There's a lull in Iraq, the "surge" is working

[ProSense]

Children pay the high price of Iraq violence: UNICEF

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) - The lives of millions of Iraqi children are still blighted by violence, poor nutrition and disrupted education more than four years after the US-led invasion, UNICEF said on Friday.

The United Nations Children's Fund said in a report that few teenagers took their final exams last summer, safe drinking water remained scarce and about 1,350 children were detained by the authorities in 2007.

It also said that on average 25,000 children and their families were forced out of their homes each month to seek shelter in other parts of the country.

UNICEF said that the current reduction in violence provided a chance to help Iraqi children, gain access to those in detention, and strengthen government structures focused on young people.

"Iraqi children are paying far too high a price," said Roger Wright, UNICEF's special representative for Iraq, in the report.

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Bitterness apparent as U.S. releases Iraqi prisoners

By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007

BAGHDAD — When Leila Nasser was six months pregnant, U.S. soldiers burst into her house and wrestled away her husband, Mohammed Amin, who was asleep on the roof, trying to escape the summer heat.

This week, Nasser waited outside what's now called the "reconciliation hall" in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood for Amin to appear. In her arms she cradled her year-old son, whom she'd named Moubin, the Iraqi word for apparent.

"I called him Moubin hoping that his father would appear for his eyes," she said. Moubin had never met his father.

Now Amin was one of 15 detainees who'd be released as part of a reconciliation program that the U.S. military's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment put together in hopes of easing tensions in this divided neighborhood. But the release showed how far reconciliation has to go.

More than 25,000 Iraqis are now in U.S. detention facilities. The Jihad reconciliation committee of Sunni and Shiite Muslims had requested that 562 men be released. Last month, 48 people were released, but 40 more were detained.

Most of those held are never charged with crimes. Sometimes Iraqis are detained because of a tip from a neighbor or because a few cables and cleaning agents are mistaken for bomb-making material.

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Disaffected Iraqis Spurn Dominant Shiite Clerics

Subtle Backlash Reveals Intensity of Frustrations

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 21, 2007; Page A01

NAJAF, Iraq -- Two years after helping to bring to power a government led by Shiite religious parties, Iraq's paramount Shiite clerics find their influence diminished as their followers criticize them for backing a political alliance that has failed to pass crucial legislation, improve basic services or boost the economy.

"Now the street is blaming what's happening on the top clerics and the government," said Ali al-Najafi, the son of Bashir al-Najafi, one of four leading clerics collectively called the marjaiya. Speaking for his father, the white-turbaned Najafi said he wished that the government, all but paralyzed by factionalism and rival visions, was more in touch with ordinary Iraqis.

"We were hoping that it would have been better," he said.

The marjaiya, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, still wield enormous power in Iraq. But if a critical mass of Iraqis stops listening to them, it could hinder efforts toward political reconciliation and strain the fragile unity of the Shiite parties that head the government. The loss of clerical influence could also hurt the political fortunes of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians and America's main Shiite ally, who has closely aligned himself with Sistani.

The marjaiya now compete in the streets with political parties that maintain armed militias and in the seminaries with younger, ambitious clerics. In recent months, the top clerics' aides have become frequent targets of assassination, victims of the fight for power and resources.

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Iraq Shi'ite leader wants U.S.-backed units curbed

By Alaa Shahine

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A powerful Shi'ite Muslim leader in Iraq called on Friday for U.S.-backed, mainly Sunni neighborhood patrols to be brought under tight government control with a more balanced sectarian makeup.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the biggest party in the Shi'ite-led government, said the patrols known to Iraqis as "Awakening Councils" had helped reduce violence but should only play an auxiliary role.

His remarks highlight the uneasiness of Iraqi Shi'ite leaders over the prospect of organized Sunni armed groups that could turn against them when U.S. forces withdraw.

"It is necessary that these Awakenings should be an arm of the government in chasing criminals and terrorists but not a substitute for it," he told hundreds of Shi'ites at his Baghdad compound in a speech marking the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast.

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The walls around Bush's Iraq strategy

[spanone]

1. the bad guys are on surge vacation...as my brother's son in law says from Baghdad

[ProSense]

2. Powerful Iraq cleric may extend freeze on militia

Powerful Iraq cleric may extend freeze on militia

Thu Dec 20

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is considering extending a freeze on the activities of his powerful Mehdi Army militia, his official spokesman said.

"Yes, there is a chance that the freeze on the Mehdi Army will be extended," Salah al-Ubaidy told Reuters late on Wednesday.

Ubaidy did not say how long another extension might last or why the group was thinking of extending a freeze that U.S. commanders say has helped ease overall levels of violence in Iraq.

Sadr, who led uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004 and whose militia were later described by U.S. commanders as their greatest threat, surprised both Iraqis and U.S. forces when he ordered the initial six-month freeze on his militia in August.

Washington says the freeze is one of the factors that has led to a decline in violence across Iraq, although it has continued to pursue what it describes as "rogue" Mehdi Army units that have not laid down arms.

The son of a revered Shi'ite cleric slain under Saddam Hussein, Sadr has wide influence in the Shi'ite south and parts of Baghdad although he does not himself hold high clerical rank.

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SAME OLD SADR DANCE.

Cernigcomments on reports that Muqtada al-Sadr may extend the cease fire he declared in late August. (Via Eric Martin.)

Meanwhile, Cap'n Ed puzzles over why Sadr continues to refuse to play his assigned part in the "decline into political obsolescence" narrative that the Cap'n and so many other conservative scribes have persisted in writing lo these many years.

Sadr has proven a wily foe in Iraq, and one has to wonder what he hopes to gain from this decision. No one really understood his sudden decision to adopt the cease-fire, either, except that he had already tried fighting a smaller American force and lost badly. Sadr didn't want to give the US another reason to go after him personally, and in fact fled the country when the surge started.

<...>

One hint may be in his new enthusiasm for his religious studies. He has long wanted to be taken seriously as a cleric, but lacked the formal training that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has, as well as his standing. Sadr, who got marginalized by Nouri al-Maliki this year as a politician, wants to extend his influence through Islam, and it looks like he's willing to be patient about it.

Yes, the Cap'n actually used the word "wily," a classic bit of old-timey colonialist jargon usually deployed when the sahib has been conned out of his watch. After all, Sadr's only a local Arab (and a turbaned one at that!) and therefore must be described as "wily," or "crafty," or perhaps "sly," and sometimes, on weekends, "cunning." He cannot ever be "intelligent," "astute," or just plain old "more knowledgeable about his own country and its political contours than the former exiles and foreign governments trying to run it." No, never that.

As I wrote back in October, Sadr's stand-down order was consistent with a pattern he had set over the last few years, in which he periodically pulled back to allow rogue elements of his militia to be picked off by coalition forces. I think his more formal announcement of a cease-fire in August is explained by the significant threat to his reputation that existed after his Mahdi Army was blamed for the Karbala violence that occurred days earlier.

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[ProSense]

3. "More than 25,000 Iraqis are now in U.S. detention facilities."

Most of those held are never charged with crimes. Sometimes Iraqis are detained because of a tip from a neighbor or because a few cables and cleaning agents are mistaken for bomb-making material.

A pattern!