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Bomb Hits U.S. Embassy Vehicle

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:23:02 +0400

BEIRUT — A car bomb struck an American Embassy vehicle in Beirut yesterday, killing at least three bystanders and wounding a Lebanese Embassy employee in the first direct attack on U.S. interests in Lebanon in 20 years.

An estimated 20 people, including an American passer-by, were injured in the attack on the armored embassy sport utility vehicle, which Lebanese officials immediately linked to a wave of attacks on governing party legislators.

"This was an attack against the American role in Lebanon and the stability of Lebanon; it is part of the whole campaign against us over the last couple of years," said Amal Mudallali, foreign policy adviser to Saad Hariri, leader of the dominant bloc in parliament.

Several members of the U.S.-backed governing coalition have died in similar blasts since Mr. Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was assassinated in a car bomb attack in February 2005.

But yesterday's attack was the first to hit an explicitly U.S. target since Marine Corps Lt. Col. William R. Higgins was kidnapped and killed by Iran-backed terrorists in February 1988. The most serious attack on Americans in Lebanon came in 1983, when a suicide attacker struck a U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 servicemen.

Yesterday's blast in a largely industrial area of Christian north Beirut shook windows across the city, sending a slender plume of black smoke billowing over the capital.

It left the street scorched, several cars burned and torn, and nearby buildings damaged, with shattered windows and broken mortar.

The Lebanese driver suffered minor injuries and the only passenger, another Lebanese, was unhurt. However, the embassy immediately canceled a banquet for departing Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman scheduled for yesterday evening.

The U.S. Embassy said four persons were killed in the explosion but Lebanese authorities put the death toll at three. Among the wounded was one American, Mathew Clason of Minnesota, who was at the nearby National Evangelical Church at the time.

Miss Mudallali said extremists may have been trying to make a political point while President Bush is traveling in the Middle East. "The timing ... is not lost on anybody," she said.

She also suggested the attack was intended to undermine an international effort to break a long-running stalemate over the election of a new president.

"Politically those who are against us in the region are known," she added. "Everyone knows who is against the Americans in the region."

Government officials repeatedly have voiced suspicion that Syria, working through Hezbollah and other extremist organizations, has a role in a wave of attacks on pro-government legislators that threatens to wipe out their majority in parliament.

However, Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, argued it is unlikely that Syria or Iran, another Hezbollah sponsor, is behind the explosion.

"Both Syria and Iran have always been mediators and have been clear never to touch anything American in Lebanon," he said. "It is possibly an al Qaeda or an al Qaeda-like cell."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Saudi Arabia with Mr. Bush, said the United States "will, of course, not be deterred in its efforts to help the Lebanese people ... resist force and interference in their affairs."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that agents from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security will work with Lebanese authorities to investigate the blast.

Originally appeared in the Washington Times.

A risky lie protects a friend

Tue, 4 Sep 2007 01:07:48 +0400

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon — Wassim al-Hagehussein was worried. The Lebanese soldier was twitchy, suspicious as he stalked through the dark and powerless grocery store where Wassim worked. It was a day after Prime Minister Fuad Siniora had declared an end to the war over the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared, during which fanatical jihadists had fought off an Army onslaught for 106 days. And now, today, the fighting had started up again and the grocery store was in the crossfire. A company of soldiers was pinned down by an unknown number of Fatah al-Islam fugitive fighters.

“Are there any Palestinians in here?” the soldier asked the owner, Rabieh al-Masri, who was a boss and a friend to Wassim. The soldiers had just arrested another Palestinian in front of the store and taken him in for questioning.

Al-Masri deliberately didn’t look at Wassim. “No,” he said. “There are no Palestinians here.”

He was lying. Wassim was a Palestinian from Nahr el-Bared.

For three and a half months, this wretched Palestinian camp just north of Tripoli has been under siege by Lebanese troops against Fatah al-Islam militants, a jihadi group that shares an ideology with al Qaeda and which some Lebanese officials say is supported by Syrian military intelligence. The battle started on May 20 when militants attacked Army units normally posted outside the camp, killing more than a dozen troops. The Army responded with a massive campaign of shelling and ground assaults that killed 163 soldiers, at least 131 militants and 42 civilians. The camp itself, a warren of cinderblock buildings built up over almost 60 years now looks like piles of melted wedding cake, with almost every building honeycombed from shell blasts and entire floors sliding off into the streets.

On Sunday, it seemed that after a long grind, the fight had come to an end. After a last-ditch escape attempt that left its leader dead, Fatah al-Islam positions were overrun by Lebanese troops, who sent up a celebratory flare from the center of the camp, which has been in place since the 1948 creation of Israel forced thousands of Palestinian families to flee to Lebanon as refugees. Since then, the camp has swelled to more than 30,000 people cramped into a 1 square kilometer space, and a breeding ground for extreme ideologies that feed on hopelessness and resentment.

Just an hour before the soldier stomped into the store, Wassim, a Palestinian, and Rabieh, a Lebanese, were happily chatting with Western reporters just a few hundred meters from the camp’s entrance. Al-Masri rents the store from Wassim’s parents, some of the more well-off members of the Nahr el-Bared community. Wassim, 30, has worked for al-Masri for seven years and the two are close despite the often strained relations between the Lebanese and the Palestinians. They were happy that the war up north seemed to be over, and Wassim was particularly happy about the pledge from Siniora to rebuild the camp and, more important, place it under Lebanese authority.

Under a tacit agreement, the Palestinians policed themselves, and maintained large weapons stockpiles, mainly as symbols of their resistance to Israel. The Lebanese government has never claimed sovereignty over the camps, publicly committing itself to the Palestinians’ right of return to their homeland.

But those weapons stockpiles had been turned against the Lebanese Army as one faction, Fatah al-Islam, gained ascendency in Nahr el-Bared. Now Wassim was done with Palestinian in-fighting.

“No more factions,” he said.

Al-Masri was glad the war was over, too, and he hoped that customers could come back soon to start shopping at his store again, one of the largest in the area. He worried that Islamist cells, inspired by Fatah al-Islam and al Qaeda might still be active in Lebanon, but said optimistically, “if there are any, the Army will wind up catching them. It is over,” he added with a smile.

It wasn’t. Moments later the scattered sound of weapon fire sounded off in the distance in the direction of the camp. A few minutes later, about three dozen Lebanese troops who had been fighting in the camp just the night before pulled up in front of the store. Commandos in buildings across the street began to take up positions and directing their comrades to train their weapons both toward the camp and up the hill in the opposite directions. Two groups of Fatah al-Islam fugitives had opened fire on the Army patrol as it exited the camp and now the store, its employees and the soldiers were caught in the crossfire.

“May God burn them,” Asmahan Jawhar, 23, one of the female employees of the store, said of Fatah al-Islam. “They came and messed the place up.”

She had good reason to be angry. On July 14, her brother, Bassam, a commando in the Lebanese Army, died along with six of his men in an ambush by the militants. They were killed when a booby-trapped building collapsed on top of them. It took six days to recover the bodies and jihadi snipers killed three more Lebanese troops as they dug through the rubble.

She cried for days when she heard the news. However, “I was very sad and proud at the same time,” she said.

And now the same militants had her pinned down in a dark grocery store next to a stack of water bottles.

“The sons of bitches are moving quickly” to escape, said the Lebanese platoon leader, who declined to give his name as he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. When asked how many had him under fire, he growled, “There are plenty of them. The more we kill, the more we see.”

The company’s lieutenant estimated there were perhaps a dozen fugitive militants split into two groups, one still inside the camp and one outside, had staged the ambush.

The soldiers soon responded with heavy machine guns and outgoing artillery fire, although it was unclear where the shells were landing. The boom of the nearby guns rattled the windows of the store and shook loose dust built over three months of neglect. Al-Masri herded his jittery employees into a corner away from the front of the store.

The fighting eventually died down and the Lebanese troops began to relax. Some lounged in the lee of the armored personnel carriers in evident exhaustion. They had been on patrol all night and they were supposed to be en route back to base for some R ‘n’ R.

“Hey, you guys stand up,” barked one soldier, half in jest. “There are still more to kill.”

Suddenly, soldiers hauled over a young man in a T-shirt and pushed him against the side of an APC, as the soldiers checked his papers. He had been picked up just moments before, in an area where civilians were not supposed to be. The soldiers wanted to make sure he wasn’t another Fatah al-Islam fighter. An officer ordered that he not be mistreated. His papers showed him to be a Palestinian from the camp, but the soldiers were still unsure. One said he had marks on his shoulders from carrying a rucksack and shrapnel marks on his legs, signs of being a fighter. They zip-tied his hands behind his back and arrested him, taking him away to an interrogation center.

Wassim blanched. “I know him, he’s from the camp,” he thought to himself. “If they’re arresting Palestinians they’re surely going to arrest me.” That’s when al-Masri protected him and lied to the soldier.

“It’s my duty,” he would say later, as he and his employees — including Wassim — were being evacuated in a small convoy. While in the car, he tempered his earlier praise of the Army.

“They declared victory yesterday, but it was too quick,” he said. “The Army was confused today. We know and they know (Fatah al-Islam) are out in the fields.” 
He thought despite the apparent gains, the Army would be fighting for another two days. “There is no quick end,” he said and sighed. “There will always be something to finish.”

A version of this post appeared in the Washington Times and the Newark Star-Ledger.

