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.

------

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.