NYTimes Article:Frustration Over Wall Unites Sunni and Shiite

 
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 23 — The unexpected outcry about the proposed construction of a wall around a Sunni Arab neighborhood has revealed the depths of Iraqi frustration with the petty humiliations created by the new security plan intended to protect them.

American and some Iraqi officials were clearly taken aback by the ferocity of the opposition to the wall, and on Monday the United States was showing signs of backing away from the plan. The strong reaction underscores the sense of powerlessness Iraqis feel in the face of the American military, whose presence is all the more pervasive as an increasing number of troops move on to the city’s streets.

And it has proved to be an unlikely boon for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, making the Shiite politician — at least for now — into a champion for Sunnis because he publicly opposed the wall’s construction.

At a rally on Monday, residents of the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya pledged support for Mr. Maliki because of his declaration on Sunday in Cairo that construction of the wall around their neighborhood must stop. Their endorsement was all the more telling because many Sunnis see Mr. Maliki as the representative of a government bent on Sunni oppression.

“My view of Maliki has changed since I heard of this news, and we hope he would be able to carry out this decision,” to stop the wall’s construction, said Um Mohammed, a teacher in Adhamiya.

“We denounce the building of the wall, which will increase the sectarian rift,” she said as she stood with more than 1,000 neighborhood residents at the peaceful protest.

By late in the day, the American military, under pressure from the Iraqi government, appeared to be rethinking the plan. “This one was obviously one in which the people in the area expressed some concern,” said Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Pentagon. “There are aspects of this that the Iraqi government feels at this point are not productive. We’ll continue to work with them on this and other tactics,” he said.

Although the strategy of using barriers to safeguard areas of Baghdad is not new, the Adhamiya plan to enclose the neighborhood entirely was promoted as an advanced security measure. About two years ago, the American military erected a wall along the section of the Amiriya neighborhood that borders the airport road. While hardly foolproof, it reduced the number of attacks on American convoys on the route. More recently, the military has erected walls around marketplaces to safeguard them from suicide bombers, said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, Baghdad’s deputy commanding general, in a statement released Saturday when questions began to emerge about the plan.

But the Adhamiya wall, only partly built, has fast become a metaphor for the cumulative resentment that Iraqis feel about the violence and disruption of daily life that have brought so much misery to the country since the American invasion in 2003.

The latest indignity is the new security plan, which has snarled traffic with checkpoints that turn even the shortest journeys into hourlong forays. And to the chagrin of many Iraqis, even after four years, the Americans still seem to be oblivious of the havoc they cause in Iraqis’ daily lives by forcing traffic to stop, blocking roads and taking property for military outposts.

Iraqis feel demeaned and infuriated when they find themselves sitting in traffic for hours as it trickles through checkpoints or standing in lines in the already blazing spring sun waiting to be frisked to get into government buildings.

A man who had waited in line for more than two hours to get into the fortified International Zone, formerly known as the Green Zone, on Monday said no one explained the reason for the delay to the nearly 200 people standing there. “Why, why? What did I do?” he said to no one in particular, as a soldier who had briefly appeared near the front of the line walked away.

On the outskirts of Adhamiya on Monday afternoon, a line of cars stretched for more than half a mile, waiting to go through an Iraqi Army checkpoint to enter the neighborhood. The line of some 200 cars was moving so slowly that some drivers had gotten out and were gesticulating and shouting in frustration.

Although the decision to use tall concrete barriers to cordon off the neighborhood was made jointly by Iraqi and American forces, American soldiers are building the Adhamiya wall, according to neighborhood residents and a news release issued by the United States military. The wall is made of concrete slabs weighing 14,000 pounds each, which, when set next to each other, form a solid barrier. Cranes are used to winch them into position.

Mr. Maliki’s decision to speak out against the wall was read on the streets as a moment of defiant Iraqi sovereignty in the face of the Americans, whom the vast majority of Iraqis view as an occupying force. Despite his government’s backing of the overall security plan, Mr. Maliki has managed to appear to be a defender of the interests of the common citizen.

Sameer al-Obeidi, the imam of the Abu Khanifa mosque, one of the most influential Sunni Arab mosques in the city, applauded Mr. Maliki. “We shake hands with the government in such stands,” he said.

The American involvement in the wall’s construction has united Iraqis of different sects. Sunni political parties, as well as some Shiite groups, strongly oppose the wall. Shiite groups fear that though Sunni Arab neighborhoods are the ones being cordoned off this week, next month it could be Shiite areas as well.