Dead Sea, Jordan River valley face ecological disaster

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 02:14:11 +0400

Jordan River Valley, Jordan—Abdel Rahman Sultan walked along a modern bridge over a small wadi flowing into the Dead Sea, about 300 yards away. On the other side of the salty lake, he could see the West Bank, the ancestral home that his family fled after Israel captured the area in 1967.
"Three years ago, I used to bring kids from different schools to clean up this wadi bed," he said. "There used to be fish here, small little fish. ... Now, there are no fish here, there is no water. And no reason to keep it clean."
Sultan is a project manager of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), a nongovernmental organization dedicated to preserving the Jordan River valley and the Dead Sea basin, an integrated ecosystem that is smack in the middle of the world's most contentious land dispute - the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Jordan River Valley is one of the most famous spots on Earth, full of religious significance, historical interest and environmental richness. The Israelites crossed it to enter the promised land; Christ was baptized in its waters, and several of the prophet Muhammad's companions are buried near its banks.
The sole source of water for the Dead Sea - the lowest place on Earth at 1,378 feet below sea level - is the Jordan River, which travels from north of the Sea of Galilee before draining into this deep hole of a saline lake. As a result, the sea is 8.6 times saltier than oceans - and people bob like corks when swimming in its waters. The minerals in its mud are also prized for their rejuvenating effects on skin. The Jordan River Valley is also a rich wetland ecosystem and an important migratory pathway for more than 500 million birds.
But both the river and sea are dying.
Israel, Jordan and Syria divert more than 90 percent of the 1.3 billion cubic meters of Jordan River water annually for drinking and irrigation that should flow into the Dead Sea. The siphoning of water has caused the Dead Sea to shrink by 30 percent over the last 20 years, according to FOEME. Dams, pumping stations and canals suck the basin dry, while wastewater is dumped into the sea. The water flowing past Christ's baptismal site, just north of the Dead Sea, is mostly sewage.
In June, the World Monuments Fund added the Jordan River Valley to its list of 100 most endangered sites.
But since much of the valley is an off-limits military zone because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the environmental problem is not well known.
Last month, about a dozen Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian mayors from towns and settlements along the river met at the confluence of the Jordan and the Yarmouk rivers to call attention to the situation by swimming in one of the only remaining spots still considered safe for bathing.
"There are people who use the water without considering the needs of others," said Mamoun Alouneh, mayor of the Jordanian town of Tabket Fahal.
FOEME has urged Jordanian farmers to diversify their crops, planting date trees that use less water, rather than traditional banana and citrus fruits - all water guzzlers. "Their response often is, 'You want me to change what my great-great-grandfather started?' " said Mehyar. "You're talking about a tribal mentality."
But like many other Mideast problems, toxic politics are never far away.
Under Article 18 of the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, the two sides pledged to manage and rehabilitate the Jordan River Valley. But both governments blame the other for water mismanagement.
Muneth Mehyar, chairman of the Jordanian chapter of FOEME, says a Syrian dam across the Yarmouk River, Jordan's main tributary, has reduced that river's flow to a trickle. Under an agreement between the two nations, Mehyar says, Jordan should receive 700,000 liters per second from Syria. Instead, it receives just 700 liters.
The peace treaty also calls on Jordan to supply Israel with 25 million cubic meters of water every year, Mehyar said. But by cutting the flow of the Yarmouk, the Syrians have forced the Jordanians to draw more water from the Jordan River for their own use.
FOEME believes only a comprehensive political settlement between Palestinians and Israelis would make regional cooperation possible and solve the environmental problems.
Because Syria bans nongovernmental organizations it can't control, FOEME has yet to talk to Syrian officials, whose water ministry appears more interested in punishing Jordan for its peace treaty with Israel than enacting sound environmental policies.
"A lot of people in Jordan criticize us for talking to Israel," said Mehyar. "People still call us traitors."
Yet there is some movement to save the Dead Sea.
In 2005, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement to study the feasibility of a 110-mile canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. A "Red-Dead" canal would pump up to 850 million cubic meters of seawater from the Gulf of Aqaba about 110 miles south of the Dead Sea. The $5 billion project, which is favored by the World Bank, is also expected to provide jobs and about 190 megawatts of electricity for the three parties.
FOEME, however, opposes the canal, arguing that protecting the Jordan River Valley is a better solution than pumping water from elsewhere. They note that the less- salty Red Sea waters are chemically different from the Dead Sea, which, when mixed, might change the sea's unique properties. Instead, Mehyar proposes changing consumption habits of Jews and Arabs, peace parks and eco- and religious tourism as better ways to preserve the valley.
"If we solved this water thing, we could solve 50 percent of the political issues," Mehyar said. "I am sure people will come to their senses."
Originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Page A-15, Aug. 12,, 2007
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Beirut: Faith No More?

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:09:35 +0400

For my inaugural column here on Spot-on, I wanted to look at the grand political events of the region, how America and Iran, along with their allies, have squared off in multiple arenas over power and resources.

Screw that. Instead, I wanted to write about my home, Beirut, and invite y’all in for a bit. It’s a messy place and frankly more than a bit depressing. But it’s also important and exciting, full of folks who (mostly) deserve better than they’ve received. But this is also a place under a kind of mental siege from within the country’s collective psyches. The reason for the fear is not that the Lebanese fear the Syrians or the Israelis. They fear each other more.

There are moments that disguise this undertone. I’m writing this in a coffehouse called Te Marbuta, named for a letter in the Arabic alphabet. It’s a groovy little place in the once fashionable district of Hamra. Lebanon’s national chanteuse, Fayruz, is playing from the iBook in the corner through the joint’s speakers and the hummus is dripping in olive oil. Just now, as I glance at the door, two young women come in. One is in tight jeans and a tight tanktop, brown Mediterranean skin glowing with youth. Her long black hair swings free and she smiles easily at her friend who’s with her. Her friend is also young, but swaddled in a hot pink hijab, the head covering that marks a religiously observant Muslim woman. There is not a trace of awkwardness between the two, and neither is the least self-conscious about one’s flagrant display of shoulder or the other’s lavish use of fabric.

This is Lebanon, which has never quite figured out where it belongs. Geographically of the Middle East, in some social circles it is part of the Western sphere (particularly France’s) and, in other cliques, part of the Arab world. Between friends, the cultural divide is an easy transition, and it’s reflected in the languages Lebanese speak: French, English and Arabic, often with all three in the same sentence.

But between the various communities in Lebanon, the cultural divide is a chasm, and it’s one—for all but a brief time—that has been tearing Lebanon apart since the Crusades.

Which is why these days Beirut feels like a city at war, a capital under siege. Since 2005, when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was murdered by a massive truck bomb, Lebanon has experienced a terror campaign of bombings, assassinations, war and interference by its larger neighbors. The Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah—with Syria’s support—has been pushing against the Western-oriented government in an attempt to combat “the American agenda” in the Middle East. Many pro-Western and pro-government people here in Beirut squarely blame Syria for their woes, saying Damascus is responsible for every woe that has befallen Lebanon since… well, since forever, basically. Last year’s war between Hezbollah and Israel? If it’s not Syria’s fault, it at least benefitted from it. Lebanon’s droopy-eyed Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, one of the civil war’s fiercest warlords now turned statesman, can always be counted on to point fingers at Syria.

Hezbollah and its Shi’ite supporters, for their part, point to every action as a work of America, Israel or some other unspecified “agents” from the West. (They really don’t distinguish much.) Iran’s conspicuous involvement in Lebanon’s affairs is seen as “help,” however, rather than interference, which is what the U.S. contributes when it lends its support to the government in Beirut. Syria, too, is merely looking out for its “brotherly neighbor,” when it allows weapons to be shipped to Hezbollah and militant Palestinians in the Bekaa Valley.

In this political climate, the Lebanese have been cowed. Their famous joie de vie, which was formerly so evident that numerous travel magazines ran “Beirut’s hip again!” articles extolling the town’s nightlife and restaurant culture, has been ground down. This has happened, however, not by the boot of a Syrian occupier, but by the Lebanese themselves.

The campaign of bombings and assassinations has been awful, but it’s certainly not been on the scale of, say, Iraq. And I spent two years in Baghdad; I know from terror. The bombings here, as bad as they are, are nowhere near that level. And yet every Lebanese I have spoken with about this always agrees with me and then adds the warning, “it’s not that bad... yet.”

Terrorism is winning here, like I’ve never seen terrorism win elsewhere. As traumatic as 9/11 was, most New Yorkers went back to their daily lives pretty quickly. London, as the home of stiff-upper-lipism, carried on the day after the 7/7 bombing as if nothing happened. But the Lebanese are terrified. It has affected how they live their lives in ways far outside what might be considered reasonable precautions. According to my fiancé, women at her nail salon say that many of their friends are delaying weddings this summer. (Although one woman said yesterday that if it weren’t for the fact that she had a wedding that night she wouldn’t be there.) Few are going out. Beirut’s famous nightclubs and restaurants are practically barren. Parents are forbidding their adult children to stray too far from home and those that can leave Beirut for another country or the mountain retreats above the city for the summer break are doing so earlier and earlier.

“This is worse than during the war,” my friend Haysam Eid, who, as a Lebanese dude, embodies the term, “tragically hip.” Young, popular and good looking, he should be enjoying the hell out of the summer, chasing girls and hanging with his buddies. Instead, he goes to work at the barbershop and goes home. “You don’t know where the next bomb will hit, man,” he said. “It’s the uncertainty. During the war, you had an idea what might happen. This is hell.”

The older generation likes to tell stories about how, during the civil war (which was truly vicious) they maintained a beach-going schedule and risked their lives to go to nightclubs. Today’s generation is the offspring of those wartime partiers, and they’re huddling in their homes at night. Yes, Beirut is under siege, but it’s not just a siege from outside forces.

That’s why I look at those two young women who walked in the coffeeshop with both appreciation and sadness. I worry that any conflict here will mean the divides between Christian and Muslim and the religious and the secular will trump friendships. Christian, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims and Druze all live in a state of deep anxiety toward the other sects and evidence of that tension can erupt at any moment.

Time and again, I’ve been told there will be another war here because “the Lebanese are stubborn” or “the Lebanese never learn.” There is a quickness to suspect bad intentions, even in everyday encounters. And then those same people will tell me it’s the outside powers trying to stir up trouble in Lebanon because a war here will benefit the U.S. or Iran or Syria or Israel for one reason or another.

But make no mistake: if there is a war here it will be because the Lebanese lack of trust in each other allows outside powers to manipulate them. That’s the greatest irony and tragedy of Lebanon: in a land of many faiths, its people have no faith in each other.

Lives Suspended by War

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 09:58:33 +0400

AMMAN, Jordan—Rana crosses her legs on the threadbare carpet in her living room in this poor Palestinian section of town and watches as her three children light a candle. The kids are having a pretend birthday party without a cake or presents, but their faces are painted a magnificent shade of gold by the candlelight.

Across town, Hasa and his family sit in their richly-appointed apartment, with all the modern conveniences and bedrooms for everyone. The kitchen is especially bright and clean.

Rana and Hasa live in separate worlds, but have much in common.

Both families are Iraqi refugees facing an uncertain future in a foreign country. Both want to return to their shattered country. And both agreed to be interviewed and photographed for this story only if their real names would not be used because they fear deportation from Jordan and retribution in Iraq.

Driven from their homes by violence and threats of death, Rana and Hasa also provide rare portraits of the refugee life facing many Iraqis. The two families are among the 750,000 Iraqi refugees estimated to be living in Jordan, a country about the size of Pennsylvania and choking on the staggering burden of its new population. (The Iraqis account for about 15 percent of the people living in Jordan.)

