John F. Burns

Tribunal Leader in Hussein's Case Is Target of Plot - New York Times

2005-11-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 28, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 27 - Less than 24 hours before Saddam Hussein's scheduled return to court on charges of crimes against humanity, the police in northern Iraq said Sunday that they had arrested 10 Sunni Arab men carrying orders from a fugitive associate of Mr. Hussein's to assassinate the court's best-known judge.

Iraqis in Najaf held photos of relatives they said had been killed by the government of Saddam Hussein.

Prosecutors have said they plan to bring their first witnesses against Mr. Hussein and other defendants when the court resumes in Baghdad on Monday after a six-week recess."

Lawyer's Slaying Raises Questions on Hussein Trial

2005-10-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 22, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 22 - The execution-style killing of a defense lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and some top associates shocked Iraqi and American officials on Friday and renewed doubts about whether it is possible to hold a fair trial in the midst of a war that has spurred a wave of revenge killings against people linked to Mr. Hussein.

A group of a dozen armed men seized the lawyer, Sadoun al-Janabi, from his Baghdad office at 10 p.m. on Thursday and his body, with two bullet wounds to the head, was found in a rubbish-strewn lot nearby about an hour later, an Iraqi police spokesman said. The killing occurred less than 36 hours after Mr. Hussein's trial began on Wednesday, with live television coverage that identified Mr. Janabi by name and showed close-ups of him presenting arguments in the court on behalf of his client, Awad Hamed al-Bander, the former head of the Revolutionary Court under Mr. Hussein."

Saddam Hussein Goes on Trial for Crimes Against Humanity - New York Times

2005-10-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

By EDWARD WONG and JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 19, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 19 - Iraqi judges and prosecutors assembled this morning in a heavily guarded compound in central Baghdad as Saddam Hussein and seven defendants prepared to face charges in a 1982 massacre, beginning the long process of public reckoning for the decades of brutal repression that Mr. Hussein brought to Iraq.

Scores of Hussein supporters took the streets of Tikrit, the birthplace of the deposed president, to protest his trial.

Beneath a wan sky, with American helicopters swooping overhead, officials from the Iraqi special tribunal, most middle-aged men in dark suits, gathered near the convention center inside the fortified Green Zone to await transport to the courthouse. Accompanying them were human rights observers from international organizations. The Iraqi officials included Raad Juhi, the judge who has been leading the investigations into Mr. Hussein."

Hussein Goes on Trial Wednesday, and Iraqis See a First Accounting - New York Times

2005-10-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 18, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 17 - On Wednesday, 22 months after he was dragged from his hiding place in an underground bunker, Saddam Hussein will appear in an Iraqi court to answer for the brutalities he inflicted on his fellow Iraqis. But what should be a moment of triumph for his victims is instead stirring concern about the fairness and competence of the court itself.

The special Iraqi tribunal established to conduct the trial has chosen a case that many Iraqis believe to be too narrow to answer the widespread yearning for Mr. Hussein to be held to account for the most savage of his crimes. And the political pressure to hasten the trial has forced the tribunal to accelerate some of the work needed to prepare for other cases involving tens of thousands of victims, nearly 300 mass graves and about 40 tons of documents gathered from the government agencies that oversaw his repression."

Ignoring U.S., Chalabi Pursues Attempt to Fire Hussein Judge - New York Times

2005-07-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 27, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 26 - Aides to Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi said Tuesday that they planned to move forward with demands for the dismissal of the judge who has led the investigations of the mass killings committed under Saddam Hussein, ignoring American calls for restraint.

Ali Feisal, an aide to Mr. Chalabi, said the judge, Raid Juhi, was the most prominent of 19 judges, prosecutors and officials on a new list of those to be purged from the Iraqi tribunal set up to try Mr. Hussein and top officials of his government. All 19, Mr. Feisal said, are former members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party and therefore legally ineligible to work for the tribunal.

'Juhi's on the top of the list,' Mr. Feisal said.

Mr. Juhi, 34, the tribunal's chief investigative judge, is considered by American lawyers working with the tribunal to be central to its work. While handling the initial court appearance of Mr. Hussein last July, Mr. Juhi met his defiance with a stolidness that stunned Iraqis."

If It's Civil War, Do We Know It - Iraq

2005-07-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 24, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The first signs that America's top officials in Iraq were revising their thinking about what they might accomplish in Iraq came a year ago. As Iraq resumed its sovereignty after the period of American occupation, the new American team that arrived then, headed by Ambassador John D. Negroponte, had a withering term for the optimistic approach of their predecessors, led by L. Paul Bremer III.

The new team called the departing Americans 'the illusionists,' for their conviction that America could create a Jeffersonian democracy on the ruins of Saddam Hussein's medieval brutalism. One American military commander began his first encounter with American reporters by asking, 'Well, gentlemen, tell me: Do you think that events here afford us the luxury of hope?'

It seemed clear then that the administration, for all its public optimism, had begun substituting more modest goals for the idealists' conception of Iraq. How much more modest has become clearer in the 12 months since."

Hussein Tribunal Shaken by Chalabi's Bid to Replace Staff

2005-07-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 20, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 - The Iraqi tribunal preparing the trial of Saddam Hussein has been thrown into turmoil by the dismissal of nine senior staff members and a threat to dismiss 19 others, including the chief investigative judge.

The upheaval burst into public view on Tuesday when an aide to Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite who is a deputy prime minister in the transitional government, confirmed that Mr. Chalabi had begun to press for the removal of former members of Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party from the tribunal's staff of judges, prosecutors and administrators. Mr. Chalabi contends that the 28 men he has cited for removal are ineligible under Iraqi law to work at the tribunal because of their party affiliation.

It was not immediately clear whether his efforts would disrupt plans for the trial, which is to start in September. An aide to Mr. Chalabi, Ali Feisal, said Tuesday that Mr. Chalabi had delayed his push to dismiss the chief judge, Raid Juhi, and others of the tribunal's 65 members so as not to 'disrupt' the tribunal's work or plans for the Hussein trial, but that the removal of the former Baathists would continue as replacements were appointed."

Hussein Jousts With Iraqi Judge Over His Rights in a Court Hearing

2005-07-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 22, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 21 - A new court videotape broadcast on Thursday showed a caustic but emaciated Saddam Hussein complaining to an investigative judge about limits on access to his lawyer and about the entire process of holding him prisoner while Iraqi prosecutors prepare to try him for atrocities committed during his 24-year rule.

'Right now, I'm a prisoner - that's what is being said,' Mr. Hussein said in the tape aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, which provided the first opportunity for the public to hear the former dictator speaking since a court appearance last July. 'It's a game, as you'll see. I am a prisoner of the Iraqi government, but that government was appointed by the Americans.'

Moments later, Mr. Hussein interrupted the judge, Munir Hadad, as he read from a legal document outlining the former Iraqi leader's right to a lawyer.

'When do I see my lawyer?' Mr. Hussein asked, motioning to Khalil al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi defense attorney hired by the Hussein family. 'Is it right that I see my lawyer only when there is a hearing, and that I know that there is to be a hearing only when I'm already in it? Is this the law?'"

First Case Against Hussein, Involving Killings in 1982, Is Sent to a Trial Court

2005-07-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 18, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 17 - After more than 19 months in American custody, Saddam Hussein was referred for trial on Sunday in the first of more than a dozen cases of crimes against humanity that Iraqi and American investigators have been building against the deposed Iraqi dictator.

No date was set for Mr. Hussein's trial in the killing of 150 men and youths from Dujail, a town 35 miles north of Baghdad that was the scene of an assassination attempt against him in 1982. But Raid Juhi, chief investigative judge for the Iraqi Special Tribunal, who announced that he had ended his inquiry into the case and sent it to the trial court in a process known as a referral, said the date would be set "in the coming few days."

Officials at the tribunal said the five-judge panel that will preside at the trial envisioned a date in mid-September, not long after the expiration of the minimum 45-day period that Iraqi law gives defendants to prepare for trial after their cases have been referred to the trial court. But the officials, who requested anonymity because of the political sensitivities involved, cautioned that there could be delays if Mr. Hussein's defense lawyers present motions for dismissal on legal technicalities, as they have indicated they would. But even if these motions are filed and referred to an appellate court, the tribunal sources said, they were confident the case would go to trial later in the fall, probably in October

10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody

2005-07-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 13, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 12 - Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees.

As relatives collected the bodies from Baghdad's main morgue and drove them to a village near Abu Ghraib for burial, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was meeting with two police generals who run the commando units, preparing for a government statement that Mr. Jabr's office said would be made Wednesday.

One of the officers, Brig. Gen. Rashid Flaieh, acknowledged in a telephone interview that the victims suffocated inside what he described as 'an armored van.' But he denied accounts by one survivor that the victims had been kept in the van for more than 12 hours, saying it was 'only two hours.' He also rejected assertions by doctors who examined the bodies that the victims, in addition to suffocation, had been subjected to torture with electric shocks.

'The van had an air-conditioning system,' he said, 'but they had a problem with it, and it was the lack of oxygen that caused the deaths.'"

Seven Iraqi Soldiers Killed After Attacks on Iraqi Army

2005-07-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 11, 2005

Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed after insurgents attacked an Iraqi Army check point north of Baghdad today, during the latest surge in violence in Iraq.

The attack occurred about 45 miles north of Baghdad in Khalis, the same town where 26 Iraqi soldiers died June 15 after a man wearing an army uniform blew himself up inside an Iraqi Army mess hall.

During the assault on the check point today, insurgents fired mortars and semi-automatic weapons, a Ministry of the Interior official said.