There was still confusion on Monday over whether construction on the wall would proceed. Despite Mr. Maliki’s declaration during his visit to Cairo on Sunday that construction would be halted, the chief Iraqi military spokesman said that there was no change in the plans to build the 12-foot barrier.

“We will continue to construct the security barriers in the Adhamiya neighborhood. This is a technical issue,” Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said.

Reporting was contributed by Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala, Falluja and Hilla, and David S. Cloud in Washington.

AP Article: Potentially habitable planet found

 

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer


For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

___

On the Net:

The European Southern Observatory:http://www.eso.org

GulfNews.com Article: Iraq PM orders halt to Baghdad wall

Iraq PM orders halt to Baghdad wall

Agencies


Baghdad: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki has ordered a halt to the construction of a wall around Al Adhamiyah, a Sunni enclave surrounded by Shiite areas in Baghdad.
"I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop. There are other methods to protect neighbourhoods," Al Maliki said on Sunday. "I asked yesterday that it be stopped and that alternatives be found to protect the area."

Criticism has mounted over the construction of the wall, which the US military said will protect residents from sectarian violence.

Sunni leaders and residents said it will only serve to isolate them and divide Baghdad along sectarian lines.

Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar defended the scheme. "The barriers can be modified or removed at any time ... the purpose of these barriers is to provide security," he said.
US troops have begun placing six-tonne sections of wall around Adhamiyah. When finished, the wall will be up to 3.5m high with military checkpoints at entrances.

US officials had said the districts of Amiriya, Khadra, and East and West Rashid will also become "gated communities".

TheLedger.com Article: U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart

By: EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD

The radical new strategy will build a wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

BAGHDAD, April 20 — American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad, a Sunni Arab stronghold, began construction of the wall last week and expect to finish it within a month. Iraqi Army soldiers would then control movement through a few checkpoints. The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to box in the minority Sunnis.

A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the residents into caged animals.

“It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will be much greater between the two sects.”

“The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.

The American military said in a written statement that “the wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”

As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted to the Iraqi government that it had to pass by late summer a series of measures long sought by the White House that were aimed at advancing reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs.

Whether Parliament meets that benchmark could affect a decision that the Bush administration plans to make in late summer on extending the nearly 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq earlier this year, Mr. Gates said.

His words were the bluntest yet by an American official in tying the American military commitment here to the Iraqi political process. It reflected a growing frustration among Bush administration officials at Iraq’s failure to move on the political elements of the new strategy. President Bush’s new security plan here is aimed at buying time for the feuding Iraqi factions to come to political settlements that would, in theory, reduce the violence.

In recent weeks, Democrats in Congress have been intensifying pressure on the president, through negotiations on financing for the war, to set political deadlines for the Iraqis and tie them to the withdrawal of American troops.

Speaking to reporters after talks with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Gates urged Parliament not to adjourn for a planned summer recess without passing legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the purges of former Baath Party members from government positions and setting a date for provincial elections.

“Our commitment to Iraq is long term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq’s streets open-endedly,” he said, adding that he told Mr. Maliki that “progress in reconciliation will be an important element of our evaluation in the late summer.”

This is not the first time the Bush administration has set a timetable for Iraq to pass the reconciliation measures. Late last year, the White House gave the Iraqi government a goal of March to pass the legislation. March came and went, and senior administration officials shrugged off the missed target, saying it was counterproductive to press the Iraqis on the issue.

Mr. Gates’s demand, with its strong hint of conditions attached, could force the Bush administration into a corner.

If progress on the reconciliation measures proves impossible before the target date, as many Iraqi politicians say they believe, American officials will have to decide whether to follow through with the veiled threat. American military commanders have already indicated privately that it may be necessary to extend the troop reinforcements because the time between now and August is not be long enough for the new strategy to work.

A senior White House official in Washington said that Mr. Gates had not threatened to remove American troops if Mr. Maliki cannot act by midsummer. Instead, the official argued, “He simply said what everyone has said, which is that the process of political accommodation has to speed up.”

President Bush spoke with Mr. Maliki in a secure video conference on Monday morning and also emphasized the need to pass the legislation, aides said.

Mr. Maliki’s office issued a statement on Friday saying that the prime minister was confident that steps toward reconciliation could be achieved this year.

