Private security companies

Last week there was an incident in which a private security company killed 8 and wounded 13 civilians on the streets of Baghdad. The convoy was returning to the green zone when a bomb or rocket went off close by, and the security personnel opened fire on the street. This was by no means the first such incident - there have been many of these. The company concerned was Blackwater, a US based company. The Iraqi authorities have reacted by saying enough is enough and it will expel Blackwater and its employees from Iraq, as well as prosecuting the individuals involved. Blackwater is a huge company and has the contract to provide protection to US State department personnel, including the US Ambassador, in all movements outside the green zone. Its expulsion would be a significant problem for the US if it happens.

I think it would serve them right. Blackwater has long been the company that likes to think it can operate above the law. I would estimate no less than 70% of the incidents involving a private security company killing or wounding civilians on the streets of Baghdad have been Blackwater. They didn't even bother to get a licence until a few months ago. The company has ties to the Republican party and basically has patronage from the US government which might explain why it thinks its above the system. The actions of Blackwater have always cast a shadow over the entire private security industry in Iraq. The vast majority of companies do operate professionally and are not the trigger happy mercenaries the media like to portray. Unfortunately, this latest incident will likely lead to a review by the Iraq authorities of all companies' licences, so it might well be that some other companies get kicked out even if they have operated with restraint and professionalism, and within the law.

It remains to be seen whether Blackwater really will get kicked out. Condoleeza Rice has personally intervened to try and stop this from happening. The importance of this can't be made clear enough - this is a real litmus test of how independent the Iraqi government really is from the US administration. Everyone in Baghdad knows that Blackwater is by far the worst offender and that it has always operated above the law. Whether the Iraqis go ahead and expel the company will be one of the clearest signs yet of whether they are really able to dictate their own policies independently of US wishes.

Part of the problem is the Iraqis' own making though. They were supposed to pass a law to regulate the private security industry but have failed to do so. I saw a draft law several months ago and it was a shambles. It conflicted with other laws and had inconsistencies in itself, and was going to be a total failure if it became law. I warned of this in an address to an audience with many members of PSCs and Iraqi officials from the Ministry of Interior, which is the government agency responsible for overseeing the industry. That was months ago, and we still haven't seen a next draft. The sooner they pass a law that works, the sooner they will be able to regulate the industry properly and get rid of companies without having to wait for incidents like the one last week.

Another issue at work is self interest of government ministers and people connected with the Ministry of Interior. In the last 12 months around 6 or 7 foreign PSCs have been issued with a licence from the Ministry of Interior, against about 20 odd Iraqi PSCs. The Iraq companies are all owned by government ministers and people in the Ministry of Interior. Clearly, they're trying to freeze out the foreign companies so that the contracts all go to the Iraqi companies. Aside from the corruption of this, it will spell disaster for the performance of those contracts. But hey, it's their country and we weren't invited so I can't honestly say we can claim any moral high ground. It's just a shame that the companies who do a good job protecting reconstruction contractors, NGOs, Iraqi officials and others could be sidelined despite doing a good job under difficult circumstances. There are many of you who read this and say "well they're only mercenaries anyway" but that's simplistic and ignores the reality not portrayed in the media. Guys like Blackwater behave like mercenaries, not the industry as a whole.

And, I should add, the vast majority of employees working for most of the companies in the industry are Iraqi. There are many foreigners, but mostly it's Iraqis doing the job. That's probably something else the newspapers don't mention.

The Pull Out Method (Pt. II)

The long anticipated report to Congress from America's commanding General and its Ambassador to Iraq has finally passed. It looks to have been a waste of time in some ways - looking at the response of the Democratic senators, they've long since made their minds up about things so the last couple of days' testimony wasn't going to change a great deal in reality. Democrats want the US to pull troops out of Iraq as soon as possible and in any event to have as many as possible out of Iraq before January 2009, when they are fairly likely to take over the White House and it becomes their headache.

General Petaeus predicted that troop levels should be able to return by next summer to the pre-surge levels of 130,000, because violence in Baghdad and the western Anbar province has dropped. This ignores the fact that violence overall - if you take into account cities outside of Baghdad - has slightly increased. Perhaps more importantly, the US cannot maintain current troop levels beyond another 8 months. Rotations have been extended time and again and the strain is biting. The purpose of the testimony before Congress is to make it look like Bush has the ability to choose when to reduce troop numbers.

One thing I found interesting was the amount of mention given to Al Qaeda. It roughly goes, "we have been successful in pushing Al Qaeda out of Anbar and if we were to pull troops out then Al Qaeda would take control and be a big threat to the US". That's just ridiculous. First off, it was the Sunni tribal leaders' decision that they didn't want AQ in their area anymore that resulted in the stabilisation of Anbar. Instead of fighting against the US, the Sunni tribal chiefs joined forces with them to get rid of AQ. Second, although the headline violence is often committed by AQ (truck bombs etc) AQ probably only accounts for about 5 - 10% of the insurgency in Iraq. Third, Iraq has a Shia majority population and government (and security forces) and Iran next door so it's laughable to suggest that AQ, which is largely Sunni, would be able to overrun Iraq.