The United States military announced today that two marines had died Sunday in western Iraq after being hit by 'indirect' fire. The military did not release the names of the victims.

On Sunday in Baghdad, an attacker mingling with a crowd of men outside an Iraqi Army recruiting center detonated an explosive vest, killing at least 23 volunteers and wounding at least 40 others"

23 Killed in Bombing at Baghdad Recruiting Center

2005-07-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 10 - A brief lull in the suicide bombings here ended Sunday when an attacker mingling with a crowd of men outside an Iraqi Army recruiting center detonated an explosive vest, killing at least 23 volunteers and wounding at least 40 others.

The attack came on a day when the war claimed at least 43 victims, including a mother and eight children ages 2 to 19, who were shot to death before dawn Sunday as they slept at their home in southern Baghdad.

Another victim was an Iraqi karate champion who was kidnapped outside Baghdad on Friday at a fake checkpoint. His body was found 24 hours later floating in the Tigris River near Kut, 100 miles south, said an Iraqi Olympic official who announced the death on Sunday and said he knew of no motive."

Iraq Asks Muslim States for Support After Envoy's Killing

2005-07-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 9, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 8 - Iraq's transitional government reached out anxiously on Friday to Arab and other Muslim nations, asking them not to be intimidated by the killing of Egypt's top diplomat here by an Islamic terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.

The appeal, in a Foreign Ministry statement, reflected concern that the killing of the diplomat, Ihab al-Sharif, 51, would derail attempts to draw stronger diplomatic support for the Baghdad government, particularly from other Arab nations.

Mr. Sharif, designated to become Egypt's ambassador here, was abducted last Saturday and later killed by the group calling itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which has vowed to mete out similar punishment to other diplomats from Muslim nations.

'The criminals wanted by this act to terrorize Arab and Islamic countries and deter them from upgrading their diplomatic missions in Iraq,' the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in its statement on the killing. 'Arab and Islamic countries are asked to prove their seriousness in combating terrorism by assigning ambassadors to Baghdad so that they send the right message to the terrorists.'"

Rebels Kill Egyptian Diplomat, Adding Pressure on Others in Iraq

2005-07-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 7 - The insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq said Thursday that it had killed Egypt's ambassador-designate in Iraq, Ihab al-Sharif, four days after gunmen seized him on a street in a diplomatic quarter in western Baghdad, where he had driven alone to buy a local newspaper.

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, left, and Iraq's defense minister, Sadoun al-Dulaimi, signed a military cooperation pact Thursday.

In a posting on an Islamic Web site, the group said Mr. Sharif's killing was 'the judgment of God' and described him as representing a 'tyrannical' government in Egypt that was allied with 'Jews and Christians.' An accompanying video showed Mr. Sharif, 51, saying he had been Egypt's deputy ambassador in Israel before relations were downgraded after the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that began five years ago.

'Oh enemy of God, Ihab al-Sharif, this is your punishment in this life, and you will be condemned to hell in the hereafter,' the posting said.

The video did not show the killing, but the Egyptian government confirmed Mr. Sharif's death on Thursday night, and Egypt's state-run television interrupted evening programming for special tributes. A Foreign Ministry statement said the slaying would not intimidate Egypt."

Iraq Asks Muslim Nations Not to Be Deterred by Envoy's Death

2005-07-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 8 - Iraq's transitional government anxiously reached out to Arab and other Muslim countries today, urging them not to be intimidated by the killing of Egypt's top diplomat in Iraq by an Islamic militant group linked to Al Qaeda.

The appeal, in a Foreign Ministry statement, reflected concern that the slaying of the diplomat, Ihab al-Sharif, would derail attempts by the nascent Baghdad government to draw stronger diplomatic support, particularly from other Arab nations. Mr. Sharif, 51, who had been expected to become Egypt's ambassador here, was abducted and executed by the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which vowed to mete out similar punishment to other diplomats assigned to Iraq by Muslim nations.

Egypt announced today that it was temporarily closing its embassy. Jordan has said that it will keep its commitment to reopen its mothballed mission and appoint an ambassador when security requirements are met. Pakistan, whose ambassador was withdrawn this week after he survived an assassination attempt unharmed, has said he will return once his safety can be assured. Bahrain has made a similar commitment with respect to its top diplomat here, who was wounded in the hand on the same day in another drive-by shooting."

Rebels Kill Egyptian Diplomat, Adding Pressure on Others in Iraq

2005-07-08T05:14:00.000-07:00

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Egyptian Envoy

2005-07-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 7, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 7 - The insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq said today that it had killed the top diplomat in Egypt's embassy in Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, five days after gunmen seized him on a Baghdad street where he had gone unguarded to buy a newspaper.

The group said in a posting on an Islamic Web site that the killing of the 51-year-old diplomat was 'the judgment of God against the ambassador of the infidels,' and described him as representing a 'tyrannical' government in Cairo that was allied with 'Jews and Christians.' An accompanying video did not show the reported killing, but featured Mr. Sherif saying his career had included a stint as Egypt's deputy ambassador in Israel before relations between Israel and Egypt were downgraded in the wake of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that began five years ago.

'Oh, Enemy of God, Ihab el-Sherif, this is your punishment in this life,' the Web site posting said."

A Town That Bled Under Hussein Hails His Trial - New York Times

2005-07-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 3, 2005

DUJAIL, Iraq - The scars of what happened after an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein, on July 8, 1982, are painfully evident in this mainly Shiite town 35 miles north of Baghdad.

People lower their voices when they speak of fathers, brothers and sons who went to the gallows, their fates unknown until Mr. Hussein's overthrow 21 years later set off the ransacking of a secret police headquarters in Baghdad that uncovered official records of the executions. The landscape around Dujail is mostly barren scrubland, stark testament to the bulldozing of thousands of acres of date palms and fruit orchards after plotters fired on Mr. Hussein's convoy from thickets on the edge of town.

Now, the events at Dujail have come full cycle for Mr. Hussein."

Suicide Car Bomb Kills 6 at Home of Iraqi Officer - New York Times

2005-06-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 26, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 25 — A suicide car bomber killed at least six people on Saturday when he slammed his vehicle into the wall outside an Iraqi police officer’s home in Samarra, an insurgent stronghold 60 miles north of Baghdad. The local police said the officer singled out in the attack had survived, but at least four civilians on the street and two insurgents, besides the suicide bomber, had been killed.

The Samarra attack, on a day that was otherwise notable for a relatively low level of insurgent attacks, demonstrated the increasing complexity that American commanders say they have identified in insurgent tactics in recent months. According to the police account, the suicide bomber was accompanied by several other cars with insurgents, two of whom were killed when a bomb exploded while they were trying to plant it on the road outside the target house after the initial attack."

Some Iraqis Optimistic About Sovereignty

2005-06-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and EDWARD WONG
Published: June 29, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 - When Shaker Assal was approached in his butcher's shop on Tuesday and asked what he thought about life in Iraq a year after it resumed formal sovereignty, he responded with a blast of invective as heated as the sunbaked sidewalks in his Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya.

'What sovereignty are you talking about?' he asked. 'How can you even call it sovereignty? We have thousands of occupation troops in this country and you talk about sovereignty? Enough! Iraq is nothing but an American base.'

And what about the two Iraqi governments that have taken office since the head of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, handed a leather-bound folio marking the formal transfer of power to Iraqi leaders on June 28 last year?"

Four Car Bombs Explode in Central Baghdad, Killing 17

2005-06-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: June 24, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 23 - Four car bombs exploded in a central Baghdad commercial district early Thursday morning, spewing shattered glass and bits of human skin over the streets while killing at least 17 people. The bombings raised the toll in the capital to at least 43 dead and 100 wounded in a string of similar attacks that began Wednesday night.

The car bombs blew up in quick succession outside two Shiite mosques, next to a police patrol near a gas station and adjacent to an old supermarket in the Karrada neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. On a day when dust storms left a stifling gray pall over the city, the stench of the fires and human remains in Karrada was overwhelming.

Shortly after the thud of the explosions, which from a distance sounded like a volley of shells dropped from some great bomb bay, a woman named Um Ahmed frantically searched for her son, Ahmed, who tended a small cosmetics stand in the area. 'No one knows where my son is?' Um Ahmed said. 'He sets off to work at 6 a.m. He is only 8.'"

Attack in Falluja Kills at Least 2 Marines and Wounds 13

2005-06-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: June 24, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 24 - Two marines were killed and 13 were wounded when a suicide car bomber plowed into their vehicle in Falluja, west of Baghdad, the military said today.

Three marines and a sailor who are believed to have been in the vehicle are listed as missing 'pending a positive identification,' a military statement said, raising the possibility that they might also be dead. No further elaboration was given of the attack, which occurred late Thursday.

Insurgent attacks have been rare in Falluja, 40 miles west of the capital, since an all-out American-led assault in November, reinforced by a heavy American and Iraqi security presence that is close to a lockdown.

At least 10 marines have been killed this month during operations against insurgents in the restive Anbar Province."

3 Car Bombs Leave 18 Dead and 46 Hurt in a Suburb of Baghdad - New York Times

2005-06-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 23, 2005

Earlier on Wednesday, a Sunni Arab journalist with links to a hard-line school of Sunni Islam was killed with his 17-year-old son in a drive-by shooting nearby.

The killings in the northwestern Shuala district occurred on another day of widespread violence in Baghdad, with at least 24 people killed in seven car bombings and several shootings, the police said. Also, four men were found dead, shot in the head, blindfolded and with their hands tied, in a lot in Doura, a district southwest of Baghdad."