Mr. Gates delivered his message at the end of a week of major political turmoil and security setbacks for Mr. Maliki’s government. Mr. Maliki’s strongest political supporter, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet. Car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 171 people on Wednesday, puncturing Iraqi confidence in the security plan.

Ceaseless violence is what led American commanders in Adhamiya to build a wall to break contact between Sunnis and Shiites. It is the first time the Americans have tried a project of that scope in Baghdad. The soldiers jokingly call it “The Great Wall of Adhamiya,” according to military officials.

Commanders have sealed off a few other neighborhoods into what they call “gated communities,” but not with a lengthy wall. In the earlier efforts, American and Iraqi soldiers placed concrete barriers blocking off roads leading into the neighborhoods and left open one or more avenues of egress where people and vehicles were searched.

Soldiers did that to a degree in the volatile district of Dora during a security push there last summer. More recently, American and Iraqi Army units have closed off almost all roads into the western Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Amiriya and Daoudi. Residents of Amiriya say violence dropped when the roads were first blocked off late last year, but has gradually increased again.

Adhamiya is different, because it involves the building of a three-mile wall along streets on its eastern flank. It consists of a series of concrete barriers, each weighing 14,000 pounds, that have been transported down to Baghdad in flatbed trucks from Camp Taji, north of the city. Soldiers are using cranes to put the barriers in place.

Once the wall is complete, Iraqi Army soldiers will operate entry and exit checkpoints, Capt. Marc Sanborn, a brigade engineer for the Second Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, said in a news release on the project issued this week by the American military.

The wall “is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods,” Captain Sanborn said.Adhamiya has been rife with violence throughout the war. It is a stalwart Sunni Arab neighborhood, home to the hard-line Abu Hanifa mosque, and the last place where Saddam Hussein made a public appearance before he went into hiding in 2003. Shiite militiamen from Sadr City and other Shiite enclaves to the east often attack its residents, and Sunni insurgent groups battle there among themselves.

“Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street,” Capt. Scott McLearn, an operations officer in the area, said in a written statement.

Abu Hassan, the doctor in Adhamiya, said his neighborhood “is a small area.”

“The Americans and Iraqi government should be able to control it” without building a wall, he said.Many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation.

A spokesman for the American military, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the military did not have a policy of sealing off neighborhoods.

The American military has tried sealing off entire cities during the war. The most famous example is Falluja, in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province, where marines began operating checkpoints on all main roads into and out of the city after laying siege to it in late 2004.

On Friday, a child was killed and nine people were wounded in a mortar attack in Baghdad, and 19 bodies were found across the capital. Hospital officials in Mosul said they were treating 130 Iraqi Army trainees suffering from stomach illness, in a possible case of mass poisoning at a training center north of the city.

An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket attack on a base in Mahmudiya on Thursday night, the military said.

csmonitor.com Article: Baghdad's Sunni/Shiite security wall

The US military hopes its barrier will prevent deadly attacks. Iraqis worry it will worsen economic, sectarian problems.
By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

The US military is building a three-mile-long wall around Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah in order to isolated it from the surrounding Shiite areas, and prevent sectarian attacks.

Stars and Stripes, a newspaper published for the US military community serving abroad, reported Thursday that according to a military press release, personnel began construction on the wall on April 10, and will continue work "almost nightly" until it is complete.

"The area the wall will protect is the largest predominately Sunni neighborhood in East Baghdad. Majority-Shiite neighborhoods surround it on three sides. Like other religiously divided regions in the city, the area has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation," according to the release.

In January, when the new Baghdad security plan and troop "surge" were announced, the "gated community" concept was reported by several news agencies as one tactic to be used.

Stars and Stripes notes, however, that Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, said Wednesday that he was unaware of construction of the wall, and said that such a tactic is not a policy of the Baghdad security plan. "We have no intent to build gated communities in Baghdad," he said. "Our goal is to unify Baghdad, not subdivide it into separate [enclaves]."

The Los Angeles Times indicates that the plan, which it notes is "the first [barrier in Baghdad] to be based in essence on sectarian considerations," is a local decision made by US military operating in the neighborhood.

"We defer to commanders on the ground, but dividing up the entire city with barriers is not part of the plan," U.S. military spokesman Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Thursday.

The Times writes that US commanders say the wall is meant to prevent suicide bombers and death squads from launching attacks across sectarian lines. But the Times adds that both Sunnis and Shiites in the affected neighborhood "were united in their contempt for the imposing new structure."

"Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?" said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who would identify himself only as Abu Ahmed, 44. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation."

Some of Ahmed's customers come from Shiite or mixed neighborhoods that are now cut off by large barriers along a main highway. Customers and others seeking to cross into the Sunni district must park their cars outside Adhamiya, walk through a narrow passage in the wall and take taxis on the other side. ...

"I feel this is the beginning of a pattern of what the whole of Iraq is going to look like, divided by sectarian and racial criteria," Abu Marwan, 50, a Shiite pharmacist, said.

The Associated Press reports, however, that some Sunnis approve of the plan, though they fear it will deepen the city's sectarian divides.

As work continued Friday, the day of worship in mostly Muslim Iraq, several Sunnis living in Azamiyah welcomed the effort to improve their security, but said the wall was another sign of the deep hostility between Sunnis and Shiites.

"It is good from one hand to curb violence and have control of terrorists. But it's bad on the other hand to be separated from others. We should live in one area like brothers, not be separated from one another," said Bashar Abdul Latif, a 45-year-old teacher.

"I don't think this wall will solve the city's serious security problems," said Ahmed Abdul-Sattar, 35, a government worker. "It will only increase the separation between our people, which has been made so much worse by the war."

Concern that the wall will heighten tension between Baghdad's Sunnis and Shiites is supported by study of the situation over the years in Belfast, which was riven by "peace lines" - metal and brick walls, some as tall as 30 feet, meant to separate Protestant and Catholic enclaves in order to prevent violence. The Guardian reported in 2002 that a survey of those living along the peace lines found that the segregation of the two groups had grown worse since a 1994 ceasefire.

Prejudice on both sides was so marked among the 18- to 25-year-olds that 68% had never had a meaningful conversation with anyone from the other community. In all age groups six out of 10 said they had been victims of verbal or physical abuse since the first ceasefire of 1994, and the same number believed that community relations had worsened during the same period. ...

According to the survey, older people were more likely to cross sectarian lines to shop, and to attend health centres and other facilities.

They were less likely to see themselves as potential victims of violence and more inclined to see good in people on the other side. This was mainly because they had memories and contacts in the other communities from before the Troubles erupted in 1968.

Young people were least likely to cross the peace lines. The number of acts of violence was increasing. Although the number of murders had reduced, the number of fist fights and other acts of intimidation or physical attack was rising.

Israel's "security fence," a concrete barrier being built between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank to prevent terrorist attacks, provides evidence of the economic impact of such a barrier. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 2003 that the West Bank barrier had a "profound impact" in the Palestinian town of Qalqilya.

Agriculture has traditionally acted as an economic shock absorber during hard times, employing people when they lost jobs elsewhere. But wall construction has cut people off from that shock absorber. An estimated 6,000 to 8,000 people have already left Qalqilya in order to escape the stricter Israeli hold on their lives and pocketbooks. The wall comes on top of an isolation initiated by Israeli closures and curfews.

"Qalqilya depends on agriculture, the manpower of its people, and the commercial sector. These three sectors have been hit hard by the [Israeli] siege, and the city has been isolated from the surrounding villages," Governor Malki says. "Now when you bear in mind that villagers from nearby villages can't come to Qalqilya anymore, up to 85 percent of the economy has come to a halt."

But despite the sociological and economic effects of security walls, analysts say they can achieve their stated purpose — to reduce violence. Ben Thein, in a 2004 article for Middle East Quarterly, argues that "there is little doubt that the security barriers work," particularly in the case of Israel where, he notes, suicide attacks "declined 75 percent in the first six months of 2004 compared to an equivalent period in 2003."
 

Ledger-Enquirer.com Article: Roundup of Iraq Violence -- April 19, 2007

By Hussein Kadhim
McClatchy Newspapers

The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.


Baghdad

- Around 11 am, 2 policemen were injured by gunmen in Waziriya neighborhood.

- Around 12 pm, mortar shelling targeted Al-Ilam neighborhood without casualties.

- Around 1 pm, a roadside bomb exploded in Baldiyat neighborhood without casualties.

- Around 1:30 pm, a suicide car bomber targeted Al Jadiriya neighborhood killing 6 civilians, 31 injured and some burned cars with some damage to the nearby buildings

- Around 3 pm, 3 civilians were killed and 2 injured in random shootings by gunmen near Al Sadoon street in the middle of the downtown.