Rana’s family is struggling to fit in and faces discrimination from other Iraqis, Jordanians and Palestinians. Jordanians, Rana says, complain to her that “you’re not wearing a hijab, you’re wearing tight jeans, you’re leaving the house.” Palestinians, meanwhile, say, “You killed Saddam.”

Hasa’s family, while well off, faces difficult circumstances as well. From their plush perch overlooking the local mosque, they made a comfortable life here after arriving in 2003.

Things have changed, though.

Hasa now complains government regulations make it impossible for him to run his businesses here or in Iraq, and his life savings is being bled dry.

At the same time, he rages at the U.S. government.

“We are in such a state that we who welcomed America now hate it, and hate the people as much as we hate the politics,” he says. “This isn’t the freedom we expected. This isn’t what we wanted.”

Two families in a country where they don’t want to be.

Two families in a country that really doesn’t want them.

THE WRONG SIDE OF TOWN
In addition to her three children, Rana supports a husband who can’t work. She scratches out a living by teaching Iraqi children at a Christian nursery school and settling for whatever the headmistress pays her under the table.

“I can’t (legally) work because I’m Iraqi,” she says, twisting her fingers together and keeping one eye on her kids and the candle. “But my boss takes care of me.”

Life, she says, was better in Baghdad—until the U.S.-led invasion four years ago.

Rana’s family lived in a two-story house in Sadr City, the seething Shi’a slum. But the children had a swing on the roof and Rana taught fifth- and sixth-grades.

And they were content as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

Rana explains her family is Sabean, an ancient faith that holds John the Baptist as one of its greatest teachers. Under Saddam, she said, the family practiced its faith without fear of persecution because “Saddam was controlling them” and “he had a sword over everyone.”

But after Saddam was removed from power, “everyone who hated someone began acting on it.”

As the sectarian violence escalated and militias took over, once-friendly neighbors started gossiping about the non-Shi’as in their midst.

“They didn’t respect us because we are not like them,” Rana says with a trace of bitterness. “We are infidels.”

But it was her husband’s ordeal last May that convinced them to flee.

Her husband, a jeweler, was kidnapped by members of a Shi’a militia. He was held for three days, beaten and tortured. She offers pictures of him with marks on his back. In the photos, he looks like a corpse.

“He was practically dead,” she says. “I didn’t think he would come back to me ... They said we were infidels and they said our money should belong to the mujahadeen (resistance fighters), so they took it.”

Rana explains she paid a ransom (she declined to say how much) and turned over all the gold in the store to win her husband’s return.

Soon after, the family fled to Dora. After six weeks, they had new passports and paid $300 to drive to Amman.

Today, she says, her husband is still too traumatized to work because he fears going out in public.

“He tells me, ’Will I return to normal? Will I be okay?’”

Rana’s son, Mahmoud, is 4 and also was traumatized by the kidnapping. Today, he refuses to leave his father’s side or play much with his sisters, Amira, 7, and Aisha, 6.

The birthday party is a rare sign of engagement.

Rana looks around the small room, taking in the paucity of her surroundings: the black and white TV, the twin mattresses on the floor where all five family members sleep, the Polaroids of relatives taped to the walls. It’s a mean little space that is nonetheless safe—for now.

Her children, even little Mahmoud, are playing together and this makes her happy.

“God hasn’t forgotten us,” Rana says after a moment’s reflection. “I believe that honestly. Sometimes when a door closes in our face, another one will open. I believe this.”

BURNING THROUGH A FORTUNE
Hasa was a successful businessman in Iraq, with four businesses just outside Baghdad, including a chicken and fish farm, a dollar exchange business, government construction contracts and a real estate development business.

But none of that mattered in 2003, just after the invasion, when a group surrounded the car his son Haidar was driving in Baghdad. Masked gunmen, Hasa says, forced Haidar and his friend out of the car, beat them and stole the car.

Hasa decided right then to get his family out of Iraq. A month later, his wife and three children were in Jordan. Two months later, Hasa followed.

At first, life in Jordan was easy, Hasa says.

He was able to bring plenty of money with him and they settled into their apartment in a ritzy part of Amman. Hasa even had resident status back then, allowing him to set up a real estate development business in Jordan while employees kept his farms going in Iraq.

Today, Hasa has lost legal residency because the Jordanians tightened the rules. He no longer can leave the country because he fears not being allowed to return. None of his children can work and the family is burning through its savings.

“I’ve got children in school. I’ve got rent. I’ve got expenses,” Hasa says, waving his hand to take in his apartment and its furnishings.

His businesses in Iraq have collapsed and Hasa says his farms are now occupied by the mujahadeen, who have driven off his employees. “I can’t go back to Iraq,” he says. “My house is in Amriya (a neighborhood in western Baghdad), and I am a Shi’a. That place is now Sunni.”

At times, Hasa’s frustrations boil over and he spills his ire toward Washington.

“Of course we blame America,” he fumes. “When America first came, we welcomed it.” But the Americans worked with the exiles instead of the businessmen of Iraq, he says, because they didn’t want to work with anyone who had dealt with Saddam in the past. And he refuses to believe this chaos wasn’t planned.

“They can repair a satellite in space from earth and they can’t control Baghdad?” he says, spreading his hands in a universal “Can you believe that?” gesture.

As Hasa speaks, his children sit silently until his daughter Samara, who is 26, is asked whether the U.S. should open its doors to Iraqi refugees.

“That’s the minimum they can do for the Iraqis,” she says flatly.

HOPE ON THE HORIZON?
Only 700 Iraqis have been admitted to the U.S. since the war began, despite thousands of applications. Many of those requests have come from Iraqis who worked for the U.S. as translators, drivers or laborers. (Sweden, by comparison, has taken in 8,000 of the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees over the same period.)

Last week, the war’s refugees finally got some good news when the Department of Homeland Security announced the U.S. would admit up to 7,000 Iraqis by the end of the summer.

Rana’s family, as Sabeans, is more likely to be included among the refugees with a chance to enter the U.S. because they’re a religious minority. But she already has her sights set on Australia because her sister lives there.

Hasa’s family, however, might be out of luck. So like the hundreds of thousand other Shi’as in Jordan, he sits and waits.

Bills rising. Hope fading.

“When we sit down as a family and talk, my children say that if they get any opportunity to go elsewhere, they will,” Hasa says. “That means my family will be scattered.”

Originally appeared in the Newark Star-Ledger on Page A1, June 4, 2007
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Jihadists Moving Into Lebanon From Syria

Tue, 29 May 2007 17:05:13 +0400

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon—Heavily armed foreign jihadists have been entering Lebanon from Syria from around the time Western authorities noticed a drop in the infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq, Lebanese officials say.

Syrian authorities, hoping to disrupt Lebanon so they can reassert control of the country, “have stopped sending [the jihadists] to Iraq and are now sending them here,” charged Mohammed Salam, a specialist in Palestinian affairs in Lebanon. “They sent those people to die in Lebanon.”

Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, said about half of the militants who have been battling Lebanese forces in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli for nine days had fought previously in Iraq.

“They are very dangerous,” he said in an interview. “We have no choice, we have to combat them.”

Officials traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before Miss Rice’s meeting with her Syrian counterpart in Egypt early this month that Syria appeared to be taking “positive” steps to guard its border with Iraq, resulting in a reduced number of jihadists crossing the border.

But U.N. officials running the Nahr el-Bared camp told The Washington Times that a large band of foreigners carrying mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons entered the camp in a group several months ago.

That is near the time that infiltration of militants from Syria into Iraq fell off, according to Lebanese authorities, who suspect the jihadists were simply redirected by Damascus.

Several thousand residents have been trapped in the Palestinian refugee camp since fighting broke out May 20 between the army and several hundred militants of a group called Fatah Islam, which includes a large number of foreign fighters.

Palestinian leaders tried yesterday to negotiate an end to the standoff, in which Lebanese army forces are ringed around the camp, but Prime Minister Fuad Siniora insisted that the militants surrender and face justice.

Gen. Rifi said the foreigners began arriving in Lebanon during the war between Hezbollah and Israel last summer, when between 60 and 70 jihadists were integrated into Fatah al-Intifada, a group set up by Syrian intelligence in the 1980s.

In November last year, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship named Shaker Youssef al-Absi broke with Fatah al-Intifada and set up a new group, Fatah Islam, based in the Nahr el-Bared camp. Gen. Rifi said Fatah Islam has about 250 fighters, of which about 50 have been killed so far.

“They are parasites,” the general said. “Even in Nahr el-Bared, there are not a lot of Palestinians with Fatah Islam.”

The original group had about 30 to 40 Lebanese members and 20 Palestinians in the leadership positions, Gen. Rifi said. The rest were made up of fighters from Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria and even from as far as Bangladesh.

Residents of the camp appear to have been terrorized by the jihadists, according to interviews with Palestinians who fled for their lives over the past week.

The militants “were shooting at anyone who moved,” said one refugee who declined to give his name. He said he could tell they were foreign by listening to their accents, but his wife shushed him and he said no more.

Gen. Rifi said there are several more cells of foreign jihadists scattered around Lebanon. Some are in the Palestinian camps, some are in Tripoli and some are in Beirut. Another government official said some were based in the Bekaa Valley.

“Some [Gulf] Arabs, originally from al Qaeda, joined the group,” Gen. Rifi said. “But they are false al Qaeda. Our al Qaeda is made in Syria.”

Money for the fighters comes from local criminal activities, such as bank robberies—one of which sparked the current standoff—and support from Gulf countries and “local politicians,” said a senior regional military source. “They’re part of the global jihad,” he said.

Many government supporters think the timing of this flare-up, given an upcoming U.N. Security Council vote on the formation of an international tribunal to investigate the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, indicates Syria’s involvement.

“It’s actually a Syrian-sponsored and -coordinated move to send these jihadis into Lebanon to topple the regime,” said Mr. Salam.

Syria has been using the militant Shi’ite group Hezbollah to advance its interests in Lebanon, but Mr. Salam suggested Damascus was worried about inflaming religious tensions with the Sunni-led government that could spill over into Syria.

The Syrians “wouldn’t mind demolishing Lebanon, but they didn’t want to do it with a Sunni-Shi’ite war because that could cross the border into Syria. So they got Sunnis to fight Sunnis,” the analyst said.

Originally appeared May 29, 2007 in the Washington Times.