Second Wave of Bombs in Baghdad Kills at Least 17

2005-06-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: June 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 23 - Four car bomb blasts struck the central Baghdad commercial district of Karrada early this morning, spewing shattered glass and bits of human skin over the streets while killing at least 17 and raising the combined toll in the capital to at least 43 dead and 100 wounded in a string of similar attacks that began on Wednesday night.

The car bombs exploded in quick succession outside two Shiite mosques, next to a police patrol near a gas station and adjacent to an old supermarket, an Interior Ministry official said. On a day when dust storms left a stifling gray pall over the city, the stench of the fires and bloody human remains in Karrada was overwhelming.

Shortly after the thud of the explosions, which from a distance sounded like a volley of shells dropped from some great bombay, a woman named Um Ahmed frantically searched for her son, Ahmed, who tended a small cosmetics stand in the area. "No one knows where my son is?" Um Ahmed said. "God, he sets off to work at 6 a.m. He is only 8."

Choose: More Troops in Iraq Will (Help) (Hurt)

2005-06-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 19, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — IF, in time, the attempt to implant a pro-Western, democratic political system in Iraq ends up buried in the desert sands, historians will have no shortage of things that went wrong. Equally, if the problems here ultimately recede, supporters of the enterprise will find vindication in the Bush administration's decision to hold course as others lost faith.

Either way, any reckoning will examine the numbers of American troops committed here: whether they were so thinly stretched that their mission was doomed from the start, or, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week, American commanders were given 'exactly what they've recommended' in terms of troops.

Mr. Rumsfeld has long taken a 'less is more' approach to combat troop levels, and in a BBC interview Monday, he seemed to move toward those now pressing to reduce troop levels soon. 'The reason for fewer,' he said, 'is because ultimately it's going to be the Iraqi people who are going to prevail in this insurgency' - in other words, Iraqi, not American, troops are the ones who will win the war, if it can be won."

Sunnis Reach Accord With Shiites on Makeup of Charter Panel

2005-06-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 16 - Sunni Arabs reached agreement today with the major Shiite alliance over increased Sunni representation on the committee that will draft the Iraqi constitution.

The agreement represented a significant development in the weeks-long political deadlock between the Sunnis and the 55-member committee, and it came after considerable pressure from the United States and the European Union for Iraqis to reach a solution.

It also signaled a willingness by the Sunnis, most of whom who refused to take part in the Iraqi elections on Jan. 31, to become more involved in the political process."

Iraqi Forces Rescue Australian Hostage on a Bloody Day

2005-06-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 15 - Iraqi troops raiding a house in Baghdad rescued a 64-year-old Australian hostage, Douglas Wood, from nearly seven weeks of insurgent captivity today, and an Australian official said he was 'resting comfortably' and 'as well as you could expect him to be' in an American military hospital here.

The raid, which also freed an Iraqi hostage, was a rare case of military action successfully ending one of the scores of hostage-takings that have been a major insurgent tactic in the past 18 months.

But the release of the two hostages was accompanied by another day of insurgent violence that left at least 27 other Iraqi soldiers and policemen dead from two suicide bomb attacks. The American military command also said that two marines were killed by roadside bombs on Tuesday during what were described as combat operations near the towns of Falluja and Rutba in western Iraq. Another statement said two Bulgarian soldiers died Tuesday night near the southern city of Diwaniya when their Russian-made armored personnel carrier slid into a canal."

Iraqi Court Releases Video of a Much Subdued Hussein

2005-06-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 13 - The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein and his top aides released a videotape on Monday showing a subdued, contemplative and seemingly compliant Mr. Hussein being questioned Sunday about mass executions ordered after he had survived an assassination attempt in 1982.

The Iraqi special tribunal questioned Saddam Hussein about the killings of dozens of men in a Shiite village in 1982.

The two-minute recording, without sound, appeared to show a strikingly different Mr. Hussein than the defiant figure whose only court appearance, last July, featured lengthy self-justifications and mockery for the judge, Raid Juhi, 35. Then, after an anxious start when he appeared to fear he might be summarily shot, it was Mr. Hussein who dominated the court, with hectoring rebukes for Mr. Juhi for serving his 'American masters' and for having the temerity to sit in judgment on the man who had appointed him a judge.

But in the video excerpt it is the judge, Mr. Juhi, who appears to set the tone. Mr. Hussein is shown responding quietly, after careful thought, and glancing sideways at one point to his Iraqi lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, as if for reassurance."

First Court Case of Hussein Stems From Killings in Village in '82

2005-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Iraq's Ho Chi Minh Trail

2005-06-05T21:43:00.001-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Some American officers call him 'Z.' In the military's classified signal traffic, he is 'AMZ.' By any name, American forces in Iraq have found in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a mesmerizing target.

At Husayba, scene of recent fighting, an Iraqi girl peering from a gate as an American tank patrols.

If they could capture this Jordanian-born militant, anointed by Osama bin Laden as Al Qaeda's chief in Iraq, American commanders are hoping, they could strike a compelling, perhaps decisive, blow against one crucial component of the Iraqi insurgency - the Islamic militant groups that draw zealots from across the Arab Middle East to carry out suicide bombings, beheadings and other atrocities.

The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 dealt the insurrection no such mortal blow, and American commanders know Mr. Zarqawi's capture or death might not either. 'It's not about one guy,' a senior officer said Friday. 'It's more about the network of cells he has across the country. That's where we're applying the pressure.'"

Iraqi Tribunal Details Plan to Prosecute Saddam Hussein

2005-06-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 -The Iraqi court set up to hear cases against Saddam Hussein and his top aides plans to bring him to trial by late summer or early fall in its first case, involving the 1982 killings of nearly 160 men from Dujail, a predominantly Shiite village north of Baghdad, after he survived an assassination attempt there, according to a senior Iraqi court official.

By scheduling an early trial for Mr. Hussein on a small fraction of the accusations against him, the Iraqi Special Tribunal has effectively ceded to pressure from Iraq's transitional government, settling a behind-the-scenes power struggle involving American lawyers who have guided the tribunal's work since the court was established last year. The Americans favored trying at least some of Mr. Hussein's aides first, saying doing so would help build up a pattern of 'command responsibility' that led conclusively to Mr. Hussein.

This approach, the American lawyers have said, would allow prosecutors to use his aides' testimony against him, bolstering documents that were often inconclusive on Mr. Hussein's personal role in the mass killings. But this approach would most likely have delayed Mr. Hussein's trial until some time in 2006, because the tribunal, using two side-by-side courtrooms, each with a five-judge panel sitting without a jury, would first have to work its way through trials of at least some of his subordinates."

Iraq to Move Up Trial of Hussein and Start It in Summer

2005-06-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 31 - Iraq's month-old transitional government, keen to establish its authority after weeks of intensifying insurgent violence, announced Tuesday that planned to move up the trial of Saddam Hussein, bringing him to court this summer.

Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish politician who is the country's transitional president, said in a CNN interview from his headquarters in northern Iraq on Tuesday that he expected Mr. Hussein to be put on trial 'within two months,' a move that would break with earlier plans to defer his trial until later this year or next.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, at a news conference in Baghdad, gave a strong endorsement of the role played by 'multinational forces,' the formal name for the 160,000 foreign troops serving here under American command, including about 140,000 Americans and 20,000 in contingents from some 30 other nations."

Attack Kills at Least 30 as Iraqi Forces Press Baghdad Offensive - New York Times

2005-05-30T17:44:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 30 - The violent backlash to the largest Iraqi-led counterinsurgency operation since the downfall of Saddam Hussein continued today in Baghdad and surrounding areas, with at least 30 people killed in a twin suicide bombing. And in eastern Diyala Province, an Iraqi Air Force aircraft carrying four Americans and one Iraqi was reported to have crashed.

More than two dozen were killed and 120 people were wounded when two suicide bombers hit a crowd of police officers in Hillah.

A brief United States military statement announcing the crash provided no details on the cause, the fate of those aboard or even the type of aircraft.

Citing officials it did not identify, Reuters reported that the aircraft went down around midday during a sandstorm near the town of Khanaqin, close to the border with Iran."

Iraqi Offensive Met by Wave of New Violence From Insurgents - New York Times

2005-05-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 29 - The largest Iraqi-led counterinsurgency operation since the downfall of Saddam Hussein set off a violent backlash on Sunday across Baghdad. At least 20 people were killed in the capital, 14 of them in a battle lasting several hours when insurgents initiated sustained attacks on several police stations and an army barracks.

The violence, including at least four suicide car bombings, was a bloody start to an operation that Iraq's new Shiite-majority government had presented as a new get-tough policy toward Sunni Arab insurgents, first in Baghdad and then countrywide. The government has said it will commit 40,000 uniformed Iraqis to the Baghdad operation in an effort to crush insurgents who reacted to the government's swearing-in four weeks ago with one of the war's biggest rebel surges."

Violence Surges Across Iraq With 30 New Deaths Reported

2005-05-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 28 - The surge of violence that has swept Iraq since its first elected government took office nearly a month ago continued Saturday, with at least 30 new deaths reported across the country, some of them in what appeared to be sectarian killings.

The latest attacks raised the total number of Iraqis killed this month to about 650, in addition to at least 63 American troops who have been killed, the highest American toll since January.

In two of the worst incidents reported Saturday, three suicide bombers tried to blast into a base shared by American and Iraqi troops at Sinjar, 40 miles from the northwestern border with Syria, killing at least one Iraqi border policeman and wounding at least 18 others, including 15 civilians."

On Way to Baghdad Airport, Death Stalks Main Road

2005-05-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 28 - Iraqis call it Death Street. To American soldiers, it is 'I.E.D. Alley,' after the improvised explosive devices - bombs - that are lethally common on the 10 miles of expressway and city streets that make up Baghdad's airport road."

