ROVING IN THE RED ZONE

[bemildred]

You gotta read the whole thing, excerpts don't begin to cover it.

BAGHDAD - It's noon on Sunday right in front of the Adhamiyah wall - the now infamous symbol of the Pentagon-devised Baghdad gulag. On Muhamad al-Kasem highway, a few battered cars and vans stop, their occupants curious to examine this prime stretch of "ghettoization".

Behind lies Adhamiyah, one the key arteries of the Red Zone and privileged heartland of Sunni Arab guerrillas. The streets are littered with all sorts of debris, some blocked by tanks, some blocked by the usual blast wall slalom. The road to Abu Hanifa Mosque - where the Sunni Arab resistance was born on April 8, 2003, a little over a week after the "liberation" of Baghdad - is also blocked. It was in Abu Hanifa that a 3,000-strong demonstration assembled last week to protest against the wall. Adhamiyah is virtually encircled by US forces, but their checkpoints are always mobile.

A few minutes later we are still close to the heart of Adhamiyah, on al-Mashatil Road, one of its main streets. We are unembedded, non-Hummer convoy-transported, non-Kevlar protected, and not surrounded by 100 soldiers and circled overhead by three Black Hawks and two Apaches, like US presidential candidate John MacCain in his recent visit ("Hello, habibi!") to Shorja market (the next day 21 merchants and workers at the market were ambushed and murdered). We are just three journalists - two Iraqis, Abdel and Fatima (their real identities should be protected) and one foreigner, his head in a keffiah, all aboard a civilian Toyota stuck in traffic.

There's a checkpoint ahead. Incoming traffic has to slow down in front of a Hummer of the Iraqi Defense Forces. A soldier is talking to the driver of a van. Suddenly there is a shot. The soldier falls to the ground, right before our eyes, screaming in pain. He is not dead instantly. His companion, by the Hummer, takes some time to react, then also starts shooting. People duck in their cars; general wisdom is that if these were US troops, they would be shooting at random and every car would be sprayed with bullets.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE02Ak01.html

[hobbit709]

1. But we've done so much to help these people

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:
One more thing for the war crimes trials.

[lapfog_1]

2. This reminds me so much of science fiction that I read when

I was a kid. Not the SciFi of star travel and aliens... but the stories of post Apocalypse "Mad Max" hellish futures, where people rarely venture out from their "homes" and capricious actions of war lords at some sort of ill defined "check point" can determine if you live or die on the spot.

[bemildred]

3. "Blade Runner" was the first thing that popped into my head. nt

[Fovea]

4. Re Read Frank Herbert's

Dune to really understand the Middle east as it is now.

[lapfog_1]

5. Almost any story by John Brunner. but yes, Dune is like I was thinking.

[bemildred]

6. ROVING IN THE RED ZONE: What Muqtada wants

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The Sadrists want an oil law that "is the symbol of the unity of Iraq, and not good only for the Kurds or for the south". Here we find the Sadrists in essence concurring with Saddam Hussein, who nationalized the Iraqi oil industry in 1972.

Once again the criticism of the top government parties, the SCIRI and Da'wa, is implicit. Abdul Adel Mahdi, the SCIRI's No 2, has been one of the top cheerleaders of the oil law; he has been to Washington to assure Big Oil of the "great opportunities" lying ahead. Oil Minister Husain al-Shahrastani, from Da'wa, is also a top cheerleader, arguing that the oil law "will benefit all Iraqis" and boasting that the country may raise oil production to 4 million barrels a day until 2012, and then to 8 million barrels a day. According to the minister, Iraq currently exports 2.2 million barrels a day - a very dubious figure considering non-stop pipeline sabotage by Sunni guerrillas.

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"Is he in Iran or Iraq?"

"Of course in Iraq," answered Roubaie with a huge grin, as a column of US Bradleys rumbled back to its cozy abode in the Green Zone. So the White House, once again, has been spinning a lie about the cleric having fled the country.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE04Ak07.html

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7. ROVING IN THE RED ZONE: Masri: Dead or alive, the terror continues

BAGHDAD - The breaking news came around noon, on state-run Al-Iraqiya TV, and it hit the Shi'ite slum, Sadr City, as well as the rest of Baghdad, as a new "shock and awe": Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, popularly known in Baghdad as Abu al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in the al-Nabai area of Taji, north Baghdad. That's what Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abu al-Kareem Khalaf was telling Al-Iraqiya live - to the incredulity of many a viewer.

But the spokesman was also saying something even more striking. Abu al-Masri had not been killed by militias at the ministry (the seventh floor is considered "Iranian territory"; virtually no one is admitted). He had not been killed by death squads. And he had not been killed by US forces. He fell victim to "internal fighting" - which could be a reference to a coalition of Sunni tribes that has been fighting al-Qaeda's extreme methods, or even to al-Qaeda itself. Khalaf actually said Masri was killed by his own al-Qaeda jihadis in an ambush at the Safi Bridge north of Baghdad, an assertion that should be taken with an extreme pinch of salt.

The reaction in almost-3-million-strong Sadr city - where al-Qaeda in Iraq (or "the Wahhabis") is viewed as worse than any plague - was predictably ecstatic. There was jubilation at police checkpoints (all of them manned by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army). But then came the "ifs" - Masri's death had already been officially announced twice in the past few months. The ministry had "definitive intelligence reports" Masri was dead. But it had not seen the corpse yet. The Pentagon could not confirm anything.

Then government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh showed up, once again on Al-Iraqiya, saying, "This does not represent an official government announcement." The truth would only emerge after a series of DNA tests. If, of course, there was a body. Interior Ministry officials would only say, "Our people have seen the body."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE03Ak01.html

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8. ROVING IN THE RED ZONE: The man who might save Iraq

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The Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq is at least 100,000-strong. Salafi jihadis, mostly foreigners - from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Palestine, North Africa, and a few "white Moors" (European Muslims) - may be no more than 1,000. And a small percentage of these are Iraqi recruits.

Abu Risha swore that the Iraqi Army and US forces now control Ramadi. Fallujah is a very different story - according to Iraqi journalists who have been to the front line. They say the outskirts of west Baghdad are safe up to Abu Ghraib, but not Fallujah, which has been an Islamic State of Iraq stronghold. According to the sheikh, al-Qaeda in Iraq is particularly active in al-Rahwa (a big city near the Syrian border), Tilal Himrin (a village also near Syria), the village of Elbu Baly, and the big city of Balad.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had promised more than US$100 million for rebuilding Ramadi this year. Abu Risha said, without elaborating, that "support from the government has not been enough", whether financially or militarily. It is well known in Baghdad that the sheikh has been traveling to Syria and Jordan to rally Sunni tribes to the council's cause - and he added, "The borders with Syria and Jordan are all patrolled by our forces," implying the difficulty for jihadis to cross over.

Abu Risha insisted he gets active cooperation "from all tribes" - and that includes border surveillance. The fact is, 80% of these tribes are sub-clans of the powerful al-Dulaimi tribe. Al-Qaeda's close relationship is with the al-Mashadani, a big tribe very much present near Samarra and Balad. The Mashadani tribe detests the Maliki government, and the Ibrahim Jaafari government before it. They used to be very close to Saddam Hussein. Now, they have an alliance of circumstance with al-Qaeda.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE05Ak01.html