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Today's Stories March 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Iraq Could Blow Up in John McCain's Face Robin Blackburn Question for Barack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the 'Right War'? Saul Landau The Stupid Economy Will Potter Before the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word Binoy Kampmark When Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats Chris Floyd Crushing the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire Andy Worthington Spanish Drop Extradition Request for Guantánamo Britons March 6, 2008 Vincent Navarro The Next Failure of Health Reform Forrest Hylton High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President Peter Morici Why the Dollar is So Cheap George Ciccariello-Maher Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats John Ross Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars Jacob Hornberger No Standing to Lecture on Justice Paul Watson Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers Dan Bacher Off the Deep End Website of the Day A Katrina Reader Online   March 5, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader) Joanne Mariner After Guantanamo Fidel Castro The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa Christopher Brauchli The Turkish Invasions Steven Sherman Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left Dave Lindorff Busting Bush & Co. in New England James Murren Bombing Somalia Adam Engel Necropolis Now Website of Day Remember Song   March 4, 2008 Wajahat Ali Mumbo Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed William Blum How Could Hillary Have Known? Bill Quigley The Cleansing of New Orleans Ralph Nader The Prince Harry Solution Patrick Irelan Oil and Health in Venezuela James J. Brittain / R. James Sacouman Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America Norman Solomon The War Election Jacob Hornberger Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the European Parliament Mike Averko Kosovo and the Press Website of the Day Tex-Mex Primary   March 3, 2008 Jennifer Loewenstein Gazan Holocaust Alan Farago American Politics and the Faltering Economy Richard Gott Colombian Deaths in Ecuador Wajahat Ali Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup Poll with John Esposito Paul Craig Roberts The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution Robert Weissman When Multinationals Say Adieu Uri Avnery Good Morning, Hamas Martha Rosenberg When Your Meat is a Downer Eva Liddell Leave the Next Dance for Bill Michael Donnelly Will Ferrell Does Flint Website of the Day Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues   March 1 / 2, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Race Card Paul Craig Roberts The Political Trial of Don Siegelman Kathleen and Bill Christison Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism Nelson P. Valdés Cuba After Fidel Christopher Brauchli Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick Ron Jacobs Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge John Ross The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico Robert Fantina Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins Robert Weissman Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy Mohammed Omer Fear in Gaza Remi Kanazi Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia Bob Jackson Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd? Richard Rhames Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury Franklin Lamb Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole Rannie Amiri Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon David Michael Green The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam Conn Hallinan Notes from the Southern Cone Faheem Hussain Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy Poets' Basement Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford Website of the Weekend The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!     February 29, 2008 Matt Gonzalez The Obama Craze Jonathan Cook Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel Joshua Frank Obama and Israel Anthony DiMaggio The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback of American Law Linn Washington, Jr. Cop Abuse in America Binoy Kampmark Hubris and Nemesis Robert Bryce Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy Use Sonja Karkar Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel Dave Lindorff A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush? Website of the Day Olduvai George   February 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn "Iraq" Falls Apart Fred Gardner The Birth of NAFTA Michael Levitin The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning William S. Lind The Fake State of Kosovo David Macaray A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor Stephen Fleischman Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod? George Wuerthner The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron Laura Carlsen The North American Union Farce Carl Finamore Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off Michael Dickinson The Day I Bombed the House of Commons Website of the Day Plane Stupid   February 27, 2008 David Rosen Playing the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political Dirty Tricks Vijay Prashad Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War Harvey Wasserman Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink? Andy Worthington Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns, Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense Wajahat