- Around 3 pm, 2 policemen were killed and 1 injured when gunmen fired on their vehicle in Al Waziriya neighborhood.

- Around 4 pm, a roadside bomb exploded in Adil neighborhood injuring 2 civilians.

- 20 corpses were found in Baghdad today. 17 were in the west(Kharkh): 4 in Dora, 3 in Bayaa, 2 in Amiriya, 2 in Mahmudiya, 2 in Jihad, 2 in Amil, 1 in Mansour, 1 in Hurriya.

3 were found in east(Rusafa): 1 in Adhamiya, 1 in Ma'amil, 1 in Sadr City.

Albawaba.com Article: Baghdad dating turns hi-tech

A growing number of young men and women in Iraq have turned to an unlikely way of meeting one another - the internet. Though in the past, most young couples were introduced to one another by their families, the ongoing war which has ravaged the country has made many such meetings between war-torn neighborhoods impossible.


Young Iraqis, confined to their homes as battles rage outside have turned to the internet as a means to keep up with relatives and friends, as well as initiate new relationships. Thus, the unlikely phenomenon of internet dating has arisen in major urban Iraqi centers such as Baghdad, according to the Los Angeles Times.


The trend has been further strengthened by the fact that in Iraq, like many other Islamic countries, young men and women rarely have the opportunity to communicate or meet without a chaperone.


A number of new people are cashing in on the demand for internet through wireless connections to satellite-based hubs, which bypass Iraq's notorious phone lines.


More and more internet café's have sprouted up around the city, including the Shirifi Internet Café, which opened three years ago.


“All they do is chat, chat, chat,” says the 25-year-old owner of Shirifi, Yousef Abdulla, referring to his many young male clientele.


“They have the opportunity to expand their horizons with this portal and get whatever information they want about anything, but all they are interested in is chatting – especially with girls.”


However, a number of internet cafes in Baghdad have received threats that they are spreading pornography and providing a means to contact the U.S. military. As a result, many have been forced to close, while other potential investors choose to avoid such entanglement and personal danger entirely.


Nonetheless, across Iraq and the Middle East, a growing number young people are logging on to chat rooms in order to meet one another, chat with friends and relatives, and also distract themselves temporarily from the horrors of the war outside their door.


For many though, an internet relationship is doomed from the start despite its promising beginnings. For Ali and Noura, two educated Sunni Muslims from Baghdad, such was the case.


For months the two chatted online obsessively, and eventually chose to have a Webcam meeting.


However, the two may as well have lived in separate countries, as Noura lived across the Tigris River in the city’s war-torn west while Ali lived in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in the east.


“It seemed like a pointless relationship,” says Ali, who now refers to Noura as “my ex-Internet girlfriend.” He stopped responding to her messages and she eventually stopped sending them.


“She must be angry,” he says, “Maybe if we could have been alone together, it would have been different.”


Such virtual relationships, like many, offer a refuge of sorts for a time from fear and boredom. But all too often, such escapes are only mirages, and a frustrating and seductive reminder of a life outside the reach for most.

BusinessWeek.com Article: Calif. grandmother blogs from Baghdad

By MICHELLE LOCKE
BW Exclusives


BERKELEY, Calif.


Jane Stillwater is an unlikely war correspondent. She's 64, a self-described Berkeley "flower child, 40 years later" and broke. So how did this mother of four grown children end up in Baghdad, churning out commentary ranging from shock at Thursday's bombing of the Iraqi parliament cafeteria, to the weirdness of touring Saddam Hussein's bathroom?

Inspired by a sense of outrage and determined to blog from inside the war zone, Stillwater ate peanut butter sandwiches for months to save up for a ticket to Kuwait. She got a small Texas newspaper to help her secure press accreditation, and eventually boarded a troop transport to Baghdad.

"I'm really glad I came," she said Thursday by phone from the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad's Green Zone. "I don't know whether I would ever come back."

Some of her entries deal with everyday life during wartime. Others are strongly political, musing on issues like using violence to fight violence in what she sees as the "broken egg" of Iraq.

"It's like being on an adventure with somebody," said W. Leon Smith, editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast, the Texas newspaper that sponsored her request for press accreditation. "She's like an ordinary person that's over there ... people can identify with it."

To some, the idea of a grandmother with no formal journalistic training dropping everything to report from Baghdad seems far-fetched. But not to her friends.