Politically, the situation is dire. Maliki's "unity" government is a shambles and reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites is non existent.

ironic

So I spend several months in Baghdad and don't get a scratch, and 2 days into my holiday I get hit by a car. It'll be 2 or 3 months before I can go back to Baghdad but will try and write something soon. There's enough to write about.

Peace
S

The pull out method

Again it's been a long time since I wrote. That's partly because I've been busy when I've been here in Baghdad, partly because I've been away sometimes and partly because I don't know where to start. There's so much going on here and you can hardly pick up a western newspaper (or an Eastern one probably) without there being something about Iraq in there. Since I last wrote, there have been some potential laws referred to the Iraqi parliament, Tony Blair's mercifully departed office, several hundred Iraqis and dozens of coalition soldiers have been killed, support for Bush's surge has been collapsing, and Bush commuted "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence for obstructing an investigation into the leaking the identity of a CIA operative whose husband discredited one of Bush's pre-war claims about Iraq's "WMD". And there's been much more, but that's enough to list for now.

So..... the surge. Is it "working"? Is it time to pull the troops out? I was at a wedding in Sweden recently and everyone I met posed the question and had their own view on it. But is it possible to answer that question yet? I don't believe so. There continue to be headline-grabbing attacks now and then. About a month ago, a Shia shrine in Samarra was bombed, again, toppling 2 minarets and causing extensive damage. This was the same shrine whose golden dome was bombed in February 2006. That attack was what is widely understood to have really kicked off the sectarian trouble that still rumbles on today. There was a curfew imposed after last month's bombing for 3 days, as the authorities feared it would cause another increase in sectarian bloodshed. I never bought that, because the level of violence is already at a level that would be difficult to increase significantly further. There may have been a slight increase but I think that is mainly due to Al Qaeda wanting to put as much pressure on the US as possible in advance of September, when General Petraeus is due to report to Congress on whether the surge is working.

And that pressure is shown by high profile bombs such as the truck bomb that exploded in Kirkuk on Saturday, the death toll for which could top 150.

Not helping the situation is the continued uselessness of the Iraqi government. The Kurdish Regional Government has been pressing ahead and has agreed its own oil legislation and agreed a revenue sharing draft law with the federal government in Baghdad. The process isn't going anywhere fast in Baghdad however. It is likely at this stage that the Kurds will pass their own oil law allowing them to sign agreements with foreign oil companies, even before the Iraqi government passes its own oil and gas law (which was almost agreed in February but is now being rejected by the Kurds because the Sunnis and Shiites basically re-wrote it at a later conference). There's talk of making the revenue sharing law dependent on the federal oil and gas law, so this will take a while longer to be passed. There's little or no parliamentary activity going on at the moment anyway. Many of the MPs are out of the country for summer so raising a quorum is not necessarily going to be possible. Which could be lucky for Maliki, as a vote of no confidence is apparently being proposed against him in 5 days' time. It's questionable whether that vote will be passed, as explained better by the excellent Juan Cole blog.

So all in all I think it is too early to tell whether the surge will work. It's only in the last couple of weeks that the troop numbers have hit their peak, and violence does continue, albeit that some of it has spread from Baghdad to other places. I've heard it called the "water bed effect" whereby if you push down in one place, others rise. There are good signs in some other parts of the country, though. The western Anbar province was once a hotbed of Al Qaeda in Iraq activity but the Sunni tribal leaders there have had enough of Al Qaeda and are now fighting with the coalition troops to drive them out. That was unfathomable at the end of last year. So I think more time is needed to see how it will play out.

The Americans I have spoken to are very divided on the issue. Some think the troops should get out now, while others think that if that happens, a full blown civil war will erupt. Timing is everything though. It would be a sad irony if the surge, which is probably about the first thing Bush has got potentially right, is scuppered now by a Democratic controlled Congress which only starts asserting itself about 4 years too late, or by Republicans distancing themselves from Bush. It's unfortunate that what happens will be dictated not by events on the ground here, but political necessities in Washington. What you do clearly see now is how isolated Bush is becoming. Congressional delegations and people running for the Democratic or Republican presidential nominations for the next election are making trips out here to speak to people and get their own impression of events on the ground. I think John McCain is over here at the moment so that he can go back and come out with a statement of some sort that improves his chances of nomination. Whatever happens with troop numbers, Maliki has to go if there's to be any progress.

More on the hapless and cretinous parliament: on June 10 the parliament voted to change the Speaker of the Council of Representatives after one MP got his bodyguards to beat up another MP when he walked past his office. As the person who sent me the report said, "so, Iraqi democracy coming along nicely".

Mind you, with Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence to shut him up, democracy in America isn't exactly perfect. (Clinton was no saint either - he issued 140 full pardons in his final hours as president, among them to Marc Rich, whose lawyer was.... scooter Libby. If you're not too bored with reading about corrupt bastards looking after themselves in Washington you can read more here.)

An inside job?

The adviser who was kidnapped yesterday was at the Ministry of Finance as part of a process to implement transparency in government procurement. At the moment, ministers and flunkies are taking millions of dollars in corrupt payments to influence the awarding of contracts. So, this new system to make the process more transparent means a lot of people stand to lose a lot of dead presidents. All of which points the finger at involvement not just within the Iraqi Police, but also the Ministry of Finance.