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Bodies piling up in assault on camp

Wed, 23 May 2007 13:17:15 +0400

Nahr el-Bared, Lebanon—The scene inside Nahr el-Bared refugee camp is grim. As intense combat between Lebanese troops and the Islamic militant group Fatah Islam entered its third day, bodies of fighters and civilians are piling up, according to several residents who managed to leave Tuesday after a brief lull in the fighting.

At least 30 soldiers, 18 militants and 19 civilians have been killed since Sunday in the worst internecine violence to hit Lebanon since the end of the 1975 to 1990 civil war, according to Lebanese army and Palestinian sources. The number of civilian casualties remained unknown because relief workers have not able to get inside the camp.

But a civil defense worker said there were “lots of bodies” just inside the north entrance to the camp where Fatah Islam—a jihadist group with an al Qaeda-inspired ideology and possible ties to Syria—was holding out against hundreds of Lebanese troops. The government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said it is determined to uproot Fatah Islam, which took up residence in the camp late last year.

But despite being hammered for the past three days by 155mm mortar rounds, tank blasts and 50-caliber machine gun fire, Fatah Islam’s positions seemed to be holding fast Tuesday.

Khoder Taleb, 36, the regional manager for Lebanon’s civil defense forces, said Fatah Islam has hundreds of fighters, many of whom are foreigners. Two bodies, which reporters were not allowed to see, were reportedly burned beyond recognition. Papers found on the dead militants identified them as Bangladeshis, Taleb said. There was no way to confirm that claim.

Around noon, a U.N. convoy tried to enter the camp, loaded with food, water, medicine and generators for residents who have been cut off from most supplies since Sunday. Even though a truce appeared to be in place by late afternoon, the convoy was attacked and three trucks were disabled, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. It wasn’t clear who did the firing.

Fighting continued intermittently throughout the day, with another truce going into effect at about 4:30 p.m. At that time, as many as 10,000 Palestinians took advantage of the lull to flee on foot wearing slippers and pajamas, and in cars. Many hung white sheets from their vehicles or waved white plastic bags outside car windows. Many drove on flat tires. The refugees were then taken to a nearby refugee camp, Beddawi, where they were housed in school buildings and given mattresses, food and water.

“The smell of corpses was everywhere. There was no food, water or electricity, and they were shooting at us,” Dania Mahmoud Kassem, a 21-year-old university student, told the Associated Press.

But the Palestinians didn’t receive much sympathy from the Lebanese, who blame them for igniting the civil war in 1975. Palestinians, in turn, aren’t very fond of their Lebanese hosts, who have refused to grant them citizenship or allow them to work in nearly 70 professions—consigning most of the 350,000 refugees to poverty in nearly a dozen camps.

When Lebanese troops rolled up to the Nahr el-Bared entrance Tuesday—they are not allowed to enter under a 1969 agreement with Palestinian groups—dozens of young Lebanese men cheered. Atop their armored personnel carriers, the soldiers grinned and flashed victory signs.

At Nahr el-Bared, between 30,000 and 40,000 people are wedged into an area that is barely a few square miles. Fatah Islam has taken over several buildings in the camp and in surrounding hamlets. The army has responded by often reducing them to rubble.

U.N. Relief and Works Agency officials say that dozens of buildings have been destroyed with residents inside. Lebanese Red Cross official Joseph Boutrous said his men managed to take 17 wounded civilians to local hospitals Monday and another 10 Tuesday.

Ali Said Mearbani, who lives in the village of Ard al Hamra, which borders Nahr el-Bared, was one of the first refugees to flee the camp, along with his wife and three daughters. A friend in the Lebanese army helped spirit the family to safety.

He said four “terrorists” had forced his family into the basement while they took positions on the roof. He said he could tell from their accents that they were from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan.

After a terrifying night huddled with his children while shells fell nearby, his wife and daughter-in-law begged the militants to leave them in peace.

“They told them, ’We won’t leave unless we’re dead,’ ” said Mearbani as he juggled several cell phone calls from concerned relatives.

Mearbani then praised the army for firing on every sniper position Fatah Islam had taken up—“even when they were hiding in a mosque,” he said.

Originally appeared May 23, 2007 on A-15 of the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Lebanon, Syria Point Fingers in Recent Violence

Tue, 22 May 2007 13:12:28 +0400

BEIRUT—Lebanon and Syria exchanged charges yesterday, with each blaming the other for an outbreak of fighting that has killed dozens of people in and around a Palestinian refugee camp near the northern city of Tripoli.

But both agreed that the two-day gunbattle, sparked by an attempt to arrest a group of bank-robbery suspects, was really about efforts to convene a U.N. tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The fighting pits the Lebanese army against a Palestinian splinter group called Fatah Islam, which has been publicly linked to Osama bin Laden’s global terrorist network, al Qaeda.

But Lebanon’s national police commander, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, said yesterday that the group was little more than a front created by the Syrian government to stir up trouble in Lebanon.

“Perhaps there are some deluded people among them, but they are not al Qaeda,” Gen. Rifi said. “This is imitation al Qaeda, a ’Made in Syria’ one.”

Muhammad Shatah, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, said Syria was sowing discord in Lebanon in hopes of derailing the tribunal, which is widely expected to implicate senior Syrian officials in the Hariri killing.

Fatah Islam is led by Shaker Youssef al-Absi, a Palestinian who came to Lebanon after winning early release from a Syrian prison last year. It is widely thought among Lebanese government members that al-Absi is a Syrian agent who was sent to Lebanon to stir up trouble.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem flatly rejected those charges, saying his government had been working through Interpol and in other ways to help break up the group. And the nation’s ambassador to the United Nations hinted at a Lebanese plot to build support for the Hariri tribunal.

“Every time there is a meeting in the Security Council to deal with the Lebanese crisis, one or two days before the council meets, there is some kind of trouble, either assassinations, or explosions or attempts to assassinate somebody,” Bashar Jaafari told reporters.

“This is not a coincidence. ... Some people are trying to influence the Security Council and to make pressure on the council so they can go ahead with the adoption of the draft resolution on the tribunal,” he said.

Kassem Kassir, a reporter for the pro-government newspaper al Mustaqbal who has interviewed members of Fatah Islam, said the truth is probably more complicated.

The group is financed and supported less by Syria than by Salafist groups in Iraq, Jordan and the Persian Gulf, he said. Salafists are Sunni fundamentalists who seek a return to Islam’s roots and are ideologically in tune with al Qaeda.

Al-Absi was once a member of the main Palestinian faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died in 2004. Al-Absi later joined Fatah al-Intifada, a front group set up by Syria to be used against Israel. That group failed to win popular support among the Palestinians, and al-Absi went out on his own last year by forming Fatah Islam.

The move makes sense, Mr. Kassir said, because al-Absi is a Jordanian of Palestinian descent with ties to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq who was killed last year. But he acknowledged that Fatah Islam appears to be very well-armed, presumably with weapons smuggled into Lebanon from Syria.

Syria’s most important ally in Lebanon is Hezbollah, but the militant group is constrained by its own carefully nurtured image as a Lebanese resistance group with members in parliament, said Reva Bhalla, director of geopolitical analysis at Stratfor, a Houston-based security firm.

She said Hezbollah is reluctant to turn its guns on the government, given that it seeks to be seen as a legitimate part of the Lebanese political process. Groups such as Fatah Islam have more flexibility.

“Syria is funneling weapons and men to them, keeping them [in Lebanon] and they’re a bargaining tactic against the United States” at a time when Washington is preparing for bilateral talks with Iran, she said.

Significantly, she added, Iran has signaled that it doesn’t oppose the Hariri tribunal, which is making Syria fearful of being betrayed by its main ally.

“Syria is watching very closely that it doesn’t get screwed in any deal,” and any support it may be giving to groups such as Fatah Islam is to remind the United States that it has chips it can still play, she said.

Originally appeared May 22, 2007 in the Washington Times
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Pelosi seen moving around Bush in Mideast

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 12:36:37 +0400

BEIRUT—She came, she met with Lebanese officials, she said little. But that hasn’t stopped speculation here as to what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hopes to accomplish this week on her fact-finding tour of the Middle East.

Pelosi touched down briefly in Beirut on Monday, meeting with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri before flying to Jordan. She is expected to meet Syrian officials Wednesday.

In Beirut, she walked into the tar pit of Lebanese politics, which is stalemated over the issue of an international tribunal investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who died in a car bombing two years ago—engineered, many suspect, by Syria. Pelosi paid her respects at Hariri’s grave.

In her meeting with Saniora, Pelosi listened to his complaints about Berri, an ally of Syria, who has declined to convene parliament although its spring session began three weeks ago. Each time Saniora has sent him legislation regarding the tribunal, he has been rebuffed by the speaker who claims no one has been available in his office to accept it.

Pelosi “was quite surprised that a speaker of parliament has the power to shut down the house,“ said Muhammed Shatah, a Saniora adviser. ”So, yes, it was clear that she was not indifferent to the situation.“

Over lunch, Pelosi pressed Berri at his Beirut home to create the tribunal, said Shatah and Western diplomatic sources. In Syria, Pelosi is expected to ask President Bashar Assad to stop impeding the investigation of Rafik Hariri’s death.

”The message ... is that Syria needs to stop interfering in Lebanon,“ said a Western diplomatic source who requested anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media. ”She’s not going to bring anything different.“

But analysts in Beirut said her stopover wasn’t just to shore up the pro-U.S. Saniora government, which is also bitterly opposed by the radical Shiite group Hezbollah.

She was also looking to score political points back home, they said.

”As a Democrat, her party clearly objects to the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq,“ said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Institute for International Peace. ”And they adopt the Baker-Hamilton report (which recommended that Washington reach out to Syria and Iran). So her visit falls in line with that line of thinking.“

But President Bush has rejected that recommendation, which is one reason, analysts in Beirut suggested, why Pelosi’s planned Damascus trip drew White House criticism—even though a GOP delegation met with Assad in Damascus on Sunday, while lower-level U.S. officials have been quietly engaging Syria in hopes of prying it away from its alliance with Iran and curbing its support for Hezbollah and Iraqi insurgents.

In fact, Pelosi will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria since President Bill Clinton’s meeting with the late President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar Assad’s father, in 1994.

”I think she is trying to offer a new Democratic approach to foreign relations in the region,“ said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Boston University. ”Since 2001, diplomacy has been discredited and dismissed by the administration. Democrats have gone far (in) voicing their opposition to the war in Iraq. But that is only a negative strategy. Pelosi, and Democrats, need to start showing how things can look different.“

Reva Bhalla, director of geopolitical analysis for Stratfor, a strategic think tank in Austin, Texas, said Pelosi is laying the groundwork for the eventual Democratic presidential nominee to have a concrete foreign policy agenda rather than appear merely to be anti-Bush.