"Having known her for many years and having seen her do things that nobody else would think of taking on ... she's a pretty irrepressible force of humor and passion mixed together," said Kriss Worthington, a Berkeley city councilman.

Stillwater said Baghdad "is insane. The Green Zone, it's like East Berlin in 1955. And outside, it's like 'Blade Runner.' People are trying to lead normal lives, and there's so much going on and there's firefights."

Many of Stillwater's postings have dealt with her frustration at being relegated to the U.S.-protected, fortified Green Zone. She said she has twice been stood up by Iraqi Army officials who promised to take her on an excursion outside the area.

When she went to Iraq, Stillwater was for immediate troop pullout. Now, she's not so sure what's the best way forward.

"What I realized is it's just very, very complex," she said.

She said the troops are "really nice, they're really doing a good job. It's just that they've been assigned a job that's screwed."

Reaction to the blog tends to be love it or hate it. "People will say, 'Hey, you're an idiot,' or, 'Hey this is wonderful and we're so proud of you'," she said.

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On the Net: http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/

http://www.lonestaricon.com

We Won't Forget... The Sarrafiya Bridge

Reuters Article: Dreamed up phone number leads man to a bride

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man has met and married a 22-year-old woman after, by his own account, dreaming of her phone number and then sending her a text message.

David Brown, 24, says he woke up one morning after a night out with friends with a telephone number constantly running through his head. He decided to contact it, sending a message saying "Did I meet you last night?."

Random recipient Michelle Kitson was confused and wary at first but decided to reply and the two began exchanging messages. Eventually they met and fell in love.

"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson told the Daily Mail newspaper. "My mum and dad kept saying 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it."

After a long courtship, the oddly matched couple -- he's six foot seven inches tall and she's five foot four -- have just returned from their honeymoon in the Indian resort of Goa.

A love-struck Brown said: "I've no idea how I ended up with her number in my head -- it's only a few digits different from mine."

AP Article: Sunnis, Shiites join in radio-TV station

By ANNE GEARAN

Using jumper cables and a 12-volt battery, plus financial backing and technical help from the United States, Sunnis and Shiites are broadcasting with one voice in Iraq.

A makeshift radio and television station went on the air last month in Baqouba with a refurbished transmitter lashed onto the top of a radio tower originally built by Saddam Hussein to broadcast Baathist propaganda into Iran and Syria.

The young staff — two Sunni and two Shiite Muslims — works together to produce a menu of Arabic news, public affairs and entertainment programming, a collaboration that would not have seemed remarkable before Iraq's sectarian divisions hardened into tit-for-tat killings last year.

Now, however, the project puts the staff members at risk, both because of their cooperation with one another and their affiliation with U.S. forces and the State Department. Just last week, police found the bullet-riddled body of Khamael Muhsin, a reporter since 2004 for Radio Sawa, a separate Arabic language station financed and overseen by the State Department.

The U.S. military spent $36,000 to fix the transmitter and generator for the new station, which now broadcasts across Baghdad and into other areas where sectarian killings and kidnappings have become common. Baqouba itself has become one of the most violent places in Iraq, with its surrounding area a battleground between al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.

"It seems the government is not able to help ... in making reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia, so what I think is, our voice will be strong and helpful for all our people," independent Iraq Radio and Television Network co-founder Samir Kamies said in an e-mail interview in English.

Despite its sponsorship, the network is independent of the U.S. government and the Iraqi government, its Iraqi employees and U.S. benefactors said. Unlike better-known U.S. projects such as Cuban-themed Radio Marti or the Cold War-era Radio Free Europe, the Iraq network is not directly produced by the U.S. government, although the State Department provided technical and programming help.

"It is not run by the government of Iraq, the provincial government or the mosques," State Department spokeswoman Susan Phalen said. "The Iraqi broadcasters alone determine the programming and design the production, with (State Department) advice and training."

The U.S. government hopes the network's mere existence will be an advertisement for stability and reconciliation, the political goals set by President Bush before U.S. forces can begin withdrawing from Iraq.

The network is also meant to show the value of a free and independent press, although there is more frank and critical coverage of Iraq's troubles and the role of the United States to be found elsewhere in Iraq's emerging media. The network's general interest programming is heavier on consumer news and mild-mannered chat shows than politics.

A 28-year old Sunni, Kamies produces an agriculture show for the network. He counts IRTN co-founder and general manager Rafed Mahmood, a Shiite, as his best friend.

