Ah, peace! (relatively speaking)Mar 23rd, 2008 - 16:29:27

(How long will the Admin. fall back on a comparison to the most violent period since 2003 to attempt to convince the public that they're winning?)

www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL0157942120080323

'BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's heavily fortified 'Green Zone' came under rocket or mortar attack on Sunday, and police said up to eight people had been killed by rockets falling short outside the government and diplomatic compound. The attack was part of a wider increase in violence in the capital and in the northern city of Mosul, underlining warnings by U.S. military commanders that recent security gains in Iraq are both fragile and reversible.'

(What this series of incidents around Baghdad, and even in Shia areas point up, is that the Shia militia are responsible for violence as well, and they outnumber the foreign fighters by far)

'While there was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the Green Zone attacks, the U.S. military has blamed past missile strikes on rogue elements of anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. Sadr last month renewed a seven-month-old ceasefire for his militia, which the U.S. military has credited for contributing to sharp falls in violence across Iraq. However, there are fears the ceasefire may be unraveling after Mehdi Army fighters clashed with Iraqi and U.S. forces in the southern city of Kut and southern Baghdad last week.'

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al Sadr cease-fire unraveling?Mar 23rd, 2008 - 16:38:58

(Since the Shia are the dominant sect in Iraq, their cease-fire concurrent with the surge has made the situation look better than it really was. al Sadr tried to purge the more violent Shia elements, but it looks like the Shia are fracturing again and battling al-Maliki while jockeying for political position, and the U.S. forces will be under pressure because of it. Bush keeps making it seem to be all about al Qaeda, which was never there until Bremer dismissed the Iraqi army. Now the Shia are jockeying for power, and in resentment of our paying the Sunni hard cash to repel al Qaeda. To make it worse, we are now trying to back out of the deal to keep paying the CLC's in the more pacified areas where they're not needed anymore at 10 bucks a day)

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ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8VI2SP81

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi security forces battled Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad on Friday, raising tensions among rival factions of the country's majority religious community and straining a seven-month cease-fire proclaimed by the biggest Shiite militia.

Al-Sadr proclaimed a cease-fire last August and extended it indefinitely last month. But the firebrand cleric, who led two uprisings against U.S.-led forces in 2004, has authorized his followers to defend themselves if attacked.

Al-Sadr's supporters have complained that the Shiite-led government has used the cease-fire to accelerate a crackdown against their movement in Baghdad and the Shiite heartland south of the capital.

Iraqi security forces are heavily influenced by a rival Shiite group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which wields considerable power in the central government and in provincial administrations throughout the south.

Rival Shiite groups have been battling for control of the oil-rich south with an eye toward the eventual withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. Shiites form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people.

A Sadrist member of parliament alleged that the crackdown in Kut and elsewhere in the south was part of a move by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the supreme council to prevent al-Sadr's followers from winning control of key southern provinces in provincial elections expected this fall.

'They have no supporters in the central and southern provinces, but we do,' Ahmed al-Massoudi told the AP. 'If the crackdown against the Sadrists continues, we will begin consultations with other parliamentary blocs to bring down the government and replace it with a genuinely national one.'

Al-Sadr's cease-fire last summer was responsible in part for the dramatic fall in violence in Iraq, and U.S. officials have been careful to avoid accusing the young cleric of any role in recent fighting. Instead, the U.S. military points the finger at 'criminals' and 'rogue militiamen' who have defied al-Sadr's cease-fire order and who maintain close ties to Iran.

Iraqi reinforcements were sent to Kut four days ago to wrest control from Mahdi Army fighters, police said. However, al-Sadr's followers have been growing increasingly angry at what they consider a government campaign against them under the guise of a security crackdown.

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CLC's face unemploymentMar 23rd, 2008 - 20:25:09

www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-gunmen21mar21,1,94576.story
As calm returns to some areas, the U.S. military is faced with the question of what to do with the tribesmen it hired to defend their neighborhoods.

After five years of trial and error, the strategy of recruiting tribesmen to help defend their neighborhoods against Islamic extremists has proved one of the most effective weapons in the U.S. counterinsurgency arsenal.

But restoring a measure of calm to what were some of the most violent places in Iraq has in turn presented the U.S. military with one of its biggest headaches: what to do with the more than 80,000 armed men whose loyalty has been bought with a paycheck that cannot go on forever.

'We don't want to pay people to stand on street corners with guns if they don't need to be there. What we want to do is we want to get them into a transition to more gainful employment,' said Army Col. Martin Stanton, who oversees the effort.

After months of U.S. entreaties, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shiite-led government grudgingly agreed in December to hire a portion of the mostly Sunni Arab fighters for the official security forces. But the process of vetting and approving the job candidates is painfully slow -- some say deliberately so -- and less than a third of them are expected to qualify.

U.S. and Iraqi officials are now hammering out details of a plan to revive local economies and create new opportunities for the fighters through vocational training, public works schemes, farm revitalization programs, micro-grants and business start-up loans. The two governments have committed $155 million apiece to the projects.

But these are long-term strategies, and the fighters need jobs now. If not, many openly declare they will have no choice but to work for the insurgency, which has tried to lure some of them back with offers of more money.

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