The Guardian reports today that the Ministry of Interior "became politicised by Shia extremists under the previous minister, Bayan Jabr, a leader of the Badr organisation and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - Iraq's largest Shia political party. Mr Jabr encouraged members of the Badr brigade to take up key posts in the ministry and subvert its operations." The Ministry of Interior is one of the worst arms of government you could imagine. Corruption is rife and sectarianism is evident in everything it does. The article goes on to report that Babyan Jabr has moved to the Ministry of Finance but still controls the MOI's budget and police salaries. If that's not a man with likely involvement I don't know who is. The Ministry of Finance was where the kidnapping took place and it's clear that the adviser was targeted from the fact that the kidnappers stormed into the room shouting "where are the foreigners?". Add the police involvement (controlled by the MOI) and a picture emerges.

The Times reported that a Mahdi Army official denied their involvement but said that they "called the Iraqi police in the area and they told us it was uniformed men speaking with Sunni accents". So either the police or the Mahdi Army are trying to blame it on the Sunnis but that doesn't seem remotely credible. For one, the two Ministries involved (Finance and Interior) are both Shia controlled, and the Ministry of Finance is on the edge of Sadr City, a Shia area. There's no way the Sunnis would have had the access to the area to conduct an operation like that. Look at the connection between Babyan Jabr and the Badr Brigade and you have a more likely scenario.

So hopefully the Garda guys and the BearingPoint guy will come back alive.

What a place.

Another Day in Paradise (not in the Phil Collins sense...)

Another day in paradise. A finance expert and his security team were kidnapped from the Ministry of Finance this morning. This is the first time a Westerner has been kidnapped from a Ministry as far as I know and the scale of the operation is such that it's looking likely the police themselves were involved. That ought to be news that's more good than bad in the bigger scheme of things, because if the police were involved the outcome will more likely be a peaceful one. If the Sunnis or Al Qaeda are the snatchers, less so. Police involvement would suggest a Shia angle so there is hope that this would be a political move. It should never have happened, and there will be obvious questions as to how this happened, but they can be asked and answered after the fate of the man and his PSD is known. As it goes, I've met him and probably at least one of the PSD guys that were taken, and hope personally as well as morally that all will work out.

Meanwhile, the US and Iran sat down over a cuppa for the first time since 1980. The only thing on the agenda was Iraq which is a good thing. No bleating about uranium enrichment from the US; no whining about spies within its borders from Iran. Whether or not these talks produce anything of substance is important, and on track record of late you'd have to be a pessimist. But that these talks are even taking place would have been unimaginable not so long ago. It's clear evidence, if any were needed, that the power of Cheney and Bush is giving way to a more conciliatory train of thought within the US Government. And about time too. There has to be a recognition that, whether or not dialogue with Iran and Syria is likely to produce results, the mere possibility is reason enough to have a crack.

As for me, I've been fine. There's been a fair amount of incoming but not right where I am and not such that I feel threatened. I can't recall whether I ever mentioned it, but I joined/formed a band a while ago and we're having a lot of fun. There may be some people who read this and shake their heads and say "shame on you for partying it up". This is a difficult environment so you have to try and bring a little familiarity and humanity. We played on a villa's roof on Friday and it was great setting up the gear when it was still light, looking to the background and seeing all the date palms and a couple of landmarks. One of the more unique gigs you could ever play, as ours all are.



I've not been so busy with work lately so have been watching a recent US TV series called Deadwood. It's about a US goldrush town in the 1870s that was lawless and became annexed to the Dakota territory. (To read about the series click here, or about the place itself click here). There are certainly similarities between that place and Baghdad and it was interesting to think about that. Another interesting thing I came across (well I find it interesting anyway) is an article I read today that was written in 1920 by T. E. Lawrence. You can read the text here and again it's amazing the similarities between the circumstances of 87 years ago and those existing now and in the past 4 years. The patterns of colonialism and/or the attempts, by whatever means and with whichever intentions, seem to be fairly constant. Which makes you hope on the one hand if things will eventually work themselves out, but wonder on the other why the fuck we never learn from our mistakes.

The long goodbye

At last, Tony Blair is off. He came to Baghdad unannounced yesterday for a last chat with the big guns here and 3 mortars went off in the IZ just as he was arriving. He went down to Basra for a "morale boosting" session with British troops down there and again a mortar went off. It's funny reading suggestions that he may have been targeted - if he really was targeted there would have been 10 times as many projectiles coming in. There were a lot last week and apparently the week before, with some injuries and two Iraqis killed. It seems to have quietened down a bit the last few days; in fact it seems to have been a few quiet days generally across Baghdad. Only a temporary respite, no doubt, but a welcome one.

The draft oil and gas law seems to have taken a few steps backwards. A significant part of the draft law is its annexes, which set out who controls which oil fields. There was a meeting in Dubai a few weeks ago at which the draft of the annexes was changed considerably, and the Kurdistan Regional Government won't back the law as it currently stands. So the law itself is a long, long way from being passed.