Among the network's other offerings is an earnest talk show called "Common Ground" that features the station's mixed staff talking, laughing, drinking tea and dancing together. The first episode featured a Sunni-Shiite soccer match.

"The risks are everywhere actually," Kamies said. "The insurgents do not want anything good to go in our country and they target everybody in our country."

Kamies said his family knows about and supports his work. Some Iraqis who have worked as translators, go-betweens or other aides to U.S. forces have become estranged from their families as a result, or choose to hide their work from family and friends.

The shoestring network is now funded partly through advertisements and public affairs notices paid for by U.S. military and partly by the sale of hats, coffee mugs and other merchandise.

U.S. advisers are working with the station founders to develop a longer-term business plan, Phalen said.

IraqSlogger.com Article: Despite Claim, Militants Hold Sunni Turf

Despite Claim, Militants Hold Sunni Turf

Sources: Security Stalemate, Rent Rackets, and Endless Siege

Amiriya

Slogger reported last week that Iraqi security forces had announced that operations in Amiriya were nearly complete and called for the authorities to aid residents in returning to their homes.

In fact, much of Amiriya remains under the control of the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad organization, a source reports. In a commercial area and major throughfare of the district known as al-'Amil al-Sha'bi Street, police and military forces are not present, a local source tells Slogger, and the al-Qa'ida-affiliated militants are in control. Some of the shops on al-'Amil al-Sha'bi Street, are allowed to open, and can even stay open after sunset, but in return the group extorts payments from the shopkeepers.

Militants also distribute compact discs to locals, Slogger’s source says, to propagandize their armed operations. Usually they pass the discs out by hand, or force shopkeepers to dispense them in grocery bags. Sometimes the groups place the discs on cars in residential areas. “No one is allowed to refuse,” Slogger’s local source says.

Voices of Iraq Article: Iraqi flags flutter in some areas in Baghdad

By Santa Michael Baghdad, Apr 3, (VOI) – Local residents in some neighborhoods in the capital Baghdad woke up on Tuesday morning to find Iraqi flags hung on lamp posts, house roofs and traffic lights.

"The flags were hoisted by NGOs in several places in Baghdad," the media official from the Nissan 9 municipal council told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Majid Soliman said, " NGOs put Iraqi flags in place of the colored ones indicating religious occasions, in a show of national unity and to renounce sectarianism."

On the timing of this step, Soliman said it "coincided with the circumstances Iraq is going through and the Law Enforcement security plan and also to emphasize that we're working for one Iraq that has no place for sectarian sentiments."

(Belated Story): Voices of Iraq Article: Iraqis celebrate compatriot Shada's win of Star Academy title

By Santa Michael and Abdul-Hameed Zibari

Baghdad/Erbil, March 31 (VOI) – Iraqi amateur singer Shada Hassoun's win in the popular contest Star Academy, televised by Lebanese channel LBC, was the cause of celebration all over Iraq, causing Iraqis to forget for a while about the waves of violence hitting the troubled country.

"I was pinned to the TV screen yesterday praying for Shada to win. I would have had a heart attack if she hadn't. I recommended all my relatives and work colleagues to vote for her," Um Solin, an employee, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) on Saturday.

Fadi, a student, said he spent 40 dollars (50,929 Iraqi dinars) buying two cell phone pre-paid cards to vote for her.

Omar Abdul-Mohsen, a contractor, said "Shada is our sister who has brought joy to our hearts. All members of my family kept praying for her, even my aging father."

Many view Shada's win as success for Iraq. Some even went further to consider it a ray of hope for Iraq's unity.

Samer, an employee, said "she unified us after politics and sectarianism divided us. Everyone – Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Kurds – voted for her." Samer's colleague said "I wish our politicians would use Shada as an example and think of whatever brings us together rather than keeps us apart."

Shada, 25, has attracted Iraqis' interest since her participation in the Star Academy program.

The Iraqi channel al-Sharqiya devoted a large amount of space to promote her and encourage viewers to vote for her. The official TV channel, al-Iraqiya, which usually dedicates its news subtitle to urgent and important political and security news reports, relayed urgent news about Shada's win.

"Iraqis, who have experienced a lot of sadness and pain, were searching for something to cheer them up, which they found in Shada's win," an analyst, who declined to be named, told VOI.

"Shada has sung for Iraq and the wounded and both needed somebody to sing for them," he said.