”There’s the early start to the presidential election season,“ Bhalla said. ”And it’s part of the Democratic consensus, which is the whole idea that, ’Well, we’re not going to get anything done purely with military power.’ “

But critics here say Pelosi’s visit will be a propaganda boon to Assad.

”Any meeting is considered a PR coup,“ said the Western diplomat who asked not to be named. ”The danger in such freelance diplomacy is it sends a message of disunity and undermines official policy, which is to isolate Syria.“

David Schenker, a senior fellow in Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, echoed that concern.

”She’s undermining the president by going against his wishes, and she’s undermining the policy“ of isolating Syria, he said.

This article originally appeared on page A-13 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Silent war against terror waged in dangerous waters

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:07:01 +0400

Aboard the Bremen, Gulf of Aden—The seizure of 15 British navy personnel Friday was a stark reminder of the unheralded conflict being fought by the United States and its allies on the high seas surrounding the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, patrols of the volatile waterways in the Middle East and East Africa were stepped up. Their targets are human trafficking, drug and oil smuggling, piracy, weapons-running and possible infiltration by terrorists into Somalia and Yemen—criminal activities that, military leaders fear, provide cover and financial support for international organizations such as al Qaeda.

The British sailors and marines seized by Iran in the Persian Gulf on Friday were from the crew of the frigate HMS Cornwall, which was taking part in patrols in the narrow, contested waters between Iran and Iraq.

Nearby, an armada, the Combined Task Force-150, consisting of frigates, destroyers and support vessels from 10 nations—the United States, France, Britain, Pakistan, Singapore, Bahrain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada and Germany—patrols 2.4 million square miles of water and 7,480 miles of coastline. More than half of the world's crude oil and 95 percent of the cargo trade between Asia and Europe crisscrosses this vast patch of ocean.

"We're just a bobby on the beat doing his job," said the task force spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Brian "Grassy" Meadows of the British Royal Navy. Britain has command of the task force until April 4, when France takes over.

Commanded from Bahrain and attached to the U.S. 5th Fleet, CTF-150 is part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes the war in Afghanistan—but not in Iraq, sailors on the German frigate Bremen pointedly note.

"It's not being in a state of war," said Chief Petty Officer Beatrice Dongas, 35, the chief gunnery officer of the Bremen, which is in its 25th year of service in the German navy. "It's threatening possible terrorists by being in the area. It's not a shooting or fighting war."

Task force commanders are concerned about what Meadows called a "permissive environment"—one that allows for any number of activities, legal and illegal, to provide cover for terrorists. The region is rife with narcotics trafficking from Pakistan to Yemen and Kenya and then on to Europe. Weapons are smuggled from Yemen to Somalia, fueling the violence there.

Meadows would give no statistics on the number of boardings, seizures or confiscations the task force has carried out, saying such information was "classified."

Lt. Cmdr. Christian Scherrer, the Bremen's operations officer and third-in-command, said that halfway through its six-month deployment, the crew has conducted eight approaches and two boardings of suspicious ships. Nothing was found amiss, he said.

Of greatest concern in the anti-terror operations is the movement and trafficking of people from Sudan and Eritrea into Saudi Arabia, refugees and economic migrants from Somalia to Yemen and "people of particular interest" moving from Yemen to Somalia.
In January, Ethiopian troops—with U.S. support—routed the Union of Islamic Courts, an Islamic movement that had conquered much of southern Somalia. The United States said the courts group was an al Qaeda affiliate.

Task force commanders moved the Ramage, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, and the Ticonderoga-class U.S. cruiser Bunker Hill to the waters off Somalia. At the time, the task force's commander, British Commodore Bruce Williams, said, "Coalition forces will continue routine operations in this unstable area as long as the need exists for our presence."

Deep inside the Bremen, along the central corridor that the crew calls "Broadway," two small snapshots are posted on a bulletin board. They show a ship very much like the Bremen with a 35-by-36-foot hole blasted in it at the waterline, its edges black and folded inward from the force of a powerful explosion.

It's the U.S. Navy's guided-missile destroyer Cole, which was attacked on Oct. 12, 2000, by al Qaeda suicide bombers while the vessel was on a routine fueling stop in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen American sailors died, and 39 were wounded.

"We put that up to keep the guys focused," said Scherrer. "So they know what can happen."

Although Germany and France opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, both participate in a task force attached to the U.S. 5th Fleet, which takes part in that war from the Persian Gulf. How do the Germans feel about taking part in an open-ended operation so far from the North Atlantic?

"We don't do America's work," said Chief Petty Officer Rebecca Steinhardt, 23, the ship's weapons controller. "Since the 11th of September, there were terrorists found in Germany, so it's everyone's war."

The Bremen's skipper, Capt. Andreas Jedlicka, said intelligence showed that links existed between training camps in Somalia and militant havens in the Arabian Peninsula. "Terroristic activities are not only about the United States," he said.

Scherrer, the Bremen's operations officer, noted that Germany's economy depends on global trade, particularly shipping from Asia—the vast majority of which passes through the task force's area. In his eyes, the Bremen is defending Germany and the sea lanes it relies on, not merely falling in with America's global war on terror.
"We do not expect to find Osama bin Laden on every dhow," Scherrer said, referring to the small Arab boats that ply the waters in the area.

The Germans try to adopt a non-confrontational approach when they do board and search ships. "For example, we always bring them fresh water," said Scherrer, adding that the gesture usually was welcomed by the crews of the intercepted dhows.

At the end of the day, the sailors of the Bremen and other ships in CTF-150's area of operation link the struggle to secure the lines of trade that connect the world's developed economies against an enemy that would like nothing more than to break those links. Al Qaeda has expressed a desire to attack Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, and pirates have attacked Iraqi oil terminals in the northern Persian Gulf.

Disruption of the trade in this part of the ocean would devastate the world's economy, making the conflict here a highly strategic—if largely unknown—battle. "The kind of war that is happening here," said Jedlicka, "is a silent war."

Originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Page A1, March 24, 2007
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Lebanon neighborhoods turning into bunkers

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:11:16 +0400

Ain el-Roummani, Lebanon—Just a few yards from a statue of the Virgin, marking the spot where the Lebanese civil war started back in 1975, Elie Harfouch sized up visitors to this Christian neighborhood.

After deciding the strangers weren’t a threat, he warned that tensions in Lebanon were as high as they’d ever been and that Wednesday’s second anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri could be a bloody one.

“The young people are boiling,” said Harfouch, 50. “You can’t hold them back.”

It’s not just the young people. According to diplomatic sources, intelligence analysts and interviews in various neighborhoods, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians in Beirut have begun stockpiling weapons and posting sentries to defend against what they say are possible assaults by rival factions.

Harfouch, a former fighter for the Lebanese Forces, one of the numerous militias that tore Lebanon apart in a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, said residents of Ain el-Roummani are “absolutely” preparing. Guards are posted in strategic buildings to watch for incoming Shiite mobs, he said, and most people are buying weapons.

“A rifle used to cost $200. Now it costs $1,000,” Harfouch said, and shrugged. “You have to defend yourself.”

The event that has neighborhoods turning into bunkers is the planned rally on Wednesday by the pro-government coalition known as March 14, named for the date of a huge pro-Hariri, anti-Syrian protest, one month after the slaying of the popular prime minister in 2005.

Wednesday’s rally is planned for a city square where the body of Hariri lies, not far from the 2-month-old sprawling tent city and sit-in that the militant Islamic Shiite group Hezbollah and its supporters—the March 8 coalition, named for a pro-Syrian street rally in 2005—have erected in downtown Beirut in a bid to force the U.S.-supported government of Fuad Saniora from power.

The current crisis erupted in November, three months after the devastating Hezbollah-Israel war, when six pro-Syrian ministers resigned from Saniora’s Cabinet. That was followed by strikes and the continuing sit-in downtown organized by Hezbollah.

Two days of street battles at the end of January in Beirut and elsewhere between pro- and anti-government forces resulted in the death of nine people and the wounding of at least 300. The violence also took on a sectarian tone as Sunnis, who mainly support the government headed by one of their own, fought the Syrian-backed Shiite protesters.

January’s clashes between gangs of young men was fought mainly with sticks and stones. But as the rise in prices for weapons suggests, neighborhoods seem to be preparing for more deadly clashes.

In the Tariq el-Jadedih district of Beirut, a major base of support for the government and the Hariri clan that saw the worst of the violence in January, young men warned that they would not stand by if Hezbollah and its allies came to their neighborhood.

“We have our own weapons,” said one. “We have to defend ourselves. They come in here and smash our cars. What’s next? Coming into our homes?”

Meanwhile, in the Shiite suburbs in south Beirut, posters of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah adorn most storefronts, and pictures of men who died fighting the Israelis on and off over the past 26 years are placed in honored spots.

And there is little doubt that Hezbollah is by far the best armed and equipped of all the Lebanese factions. However, according to intelligence analysts, major groups comprising the March 14 coalition—mostly the Lebanese Forces, the Druze-led Progressive Socialist Party and the Future Movement, led by Saad Hariri, son of the slain ex-prime minister—are busy procuring weapons and training as a precaution against any outbreak in violence.

The Sunnis “really see a need to arm themselves now,” said Reva Bhalla, director of geopolitical analysis for Stratfor, a Texas-based security consulting company. “Everyone just wants to be prepared.”

Bhalla said she has received reports that Hariri is buying weapons from Saudi Arabia and Jordan—mostly automatic rifles, heavy machine guns, ammunition and mortars—and storing them in West Beirut, a primarily Sunni part of the city.

A high-level member of Hezbollah, who demanded anonymity, said young people in the Sunni neighborhoods are being organized and trained by older men who fought in the Lebanese civil war for the al-Murabitun, then the largest Sunni militia.

Hezbollah also charges that Wissam al-Hassan, Rafik Hariri’s former chief of security and now the head of the intelligence division within the Interior Ministry’s Internal Security Forces, is distributing gun licenses to Sunni men, allowing them to buy weapons easily from local gun shops.

Al-Hassan was unavailable for comment. But an Interior Ministry source denied the accusation.

“They attack us, they attack the internal security forces,” he said. “This is political.”