I joined a band a while ago which is proving, for me, to be the difference between tolerating being in Baghdad and positively enjoying it. We played a few gigs at various places, which were a mixture of private compounds or villas. We've been asked to play the UK and US embassies as well so those are a couple of gigs to look forward to. We were supposed to play the US Embassy last week but in the event we couldn't as our bass player wasn't back from leave in time. That was a relief in some ways because of the relative danger of playing a gig there - it would have been outside, by the pool, which gets hit by mortars from time to time. Would have been a hell of a buzz though.

In the US, finally Paul Wolfowitz has resigned as head of the World Bank. It's incredible that he was ever appointed, being as it was a major "up yours" to all those who opposed the invasion of Iraq, seeing as he was a chief architect of it. It's incredible too that he fought so hard to stay in the job when it was clear that the vast majority of the Bank's staff wanted him out and that he had clearly breached the Bank's rules on conflicts of interest. But that's symptomatic of the Bush crowd's arrogance. The US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is in a similar predicament now. He was, it seems, instrumental in the sacking of 8 federal prosecutors in the US who failed to toe the Bush Administration's line on policy matters. That action badly undermines the separation between the legislature and the judiciary which is fundamental to valid democracies. It's probably only a matter of time before he will be fired or forced to resign, but it's another example of one of the neocon cabal that's grimly hanging on despite clear evidence of not being fit for the job.

It's getting warmer here by the day. Supposed to hit 42 celcius on Tuesday so it's getting towards the 3 months when it won't be below 40 and often gets to 50 or more. Shame there's no decent beach around here....

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.

Yesterday's rocket

You may have seen on the news that the UN secretary general was giving a speech here in Baghdad when a mortar landed yesterday. He shat it and ducked under the podium. Very amusing. It was very loud and sounded more like a rocket than a mortar. It made the news so we got loads of emails saying "are you ok?" which was nice and all, but this happens all the time so it's always a bit confusing when we get these are you ok emails.

Friday at last. Have a good weekend.

Cases closed!

You may have heard recently about one of the Guantanamo detainees - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - "admitting" his role, indeed "confessing" to being the guy who organised, at least 30 terror plots against the US, including 9/11. Of course, the "confessions" took place under torture and the hearings are behind closed doors, so they don't remotely live up to the standards of transparency you'd expect from any civilised nation, let alone the one that shouts loudest about democracy and due process than any other. I'm pretty sure if I was being tortured I'd say anything to try and get them to stop. You get the impression the US doesn't give a shit whether he did them or not - as long as they've got somebody to pin the blame on they can shut the file and Americans can sleep safer at night "knowing" that someone has been brought to account.

Actually, I can sleep safer too. If that guy was responsible for everything they say he was (sorry, he says he was while 10,000 volts were going through his balls) then odds are he's the bastard who stole my bike when I was 13. I bet he also cut off the head of Jebediah Springfield and Bart just took the fall too.


Jebediah Springfield yesterday

Four years on

This week marked the 4th anniversary of the (latest) invasion. So much has happened in that 4 years I'm not going to attempt a summary of the highlights (are there any?) and the lowlights (too many to mention). Last weekend there were mass marches in several cities across the world to mark the event. In Baghdad there were a couple of car bombs and one day 3 trucks containing chlorine blew up.





It does seem to be much better on the streets of Baghdad at the moment. There is the occasional car or truck bomb that goes off, and some bodies do turn up on the streets each day (I saw a couple in the Tigris a few days ago) but it's not dozens of bodies every day like it used to be. The extra troops on the streets and in the neighbourhoods are bringing a bit of stability that hasn't been there for a long time. The locals are pretty wary of it though. People think that the militias are just laying low and seeing what tactics the troops are using for now, and that when the troops pull out the militias will be back. That could take a while. The surge is expected to peak around July and last until at least November. If enough people can get into employment and the electricity and water supply gets more reliable, it might be that the militias find themselves with no grassroots support. Of course, it may be that the troops pull out and the militias do resume control of the neighbourhoods. Time will tell, and the locals are probably right to be sceptical.




There are really 2 things of equal importance that have to be sorted out for Iraq to have a hope of getting anywhere. The first is the obvious one - security. The second is corruption. Getting a company registered in Baghdad is more difficult if there's an element of non-Iraqi ownership. Whenever there's an application to register a company which will be partly or wholly owned by a non-Iraqi person or company, or which will have a non-Iraqi director, the application is referred by the Companies Registry to the Residency Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is a rule that existed during Saddam's time to screen non-Arab shareholders to make sure they weren't terrorists or otherwise known to be unfriendly to Iraq. It should take no more than 3 days for the application to pass through the Residency Office before being signed off as cleared. These days, unless you pay a low level official a bribe, it takes around 4 weeks. We don't pay bribes under any circumstances, and I think that's the right way to operate, even in a place like Iraq. If we paid bribes we could get in the shit under Iraq's Penal Code. Funnily enough, people charged under the Penal Code often bribe their way out of the charges. Sam Allardyce would love this place. Bung heaven.






Take another example - private security companies (PSCs). These get a bad press, and sometimes rightly so. Some companies are cowboys and think they're above the law. They're usually the ones driving around like maniacs and who in the past had no qualms about killing civilians. Most PSCs are not like that, at least the ones I know. Most of them are very professional, courteous and focused on their proper job. They do an important job, protecting various ministries and ferrying Iraqi and Western officials and companies through dangerous places.