Ali Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's Military Economy Peter Morici The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal Stephen Philion Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement Michael Donnelly Obama by Unanimous Decision Erica Rosenberg / Janine Blaeloch After the Land Deals: Will There be Any Wilderness Left to Protect? Website of the Day Dress Blues   February 26, 2008 Debbie Nathan Confessions of a Gitmo Guard Alan Dershowitz v. Frank Menetrez On Finkelstein Harvey Wasserman How Ohio Got Nuked Michael Colby Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals Gary Leupp Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade David Orchard The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan Martha Rosenberg The Big HRT Fran Shor The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow Serge Halimi The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan for the French Left Global Balkans Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans: an Interview with Tariq Ali Website of the Day Texistentialism   February 25, 2008 Roger Morris A Death in Damascus Anthony DiMaggio Military Bases, the Media and the Democrats Ralph Nader Why I'm Running Patrick Cockburn Iraq Broils Paul Craig Roberts Kosovo and the Empire Crazies Peter Morici Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms Dave Lindorff General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That Minot Nuke Incident Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film Heather Gray James Orange, Civil Rights Legend Robert Weitzel Accomodating Torture John Halle Kucinich Goes Down Website of the Day Do the Trunk Monkey! February 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain Paul Craig Roberts Obama and Global Trade Wajahat Ali Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon on the 9/11 Commission Ralph Nader Neutering the FDA Jürgen Vsych "What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?" Fidel Castro Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo David Macaray Unions Under Assault Jeremy Scahill The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence David Krieger Stanley Sheinbaum Caging the Cold War Monster Ron Jacobs Building for the Future Michael Garrity The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies Brian McKenna Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down Missy Beattie Over the Hill with John McCain Fred Gardner American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly) Boris Kagarlitsky The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement Mike Ferner Kick That Barrel Dan Bacher On the Trail with the Border Angels Christopher Ketcham Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread Poets' Basement Davies and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Obama Mariachi   February 22, 2008 Mike Whitney The Bonfire of Capital Jason Hribal Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet Liaquat Ali Khan Arresting Musharraf Joshua Frank That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child Dave Lindorff Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for Her! Liliana Segura When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion Robert Fantina Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen? Yifat Susskind The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women Norm Kent Pushing 60 with Pot Website of the Day Bush Gets Down in Liberia February 21, 2008 Saul Landau Fidel Steps Aside Elizabeth Schulte Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed Helen Redmond Health Care as a Human Right Benjamin Dangl Undermining Bolivia Michael Levitin Kosovo's Dilemma Liam Leonard Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle Patrick Irelan Land and Food in Venezuela Linn Cohen-Cole Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto Michael Simmons Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music CounterPunch News Service A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs Website of the Day Cop Abuse in Shreveport   February 20, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Lies and Spies Paul Krassner My Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Pakistani Elections Farzana Versey The Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch Allan Nairn Dying for a Second Round: Israel's New Plan to Attack Lebanon John V. Whitbeck If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine? Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization? Steve Eckardt Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News Lee Sustar Union-Busting at Freightliner Mike Ferner How Sick of It are You? Website of the Day The US Military Index   February 19, 2008 Uri Avnery Blood and Champagne Paul Craig Roberts Paying Insurgents Not to Fight Gary Leupp The Independence of Kosovo Fidel Castro The Moment Has Come David Macaray Management's Dirty Little Secret Reza Fiyouzat Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections Valerie Morse The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie Walter Brasch Bush on Safari Website of the Day Don't Think Twice, It's Alright   February 18, 2008 Wajahat Ali Free Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan Diana Johnstone NATO's Kosovo Colony Paul Craig Roberts What Do We Stand For? Andy Worthington Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along" Debbie Nathan Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes Anthony DiMaggio Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business of Elections Bill Simpich Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq Eva Liddell A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash Christopher Brauchli The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans Stephen Soldz Wikileaks is Under Attack! Johann Rossouw The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism Website of the Day Sick of It Day!   