeting Shiite militia groups in the southern city of Basra, where at least 30 deaths are reported to have occurred in the operation, as well as in other regions of the country.
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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It was a violent Sunday in Iraq, as attacks of all stripes killed dozens and the U.S. death toll crossed 4,000. A day of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks has cast yet another shadow over the “surge.”
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Presidential contender John McCain took a trip to the Middle East to showcase his foreign policy chops, so the opposition was particularly delighted that it was during such a demonstration that he committed this gaffe.
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AP photo / Hussein Malla
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By Scott Ritter — Imad Mughniyeh was once America’s most-wanted terrorist, and his crimes were truly abhorrent. But his assassination, Ritter argues, will only lead to more violence.
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — There’s an ugly secret behind the “success” of the surge: The United States is paying off Iraqi militants with weapons and cash. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that reminds Chris Hedges of “Yugoslavia before the storm.”
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Three car bombs ripped through the southern Iraqi province of Amarah on Wednesday, killing at least 46 and wounding 149, according to The Washington Post, which reported Thursday that the death toll was likely to climb.
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The New York Times reports that in certain areas of Baghdad, such as the Dora neighborhood in the south of the city, residents are cautiously returning to their homes and attempting to resume some semblance of normal life by taking advantage of a recent lull in violence. How long it will last, however, remains to be seen.
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AP photo / Nabil al-Jurani
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Perhaps Basra can be seen as a test case for the rest of Iraq with regard to withdrawal and its effects: According to Maj. Gen. Graham Binns, the commander of British forces in Basra, there has been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks” since the majority of his troops withdrew from the city.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It’s time that we subject the Iraq war to the same cost-benefit analysis that we are called upon to impose on other government endeavors. We are supposed to repeal or revise domestic programs that don’t work. Shouldn’t a troubled war policy be treated the same way?
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AP photo / Wisam Sami
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Here’s a good way we can all support our troops: by listening to them when they tell us how the Iraq war is really going. Take this account from Sgt. Victor Alarcon and others in his battalion, who in Saturday’s Washington Post give their frank, and stark, assessment of the situation in Baghdad’s Sadiyah district.
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nytimes.com
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Determined to show just how adolescent they can be, U.S. representatives in Baghdad have expressed dissatisfaction and suspicion over a pair of power plants that Iranian and Chinese companies plan to build in Iraq. One American military official described the contracts this way: “As you know, it’s not always as it appears.”
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uncorrelated.com
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Sen. Joe Biden’s plan to divide Iraq along sectarian lines has had an unintended consequence: It has united much of the country, Shiite and Sunni alike, in opposition to the measure.
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The definition of “progress” in Iraq clearly depends upon whom you ask—while the Petraeuses and Crockers of the world are claiming that the U.S. troop “surge” is (slowly) showing signs of success, a BBC/ABC/NHK poll of 2,000 Iraqis suggests quite a different story.
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By Eugene Robinson — The next six months in Iraq are crucial—and always will be. That noise you heard Monday on Capitol Hill was the can being kicked further down the road leading to January 2009, when George W. Bush gets to hand off his Iraq fiasco to somebody else.
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This week’s highly anticipated Iraq progress report will no doubt be highly predictable, says The New Yorker’s George Packer, who’s more concerned about the longer view than America’s current leadership, whom he considers to be “trapped in the eternal present” in ways that can only spell trouble for Iraqis.
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AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — It’s enough to make one a libertarian, Robert Scheer argues, as the federal budget is hijacked by a bloated military-industrial complex wallowing in post-9/11 greed. As the president smiles, the failures of this American experiment in imperialism become all the more costly and apparent.
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nytimes.comiraq
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According to two humanitarian organizations, Iraqis are fleeing their homes in record numbers, despite the much touted (if difficult to demonstrate) accomplishments of the “surge.” Iraqis are increasingly separating themselves into sectarian groups, according to the data.
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Patrick Cockburn —
Prior to the U.S. invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq’s three main religious communities—the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites—were already divided. Although each group responded differently to the American presence in their country, Patrick Cockburn of The Independent argues that the divisions between them only deepened as a result.
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AP Photo / Karim Kadim
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An overnight attack carried out by American and Iraqi forces against an alleged militant cell killed 32 people in Sadr City, U.S. military sources reported Wednesday. The raid targeted members of the Mahdi Army militia believed to be smuggling weapons and working in tandem with Iranian militants against U.S. forces, but other sources claimed that women and children numbered among the dead.
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AP Photo / Irwin Fedriansyah
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At least some of the gunfire heard in Baghdad on Sunday was celebratory, for a change: Jubilant Iraqis flouted a government ban by firing shots into the air following Iraq’s 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the final match of the Asian Cup soccer tournament.
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AP Photo / Karim Kadim
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In a startling rejoinder to President Bush’s rosy report of progress in Iraq, and the possibility of “success” in this war, whatever that means, six policemen were killed in a clash between U.S. troops and Iraqi police—reflecting growing concerns about the infiltration of militants into Iraq’s police force.
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Living inside Baghdad’s Green Zone seems to encourage a dangerous disconnect between its occupants—American or Iraqi—and the chaotic and violent reality outside its bounds. American journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes a sobering look inside for the UK paper The Sunday Times.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A devastating explosion near a Shiite mosque in the center of Baghdad has killed at least 78 people and injured more than 200. The mosque’s imam said the attack was carried out by “sick souls” who targeted worshipers as they left the prayer hall. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that such attacks have “scarred the beautiful face of Baghdad by destroying the religious landmarks it has known over the centuries.”
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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