The process of obtaining an operating licence for security companies has been in a mess for a long while. They've been drafting a law to regulate the licensing and oversight of PSCs, which they really need to have in place to make the industry accountable and to weed out the bad from the good. The draft as it stands is crap and conflicts with various provisions in some other laws in Iraq. I gave a presentation to some government ministers and flunkies and 250 other people a few months ago telling them where the draft was in conflict with other laws. It didn't go down too well with the ministers. They have been quietly registering PSCs of their own and refusing operating licences for foreign owned PSCs. There was a flurry of activity at the start of the year when a dozen or so PSCs were given their operating licence. I know at least one of them flew the official at the Ministry of Interior that deals with this, and a mate of his, to Europe on a jolly with spending money (sorry, "to inspect the head office") and lo and behold he presented their operating licence to them when he was about to get on the plane back to Iraq. Now they're asking that lawyers don't go with the PSCs when they submit their file because they want a bribe to be paid and the lawyers not to see.




Someone who's in the know about such things told me last week that the Iraqi government is sitting on at least 40 billion dollars. This is because several signatures of government ministers are needed in some cases to get money paid out by the government. Sometimes the Shiites will sign off but the Sunnis won't, and vice versa.

So what can be done about this? If it is to stay in one piece and not break into three, Iraq needs a secular government. The obvious person to take control is Ayad Allawi, but even if he came in and a secular government is formed, it won't solve the whole problem. It would be a good start, but the corruption at low levels would still be there, if not the corruption higher up too. Unfortunately, if there was an election today, people would still vote along sectarian lines, despite the trouble that has caused so far. A total change in mentality is needed in Iraq, from the voters right up to the top of government. Otherwise things will keep going backwards.

From tuk tuks to tanks

I've just got back from a couple of weeks in Thailand. Great times with great friends and the small matter of my birthday too. I've been in Baghdad 6 months now and it strikes me how it's the kind of place I shudder at the thought of when I'm away but don't mind it so much when I'm here. Especially at the moment as well, with all the changes due to take place from the summer onwards. Due to the land in the IZ being transferred back to Iraqis, a lot of people are going to be leaving the IZ and moving out to a military camp near the airport. We'll not be able to do that as we are independent, but we do rent off an Iraqi landlord so we don't necessarily have to leave. It will be more a question of whether it's safe enough to stay if/when they knock down the outer walls to the IZ and open up the roads again. It used to stress me out but now I'm not too worried. I'll go with the flow, stay here as long as it's safe and hit the road when it's looking like getting dangerous.

I've never said what I do here but may as well spit it out. I'm a lawyer working for a small independent company that was set up in 2003 here in Baghdad. We do all sorts of stuff, from registering companies, helping PSCs get their operating licences, advising international and Iraqi banks on issues arising from Iraq debt and guarantees, some corporate work such as advising on joint ventures or share transfers, litigation advice and representation, plus some oil and energy related work, and advice to various governments.

Since I've been here I've noticed the commercial climate get increasingly difficult. Petty corruption within government departments is rife and getting worse. We don't pay bribes which makes it hard but our clients appreciate that we do things the right way rather than the easy way. It's a hell of an eye opener but it makes me really angry to see these people all on the take rather than helping to get their country back on its feet. To be fair, though, I can also see it from the Iraqis' point of view. The US and UK steamed in here nearly 4 years ago and re-wrote a bunch of laws to open the country up to foreign investment. The Iraqis can be forgiven for thinking that the rug has been pulled from under their feet. But we are where we are. The same can be said of the security situation.

Whatever your views on the invasion and the manner of occupation, we're at a point now where it is the responsibility of the Iraqi government to deal with the violence that has escalated since last February when a shrine in Samarra was bombed. There have been some interesting comments from various places about whether this is or is not a civil war. It seems that the violence has all the hallmarks of a civil war, not least the massive displacement of people, but what is really happening is a bunch of mini civil wars. There's violence between Shia and Sunni, between each of them and the Coalition/occupation forces and, more recently, within competing Shia factions and within Sunni factions that are for or against the insurgency. The last of those seems to be a very recent trend. A lot of Sunni tribal leaders, particularly towards the west (Anbar province) have had enough and want to rid the country of terrorists streaming in from the Syrian border, Al Qaeda in Iraq in particular. That's an encouraging sign.

While I was away, the new clampdown started to take effect. It seems to have had instant results. From a selfish point of view, there seems to be a lot less rockets and mortars landing in the IZ now. Bombings and killings in the red zone are significantly down on what they were in December and January. There have been a couple of high profile, very lethal attacks, but still I think overall the results have so far been very good. The best thing is, the full force level hasn't even arrived yet. From March 11 we won't be able to eat at the dining facility we usually go to because there will be 1,000 more troops in that base alone. Which is a pain in the arse for me food-wise but must mean that more troops are coming to back up those already on the ground. A lot of arms caches have been found which is good news. Many of those contain materials for the relatively new and vastly more lethal weapon - EFPs ("explosively formed penetrators") which are like the common or garden roadside bomb (IED or "improvised explosive device") but can penetrate armoured vehicles. EFPs are said to originate in Iran, which doesn't help the political situation between Iran and the US.