February 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan Ralph Nader We the Corporations ... David Macaray The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin? William J. Peace Wheelchair Dumping Ron Jacobs War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption Diane Christian War Corrupts Alan Maass Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen (and Beyond) Ramzy Baroud Iraq and the US Elections Michael Donnelly Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card Cpt. Paul Watson The Art of Finding Whalers James L. Secor China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008 Eve Bachrach Bush Returns to Africa Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army Stephen Gowans Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian Missy Beattie To Vote or Not to Vote? David Michael Green Warming Slowly to Obama Wajahat Ali Attack of the Info-tainment Circus Poets' Basement Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther Website of the Day Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!     February 15, 2008 George Szamuely The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo Patrick Cockburn Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad? Wajahat Ali Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Bush Administration Mike Whitney Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg Alan Farago God and the Democrats Chris Genovali Alberta's Black Gold Rush Jacob Hornberger Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture Dave Lindorff Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull Website of the Day Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams     February 14, 2008 Kathleen and Bill Christison Palestine in the Mind of America Mike Whitney Swan Song for NATO Clancy Sigal Strike Notes from a Screenwriter George Wuerthner A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter Peter Morici Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit? John Ross Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border Allan Nairn Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can Whack Anyone Rannie Amiri Lebanon's Warmongers Niranjan Ramakrishnan The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein Donna Volatile Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It Seth Sandronsky The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes Website of the Day Conventions: the Land Around Us   February 13, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America Alan Farago Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line Christina Kasica King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America Vicente Navarro How to Read the U.S. Primaries Hall Greenland Australia's Finest Hour Lee Sustar Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most David Macaray The Writers' Strike Finally Ends Roderick Frazier Nash Celebrating Wilderness Patrick Irelan Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT Anthony Papa Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases Carl Finamore Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians Website of the Day John He Is   February 12, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Paul Craig Roberts War Without End Dr. Trudy Bond The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture? Col. Dan Smith The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away? Ronnie Cummins Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road Ralph Nader Open the Government John V. Walsh Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered Dave Lindorff Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate Michael Donnelly Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules Ron Jacobs La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life" Ben Tripp Beggars Collide Website of the Day Springsteen and Youngstown   February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? Wajahat Ali A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby Ray McGovern Waterboarding for God and Country Allan Nairn The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta Uri Avnery An End Foreseen? Chris Floyd American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech Martha Rosenberg School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows Stephen Fleischman The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics Marc Lamont Hill Not My Brand of Hope Liliana Segura Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation Peter Morici Challenges for the New President Christopher Brauchli A Drug Rant from a Former Taker Website of the Day Annie vs. the Blue Angels   February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden         Subscribe Online