On Friday the Iraqi capital Baghdad witnessed public jubilation on the streets as Iraqis shot into the air to celebrate Shada's victory.

In Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and Christians celebrated the Star Academy's final results. Frolicking fans of Shada kept pressing their car horns loudly while parading the streets of Erbil with their vehicles until dawn.

Shada won this year's Star Academy title; the first female contestant to win the Arabic version of the popular TV program.

She managed to make it to the finals after fierce competition from more than 18 young men and women in the fourth edition of the singing contest.

The past three competitions were all won by young men.

Contestants from all Arab countries participate in the program. They live together in one place for a while and go through tests and personality evaluations. Each stage sees the elimination of a number of contestants, with a few left to battle it out for the finals.

TimesOnline Article: Sunnis try to blast Al-Qaeda out of Iraq

By: Hala Jaber and Ali Rifat - Amman

Sunni insurgent groups that were previously allied with Al-Qaeda in Iraq have turned against it, killing its leaders, attacking its supporters and vowing to drive it out of the country.

At least two Al-Qaeda commanders have been killed by Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad. Others have been forced to flee after insurgents passed their details to US and Iraqi commanders. Fierce fighting has broken out between insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda in Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

Until the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a US airstrike last summer, the groups cooperated with it in their bloody struggle with the coalition forces. But the insurgents have come to believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is destabilising the country by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, often with truck bombs.

Some senior Sunni insurgents believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq shares the agenda of Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias to plunge the country into ever more violent sectarian conflict rather than concentrating on the fight against the US-led coalition.

Late last year Salam al-Zubaie, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, began secret talks with the Sunni groups with the aim of coaxing them away from Al-Qaeda. He held meetings with commanders of groups including the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, the general command of the Iraqi armed forces, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Ba’ath party and the Salah al-Deen al-Ayyubi Brigade.

He encouraged them to form a unified Sunni alliance that could fight Al-Qaeda and attack Iranian influence. They proved receptive to his arguments.

“Both Al-Qaeda and Iran seem to have an identical agenda to try to widen the sectarian split between Sunnis and Shi’ites, maintaining instability,” Abu Baker, a commander in the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, told The Sunday Times last week. “They stepped up their attacks on innocent Iraqi people and we could not accept that.”

A senior commander in the Islamic Army said Zubaie had promised not only to help to unify the Sunni groups but also to provide them with financial and logistical support to stop Iranian infiltration.

The insurgents demanded assurances from the government that they would not be arrested or attacked by the security forces. They also asked for promises that they could eventually join the security forces.

There was one sticking point. “We insisted that our fight with the occupying forces would continue as they are to blame for our current situation,” the Islamic Army commander claimed.

“Zubaie’s response was that first we had to get rid of Al-Qaeda and turn ourselves into a strong legal force to be reckoned with. Then we’d be in a position to negotiate with the occupying forces and demand their withdrawal. This was something we could not accept.”

Within weeks, however, the insurgent groups set out to “cleanse” parts of Baghdad of Al-Qaeda influence. Shaker Zuwaini, an Al-Qaeda emir, was assassinated by the 20th Revolutionary Brigade in the Adel district of Baghdad. The emir of the Amiriya district was also killed and another commander was chased away from the Khadra district.

Abu Omar, leader of a Ba’ath insurgent group and military commander in Amouriya, said: “Al-Qaeda have turned into a bunch of criminals and gangsters up to their eyes in kidnapping and robberies. We resolved to put an end to them.”

The drive against Al-Qaeda has continued despite an attempt to assassinate Zubaie last month. He was seriously injured by a suicide bomb. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador, said the United States had also held talks with Sunni insurgents “to explore ways to collaborate in fighting the terrorists”.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has carried out many of the most brutal attacks on civilians, is made up largely of foreign fighters. Although it shares a name with Osama Bin Laden’s group, it is unclear how closely the two are linked.

General David Petraeus, the US commander, blamed Al-Qaeda for provoking carnage in Tal Afar, in northwestern Iraq, with a truck bomb that killed 152. Shi’ite militants and police then cold-bloodedly executed as many as 70 Sunnis.

- The Hollywood star Alec Baldwin was so moved by the story of a soldier’s last day with her family before training to serve in Iraq that he will help to pay for her university education after she leaves the forces. He tracked down the mother of Resha Kane, 18, in New Mexico to offer his help.