However, a couple of days ago, the US agreed to come to the table with Iran and all other neighbours and the UK among others, to discuss ways to fix Iraq's problems. It can't be underestimated how significant this is. We did a major project advising the US Government on something, and whenever we mentioned Iran you could see body language stiffen and lips tighten. Iran was taboo and the thought of anything that could be considered an overture towards it was implicitly if not expressly forbidden. So let's see how that pans out.

Further potentially good news was that last week a final draft hydrocarbon law was approved by the the Iraqi Cabinet and will be referred to Parliament for a vote. This has been long-awaited and was supposed to be produced by the end of 2006. It could change everything. Basically, the issue is that the oil rich south of Iraq is populated mostly by Shiites, and the oil rich north is populated mainly by the Kurds. There's a referendum soon on whether the oil-rich city of Kirkuk will be brought within Kurdistan or remain in Iraq. I understand the expected result is that it will go Kurdish. All of which could leave the Sunnis with little or no revenue from the oil, as the middle of Iraq (which they mainly populate) hasn't got oil fields that are ready for drilling. So the primary issue the hydrocarbon law had to address was revenue sharing. And the draft seems to have done the right thing: all revenue from Iraqi oil gets pooled, and then shared out on the basis of population. In other words, all Iraqis will benefit, whether they live on an oil field or out in the desert. So far, so good. There is a potential significant problem, however, with the manner in which it (the oil) can be exploited. Production Sharing Agreements ("PSAs") are permitted by the draft law. This basically means that foreign companies can come in, produce the oil and take around 70% of the revenue. This report from globalsecurity.org sets out why PSAs might be considered inappropriate for Iraq, and the gist of it will be why the draft law may not be approved. Even if it is approved, there may be continued violence in objection to it. With any luck, though, it will be accepted and people will get on with rebuilding their lives and society.

So, all in all, very interesting times right now. Some days I am optimistic, others I am not. Today's a "glass half full" day.

Big Scrap

Yesterday there was a big battle in Najaf in which it's reported that at least 250 insurgents were killed. They were there to carry out a mass killing against Shia clerics who were going to Kerbala for an important Shia religious festival. An alarming element of this is that it was both Shia and Sunni who were there to attack the Shia. Those Shia that were involved have differences of religious opinion which I guess are pretty extreme. Also there were Egyptians and Sudanese terrorists too. A US helicopter was shot down in the fighting, which is apparently still going on.

In Baghdad five school girls were killed after mortar rounds were fired into their school. What can you say about that? It's like so much here. Yesterday an Iraqi colleague told me that a couple of days ago they had witnessed a guy get pulled from his car, then the terrorists stuck an explosive belt on him and stuck some explosives in his car and got him to drive towards an Iraqi army checkpoint where they detonated the explosives by remote control. The guy was apparently driving really slowly and shouting at the guys on the checkpoint to get out of the way, which they did so it only killed a couple of soldiers. Insane. This colleague of mine had gone to their neighbourhood to check on their house. Many of the houses on their street have been deserted for a while but now people are just moving in to the houses. And once they're in, that's it. House is good as gone for the people who once owned it. So my colleagues are trying to find someone to house sit for them but not having much joy at the moment. Can you imagine it? You've saved all your life for your house and then some other bastard just moves in and effectively confiscates it because you had to leave after someone told you you'd be killed if you didn't leave the following morning. Pack an overnight bag and leave your life behind.

There's been a lot of rockets and mortars fired into the IZ in the last 7 days. Yesterday was quiet but before that the US Embassy and one of the compounds that houses a lot of people working on reconstruction were taking a fair few hits. And I think the UN compound had something that went in as well. Nobody died as far as I know but one guy at the US Embassy might lose his leg after getting hit by shrapnel. Luckily for me we're in a safe bit of the IZ, rockets don't tend to land too near our place, though it has happened on the odd occasion.

I went on a tour of Saddam's bunker a few days ago, it was really interesting. First we climbed up to the top of a watchtower and got some amazing 360 degree views of Baghdad. From up there if you cast your eye out beyond the T Walls it looked like a normal city. Deceptive... Then we went into the bunker. A palace was built over the top of it (the Believers Palace) and the bunker was underneath. The palace had been hit by a couple of bunker buster bombs which came in through a point in the dome and detonated when they hit the floor of the main room. The place looked like a student house after a full on party, only bigger. I'll get some pictures up soon.

Adventure tourism

It's going to be a pretty interesting few months in the IZ. The plan is for pretty much all of it to be handed back to Iraqis by next January. The only bits that are due to be under ongoing US control are the new US embassy and something else (which I forget for now). It will be a gradual process too. Initially (and this is already happening) companies and compounds are leaving and the T Walls are coming down inside the IZ. It will take several months but you can see the beginnings of it now. Around the end of the year the external walls will come down and there will be no IZ! It's a scary prospect and as you can imagine my eyes are fixed on the exit big time. I'm sure it will be fine until after the end of summer, but then how many people will be sticking around (me included) will depend totally on the situation outside and how that develops. Those companies that stay will have beefed up security arrangements so it will be interesting to see how they work out.

