really close to home....

This just landed this afternoon. 100 metres away at best. Didn't smash any windows but still pretty freaky...

Closer to home

Yesterday afternoon 3 mortars landed fairly close, one of them I think landed in the compound next door. I heard some debris falling on the roof of an abandoned half-built warehouse also next door. A rocket exploded at 4am that made the windows shake but wasn't as close as the mortars.

One of my staff's father was kidnapped this morning. From the information available so far, it sounds like this is a case of sectarian kidnapping which will not produce a ransom and release, as would be the case if it were a straightforward criminal kidnapping. That I think is as much a sign as anything about the return to sectarian killings rather than kidnappings designed for financial gain.

It's going berserk here, but there are a number of different civil war/insurgencies going on. Asking whether the departure of the troops will facilitate the return of order is meaningless. If the troops stay, there is less of one kind of violence but more of another. If they go, likewise. It's a no-win situation for Iraq in the near term.

I was disgusted by the run-up to the war, from as early as 2002 when it was clear to me what would follow. I was disgusted in 2003 when the invasion kicked off and I've been disgusted ever since that we kicked down the door of this country when the primary aim was never to "liberate" the people (as evident from the lamentable lack of post-invasion planning). But, but..... we're way past that now. Iraq and its neighbours have to take responsibility for what's going on these days.

For a while there, the surge looked like it was bringing a downturn in sectarian killings. Although there may be less bodies turning up in the Tigris or on the streets, bound and with signs of torture, the car bombings are getting really out of control.

It's up to the people here to stop it and sort their shit out, but the mentality of so many people has to change. There is no sign I can see of that at the moment. Blair and Bush should be strung up in my view for coming here in the first place, but they're not directly to blame for what's happening 4 years on.

One way traffic... the wrong way

Human Rights Watch released a paper today that highlights the difficulties now being faced by Iraqis fleeing the violence in search of asylum. It speaks volumes that some countries are not doing enough to seal their borders to stop suicide bombers entering Iraq, but are doing what they can to stop refugees leaving Iraq. What a place.

I heard another interesting thing today - since Sadr withdrew his cabinet members from the government yesterday, Ayad Allawi is trying to piece together another coaliton that would take over from this useless bunch of shits for a government. That's great news if he can pull it off. He's widely seen by many Iraqis as a puppet for the US, having spent some time as interim prime minister before this lot were elected. But they also see this lot as being puppets too, only this lot have been a complete waste of space. While many Iraqis don't see Allawi as the ideal choice of PM, he is by far the best of a bad bunch. (Sounds a bit like western leaders to me)

More on bombs and other stuff

Last Thursday that suicide bomber struck at the parliament buildings. Before that, there was a truck bomb that took out a bridge over the Tigris. Something that surprised me was the reaction of Iraqis I spoke to about that. To them, it wasn't any old bridge or just a means of getting across a river, but something more special than that. It had historical significance to them.



It was built by the British in 1920 and was damaged in 1991 by American bombing. Another bridge was hit by a suicide bomber on Saturday with 15 killed. Another 40 were killed in Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad on Saturday.

Yesterday 2 or 3 car bombs and a suicide bomb went off in quick succession in Baghdad, killing another 35-40. We heard the car bombs from here.

All of which raises the question, is the "surge" working? To answer that, I guess you have to ask what it is that the surge is trying to achieve. It certainly seems to be working in terms of reducing the number of dead bodies being found on the streets showing signs of torture. However, there are far too many car bombs going off now, most of which we hear. I've heard another few bangs this morning that sound like they were car bombs so no doubt there will be reports emerging in the next few hours about more today in Baghdad. It's hard to see what the surge can do to avoid that. The other, more predictable, effect of the surge is to push the violence out to other cities in Iraq. It's hard to see how that will all pan out in the near future. I think it's fair to say that, for now, the surge is working well in some ways but not in others, and in any case it will be another 2 or 3 months before it reaches its peak and can really be judged.

Also a few days ago a couple of UK helicopters apparently collided north of Baghdad. I'm not sure if I believe that's the real story. The amount of helicopter "collisions" that have happened here would point to pretty incompetent helicopter pilots being in charge of these multi-million dollar aircraft. I don't buy that generally, and even less in this case given that the helicopters were apparently there as part of a Special Forces operation. You wouldn't think the best of the best pilots are prone to mid air collisions.

Also I read that the official death toll from that parliament bombing has been reduced to 1. Excuse me? Reduced? When does that ever happen?? True, initial reports may have been exaggerated. But I doubt it. All the time there is such a big propaganda war going on it's often hard to believe what you read and you just have to weigh up the likelihood of things. They found an IED ("improvised explosive device") or roadside bomb outside the British Embassy on Friday too. I doubt that made the news in London. Soon enough though one of these things will go off in the IZ and you'll hear about it.

A couple of reports (from the Red Cross and the Oxford Research Group) recently out about Iraq and the "war on terror". This column highlighted nicely how little the neocons had to say about them.

Paul Wolfowitz, head of the World Bank, is in the shit because he intervened to give his girlfriend a promotion and pay rise that was "grossly out of line" with the rules. Hope he gets stuffed for that. He was one of the architects of the Iraq mess so it would be nice to see him get out of a job I don't think he should ever have been rewarded with. Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General is also in the shit for his role in the firing of 8 prosecutors when they didn't act in accordance with Bush policies. (this is the man who said torture is fine) Slowly but surely, all those bastards that screwed Iraq, robbed their own tax payers and made everyone else less safe are getting their just reward and being discredited. About bloody time.

Suicide at parliament

It was only a matter of time before this happened. Today at lunch time a suicide vest was detonated in the cafe in the Iraqi parliament building. 2 or 3 MPs dead and more injured. The military found a couple of suicide vests sitting in an abandoned box in the IZ 2 weeks ago, presumably they were dropped by someone for another to come and collect them. There are rumours that a car full of explosives was found in the IZ as well but I'm not sure if that one's true. There will be more attacks like this I'm sure. It doesn't worry me too much in a personal safety kind of way as those things will always be detonated at places like the parliament or other high profile buildings. I don't tend to go those places and have never been to the parliament (though I have been next door on occasion).

What else? The 4th anniversary of the fall of Baghdad was 3 days ago and hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the occupation in Najaf. It must be getting harder for the UK and US politicians to insist that the continued presence of troops here is doing any good. Damned if I know - maybe in some places it is and in others it isn't. One of my staff has moved his family into the IZ because the US military set up a base in his neighbourhood and insurgents are always firing at it, so my employee was naturally worried his wife or son would be caught in the crossfire. Add to that he was injured (not seriously, to our relief) when a roadside bomb detonated on a street he was walking down with his family. I would still say that the troop surge was and is the right thing in Baghdad but it's less effective than it was and in any case, violence in other cities is in some cases off the scale.

I read today that John McCain, a probable candidate for US President next election, came to Baghdad and went on a walk around a market outside the IZ. In his media statement he bleated about how it was sign that the streets are getting safer. What he didn't mention was that he was surrounded by troops and went in a convoy of a dozen heavily armed and armoured vehicles. Dick.