March 7, 2008 Why Iraq Could Blow Up in John McCain's Face By PATRICK COCKBURN In Baghdad the Iraqi government is eager to give the impression that peace is returning. “Not a single sectarian murder or displacement was reported in over a month,” claimed Brigadier Qasim Ata, the spokesman for the security plan for the capital. In the US, the Surge, the dispatch of 30,000 extra American troops in the first half of 2007, is portrayed as having turned the tide in Iraq. Democrats in Congress no longer call aggressively for a withdrawal of American troops. The supposed military success in Iraq has been brandished by Senator John McCain as vindication of his prowar stance. Seldom has the official Iraqi and American perception of what is happening in Iraq felt so different from the reality. Cocooned behind the walls of the Green Zone, defended by everybody from US soldiers to Peruvian and Ugandan mercenaries, the government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki pumps out alluring tales of life returning to normal that border on fantasy.  For instance, Brigadier Ata made his claim that there had been no sectarian murders or expulsions in the capital over the previous month on February 15, but two weeks earlier, on  February 1, suicide bombers, whom the government said were al-Qa’ida, had blown themselves up killing 99 people in two bird markets in Baghdad, both situated in largely Shia districts. So keen are the authorities to show that Sunni and Shia have stopped killing each other and overall violence is down that many deaths with an obvious sectarian motive are no longer recorded. “I think the real figure for the number of people being killed is about twice what the government says it is,” said one local politician. He had just sent the death certificates of the victims of sectarian killers to the military authorities, who were steadfastly refusing to admit that anybody had died at the time and place that the bodies were discovered. One day after Brigadier Ata claimed that there had been no sectarian killings or abductions over the previous month,  prime minister Maliki himself went on a walk about in central Baghdad to demonstrate just how safe things have become. But it was the precautions taken by Maliki’s bodyguards which were more revealing about the real state of security in the city. Maliki’s brief venture onto the streets and out of the Green Zone took place in the al-Mansur district of west Baghdad. This is an area of big houses and many embassies, but has been heavily fought over by Sunni and Shia in the past year. “I was in Mansur on Saturday afternoon,” an Iraqi friend told me, “when, at about 3.15pm, I noticed a strange movement in the street, which was suddenly flooded by soldiers in green uniforms, led by generals and colonels, who were checking parked cars and all the buildings.” Minutes later a large convoy of vehicles appeared, with three US army Humvees in front and behind, and, in the middle, five black armoured four wheel drives They stopped in front of a famous ice cream shop called al-Ruwaad, but for fifteen minutes nobody got out of the vehicles as soldiers searched all the shops nearby. When officials and their guards did begin to emerge Maliki was in the middle of them and began to walk around.  “Everybody was scared when they saw him because they thought his presence might lead to an attack,” reported my friend. “Some women began to run away and I thought it was too dangerous for me to stay. I heard that Maliki gave 500,000 Iraqi dinars [£200] each to a woman who said her husband had been killed in a bomb explosion and a blind beggar.” Maliki also bought two suits from a well-known shop called Mario Zengotti, which promptly shut down, the owner presumably calculating that Baghdad is full of people who might kill him for selling clothes to the prime minister. Baghdad is ‘better’ than it was, but the improvement is only in comparison to the bloodbath of 2006 when 3,000 people were being killed every month. People stay inside their own Sunni or Shia ghettoes. I drove one night through west Baghdad at 8 pm, sitting in the back of a police car with a second military vehicle full of heavily armed soldiers and police behind. Though I was driving in the heart of the capital I saw only three civilian cars during a three or four mile journey through a maze of military checkpoints and fortifications. In Shia-dominated east Baghdad, where there has been less fighting, there are more shops open but few customers. Overall the city the city is still frozen in fear. The growth in the number of checkpoints is not entirely good news because it has always been a favorite tactic of kidnappers and death squads to set up fake checkpoints to stop and identify potential victims. More reassuring is the knowledge that the Mehdi Army militiamen, the military wing of Shia clerics Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, who killed so many Sunni at the height of the slaughter, are still abiding by a strictly-enforced six month ceasefire on the orders of their leader. The killings have not stopped but there are less of them. Baghdad is entirely divided between Sunni and Shia and the sectarianism is as deep seated as it was before fall in violence. In many areas, say Iraqis bitterly, “the killing stopped because there was nobody left to kill.” There are very few mixed neighborhoods left. Just beneath the surface the Mehdi Army still exists as a parallel government in Shia areas, which means most of the city. A friend who was trying to sell a large house for $300,000 had to pay a $25,000 bribe to government officials to get the sale registered. No sooner had he paid this than the Mehdi Army demanded a further $15,000 for the sale to go through, money he reluctantly paid on the grounds it was too risky to refuse.  Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. This explains why so few of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled abroad, mostly to Jordan and Syria, or the one million forced from their homes within Iraq, are coming home, despite the fact that many families exist miserably in a single rented room in Damascus or Amman. Again, the Iraqi government has tried to prove the contrary. Last December it paid for a highly publicized convoy of buses to bring Iraqis home from Syria, the exercise geared to giving the impression that a flood of people was returning to peaceful Baghdad. Unfortunately, it never happened. Three months later, despite much tougher Syrian visa regulations, the flow is still out of Iraq. The latest figures from the UN High Commission for Refugees show that the number of Iraqis entering Syria from Iraq was 1,200 a day in late January “while an average of 700 are going back to Iraq from Syria.” Baghdad is now divided along sectarian lines like Beirut or Belfast. The Surge, along with the Mehdi Army truce, the emergence of al-Sahwa, the anti-al-Qa’ida Sunni movement, have all helped to freeze in place the demographic outcome of the ferocious battle for control of Baghdad which took place after the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra on February 22, 2006. It was a struggle which was won by the Shia with the Sunni, always a minority, being pushed back into a few enclaves, mostly in west Baghdad or being forced to leave Iraq. They make up disproportionate number of the refugees in Syria and Jordan and many, particularly of the better educated, will never return. The Shia also suffered, but they outnumber the Sunni by three to one in Iraq as a whole and they now control 75 per cent of the capital. It was this crucial battle for Baghdad and central Iraq, which, far more than the Surge, has determined the political landscape of Iraq for the foreseeable future. The shooting may have died down for the moment, but the butchery of 2006 and early 2007 has left a legacy of hatred and fear. Even the most liberal-minded Sunni and Shia no longer feel at ease in each other’s company. The history of one family from al-Khudat, a middle class Sunni neighborhood in west Baghdad, explains why city is going to remain divided. In this case the victims were Shia, but what happened to them, and how they reacted to it, is typical of refugee families elsewhere in Iraq. The family had lived in Khudat for thirty years and were well liked by their Sunni neighbors. The father of the family died two years ago leaving his fifty-five year old widow, Umm Hadi, who had been a primary school teacher, along with four sons and three daughters. Early in 2007 it became so dangerous for Shia in al-Khudat that the family fled to Syria after asking the neighbors to look after their house. Umm Hadi did not like it there. “We thought we were just going for a short time,” she says. “The Syrians mistreated us and charged us a lot of money, so we decided to come back to Baghdad at the beginning of 2008.” On Umm Hadi’s return from Syria she and her family found that their house had been taken by a Sunni family from al-Amel, another embattled area, and they refused to leave. Umm Hadi and her sons, all grown up, were too frightened to call the police or the Americans. Instead they moved to Hurriya in north west Baghhdad, which once was mixed but is now controlled by the Mehdi Army and the Shia. Hadi, the eldest brother, who works as a carpenter was dispirited when asked on  February 1 what he intended to do. “We were so surprised,” he said, “that our house was taken and our dear neighbors allowed this to happen. There is nothing we can do to force these people to leave because they might retaliate by attacking me or my brothers or even blow up the house.” He was interrupted by his mother, Umm Hadi, her face quivering with anger, who said she was not going to surrender so easily. “It is true,” said this former primary school teacher, “that we are poor people, but that does not mean that we are weak. We can call on our strong Shia arm [apparently referring to the Mehdi Army] to get our house back.  I have information that one of the sons of the family that took it is working in a petrol station. It would be a good message to send his dead body to them if they insist on staying.” At this point her sons interrupted their mother saying that she had “suffered a lot since we came back to Iraq; she is a kind woman and does not mean what she says.” A week later, however, on  February 8, the father of the Sunni family who had taken their house, was found shot dead in his car in west Baghdad. Perplexity among non-Iraqis about what is going on in Iraq is stems primarily from a failure to understand that ever since fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 there have been two wars being fought in the country. One was between the US occupation forces and the Sunni, rulers of Iraq down the centuries. This war had gone surprisingly well for the Sunni. They had inflicted significant losses, now approaching 4,000 dead, on the US army which, while not militarily crippling, were politically unsustainable in America. But the Sunni were also fighting a second war, this one against the Shia majority, and this war they were losing badly.  