Shiites Offer to Give Sunnis Larger Role on Broader Panel Writing a Constitution - New York Times

2005-05-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 25 - Under American pressure to draw Sunni Arabs into the drafting of Iraq's constitution, the Shiite religious parties that dominate the transitional government agreed Wednesday to re-establish a constitutional commission with as many as 15 of the 101 seats reserved for Sunni Arabs.

Sheik Humam Hammoudi, chairman of the committee drawing up a permanent constitution for Iraq, says Islam must remain central in the drafting of future legislation. The membership of the panel is still in doubt.

The decision came after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Robert B. Zoellick, made separate visits to Baghdad last week and urged the new government to reach out to the Sunni Arab minority, which lost power when Saddam Hussein was toppled. In particular, they pressed the Shiites to draw Sunni Arabs into the constitution-making process, the next phase in the American blueprint for democracy here."

Islamist Web Site Indicates Top Insurgent Is Badly Wounded

2005-05-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

May 24, 2005
By JOHN F. BURNS and TERENCE NEILAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 24 - An Internet site used by the group Al Qaeda in Iraq said today that its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been wounded, and it asked for Muslims to pray for his recovery.

"Let everybody know that the injury of our leader is an honor, and causes us to surround our enemy tighter," the statement said, in a translation by the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute in Washington, which monitors Islamic Web sites.

Generals Offer Sober Outlook on Iraqi War

2005-05-19T20:59:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: May 19, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 - American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come to Baghdad last weekend to consult with the new government.

In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years."

Iraq Government Calls for an End to Mosque Raids

2005-05-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: May 17, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 16 - In a gesture calculated to ease tensions with Iraq's dispossessed Sunni Arab minority, the new Shiite majority government announced Monday that it had ordered the army to stop raiding mosques, arresting clerics and "terrifying worshipers."

Iranian Envoy in Iraq for Talks, as Rebels Battle U.S. Gunships

2005-05-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
and TERENCE NEILAN

Published: May 17, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 17 - American troops backed by helicopter gunships clashed with insurgents in the northern city of Mosul today, as Iran's foreign minister arrived in Baghdad for talks that he has said will tackle a number of issues, including closing out unfinished business from the Iran-Iraq war.

79 Die in Attacks as Rebels in Iraq Intensify Fight

2005-05-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 - Insurgents struck in northern and central Iraq on Wednesday in a series of bloody attacks that killed at least 79 people in three cities, and wounded at least 120 others, according to figures provided by the police and hospital officials. The attacks were a further intensification of a two-week-old onslaught by Sunni Arab insurgents who appear intent on destabilizing Iraq's newly formed Shiite-majority government.

In the deadliest attack, at least 38 people were killed and more than 80 wounded when a bomber detonated his vehicle in the main street of Tikrit, the Sunni Arab hometown of Saddam Hussein, about 110 miles north of Baghdad.

At Least 79 Are Killed in New Round of Attacks in Iraq

2005-05-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: May 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 - Insurgents struck in northern and central Iraq today in a series of bloody bombing attacks that killed at least 79 people in three cities, and wounded at least 120 others, according to figures provided by police and hospital officials. The attacks appeared to signify an intensification of attempts by Sunni Arab militants to disrupt Iraq's newly formed Shiite majority government.

Iraq Legislators Set Up Panel to Draft a Constitution

2005-05-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

By John F. Burns

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 10 - Members of Iraq's transitional national assembly named a 55-member committee on Tuesday to draft the country's permanent constitution, opening what promises to be one of the most contentious passages yet in the effort to build an Iraqi democracy.

With the committee established, the stage was set for a struggle over the nature of the future Iraqi state. A key issue will be the role of Islam and whether it will be politically decisive - as favored by many of the Shiite legislators who will have a slim majority - or marginalized in a secular system.

A Crucial Window for Iraq: 15 Weeks to Pull Together

2005-04-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: April 29, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 28 - It was a moment for which Iraqis had yearned for generations: parliamentary approval of a government with a mandate won at the ballot box. For Shiites, especially, Thursday's vote was a moment in history: for generations, going back to Ottoman imperial rule that ended with World War I, Shiites, accounting for 60 percent of the population, have been a political underclass. Until American troops toppled Saddam Hussein two years ago, political power rested with the Sunni minority, accounting for no more than 15 to 20 percent of the country's 25 million people.

Video Appears to Show Insurgents Kill a Downed Pilot

2005-04-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: April 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 22 - The man in the dark blue flight suit lay face-up in the tall scrub grass looking up nervously at the video camera. Above him stood men with Kalashnikov rifles who had tracked him down to the only cover near where his helicopter had been shot down in the desert.

There Are Signs the Tide May Be Turning on Iraq's Street of Fear

2005-03-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: March 21, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly two years after American troops captured Baghdad, Haifa Street is like an arrow at the city's heart. A little more than two miles long, it runs south through a canyon of mostly abandoned high-rises and majestic date palms almost to the Assassin's Gate, the imperial-style arch that is the main portal to the Green Zone compound, the principal seat of American power.

U.S. Checkpoints Raise Ire in Iraq

2005-03-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 - When an Italian journalist was driven up Baghdad's airport road toward an American military checkpoint on Friday night, she was driving into a situation fraught with hazards thousands of Iraqis face every day.

Syria Turns Over a Top Insurgent, Iraqis Say

2005-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: February 28, 2005

Correction Appended

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 27 - Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria had captured and handed over a half-brother of Saddam Hussein who has been accused of playing a leading role in organizing and financing the insurgency that has tormented Iraq since Mr. Hussein's overthrow nearly two years ago.

Syrian officials in Damascus confirmed the transfer, and said the half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, once the widely feared head of Iraq's two most powerful security agencies, was one of a group of officials from the former Iraqi government who were arrested in Syria and delivered into Iraqi custody. An Associated Press report, quoting unidentified Iraqi officials, said there were 30 men in the group.

5 G.I.'s Killed and 9 Injured Across Iraq in 24 Hours

2005-02-26T21:23:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: February 26, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 25 - The United States military command on Friday announced the deaths of five American soldiers and the wounding of at least nine others. The day's biggest attack, a roadside bomb blast in a town outside Baghdad, struck a patrol on what was to be one of the last combat missions for some members of the First Cavalry Division before they returned home.

The bombing, in Tarmiya, 30 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris, killed three soldiers and wounded nine. Witnesses said the soldiers had dismounted from a convoy of Humvees and had begun a foot patrol when the bomb detonated. Tarmiya is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, which has been hit by a new wave of insurgent attacks since the Jan. 30 elections.

Allawi Forms Secular Coalition to Rival Shiite Alliance in Iraq

2005-02-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: February 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 23 - The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, stepped up his bid to remain in the office today by announcing the formation of a new secular coalition that he and his supporters have said will seek to outmaneuver Shiite religious parties in the contest to form a new transitional government.

Shiites in Iraq Back Islamist to Be Premier

2005-02-23T06:46:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS

Published: February 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq's new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari's powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition.

U.S. Starts New Offensive Against Rebels

2005-02-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 21, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 - Three months after American forces recaptured the insurgent stronghold of Falluja in the biggest operation of the war, the Marine division that led the assault said Sunday that it had started a new offensive against insurgents in Ramadi, Falluja's twin city, on the Euphrates about 75 miles west of Baghdad.

Iraq to Try Hussein Aides in Spring; Some May Face Death

2005-02-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 9, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 9 - Iraqi officials say the long-awaited legal reckoning for Saddam Hussein and his most powerful associates will begin this spring with televised trials for at least 2 of the top 12 men held in American custody, and Iraqi prosecutors will ask the five-judge panels overseeing the trials to impose the death penalty for those among the 12 judged guilty of the worst crimes.

Shiites Leading in Hussein's Home Province

2005-02-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ

Published: February 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 7 - The first election returns from the Sunni majority heartland north of Baghdad showed Monday that a low Sunni turnout in Saddam Hussein's home province has given a lead in the voting there to a Shiite political alliance led by the southern clerics who were among Mr. Hussein's most bitter enemies.

Shiite Coalition Takes a Big Lead in Early Vote Count in Iraq

2005-02-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS
Published: February 4, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 3 - Preliminary election returns released Thursday by Iraqi authorities showed that 72 percent of the 1.6 million votes counted so far from Sunday's election went to an alliance of Shiite parties dominated by religious groups with strong links to Iran. Only 18 percent went to a group led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who favors strong ties to the United States. Few votes went to Sunni candidates.

Shiite Coalition Takes a Big Lead in the Iraq Vote

2005-02-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS
Published: February 3, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 3 - Preliminary election returns released Thursday by Iraqi authorities showed that 72 percent of the 1.6 million votes counted so far from Sunday's election had gone to an alliance of Shiite parties dominated by religious groups with strong links to Iran. Only 18 percent went to a group led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who favors strong ties to the United States.

U.S. Shouldn't Cut Force Soon, Iraqi Leaders Say

2005-02-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 2, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 1 - Iraqi officials awaiting election results began Tuesday to grapple with the issue of how long American troops should remain in the country.

Iraqis Begin Tabulating Results of Milestone Election

2005-02-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 31 - Teams of Iraqi election workers sat down behind banks of computers in Baghdad's tightly guarded international zone on Monday and began tabulating millions of ballots that will determine the makeup of the country's 275-seat transitional assembly.