Today I've had to escort a few staff in and out of the IZ. This involves going close to the other side of whichever checkpoint they're coming in at and getting them through the inside search points where they hand in their passports. They collect them on the way back out. Usually I don't have to do this but my staffs' IDs have expired and we need to wait a while for them to be renewed. It's mildly scary going to the checkpoints at all but going towards the other end of them quickens the heart a fair bit. Not something I plan on making a habit of that's for sure. I took a photo going over the Tigris to one of the checkpoints today, facing away from the IZ. I'll try and get one looking back towards the IZ on the next suicide run. I think you can just see smoke from one of the bombs today in there.



On which point, here's a report from Al Jazeera:
"At least 17 people have been killed and nearly 50 wounded in a series of car bombings in Baghdad.

In a market in the southern district of Dora, three bombs in quick succession killed at least 10 people and wounded 30 on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Three more died in a car bomb in the east of the city.

Earlier, four people were killed and 11 wounded when a car bomb hit a police patrol near a cinema on Baghdad's central Sadun Street. Two of the dead were policemen.

A fifth car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding seven."

Pretty nuts. While there's so much to say about this you feel at the same time like there's nothing to say. Seems the baddies are getting it in before the extra troops arrive.

Another interesting thing today, Bush had a meeting with the new secretary general of the UN and actually asked him to increase the UN's presence in Iraq. It was only a matter of time, this. Having undermined or ignored the UN systematically during his shitty tenure, Bush is now grovelling for help. I was always troubled by his attitude to the UN. For all its failings, and yes there are many, it still remains the most legitimate body to deal with much of the trouble in the world. Instead of ignoring or undermining it for their own political and economic gain, the major countries should be seeking to making it stronger for everyone's benefit, including updating the permanent members to reflect the changes internationally that have happened since 1945. It's good that Bush belatedly realises that the UN is the only external body that can come here longer term and have any chance of keeping some sort of peace.

I forgot to mention something that made me laugh - Bush once called himself "the decider" which is funny enough (oddly similar to his description of "suiciders") but now, in response to the response to his new new new new Iraq plan, the "educator in chief". Ha ha !! This from a real clever bastard!

Master plan

By now you'll probably know that Bush has at last announced the new new new new strategy for Iraq. It's been pretty much universally panned from what I can tell. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. On the one hand, here is a guy who is doing what his electorate clearly don't want him to be doing. The Democrats did so well in November's congressional elections largely on the basis of their Iraq opposition and their argument in favour of getting US troops out of Iraq. So it doesn't say much about the health of their democracy is you've got this cowboy carrying on with doing things his way. The Iraq Study Group's report also backed a troop withdrawal, but Bush kept waiting until he got a report that supported his wish to carry on and, it seems, even escalate the number of troops.

On the other hand, and I doubt I will ever say this about Bush and Cheney again, I think this is the right plan, if it is carried out properly and also with a degree of reliance on luck. It seems to me to be the least bad option and with good fortune might help to improve things here in the long run. It might of course make matters here no better, but that seems to be what any other plan's guaranteed outcome would be. All the headlines have been about the troop numbers, but that's only a part of what is happening this time. If anything, they should probably send at least 30 or 40 thousand more, but that was always unlikely. There are 2 reasons this plan might work: first, this time there is a real desire to deal with the militias, in particular the Mahdi Army. Whether that is going to happen depends entirely on the Iraqi government. They've shown no inclination to deal with it before, but it's pretty clear that if they don't do something about it then their days as a government will be numbered. They're losing support from the US and, importantly, from their own people, so this is really their last chance to pull finger and do it. The other reason I think this is a starter is that at the same time as they're (hopefully) dealing with the militias, they're also trying to get factories open and Iraqis back into work. If there is work for desperate men that means they won't have to rely on the militias, then the militias can be dealt with by lack of recruits as well as depriving them of political power.

Of course, it's a long shot. But early signs are potentially encouraging. Mahdi Army are apparently going to be keeping a low profile when the extra troops arrive. If the most can be made of that (presumably) more stable time to get the factories up and running and even electricity production increased, then by the time the troops leave there will be less chance of the militias operating as they have been. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but it makes better sense to me than anything else that's been tried.

For now, though, it's still going ape shit out there. Yesterday 70 people were killed and twice as many injured when two bombs went off at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. I heard that Sunnis were being blamed for that but that doesn't make much sense. For one, the Sunnis are if anything more affiliated than anyone else at universities, and it was Sunnis who had the vast majority of the teaching jobs at universities in Baghdad before the invasion. Most of them have now fled to Jordan. Also I think the Ministry of Education is Sunni controlled as well, and when you hear about universities or academics being the target of violence, they're usually Sunnis that get killed. This time it was a mixture of Sunni, Shia and Kurds, so it may well be that terrorists from outside Iraq were responsible. At least that's the theory in a logical place but Baghdad tends to defy all logic these days.

This afternoon a couple of bombs went off, the one below in Sadr City killing 15. I saw the plumes of smoke and wondered what the hell it was. It doesn't take long to log on and find out. I remember when I first came to Baghdad I saw some plumes of smoke and wondered whether they were from bombs or simply fires. I don't tend to question it anymore.