Bhalla said Hezbollah is also readying itself. She said hundreds of Hezbollah fighters from the group’s strongholds outside Beirut have moved into the tent city downtown. Sniper teams from Hezbollah, Amal and the allied Syrian Social Nationalist Party have also scouted buildings surrounding downtown to prevent any members of the March 14 movement from provoking them into violence, she said.

On Thursday, the Lebanese army intercepted a truck filled with rockets and small arms in a neighborhood about a five-minute drive from downtown. Hezbollah said the weapons were destined for its fighters in the south and demanded their return under an agreement the Lebanese government made with Hezbollah to support the “right of the resistance” against Israel.

Defense Minister Elias Murr refused, saying the weapons would be turned over to the Lebanese army.

Back in Ain el-Roummani, Harfouch scoffed at the notion that Hezbollah’s weapons shipment was for use against Israel.

“What does the resistance need with light arms?” he asked sarcastically. “They’re for internal fighting. There isn’t anyone who isn’t arming themselves.”

Originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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View from Baghdad: How Zarqawi’s Death May Change the Game

Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:46:51 +0400

The news of the death of terrorist mastermind Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi today in Baquba, north of Baghdad, was greeted with cheers and applause by the Iraqi journalists who covered the announcement. But his killing is more important as a political victory than a military one.

On Wednesday night, working with intelligence from Iraqis and with the Jordanian spy service, American fighter-bombers leveled a house where Zarqawi and seven other leaders of his group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, were holed up. All were killed. U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of the Multi- National Forces in Iraq, said Zarqawi’s body was identified by facial features, known scars and fingerprints.

“Zarqawi was the godfather of sectarian killing in Iraq,” said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, talking alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “He led a civil war within Islam and a global war of civilizations.”

Zarqawi’s killing is a major step forward in America’s fight in Iraq, but it will not end the insurgency, which has numerous factions, not all of whom are loyal to Zarqawi—obviously, since someone tipped off the Americans. And it won’t end the sectarian violence, because Shi’ite death squads are still operating out of the Interior ministry and other police forces and many Sunni insurgents are not foreign jihadis aligned with Zarqawi. These fighters have their own beef with Maliki’s mainly Shi’ite government, which they see as a tool of Iran.

And while Zarqawi wasn’t quite the all-powerful bogeyman the Americans made him out to be several times during the war, he brought in money and inspired recruits. Zarqawi was a tremendously charismatic leader of the foreign jihadis who, while small in number, had an outsize influence on the Iraqi insurgency, able to lure former Ba’athists and local Islamists into their camp. His death will certainly put a crimp in the jihad’s money and manpower pipeline into Iraq.

More important, Zarqawi’s death is a sign that the American plans to bring the Sunnis into the political process may have finally borne fruit, that the political deal in Baghdad between the Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunnis may yet hold—if the Shi’ites do their part.

The American gambled that by bringing in the Sunnis over the objections of their allies the Shi’ites and the Kurds, Sunni politicians like Adnan al- Dualaimi and Tariq al-Hashimi would be able to strengthen their influence over the Ba’athist and Islamic insurgents, and eventually turn the Iraqi elements of the insurgency against Zarqawi. That may be what happened. Baquba, where Zarqawi was killed, is a hotbed of Ba’athist groups, and there are early reports that local insurgents had given information on Zarqawi’s whereabouts. Today, Sunni politicians said that now that Zarqawi had been eliminated, it was time to end the sectarian violence and bring the Shi’ite militias to heel. And that’s the deal Iraq is looking at now.

Just minutes after Maliki’s triumphant press conference, he presented names for the still-empty posts of Interior, Defense and National Security in the new government. It was a solid win for the Sunnis and seen as a reward for finally turning on Zarqawi. For Defense, they got Gen. Abdel Qader Jassim, a Sunni general, the current commander of the Iraqi Army and, famously, the general who advised Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait in 1991. For the post of Interior minister, Maliki named Shi’ite Jawad al- Bolani, a former colonel under Saddam and a close aide to Sheikh Karim Al-Mohammadawi, the “Prince of the Marshes,” a local Shi’ite boss in the south opposed to Iran. Both men will be acceptable to the Sunnis, who loathed the former interior minister, Bayan Jabr, a religious Shi’ite tied to the Badr Organization, a Shi’ite militia still believed closely connected with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Bolani’s anti-Iran credentials are solid. In January 2005, while standing for election for the transitional Iraqi parliament, al-Bolani told TIME: “The Iranian system will never happen in Iraq, and most Islamic movements agree wth me on that.”

So it appears that the Sunnis delivered on Zarqawi, and got candidates to their liking. Now the question turns to what happens next. In all likelihood, there will be an immediate upsurge in violence as insurgents allied to Zarqawi attempt to show that their leader’s death will be avenged and to demonstrate their ability still to carry out operations. But if Zarqawi’s killing is evidence that the Sunnis were ready to abandon him and buy into the political process, this violence should begin to ebb in a matter of weeks as more Sunni militants are brought to heel.

“Zarqawi’s death will not end the violence in Iraq,” Khalilzad said. “But it is an important step in the right direction.” He’s right. The Shi’ites will now have to complete their end of the bargain. The next step will be for Maliki and his new security team to rein in the Shi’ite militias that have been the source of so much Sunni anger toward the government in Baghdad. If they don’t—or can’t—and the sectarian killings continue, the Sunnis will be tempted to unleash their fighters again. And if that happens, there won’t be any new deals to be made.

Originally appeared in TIME Magazine.
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Iraq's Police a Deadly Problem

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:58:08 +0400

The bodies began to show up early last week. On Monday, 34 corpses were found. In the darkness of Tuesday morning, 15 more men, between the ages of 22 and 40 were found in the back of a pickup truck in the al- Khadra district of western Baghdad. They had been hanged. By daybreak, 40 more bodies were found around the city, most bearing signs of torture before the men were killed execution-style. The most gruesome discovery was an 18-by-24-foot mass grave in the Shi’ite slum of Kamaliyah in east Baghdad containing the bodies of 29 men, clad only in their underwear with their hands bound and their mouths covered with tape. Local residents only found it because the ground was oozing blood. In all, 87 bodies were found over two days in Baghdad.

The grisly discovery was horrible enough, the latest and perhaps most chilling sign that Iraq is descending further into butchery—and quite possibly civil war. But almost as disturbing is the growing evidence that the massacres and others like it are being tolerated and even abetted by Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq’s Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr. On his watch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used their positions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militia to take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni men and stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads. Despite numerous attempts to contact them, neither Jabr nor Interior Ministry spokesmen responded to requests for comment on this article.

Jabr’s and his forces’ growing reputation for brutality comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the Bush Administration, which would like to hand over security responsibilities to those same police units as quickly as possible. That has raised the distinct and disturbing possibility that the U.S. is in fact training and arming one side in a conflict seeming to grow worse by the day. “Militias are the infrastructure of civil war,” U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told TIME recently. Khalilzad has been publicly critical of Jabr and warned that the new security ministries under the next, permanent Iraqi government should be run by competent people who have no ties to militias and who are “non- sectarian.” Further U.S. support for training the police and army, he said, depends on it.

But ever since Jabr was appointed Interior Minister after the January 2005 election brought a religious Sh’ite coalition to power, Sunnis allege, he began remaking the paramilitary National Police into Shi’ite shock troops. A member of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Jabr fled to Iran in the 1970s to avoid Saddam’s crackdown. Jerry Burke, a former civilian senior police advisor to the Interior Ministry, said Jabr’s experience with Saddam’s government has left him bitter and distrustful of anyone he suspects has ties to the previous regime. That would most certainly include the former members of Saddam Hussein’s Special Forces and Republican Guards which initially made up the bulk of the National Police when Jabr took charge.

To help facilitate his transformation of the police forces, Jabr made sure to enlist the help of SCIRI’s armed wing, the Badr Organization. Members of the militia have been a growing presence in the National Police, which now consists of nine brigades, with about 17,500 members divided between the Special Police Commandos, the Public Order brigades and a mechanized brigade, which will soon be transferred to the Ministry of Defense. “Leadership in the commando positions has been turned over to Badr,” said Matt Sherman, a former CPA advisor to the Interior Ministry. “And new recruits are mostly Badr.”

Indeed, outside the ministry headquarters, banners proclaiming solidarity with Imam Hussein, one of Shi’ites’ holiest figures, snap in the spring breeze alongside—and sometimes instead of—Iraqi flags. Most of the guards’ beards are invariably cut in the close-cropped Iranian style, making them stand out in Baghdad, where beards are less common.

Like so many things in Iraq right now, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. As far back as December 2003, David Gompert, the former National Security Advisor for the Coalition Provisional Authority, realized the dangers sectarian militias posed to Iraq’s stability. And in the waning days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, American viceroy L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer issued Order 91, which was intended to demobilize or integrate nine militias totaling about 100,000 men into the Iraqi security forces. But the Kurdish pesh merga and the armed wing of SCIRI, the Badr Organization, still exist today because the order was never completely or competently carried out.

For that, Gompert puts the blame squarely on the Iraqi government, then under Iyad Allawi, as well as the American embassy. With the U.S. military engaged in several major operations in 2004 and the government transitioning from the CPA to a more traditional diplomatic presence with the arrival of U.S. ambassador John Negroponte at the end of June, Gompert says, neither Allawi nor the U.S made the reintegration program a priority. Job training programs run by Allawi’s Labor Ministry were cancelled over personal feuds and pension programs and other aspects of the program of DDR—“demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration”—were bounced around from one command to another.

Making matters worse has been the fact that the police—unlike the Iraqi Army, which is still under U.S. command and supervision—were practically ignored almost from the beginning of the occupation, says Burke. And what supervision the National Police did get came from U.S. military intelligence officers, not civilian police advisors.

This grave oversight, which stemmed from the military’s unfamiliarity with civilian police methods and its unwillingness to learn, has led to numerous abuses and little accountability. The U.S. State Department, in a report released two weeks ago, documented numerous incidents in 2005, dating back to early May when Jabr was first appointed Interior Minister, where Sunni men were killed execution-style by Interior Ministry police or Shi’ite militias. In each case, Jabr ordered an investigation, and in each case the investigation had yet to report any findings.

Thanks in part to the Interior Minister’s “nonfeasance,” said Burke, the former Interior Ministry adviser, Jabr was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of military-age Sunni men whose bodies have turned up at the sewage plant in southeast Baghdad since late December. Men in police uniforms and vehicles routinely travel through the city in daylight hours with bodies in the back of trucks for disposal at the sewage plant, he said. Prisoners often disappear, Burke said, because they’re picked up at night and no one has an accurate account of who is arrested and where they are taken. “The Special Police Commandos,” he said, using their old name, “are most definitely out of control.”