For a Battered Populace, a Day of Civic Passion

2005-01-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - Nobody among the hundreds of voters thronging one Baghdad polling station on Sunday could remember anything remotely like it, not even those old enough to have taken part in Iraq's last partly free elections more than 50 years ago, before the assassination of King Faisal II began a spiraling descent into tyranny.

The Vote, and Democracy Itself, Leave Anxious Iraqis Divided

2005-01-30T06:36:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 29 - For Ghassan al-Atiyyah, the journey to Sunday's elections has been long and painful, sustained by the hope that Iraq would one day embrace the democratic principles that drove him into 20 years of exile.

Last month, back in Iraq from London at the age of 65, he founded a political party that drew together secular Shiites like himself and moderate Sunnis, as well as Christians, Kurds and others united by the bond of civic ideals. Along with 110 other individuals, parties and alliances, the group set out to compete for seats in the 275-member provisional assembly that will be elected in the vote.

VIOLENCE: 5 Bomb Attacks Kill 26 as Vote by Iraqis Nears

2005-01-20T13:43:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 19 - Insurgents detonated five powerful truck and car bombs across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 26 people, at least 9 of them members of Iraq's fledgling security forces. The attacks came as Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said he would reveal plans next week for an accelerated buildup of those forces to prepare for an eventual American withdrawal.

Responding to political pressures within Iraq ahead of the Jan. 30 elections and mounting questions in Washington about the prospects for an American pullout, Dr. Allawi said he had been talking with the United States commanders in Baghdad about ways to accelerate the "training, equipping and deploying" of Iraqi security forces.

He added that "this in turn will accelerate the drawdown and gradual withdrawal of the multinational forces in Iraq." Those forces are made up of about 150,000 troops from the United States and upward of 25,000 from other nations.

But Dr. Allawi raised the tantalizing prospect of an eventual American withdrawal while giving little away, insisting that a pullout could not be tied to a fixed timetable, but rather to the Iraqi forces' progress toward standing on their own. That formula is similar to what President Bush and other senior administration officials have spoken about.

Some American military commanders have said privately that with this approach and considering the demoralization, desertion and unwillingness to fight common among Iraqi forces trained so far, American troops could be tied down for years, unless elections or other political developments bring the war to an unexpected end.

"I will be explaining this carefully planned process - what I call a 'conditions based' rather than a 'calendar based' gradual withdrawal program, in more detail next week," Dr. Allawi told reporters at a ceremony at Baghdad airport.

He was there to accept the first of three C-130 military transport planes that Iraq is to receive as part of the American-financed buildup of Iraqi forces. The aircraft was the first large plane acquired by the new Iraqi Air Force, which was one of the most powerful in the Middle East before it was decimated by bombing attacks in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Dr. Allawi's remarks were made on a day when attacks underlined, once again, how insurgents have turned wide areas of the country, including Baghdad, into what is effectively enemy territory, with an ability to strike almost at will, and to shake off the losses inflicted by American troops.

The attacks in Baghdad on Wednesday were aimed at the approaches to the Australian Embassy and four Iraqi security targets, including a police station, an army garrison and a bank where policemen were lining up to receive their monthly pay.

The attacks, four of them within 90 minutes in the morning rush hour, rattled windows and doors miles away. Spread across a wide area of the city, they wounded dozens of people, most of them Iraqi civilians, in addition to those killed, and served as a reminder of the insurgents' power to spread mayhem across the capital only 11 days before the elections.

American commanders have sought to prepare public opinion in Iraq and abroad for one of the bloodiest chapters in the war so far, saying the escalation of violence promised by the insurgents can be diminished to a degree, but not prevented, by an increasing tempo of American military raids on insurgent groups.

The American hope is that the voting, for a national assembly and provincial councils, will help turn the tide by drawing a strong turnout among more than 14 million eligible voters, despite the threat of attacks by Sunni insurgents on polling stations, candidates and voters, and a boycott of the election being urged by powerful figures in regions where Iraq's Sunni minority population predominates.

In almost any foreseeable outcome of the election, the Sunnis face the prospect, for the first time in centuries, of ceding political power in Baghdad to the country's 60 percent Shiite majority.

Wednesday's deadliest attack occurred near a police station and Al Alahi hospital in the Alwiyah district of eastern Baghdad. The American command said a suicide car bomber killed 18 people, including 5 Iraqi policemen, and that 15 other people had been wounded.

In a car bomb attack on an Iraqi military garrison on the site of Baghdad's old Muthana inner-city airfield and another attack at a checkpoint on the perimeter of the heavily secured Baghdad International Airport, two Iraqi soldiers and two security guards were killed.

The first attack, shortly after 7 a.m., involved a truck packed with explosives that approached concrete barriers guarding the Australian Embassy compound in southern Baghdad. The American command said two Iraqis were killed.

A spokesman for the American command, Lt. Col. James Hutton of the First Cavalry Division, said that none of the bombers Wednesday had reached their intended targets.

"While any loss of life is tragic, it could have been a lot worse," he said. Nevertheless, at the worst of the bombing sites there were deep craters, pools of blood, scattered human remains and shattered buildings.

Near the Rafidain bank in the Etifiyah neighborhood of north-central Baghdad, where a bomb went off as policemen lined up for their salaries, a crumpled child's bicycle lay near the center of the blast; people there said a boy had been killed.

The new United States-trained Iraqi Army, National Guard and police force have had hundreds of men killed in the past year.

Now, American election plans depend on these forces protecting more than 5,500 polling places.

The insurgents' threats to Iraqis seen as working for or alongside the Americans were demonstrated on Wednesday in a video posted on an Islamic militant Web site of the killing of two Iraqi telecommunications technicians.

The video showed the men, still alive, posed in front of a black banner emblazoned with the name of an Islamic terrorist group, Ansar al Sunna, that has claimed responsibility for many of the most brutal attacks of the war in the past year.

They were then shown crouching before a stone wall, blindfolded, as their executioner approached from off camera and killed them with pistol shots to the back of the head. Earlier, the men confessed that they had been sent to the northern cities of Mosul and Erbil on an American contract to install computer communications for the elections.

At least 11 other people were killed on Wednesday. Gunmen who attacked the Baghdad offices of a major Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killed one party member and wouned others, party officials said.

Also in Baghdad, another car bomb aimed at an American convoy missed its target but killed four Iraqi bystanders. In Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman was killed in a car bombing, according to a Polish military spokesman. Much of the remaining violence was in northern Iraq, in Erbil, Dohuk, Kirkuk and Mosul.

Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Mosul.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

THE ELECTION: Allawi Predicts More Strife, but Says Voting Will Go On

2004-12-21T22:28:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 20 - The Iraqi interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said Monday that he expected the election campaign across Iraq to feature an increasing number of attacks like the car bombings and roadside executions of election officials that killed at least 70 people on Sunday. But he vowed that the elections on Jan. 30 would proceed and that those responsible for attacks that sought to disrupt them would be defeated.

"As we get closer to the elections there will be an escalation in violence, and we anticipate, we expect, that similar attacks will be happening," Dr. Allawi said in an interview with a group of Western reporters at his heavily protected office in the Green Zone government compound in Baghdad. But he added, "We know we will pay a heavy price until we win, and we are going to win."

Dr. Allawi, 59, spoke as an official in Najaf, one of two Shiite holy cities that were bombed, announced that 51 people had been arrested in connection with the attack there, which killed 54 people, along with 13 others killed in a similar attack in Najaf's twin city, Karbala. The official count of those wounded in the bombings rose to at least 175.

Election officials in Baghdad, where three men working at a voter registration office were hauled from their car on Sunday morning, made to kneel on the pavement and shot in the head, said they had ordered an urgent review of security for nearly 7,000 election workers. Meanwhile, the election process gained pace as an eager crowd gathered to watch a young woman draw numbered balls from a plastic drum to determine the order in which 275 political alliances, parties and individuals would be listed on election ballots.

As the election loomed, testing Dr. Allawi's future as well as Iraq's, the interim prime minister sought to portray himself as an indispensable strong man and a secular antidote to the influence of religious parties. Although some analysts have said he is tainted by his association with the unpopular American occupying forces, Dr. Allawi argued that as a former member of governing Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, he was best equipped to defeat of the insurgency and to entice its members to work for democracy in Iraq.

He mixed warnings that American and Iraqi forces would "break the backs" of insurgents who refused recent peace feelers with an emphasis on reconciliation. He announced that the first of an estimated 300,000 people who fled Falluja ahead of the assault las month by American and Iraqi forces would be allowed to start returning later this week. A later announcement said some residents of the city's Al-Andalus neighborhood would begin returning Thursday.

Elsewhere, the daily violence took another heavy toll, with at least 13 people killed in insurgent attacks. Four men driving in a sport utility vehicle were killed by a roadside bomb at Ashaki, a town just south of the city of Samarra, where a major American offensive was mounted against insurgents in October. Agence France-Presse reported that the bodies, three of them apparently of foreigners, were picked up by other vehicles in the men's convoy.

In other attacks reported by Western news agencies, an Iraqi truck driver leaving an American base near Yethrub, north of Baghdad, was shot dead, and an Iraqi interpreter working for American troops was also shot dead in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. An Iraqi woman was killed and several civilians wounded in a roadside bombing near Samarra. Other victims included three kidnapped Iraqi national guardsmen, who were found dead near Yathrib, a Turkish truck driver killed by a bomb near Tikrit, and two members of a political party set up by Wafiq al-Samarrai, an intelligence chief under Mr. Hussein, killed in Samarra.

The attacks on Sunday, which inflicted the worst death toll of any day since July, brought a chorus of outrage from leaders of Iraq's majority Shiites, many of whom blamed insurgents belonging to the Sunni minority for the attacks. Sunnis provided Iraq's leaders for generations up to the toppling of Mr. Hussein and face the possibility of a Shiite-dominated majority in a new national assembly.