Gunfight at the Baghdad Corral

We heard this last night. There were 2 almighty explosions, one was a rocket and the other maybe mortars not long after, that landed in the IZ. Not too close to us but still very loud. Then we heard the small arms fire after that and it was in the direction of Haifa Street, just outside the IZ. There might be a few of these things in the coming days as Maliki has announced a crackdown and the militias (primarily al-Sadr's Mahdi army) will be trying to flex their muscles. I am 50/50 between scepticism and hope that Maliki really will try and crack down. The next few days should be very interesting.

Hanging update

I heard a couple of interesting things yesterday. I can't verify their truth but I was talking to someone who tends to be in the know about this kind of thing.

The first one is that the original "team" who were supposed to oversee the hanging were "replaced" at the last minute by members of al Sadr's militia (the Mahdi army). Hence the way his name was said by the executioners. Apparently the way they put the noose around his neck (at the side rather than from the back) is another giveaway. Apparently that was the way the British used to do it as well.

The other thing is that Maliki actually tried to resign last Wednesday, but the Iraqi President and the US wouldn't accept it / urged him to stay on. That suggests to me that they're still just trying to get a few things in place so that when his successor comes in he'll have less problems with militias to deal with initially. The extra US troops will presumably have getting rid of the militias as their top priority. I don't think the US has done a great deal properly here and obviously I think they shouldn't have invaded in the first place, but I have to say I think this is the right idea. For once, Bush might have got it right, but that will depend on how the thing is done. They're also now trying to get factories working again (mainly goods like textiles and concrete) so that they can get men back to work. This is crucial in sorting the violence out. It might take a little while to really start working but it's good that they're really starting to focus on "soft" ways to resolve the violence as well as the "hard" option which is coming. If the State department and the Pentagon had worked together in the first place maybe we'd have been at this point 3 years ago....

They say there are 2 potential candidates to replace Maliki, but the smart money has to be on Iyad Allawi. You may remember him from such Iraq interim prime ministerships as 28 June 2004 to 7 April 2005. More about him here. He may have been a CIA stooge but it's widely felt, most importantly by Iraqis themselves, that he is the only person who can hold some sort of government together and get a genuine process of reconciliation moving. Watch this space...

Just thought I'd comment on one more thing. The British Education Secretary, Alan Johnson said "I agree with John Prescott's remarks about the way it was handled and I am an opponent of the death penalty. But it was a matter for the Iraqi people to make that judgment. What happened shouldn't detract from the terrible crimes that Saddam committed. I knew the trade union leader he sentenced to death for organising a trade union in Iraq." I don't think that's the full story. One of the things that has stunned me as I have looked at some Iraqi laws is how progressive they were. The Labour Code, which is still in force today, actively encourages trade unions, and disciplinary action in some cases can't be taken against an employee unless a trade union representative is present. So whoever it was that was sentenced to death by Saddam was probably up to something else. British politicians should check their facts. Nothing new there then...

maybe there's hope....

So Maliki wants to step down. That's a relief. Well, a good start anyway. Maybe. There must be a whole lot more than just the poster boy who need to go. Could be a false dawn when he goes, but it might force a shift of behind-the-scenes power for the better. Here's hoping.

Two Very Different Deaths

One former leader who died last week laid in state and was given an ex President's funeral. Another was taunted and hanged and his body only released to his family and tribe after pressure from the US. Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein couldn't have been buried under more different circumstances.

I have read with interest much of what has been written in the days after Saddam's execution. Some of it regarding the trial and how it was conducted, some of it about the death penalty generally, some about the timing. It's clearly an issue that fascinates people as much as it divides them. The Italian prime minister suggested yesterday that they'd push for a global ban on the death penalty, though it's difficult to see much support for that on the security council.

Anyone that was in any doubt about whether this was "victors' justice" should by now be sure that this was exactly that. The taunting of Saddam and the evocation of Moqtada al-Sadr's name say it all. We already knew the Iraqi government was fizzing at the clopper to get him hanged by the end of last year. Now they have extended the Eid holiday from 4 to 7 days because of the hanging. If that all doesn't add up to victor's justice, I don't know what does. This government has no interest in reconciliation. Maliki depends on Sadr and others' militias for support and the notion of national unity is a sick joke.

Looks like, contrary to the ISG Report recommendation, there will be no chatting to Syria or Iran, at least not publicly. I thought initially that they'd need to do that to get anywhere. More recently I started to think that Maliki and his corrupt bunch were the root of the problem and now that seems pretty clear.

So, the US will send in 30,00 more troops and try to get the Iraqi security services trained properly. Trained to do what exactly? Kill more of their countrymen? Run more criminal rackets? Until you root out the core of the problem the whole army and police will be rotten, from the top down.

The Democrats resume control of Congress in the US tomorrow and Bush will be under a lot more scrutiny in terms of his strategy for Iraq (if there ever was one). During this year I think they'll start handing over checkpoints (the legitimate ones, that is) to the Iraqis. As soon as they start that, I'm getting the hell out of here. The country is carving itself into pieces, and the people that live in it too. I don't fancy being part of that process.