So black is the reputation of the National Police, that after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, many Sunnis said the perpetrators were Interior Ministry troops who were looking for a pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two days after the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens from each other, National Police units stood by as Shi’ite rioters—and rival militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army—stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods, according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq.

The American efforts to try and help stem the deadly sectarianism will likely do little good—and in some respects may well exacerbate the problem. Instead of increasing the number of civilian advisors to Iraq’s local police forces, a spokeswoman for the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) said more U.S. military police and military personnel will be assigned to train them. The Special Police Transition Teams (SPTTs) are the model that will be followed. “The SPTTs have been very successful in their efforts,” the spokeswoman said. No change is planned for the oversight program on the National Police.

Gompert notes, “I remember saying, ’If there is going to be a civil war, it’s going to be fought between Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militias.” And as long as Jabr is running the Interior Ministry and its police forces, there is little doubt which of the two in such a conflict will have the law—and American training—on its side.

Originally appeared in TIME Magazine.
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Making Tribal War Work for the U.S. in Iraq

Tue, 8 Nov 2005 22:11:41 +0400

Operation Steel Curtain opened up Saturday morning as two Marine battalions made a stealthy entrance into the outskirts of Huseybah, a smugglers’ haven near the Syrian border that U.S. officials believe is the latest stronghold for insurgents loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Echo, Fox and Golf companies, from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines took the southern slice of the city, which runs almost two miles west to east, while units from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines moved into the northern half. Embedded with Fox and Golf companies of the 2/1, This reporter saw little fighting in the first three days of the operation, but had advanced about halfway through the city by mid-day Monday. By then, one Marine from the 3/6 had been killed and several others from the 2/1 wounded. The number of insurgents killed was unknown, with estimates ranging from 36 to 80.

The Iraqis fighting alongside the Marines in Huseybah may have been familiar to both the U.S. forces and the insurgents. Many members of the Iraqi Army’s Desert Protectors unit are from the al-Mahal tribe in the al- Qaim area. These men had fought against the Marines of 2/1 last year when U.S. forces first moved into the region. But after the Marines had left, the al-Mahal lost a tribal dustup with the Karabilah tribe, which had allied with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq group. So, the al-Mahal were kicked out of Huseybah and the jihadis moved in. Now, the al-Mahal are back helping their erstwhile enemies, the Marines, drive out their tribal foe—most of the fighters resisting Operation Steel Curtain are presumed to be from the Karabilah tribe. Ubaidi, about nine miles east of Huseybah, is considered a stronghold of foreigners.

The first direct engagement came during a dusk sandstorm on the edge of a housing development where they had dug in to await the Marines. While talking with a family in a nearby house, members of Fox Company’s 3rd Platoon came under heavy fire from the militants. At his lookout post on the roof, Lance Corp. Manuel Beccerarodriguez ducked as 7.62mm rounds snarled past his head. Staff Sergeant Michael Ventrone ordered his Marines to get on the roof and fight their way out of the ambush.

“Get your ass up there,” he yelled to his men as the dashed up stairs and dived onto the roof to get cover. He screamed into his radio for tank support, and moments later, M-1A1 tanks advanced on the school and began shelling, sending up huge plumes of smoke and leaving gaping holes in the cinderblock buildings. On the roof, members of 3rd platoon emptied magazines into the enemy positions, while other squads joined in from adjacent buildings.

A sudden whoosh signaled a rocket-propelled grenade heading straight for the 3rd platoon position. But bad luck for the militants: it struck a lamppost before it could reach them, exploding harmlessly.

After 20 minutes, it was over. The tanks had collapsed most of the buildings in the school complex on top of those militants who hadn’t fled. Those who had tried to run got a nasty surprise: “We started dropping 203s [small grenades] behind them so when they ran, they ran into steel,” Ventrone said. “They picked the wrong time to attack us. We had two tanks.”

The firefight at the school was the most dramatic action of the first three days. House by house, block by block, the Marines advanced, methodically securing every building they passed and asking residents to relocate to abandoned buildings to the rear for a few days. One house cleared by Fox Company contained insurgent propaganda showing photos of the same Marine company when they had fought in Fallujah in April 2004. Another contained a body that had been booby-trapped. Echo company also found two weapons caches.

But now, the dusty town is almost deserted. Of the 30,000 people who reportedly live here, only about 5,000 remain, and the 300 to 500 militants the Marines were expecting to find seem either to have fled or are lying low. Of the 200 men detained, only one was foreign: a Kuwaiti.

Jasim, a member of the Desert Protectors from Huseybah, said most of the foreign fighters had now fled to Baiji, Samara and Ramadi, which matches intelligence received by the staff of 2/1 commander’s Lt. Col. Robert Oltman.

“The insurgents go where the presence isn’t,” he said. The U.S. military plans to go into towns where the insurgency has been active, secure them and establish “firm bases” in each one manned by U.S. and Iraqi troops. The plan, said Col. Stephen Davis, commander of the Regimental Combat Team-2, which is directing this battle, is to deny the insurgents the ability to create sanctuaries, such as they had done in Fallujah before November 2004. This is the “ink-spot” theory of counterinsurgency that has been gaining traction in recent months—the U.S. takes an area with overwhelming force, then holds it for six months to a year before moving on to the next insurgent strongholds, spreading like an ink spot across a tablecloth.

“These guys don’t want to die,” said Lt. Kevin Graves, the communications officer for Golf Company. “They’re not like the guys we met in Fallujah last year. Those guys wanted to kill Americans and they didn’t care if they died.”

Originally appeared in TIME Magazine.
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Looking Out on Hostile Territory

Sun, 6 Nov 2005 23:01:41 +0400

The members of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, are creeping through the mean streets of Iraq’s meanest town when their mission comes in. Intelligence officers at the Marines’ headquarters at Firm Base One, at the edge of Fallujah, have zeroed in on an insurgent: a local teacher named Taufiq Latif Saleh, suspected of being the leader of a 10- person bomb-making cell. Fox Company hits two “dry” houses before they find Saleh, a burly, bearded man in a grimy dishdasha. “I am a teacher! I am a teacher!” he protests as the Marines march him out into the courtyard, bind his hands with plastic ties and blindfold him. The Marines order his four young sons to kneel and face the wall as punishment for cracking wise when the troops entered the house. As Saleh is bundled into a waiting truck and taken to a detention facility, Lance Corporal John Hammar, 20, spots the man’s daughter in tears and sighs in frustration. “Little kids are crying,” he says. “I’m the bad guy now.”

For the Americans charged with maintaining order in this roiling, ruined city in western Iraq, it’s too late to make friends. One year ago, the Marines launched an assault to take back Fallujah from insurgents, including some loyal to al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, who had overrun the city and used it as a base for spreading mayhem throughout Iraq. A week of house-by-house fighting left hundreds of insurgents dead—and saddled U.S. forces and the Iraqi government with the task of rebuilding a battered city and persuading 210,000 uneasy locals to return home. Some military analysts hoped Fallujah would be where the U.S. could apply the “oil spot” strategy of counterinsurgency, with the aim to spread stability by clearing and securing individual cities and improving the lives of their citizens.

But like much else about the war in Iraq, Fallujah hasn’t turned out as the U.S. had hoped. In many respects, the city reflects less the progress of the U.S. enterprise than its troubles. The city’s reconstruction has been slowed by a lack of coordination among the military, U.S. aid agencies and the Iraqi government. U.S. officers on the ground say they have denied terrorists a base in Fallujah. But across Iraq, the insurgency hasn’t been curbed. October was the fourth deadliest month for U.S. troops since they invaded Iraq in March 2003, and last week 27 more Americans died in insurgent attacks, many of them in Sunni- dominated Anbar province, which includes Fallujah. But Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi security forces aren’t ready to assume the burden of imposing order in violent Sunni areas. While the city isn’t an outright failure, a military official says the hope that Fallujah could soon serve as a model for U.S. success now looks like “perhaps the result of overzealous expectation.”

The landscape of Fallujah today isn’t encouraging. Some rebuilding is taking place, and three-quarters of the houses have been reconnected to the electrical grid. But neighborhoods in the northeast and southeast—the two main entry points for last year’s invasion—are filled with rubble piles and buildings whose top stories have been blasted off. For every reconstruction project, there is a pile of cinder blocks where a house used to be. The military has closed the city to the outside world, allowing people in only after they show ID cards that they are residents of Fallujah. The Marines man five entry checkpoints, turning away anyone who can’t provide proper credentials or who seems suspicious. “Obviously, it’s not foolproof,” says Captain Chad Walton, spokesman for the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. “But it’s way better than it was.”

That may be true, but the Marines acknowledge that they are operating in largely hostile territory. “This place is definitely not safe,” says Hammar. “I wouldn’t let my sister walk here, ever.” When the Marines of Fox Company set out for a night patrol, supporters of the insurgency announce the Americans’ movements through the loudspeakers of city mosques. Although direct engagement with the insurgents is rare, the Marines face the constant threat of mortars, car bombs, suicide attacks and ever more sophisticated improvised explosive devices. When the Marines are on patrol, insurgents take potshots and then hide before the Americans can shoot back. They test the troops by seeing how close they can drive to a patrol before the Marines open fire. Lately, troops say, insurgents have begun using a technique called pigeon flipping: while on patrol, the Marines have noticed flocks of pigeons circling above them, leading them to conclude that supporters of the insurgents have somehow trained the birds to signal when troops are in the area. “If it’s a game of cat and mouse,” says Corporal Richard Bass, “then who’s the mouse?”

Marine officers say they aren’t surprised by the insurgents’ resilience. “I know this counterinsurgency is frustrating,” Major Dan Williams tells members of Fox Company after another fruitless day of chasing enemy fighters. “But you’ve almost had insurgency Darwinism. All the stupid ones are dead.” The Marines aren’t getting much help in their efforts to outsmart their adversaries. Residents who are reluctant to help the U.S. identify insurgents are equally unwilling to cooperate with the U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, whom some xenophobic Fallujis consider foreigners. The cops are public-order battalions from Baghdad, and the Iraqi army units are made up almost exclusively of Shi’ites from southern Iraq. While locals still refer to U.S. troops as occupiers, some think the Iraqi troops are worse. “When Iraqi soldiers get inside the city, they start frightening the people by attacking them and shooting in the air,” says Um Muhammed, 44, a housewife. “The Iraqi army wants revenge on us.”