They had lost control of the Iraqi state machine with the fall of the old regime. The elections of 2005 gave the Shia, in alliance with the Kurds, control of parliament, the government, army and police, though admittedly this was under partial American tutelage. The Sunni came to regard the Interior Ministry as the headquarters of the death squads. The Health Ministry was believed to have torture chambers for Sunni in its basement. If this was not enough, the Sunni were being squeezed by the murderous killers of al Qa’ida, who slaughtered all who opposed them, and were seeking to set up a Taliban-like enclave to be called the Islamic State of Iraq. By the end of 2006 many Sunni leaders were coming to see that they could not afford so many enemies. The non-al-Qa’ida Sunni guerrilla groups were less fragmented than they looked, their common background as Baathists, former military and security officers, and tribal leaders, making it easier for them to make collective decisions. They formed al-Sahwa, the Awakening movement, which was against al-Qa’ida and allied to the Americans. It was also, though al Sahwa and the US military played this down, either against the Iraqi government or not under its control. The Americans themselves were surprised at the speed with which the movement spread until there are some 80,000 al-Sahwa fighters, armed and paid for by the US, which constitute a powerful Sunni militia. The US called the al-Sahwa fighters ‘Concerned Local Citizens’ and later ‘Sons of Iraq’, seeking to give the impression that they were simple tribal folk who had turned on al-Qaida. In reality they are the same Sunni guerrillas who have been fighting the US for five years. Their leaders have a very clear idea about what they are doing and why. On 26 January I went to see Abu Marouf, whose full name is Karim Ismail Hussein al-Zubai, the leader of 13,000 al-Sahwa fighters between Fallujah and Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, a strategically important area that has seen the heaviest fighting in the war. I counted 27 checkpoints between central Baghdad and Abu Marouf’s headquarters in a half-ruined villa, hastily fortified with heavy machine gun emplacements, down a rutted tracks running between irrigation canals and reed beds near the village of Khandari. He expressed anger with the Iraqi government for not giving him and his men ‘long term jobs in the security services’ and the Americans for not paying his men. He threatened to go to war against both in three months unless his demands were met. A thin faced man in a brown suit and a tie, he said he was a former security officer under Saddam and later a fighter against the Americans. He would not say which guerrilla group he belonged to, but he is believed to have been a commander in ‘the 1920 Revolution Brigades’. “If the Americans think they can use us against al Qa’ida,” he said, “and then push us to one side they are mistaken.” He expressed contempt for Nouri al-Maliki’s government as “the worst government in the world.” Of the 13 divisions in the Iraqi army most were Shia and half were made up of militiamen controlled by Iran. There is no doubt that these former Sunni guerrilla are very much in control of the Fallujah as far south as an area which used to be known as ‘triangle of death’ near Yusufiyah. The city of Fallujah itself, scene of the climactic battle between Sunni fighters and US Marines in November 2004, is run by police Colonel Feisal Ismail Hussain al-Zubai who is Abu Marouf’s elder brother. Like him he candidly admits that up to the end of 2006, when he was appointed to his present job, “I was fighting the Americans,” he said. “If your country was occupied what would you do?” Beside him on his desk is a picture of himself in uniform as a young officer, along with other officers, in the Iraqi army’s Special Forces in which he served after 1983. He and his brother use the word ‘militia’ to describe Shia-dominated institutions. Asked why he had switched from fighting against the Americans to fighting with them, Colonel Feisal said: “We decided that, when we compared the Americans to the militia and al Qa’ida, we should choose the Americans.” The present American strategy may look like smart politics back in Washington. It is better to pay Sunni gunmen $300 a month to guard the road rather than have them planting bombs in it to blow up American Humvees. The US is losing one soldier dead a day compared to three or four killed each day a year ago. Since American casualties are the main barometer by which the US electorate views success or failure in Iraq these are important figures in an election year. The lower American casualties also reflect an important political change in Iraq. The Sunni and Shia now hate and fear each other more than they do the Americans. This puts the US in a stronger position because it can control the balance of power between the two communities. Sunni in Baghdad would prefer American soldiers to kick down their door in the middle of the night than the Shia-dominated Iraqi army and police who are likely to torture and kill them. In many ways the US position in Iraq is like Syria’s status in Lebanon, which resembles Iraq in its ethnic fragmentation, between 1976 and 2005 when it partly occupied the country. The Syrian army prevented the civil war escalating, but also stopped anything being resolved between the different communities. Probably the US cannot play this intermediary role for so long. At the end of the day neither Sunni nor Shia Arabs in Iraq want the US to stay. It would be very easy for any of the myriad armed groups in Iraq to launch an offensive and send American military casualties soaring. With the rise of al-Sahwa, a powerful Sunni militia, the country is more divided than ever. The Sunni now have their own private army as do the Shia and the Kurds. The greatest success of the Surge has been in terms of public relations. Suddenly there is a perception in the US that ‘things are getting better in Iraq’, though they are better only in terms of the mass killings of 2006. In the struggle over who will hold power in Iraq in the future nothing is decided and fighting, just as ferocious as anything we have seen in the past, could erupt at any moment. Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006. His forthcoming book 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq' is published by Scribner in April.

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