The Shiite leaders' statements were echoed by Dr. Allawi. Although he is a Shiite, he has based his own election campaign on a slate of secular Shiite and Sunni candidates that appears poised to be one of the stronger rivals to a powerful alliance of Shiite religious parties that many Iraqis regard as the early favorite in the elections. Dr. Allawi said it was clear that the insurgents wanted the attacks "to create ethnic and religious tensions, problems and conflicts," on a pattern that he said fitted closely with videotaped exhortations to Iraq's insurgents from Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

But facts on who was behind the bombings were few. The Najaf governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, said at a news conference that those arrested in the city after the bombing included mostly people from Najaf, but included one non-Iraqi Arab. In an interview later with an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times, the city's police chief, Ghalib al-Gzaari, said two men had confessed to being "in contact" with the intelligence agencies of Syria and Iran. He said one of the men was filming the bombing site when the explosion occurred.

There was no independent confirmation of the claims that there had been a foreign hand in the attacks. But the fact that the claims have surfaced so early in the campaign suggested that the question of foreign interference would be a volatile issue.

Already, a growing number of moderate Sunni politicians have made a target of Iran, saying that its ruling Shiite clerics plan to use the Shiite religious parties to make Iraq a catspaw for Iranian domination. Those claims were mocked on Monday by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was reported by Iranian state television as having said the Najaf and Karbala attacks were carried out by the United States and Israel as "a plot aimed at distracting Iraqis so they miss the election."

Dr. Allawi, chosen by the American occupation authority as interim prime minister in June partly because of his reputation as a hardknuckle politician, depicted himself in the interview as a reluctant draftee for the post, with no pressing ambition in the elections beyond a desire to see Iraqis move beyond what he described as the "tyranny" of Mr. Hussein and, now, of the insurgents. In a well-tailored gray suit and blue-striped shirt, he appeared quietly confident, and said he intended to campaign across the country, defying insurgent threats.

"They are masked," he said. "We cannot be masked."

But he appeared somewhat burdened by the hazards of the job. Outside his office in what used to be a reception room for Mr. Hussein's Ministry of Military Industrialization, the scene was a testament to a man under threat: heavily armed American bodyguards with cradled weapons, armored Mercedes-Benz limousines, an American Bradley fighting vehicle with a mounted machine gun, electrically operated barriers, high concrete blast walls and circling American attack helicopters.

"It's very tiring, it's very exhausting, it's very dangerous," Dr. Allawi said. "Every day, I face two or three assassinations attempts." He added: "But we have to put the country back on its feet. Somebody has to do it. But I assure you, it's horrible."

Quickly, he shifted the mood, noting that his secular beliefs, not the theocratic ambitions of religious parties, are best attuned to Iraq's tradition of secular rule. He said he kept in close contact with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, who helped cobble together the fractious coalition of Shiite religious parties known as the United Iraqi Alliance. But he said he believed that Ayatollah Sistani would remain neutral in the campaign. "Never in its history was Iraq run by religious groups," he said.

But his instinct for toughness emerged from the interview as the quality that Dr. Allawi appeared to regard as his strongest suit. He said Iraq needed "strong leadership" of the kind he gave in approving the American-led assault on Falluja. He said he had met recently "outside and inside" Iraq with men closely linked to the insurgency, and that he had spoken to them as a former Baathist and a conspirator in the 1968 coup that brought the party, and eventually Mr. Hussein, to power. His message, he said, was that Baathism "is dead, it's finished, it's something like the ex-Soviet bloc," and that the only future for the party was to abandon the insurgency.

He said that since the crushing of the insurgents in Falluja and their scattering to other parts of Iraq, his government had begun to see the beginnings of a "divide," between insurgents fighting a rear-guard action on behalf of Baathism and Mr. Hussein, and the "terrorists" like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who he said were beyond negotiation. He said that this presented new political opportunities, and that his discussions with men involved with the insurgency, had convinced him that many of them were fighting because they felt dispossessed by the American dismantling of Mr. Hussein's forces, and by the de-Baathification program that denied them a return to a "normal life."

"This is something I am adamant to fix," he said.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Attack in Karbala Is Followed by Another in Najaf

2004-12-19T15:19:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 19 - Only days into Iraq's six-week election campaign, an eruption of violence today killed at least 60 people and wounded about 120 others in car bombings in Iraq's two holiest Shiite cities, Najaf and Karbala. In Baghdad, a group of about 30 insurgents hurling hand grenades and firing machineguns pulled three election officials from their car in the midst of morning traffic and executed them in the road with shots to the head.

The killings raised the specter of exactly the kind of violence that American and Iraqi officials have been hoping to minimize ahead of elections on Jan. 30 that are a key watershed in the American-inspired blueprint for democracy in Iraq.

Iraqi politicians arguing for a delay in the elections to allow for renewed mediation efforts with Sunni insurgents have repeatedly warned of the risks of a wave of sectarian killings, as well as attacks on election officials and candidates.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi Election Commission, supervising the campaign, described the victims of the election workers' ambush on Baghdad's notorious Haifa Street as martyrs and appealed to all Iraqis to "support the lives of our officials."

In Najaf and Karbala, officials said the bombings, within two hours of each other and both in crowded city-center areas near the Shiite sect's holiest shrines, were the work of Sunni extremists seeking to ignite sectarian strife with the country's Shiite majority.

The bombings were the worst violence in the two pilgrim cities in several months, and seemed calculated to cause maximum loss of life, and provoke a wave of anger among religious Shiites.

In Karbala, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle amid minibuses at the entrance to the city's bus terminal. In Najaf, a car exploded in a central square crowded with people watching a funeral procession. The crowd included the provincial governor and the city's police chief, both of whom escaped unhurt.

Eyewitness accounts of the bombings told of residents pulling bodies from the rubble of shops and market stalls around Maidan Square in the heart of the old city of Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. An Associated Press report quoted Yousef Munim, an administrator at the city's al-Hakim hospital, as saying that the hospital's preliminary account showed 47 people killed, and 69 wounded.

The blast occurred 300 yards from the Imam Ali shrine, one of the most sacred in Shiite Islam, which was the center of a lengthy American-led military offensive in August that drove rebels loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, from the city.

In Karbala, about 50 miles north of Najaf, the bomb exploded about 400 yards from the Imam Hussein shrine, another sacred site, as well as the location of a bomb blast last Wednesday that killed 12 people and injured dozens of others, including a cleric who is a close aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric.

Accounts from Karbala today told of firefighters struggling to put out blazes as ambulances ferried burned and bleeding casualties to the nearby al-Hussein hospital. Ali al-Ardawi, an assistant to the hospital's director, said 14 people were know to have been killed and 52 wounded, according to a report filed by a free-lance reporter for The New York Times.

The attacks prompted an outcry among Shiite religious leaders, who blamed Sunni insurgents and said they were attempting to provoke sectarian strife ahead of the elections. "They are trying to ignite a sectarian civil war and prevent elections from going ahead on time," said Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, a moderate cleric, who has maintained ties with American officials and worked to develop the political timetable that calls for Iraq to have a fully-elected government, and a permanent constitution, by January 2006. But, he added, "They have failed before, and they will fail again."

Elsewhere in the 20-month conflict, masked insurgents issued a videotape showing what they said were 10 abducted Iraqis who had been working for an American company, the Sandi Group, and said they would kill them all unless the company pulled out of Iraq. The company, one of dozens of American, European and Middle Eastern enterprises engaged in stuttering efforts to rebuild Iraq's decrepit infrastructure, employs more than 7,000 people in Iraq, company officials said.

The day also brought what appeared to be an attempt by Saddam Hussein, or at least by lawyers saying they spoke for him, to influence the elections from his cell in an American detention center. The lawyers, hired by Mr. Hussein's family to defend him before the Iraqi tribunal set up to try top leaders of his ousted government, told a news conference in Jordan that an Iraqi lawyer who met Mr. Hussein last week said he had urged Iraqis to be "wary" of the elections.

The head of the legal team, Ziad Khassawneh, said the Iraqi lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, traveled to Jordan after the meeting on Thursday - the first Mr. Hussein has had with legal counsel since his capture last Dec. 13, - then returned to Baghdad after reporting on Mr. Hussein's remarks, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

The Jordanian lawyer said Mr. Hussein had offered "recommendations" to Iraqis through Mr. Dulaimi, among them an injunction on the need for unity, a call for Iraqi religious leaders to face their "historical responsibility" for developments here, and the caution about elections.

Mr. Khassawneh said Mr. Hussein quoted a verse from the Koran, "Hold on to God's law and don't scatter," while urging unity, and added, "He also insisted that Iraq's religious leaders, of all factions, have a role and must bear the historical responsibility for what is happening in Iraq."

On elections, the lawyer said, Mr. Saddam asked to be briefed on developments in the country, and was told that there were to be elections. "At that point, the president said to Dulaimi that the Iraqi people should 'be wary of this issue,' " Mr. Khassawneh said.

The reported remarks, comparatively mild compared with Mr. Hussein's fulminations against the United States and its role in Iraq when he made a brief court appearance in Baghdad last summer, appeared to reflect constraints imposed on lawyers who have met Mr. Hussein and his top aides in the past week. An Iraqi official familiar with the tribunal's work said the lawyers had been told that they were not to discuss events in Iraq since the men were captured and subjected to a prison routine that denies them access to newspapers, radio and television.