That kind of paranoia is one reason the U.S. troop presence, while an irritant to many Iraqis, may be the only thing preventing a slide into a sectarian bloodbath. The Bush Administration hopes that increased Sunni political participation will help defuse the insurgency. But elections have proved an insufficient antidote to the violence, and the U.S. and Iraq’s new leaders have given sullen Sunnis few tangible reasons to support them. Because of security concerns, the State Department has only one envoy and one staff member from the U.S. Agency for International Development for the whole of Anbar province. As a result, reconstruction money isn’t being spent in insurgent-friendly places like Fallujah. Says an aid worker in Fallujah who asked not to be named: “It’s frustrating that it’s taken 30 months to get someone out in the most restive part of the country.”

U.S. commanders say rebuilding places like Fallujah will happen only if the insurgency is contained. So don’t expect U.S. troops to leave anytime soon. At a recent meeting, city council members pleaded with Lieut. Colonel Bill Mullen to let Fallujah police itself. But Mullen refused and demanded that council members stop turning a blind eye to insurgent activities. “If the security situation does not improve,” Mullen said, “guess what? We’re not going anywhere.”

Originally appeared in TIME Magazine.
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Taking Back Iraq's Streets

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:56:22 +0400

Eyes peering through slits in black masks, the commandos creep up the floors of the Baghdad apartment building, ready to pounce. Their target is Omar Tamimi, an insurgent believed to have carried out the January assassination of the governor of Baghdad province. In the past, the responsibility for such high-profile operations has been shouldered by teams of elite U.S. troops. But on this night, the American commandos are playing a support role to members of the new Iraqi army’s Counter Terrorism Task Force, a unit the U.S. is training to take on more counterinsurgent dirty work. The early stages of the operation unfold smoothly. One team of troops stops on the second floor, the other continues to the third, where they place explosive charges against a thin wooden apartment door. Two booms in quick succession echo in the concrete stairwell. The doors shatter inward in a storm of wooden splinters, and the Iraqi and American troops, identically outfitted with US- made M4 carbines, night-vision goggles, boots, uniforms and body armor, burst in.

Inside the troops find children and three women, one of them elderly, cowering on the floor. The Iraqi forces search the apartment and find three men. They turn up Tamimi’s identification papers, but not the target himself. After cuffing the adults—including the women—with plastic ties, the Iraqi commander grills them about Tamimi, but gets nowhere. Then an Iraqi officer begins chatting with the children; before long one of them reveals that Tamimi had been in the apartment moments before the troops rushed in. “He’s still here,” the officer tells the Americans. Soon a Green Beret is heard yelling and laughing in the kitchen. Under the sink he’d kicked a thin wall. Behind it was Tamimi, a thin sketch of a man, curled into a ball.

Operations like the one that netted Tamimi earlier this year provide a glimpse of what U.S. commanders hope will be the future of combat in Iraq. Two years since the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. is scrambling to train and equip a new Iraqi army to take over combat duties and pave the way for a reduction in the size of the U.S. troop presence. After a slow start, the training program appears to be picking up momentum: last week the Pentagon announced plans to trim the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from 150,000 to 105,000 by early next year, a move that reflects the improved capabilities of the Iraqi forces. The top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, said that “very much sooner rather than later, Iraq will be able to provide for its own security.”

The Iraqi special-ops units like the one that captured Tamimi are spearheading that push. TIME was recently granted access to the Iraqi commandos and their U.S. advisors, observed their training sessions and accompanied the units on patrol. While their numbers are few, Iraqi special forces have assumed a bigger role in sensitive counter-insurgent operations, often acting as the lead teams in raids and rescue missions. In some cases, Iraqi units have used intelligence gleaned from locals to identify their own low-level targets, and then execute small raids on their own. Trained by Task Force Pioneer, a unit drawn from a support company from the U.S. Special Operating Force’s 10th Group, the emerging Iraqi commando units have impressed U.S. commanders with their combat performance and bolstered confidence that Iraqis can keep the insurgents at bay on their own. “We can step away more now,” says the U.S. commander of Task Force Pioneer, who, like all of the special forces in this story, cannot be named. “It’s about 50-50.”

That said, the U.S. hasn’t yet ceded command and control to the Iraqis. “We train the rank-and-file but we’re the leadership,” says the Pioneer commander. However well-trained, the Iraqi special forces comprise only a tiny fraction of the 57,000-member Iraqi army, which has been plagued by low morale, inconsistent training and infiltration by insurgents.

But the U.S. hopes the commandos provide a model for improvement. Over the past year the ISOF units have conducted 538 combat missions, capturing 431 suspected insurgents, over 1,700 weapons and tons of munitions. They’ve seen bloody action in the battles for Najaf, Samarra and Fallujah, and have fought insurgents in Ramadi and Baghdad. Among the Iraqis’ biggest successes were the capture of militants involved in the April 2004 attack in Fallujah on four U.S. security contractors; and they killed an insurgent suspected of involvement in the beheading last May of American Nicholas Berg. Advisors from the U.S. Green Berets say the Iraqi special-ops teams have suffered none of the problems of desertion in the face of enemy fire seen in most of the regular Iraqi units. None have refused to fight, they say, and rates of those absent without leave are well below other forces. “It’s unbelievable, but it’s all down to the espirit de corps,” says the Americans’ Executive Officer.

Putting Iraqis on the front lines, U.S. officials say, is yielding results in the shadow war against the insurgents. When the key to unraveling insurgencies is denying the rebels the support of the population, putting an Iraqi face on the offensives is vital. It also helps avoid blunders. Often targeting information is slightly off, with troops raiding the wrong house. Local Iraqis are loath to point the Americans in the right direction. “They’re not scared of Americans, but when an Iraqi in a ski mask confronts them they talk a lot more, and they’re more likely to say, ’He’s not here but lives across the road,’” says Task Force Pioneer’s commander. During the raid on Tamimi’s safehouse, the joint U.S.-Iraqi team hauled off Tamimi and another insurgent suspected of being a key bombmaker. The other men upstairs were left behind, a mark of the more “surgical” style of business the Green Berets are hoping the Iraqis can deliver them, blunting locals’ perceptions of Americans as brutish and arbitrary. “In the past, we’d have scooped them all up,” says an American with the CTF, ”but we only took the guys our Iraqis said were dirty.”

The Iraqi Special Forces Brigade, or ISOF, is made of two distinct parts. The 36th Commando Battalion, famed for its tenacity in battle, is a hard core of elite troops trained in urban combat and reconnaissance who are put through what their U.S. trainers dub “Ranger school-lite”. Applicants for the 36th are carefully screened for criminal or insurgent connections. Many have past military experience. Under the Green Berets’ tutelage they endure a three-week initial training course designed to elevate their fighting skills and build a cohesion even the veteran fighters have not known before. Their marksmanship drills make them far superior to their army colleagues. Comparing the U.S. regimen to those from his days in Saddam’s army and later as a Kurdish peshmerga officer, the 36th Commando school commander says “the Americans’ training kicks the Iraqis’ ass.”

The ISOF brigade’s other component is the Counterterrorism Task Force, modeled on the U.S. Delta Force. With more intensive weapons training, and specialist skills such as fast-roping from helicopters, the CTF is more adept in the arts of close-quarter combat, like those needed when storming a house to rescue hostages. While the Commandos wear Iraqi uniforms and carry Belgian-made Kalashnikov knockoffs, the CTF members don U.S. fatigues, carry cut-down M-4 carbines, travel in armored Humvees rather than open-back trucks, have modern communications equipment and pack sniper rifles and heavy weapons such as AT-4 anti-tank missiles. When CTF soldiers queued on Jan. 30 at a Baghdad polling station to vote people confused them with their American counterparts.

The brigade not only pursues what the military terms national level targets, such as terrorist kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but is also equipped for classic special forces’ unconventional warfare and covert operations. Donning civilian clothes, its men dissolve into the streets to scout targets and eye off insurgent mortar sites. U.S. commanders say that during the stand-off with renegade cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia in Najaf last summer, their Iraqi charges were “the only Coalition unit to provide daily intelligence from within the Imam Ali mosque”. Posing as locals coming to pray, soldiers slipped past Sadr’s forces to scope for the militants’ command positions, documents and arsenals. It’s a skill, and a daring, they learned from the Green Berets. In some operations American Special Forces have worn the flowing Arab dishdasha, with body armor hidden underneath. According to a 1st Cavalry Division commander, a covert team of U.S. troops has used similar tactics to penetrate target houses.

Though the U.S. is pleased with the performance of the commandos, there are also gnawing fears that sending Iraqi units to take on insurgents could fuel sectarian tensions. The vast majority of the ISOF troops are Iraqi Shia, with some ethnic Sunni Arabs; the brigade’s deadly snipers are drawn from the core of Kurdish peshmerga soldiers who bolster, and in some cases, command the Special Forces units. It’s not the demographic mix the Americans would like, but recruiting from within the Sunni community, which provides the backbone of the rebels’ forces, is proving tough

The Green Berets are watchful of factions emerging within the units. “We keep an eye out for nepotism,” says the Task Force Pioneer commander. As a demonstration he turned to the Americans around him, pointing out each man’s ethnic origins. “Look at us,” he told the Iraqi recruits, “this guy is Polish, he’s Mexican, and this guy, I don’t know where the hell he’s from but he’s going to do what he’s told.” The first 72 hours of training are geared to tackling the cultural divisions with exercises like taking orders from female medics. “By American standards it’s not that severe,” says an advisor. About 15% of the trainees wash out, he says, compared to half of American recruits failing Ranger School.

So far, the ISOF Brigade is weathering the test. One commando, a 27- year-old former lieutenant from Saddam’s army says he joined because he’s military through and through, and wanted to continue serving his country. Plus, he adds, his $520 monthly salary is an improvement on the $60 he earned in the defunct Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. Unlike most members of the CTF, he has told his family he was working with the Americans. He’s already received two “threat letters” from the insurgents to quit or face death for himself or his family. Still, his family and his new fiancé support him. “They told me, God will protect you and your guys,” he says.

Given the desire of the incoming Iraqi government to assume greater authority over the country’s security forces, U.S. officials worry that the commando-training program may be curtailed. It’s hoped the ISOF Brigade will not be disturbed. There’s a long way to go, but these elite troops are the best Iraq currently has to offer. The American Task Force Pioneer commander hopes by building these Special Forces, he is on the way to “working ourselves out of a job” in Iraq. That’s a goal both Iraqis and Americans can agree on.

Originally appeared in TIME Magazine.

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