The election campaign, with more than competing 100 political slates, began officially when the deadline for candidate registrations closed last Wednesday. A further deadline comes on Monday, when those who have registered have their last chance to reconfigure the multiparty alliances - or to forge new ones - that are expected to attract the largest share of votes. As the alliances stand, the battle appears to lie mainly between several predominantly Shiite blocs, including a powerful alliance of religious parties; groups that assemble Sunni and Shiite candidates in secular coalitions; and about 10 predominantly Sunni blocs and parties that have defied boycott demands from Sunni clerics and insurgent groups.

The election commission, with a staff of about 900 officials and about 6,000 part-time workers across the country, is racing against time to finalize voters' lists that are based on Saddam-era lists compiled for the distribution of heavily rationed foods and medicines. Those lists have yielded a potential electorate of nearly 14 million people, but registration offices across the country are bracing for a potential tide of would-be voters seeking to make corrections in listings that Iraqi officials have said contain widespread inaccuracies, in names, places of residence and dates of birth, that could be the basis of widespread disenfranchisement.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Iraqi Judge Questions Aides of Hussein With Lawyers

2004-12-19T05:25:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 18 - The chief investigative judge for the Iraqi tribunal established to try Saddam Hussein and his top aides said Saturday that he had held formal interviews with Ali Hassan al-Majid, known to Iraqis as Chemical Ali, and Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the Iraqi defense minister during the United States-led invasion last year.

Their questioning followed a flurry of statements by top Iraqi officials indicating that the beginning of formal trials was imminent for least some of a core group of 12 former members of Mr. Hussein's government who are being held in an American military detention center near the Baghdad airport. On Thursday, a Jordan-based legal team retained by Mr. Hussein's family said the former Iraqi ruler had met with a lawyer for the first time since his capture on Dec. 13 last year.

But a news conference called after the Saturday interviews by the chief investigative judge, Raid Juhi, failed to make clear whether the sessions amounted to a new stage in the tribunal procedures, much less the formal start of trials. Rather, they appeared to have been part of the tribunal's routine work that officials decided to publicize to meet pressures from Iraq's interim government.

Tribunal officials have said the cases against both the men center on gas attacks by Iraqi forces on Kurdish villages in the late 1980's, and on the savage repression of a Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq that followed the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

A Western official familiar with the tribunal's work cautioned reporters not to describe the judge's questioning of Mr. Majid and Mr. Hashim as the first such sessions held by the tribunal with the 12 detainees, and noted that such encounters were a regular part of the tribunal's preparation for eventual trials.

This suggested that statements in recent days about the tribunal reaching a new watershed in the judicial process may have been inspired more by Iraqi politics ahead of the elections set for Jan. 30 than by any actual acceleration of its work.

The newest element of the Saturday sessions may have been that the defendants were represented by court-appointed lawyers - necessitated by the fact no other lawyer volunteered to represent them - or that it took place in a courtroom rather than the detention center. Television coverage showed Mr. Majid, 58, being led into the courtroom in a gray suit and open-necked shirt. He paused to have his handcuffs removed, then sat down in a chair placed in the center of the court.

During the interview Mr. Majid, a relative of Mr. Hussein, clutched a walking stick, perhaps because of the diabetes for which he has been treated by American doctors since he was captured in August 2003.

The heavy-set Mr. Hashim, 54, similarly dressed, was shown seated in the same chair. Tribunal officials had said he had been cooperating with investigators, providing information about the involvement of other detainees, including Mr. Majid.

The pressure for early trials became public in September, when Ayad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, told The New York Times in an interview that Iraq needed to put the brutalities of Mr. Hussein's rule behind it, and that he wanted the trials of Mr. Hussein and others to begin before the end of the year. Aides said then that Dr. Allawi, a survivor of an ax attack by agents of Iraq's intelligence service while he was living in exile in London, wanted the trials begun before the elections for a 275-member national assembly, scheduled for the end of January, so that he could cast himself as the man who brought Mr. Hussein and his aides to justice.

Dr. Allawi formally began to campaign for the election this week at the head of a coalition of secular political groups known as the Iraqi List, but despite the advantages in publicity his current role affords, he is regarded as something of an underdog, partly because of the widespread perception of him as America's man, and, paradoxically, because of his past as a onetime enforcer for Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party, before he fell into disfavor in the 1980's and joined the exiled opposition.

Many Iraqis say the front-runner among the slates registered in the campaign, given the country's 60 percent Shiite majority, is the United Iraqi Alliance, a broad coalition of Shiite religious parties.

Since the July court hearing, and particularly in recent weeks, the special tribunal has come under intense scrutiny, both within Iraq and among human rights and legal watchdog groups abroad. Critics have questioned whether there can be adequate guarantees of fair trials before a court established by the American occupation authority, operating under Iraqi criminal laws that were drawn up under Mr. Hussein, and run by judges and prosecutors appointed by the Americans or, more recently, by Dr. Allawi's government. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch joined the chorus of skepticism this week with a statement that said the law establishing the tribunal "lacks significant fair-trial protections, including explicit guarantees against using confessions extracted under torture, and a requirement that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt."

Mr. Juhi, 35, presided at the only open hearing held so far for the 12 detainees, a procedural one on July 1. He was elusive when asked by reporters how long it might take to begin the trials, saying that the process would involve months of questioning the suspects, sifting through documents and examining the mass graves of victims. He appeared to want to rebut allegations that the tribunal had fallen under the sway of Dr. Allawi's government, or of the Americans.

"Dr. Allawi is the prime minister of Iraq, and his government is supporting the tribunal, but I can assure you that it will not intervene in these legal processes," Mr. Juhi said. "Ours is a purely legal proceeding. It has nothing to do with politics."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

THE CAMPAIGN: Iraq's Election Is Seen as a 'Jungle of Ambiguity'

2004-12-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 17 - With the candidates' lists closed and Iraq seemingly set on an irreversible course toward elections on Jan. 30, a senior Western official with decades of Middle East experience cast about Friday for the kind of optimistic forecast that the United States and its allies have offered at every important juncture in 20 turbulent months since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

The election, the official said, was the most ambitious democratic exercise ever attempted in an Arab country, one in which 14 million eligible Iraqis will choose from more than 7,700 candidates seeking seats in a provisional national assembly, 18 provincial councils and a regional Kurdish parliament. He invited comparisons with a clumsily rigged referendum two years ago, when Mr. Hussein declared himself re-elected president with 100 percent of his countrymen's 12 million votes.

Later, the official, guarded by the anonymity commonly demanded when reporters are briefed in the Green Zone command compound here, slipped momentarily into a more candid assessment of the prospects for conducting a successful vote in a country beset by an increasingly brutal war and deep sectarian, religious and regional rivalries.

The election, he said, was a "jungle of ambiguity" where hopes ride on a sea of uncertainties, not the least of them the degree of violence the voting will provoke.

Many of those most closely involved in organizing the elections, including Iraqis, Americans and officials in a small United Nations election team, agree that the elections amount to a high-stakes gamble: one that could end the bitter reverses that have followed last year's invasion, but that could just as easily spiral into chaos, with widespread insurgent attacks on candidates and polling stations, or end in a lopsided victory by Iranian-backed Shiite religious groups that the ethnic and religious minorities, especially Sunnis and Kurds, refuse to accept.

In the first 48 hours since the deadline for candidates to register on Wednesday, there has been little new evidence of the way things will go. The only rally so far was held Friday at a Baghdad sports stadium, where 2,000 Communist Party supporters, their ranks decimated under Mr. Hussein, met to chant slogans that would have provoked executions before his downfall.

Otherwise, the only sign in the capital of an impending election have been giant posters showing the country's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and his recent decree declaring it a religious duty for all Shiites to vote.

One uncertainty is how much of a campaign there will be, at least in terms of rallies and meet-the-voters politicking.

Although the Communists made a bold start, other groups have made no secret of their concern not to expose their candidates to the bombs, ambushes and assassinations that have been the insurgents' stock-in-trade.

When the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, began his campaign on Wednesday with an appearance with members of his slate at a Baghdad sports club, the Americans who form the core of his security team judged the risks so great that they ordered a large area of central Baghdad closed to traffic for several hours.

The empty streets at the height of the working day marked at least a symbolic success for the Sunni insurgents who have given notice of their intention to disrupt the polls.

Just as much, they were a reminder of the residual power, even in an American prison near Baghdad airport, of Mr. Hussein, who American officials believe laid the groundwork for the insurgency before the March 2003 invasion by ordering the preparation of underground cells, the stashing of large amounts of money and the stocking of extensive weapons caches.

His legacy will be injected into the campaign in another way on Saturday, when three of his closest associates, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, known to Iraqis as Chemical Ali for his role in poison gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980's, will make brief court appearances in Baghdad.

Iraqi officials have acknowledged that the hearings, a step toward full-scale trials that are not expected to begin for many months, have been hastened under pressure from Mr. Allawi, who demanded in the fall that the trials of Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants begin before the end of the year, apparently to harness whatever popular acclaim might derive from bringing the perpetrators of Iraq's grim past to book.

Mr. Allawi, chosen by the United States to head the interim government, is fighting for every advantage in what many Iraqis believe to be an uphill struggle.

The early election favorite, many Iraqis believe, is a coalition of Shiite religious parties, the United Iraqi Alliance, that announced its slate last week. That group, led by men who forged strong ties to Iran's ruling ayatollahs during long exile under Mr. Hussein, has the advantage of Iraq's Shiite majority, estimated at about 60 percent of the country's 25 million people, and of the apparent patronage of Ayatollah Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite cleric.

Added to these strengths, the religious alliance, like other Shiite groups, could find its weight in the 275-seat provisional assembly increased, under a system that will apportion seats in accordance with each slate's percentage of the national vote, by an election boycott among Sunnis, who account for about 20 percent of the population

A vociferous Sunni religious group, the Muslim Clerics Association, which has backed the insurgents, has renewed its calls for a boycott in the wake of last month's American military offensive in Falluja, and the intensity of the war in other Sunni heartland areas south, north and west of Baghdad has raised doubts about the practicality of conducting polls, even assuming that significant numbers of Sunnis want to vote.

The Shiite groups that have set aside rivalries to join the religious alliance have projected confidence, but western officials caution against assumptions about where votes will go. For one thing, they say, voter preferences could be widely dispersed. According to Iraq's election commission, the alliance is one of nine broad political coalitions seeking seats, along with 73 individual parties and 27 stand-alone candidates.

Election rules give registered candidates until Monday to reconfigure alliances, or to forge new ones, but as matters stand, Iraqi voters, each with a single ballot in the national poll, will have 109 potential choices.

The Western official who briefed reporters on Friday said opinion polls conducted for the American occupation authority during its 15 months in power, and for the interim government since it took office in June, had shown that only a small minority of Iraqis polled, about 15 percent, expressed a preference for any political group. Added to this, the official said, many parties and individuals who have registered for the election are making their first appearance on the political scene.

"None of these parties knows what it will be bringing to the table in terms of political strength," he said.

Another unknown, the official said, was the role of Ayatollah Sistani, whose closest aides have said that he favors no party or alliance, only that he wants every Shiite to vote.

While this appeared to run against the ayatollah's role in bringing the alliance together, the official said, the religious parties would have to step carefully to avoid alienating voters by giving them the impression that they were being stampeded into the alliance's camp, or, politically more risky, that they were being manipulated by groups influenced by Iran.

"I know a lot of Shiite clerics who are very emphatic that they are not some kind of stalking horse for an Iranian thrust into Iraq," he said.

The election commission's candidates list also showed at least 10 Sunni groups that have defied the clerics' demand for a boycott. Privately, many Iraqi and American officials have conceded that the Sunni turnout in the worst war-hit areas, especially Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, encompassing Falluja and Ramadi, as well as other important cities like Samarra, Baquba and Mosul, may yield negligible Sunni turnouts. Large Sunni communities elsewhere, including Baghdad and Basra, the country's two largest cities, might defy the boycott, these officials believe.

If so, they will have a choice, if they favor Sunni-led groups, of four major coalition groups that have fielded a mix of secular, tribal and religious candidates, as well as several individual parties. Two parties represent rival claimants to the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, which was ended in 1958 with the assassination of King Faisal II, an event that led to the rise of the Baath Party and Mr. Hussein.

One of the Sunni parties, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has fielded 275 candidates, more even than the Shiite religious alliance, with 228.

But the largest unknown is the effect insurgents will have on voting. After a protracted debate, American officials have ruled that security at the 9,000 polling stations will be provided by Iraq's 120,000-strong security forces, with units of the 150,000 American troops deployed across the country by the end of January "over the horizon," out of sight but close enough to intervene.

The decision has been contested by some American commanders, who have said privately that their experience, particularly in Sunni-majority areas, is that people have scant confidence in Iraqi police and guardsmen, and have said that they would be more likely to vote if American troops formed an inner cordon.

Another option, staggering the voting over a period of days or weeks to allow troops and police to be concentrated at polling stations, was also rejected after Iraqi and American officials, with support from United Nations election advisers, concluded that it would cause more problems than it would solve.

For one thing, these officials said, moving troops around the country would present major security problems, given the frequency of insurgent attacks on the country's highways, as well as giving the insurgents more time to choose their targets, and more opportunities to attack ballot boxes stored while awaiting a nationwide count.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

POLITICS AND VIOLENCE: As Iraqi Campaign Begins, a Bomb Kills 9 in Karbala

2004-12-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

By JOHN F. BURNS and ROBERT F. WORTH

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 15 - Iraq's election campaign season opened on a violent note when a bomb exploded Wednesday near the gate of one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines in the pilgrim city of Karbala, killing 9 people and wounding 40, including a top aide to the country's senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The attack occurred toward dusk, about 90 minutes after the 4 p.m. deadline for political groups to register their slates of candidates for the elections.

The registration deadline marked the official start of 44 days of campaigning, set to end two days before an estimated 14 million eligible voters go to the polls Jan. 30. They will choose among slates from more than 80 political coalitions, individual parties and other groups to fill 275 seats in a provisional national assembly.

No group claimed responsibility for the bomb in Karbala, the first of its kind in several months there and its sister city, Najaf.

But hours later, a spokesman for Ayatollah Sistani appeared on Al Jazeera, the satellite television channel, to say the attack appeared to be an attempt to assassinate the Sistani aide, Sheik Abdul Mahdee al-Karbalayee, who was walking to evening prayers when the blast struck. He was said by police officials to be under treatment in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.

The scene in Karbala was one that has become a coda of daily life in many parts of the country, with ambulances wailing and shattered glass and human remains scattered across the broad intersection in front of the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein. Doctors attended to the wounded in the early winter darkness.

The bombing raised the possibility of an election campaign punctuated not just by a heightening tempo of insurgent attacks but also by violence between Iraq's majority Shiite and minority Sunni populations, or among rival Shiite religious groups.

The interim defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, added a bitter note to the campaign period's start, with warnings about an alliance of Shiite religious groups that is a likely front-runner.

Mr. Shalaan, an intelligence officer under Saddam Hussein and now an ally of the American-backed interim prime minister, told Iraqi and American military officers that the alliance, which has the tacit backing of Ayatollah Sistani and of Iran's ruling Shiite clergy, was an "Iranian list" and a stalking horse for Iranian ambitions to re-establish an ancient Persian dominion over Iraq.

"Iran is the big link in terrorism in Iraq," he said at a meeting in the heavily protected Green Zone in Baghdad.

He said that Iran and Islamic insurgents wanted "turbaned clerics to rule," and that an Iraqi nuclear scientist favored to be the Shiite alliance's prime minister if it wins, Hussein Shahristani, was Iran's pawn.

Mr. Shalaan added: "I want to warn that Iran is the most dangerous enemy to Iraq and to all Arabs. Shahristani went to Iran after 1991 and worked on building an Iranian nuclear reactor. We will not let him come back and become an Iraqi prime minister."

In Washington, President Bush, asked about reports of efforts by Iran, as well as by Syria, to sway the elections, told reporters: "We have made it very clear to the countries in the neighborhood, including the two you mentioned, that we expect there to be help in establishing a society in which people are able to elect their leaders; and that we expect people to work with the Iraqi interim government to enforce border, to stop the flow of people and money that aim to help these terrorists. We made that very clear. And we'll continue to make it clear."

Many political groups, mostly Sunni, have urged that the elections be postponed until security improves. Some groups entering last-minute registrations simultaneously warned that insurgent groups could cause blood baths. But other groups, mainly of Shiites suppressed for generations by Iraq's traditional Sunni rulers, insist the elections stay on schedule.

But with the registration deadline past, the prospect of a postponement, or even a stretching out of voting over days or weeks to allow more concentrated security at the 9,000 polling stations, as some groups have urged, appeared to have receded.

Iraq's electoral commission announced that its final registration list totaled more than 230 political groups. They include 9 alliances, which are expected to pull the largest vote share; 47 parties competing alone; and 23 other political entities.

A commission spokesman said more than 3,500 candidates would be competing for seats in a transitional national assembly, which is to draft a constitution under which a permanent government is to be elected by Dec. 15, 2005. The number of seats each slate will get depends on its percentage of the national vote.

The lineup of major contenders was completed with the formal entry of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, 59, at the head of a six-party coalition of mainly secular Shiite and Sunni groups. The Allawi group is one of the few contenders thought capable of mounting

a realistic challenge to the Sistani-backed early favorite, the 22-party United Iraqi Alliance, which is led by the two most powerful Shiite religious groups, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Islamic Dawa Party.

One wing of Dawa is thought, like the Supreme Council, to have the covert backing of Iran's rulers.

With most groups acknowledging that the insurgency will make it largely impossible to hold Western-style rallies, campaigning is expected to consist mainly of television pitches. That arena may favor Dr. Allawi, with easier access to the country's two main broadcast television channels, one of them government-operated and the other American-financed.

Dr. Allawi's campaign started on an unpropitious note, when American and Iraqi forces closed off sections of central Baghdad so he could leave the Green Zone and cross the Tigris River to declare his candidacy at a sports club. But Western reporters judged the three-mile journey to be too hazardous in the bus provided by Allawi aides, and remained behind.

Five hours later, he stood before fewer than 60 people, about half of whom were his own aides. With American bodyguards in flak jackets and cradling automatic weapons patrolling the club's auditorium, Dr. Allawi read a brief statement and returned hastily to the Green Zone.

His statement emphasized the interim government's efforts to defeat the insurgents, and the campaign slogan emblazoned on the auditorium platform was "powerful leadership," both indications that he intends to project himself as the strongman that many Iraqis, desperate for security, say they crave.

Dr. Allawi's aides offered no detailed list of the 200 candidates put forward by his group, which will campaign as the Iraqi List. Others with him on the platform Wednesday included a smattering of tribal sheiks in traditional tribal dress, including at least one Sunni leader from northern Iraq, and a moderate Shiite cleric, Hussain al-Sadr, who won favor with the Americans during the 15 months of formal occupation that ended this summer. Two women were also on the platform, one of them a minister in Dr. Allawi's interim cabinet.

At its core, the group appears to be composed mainly of members of Dr. Allawi's party, the Iraqi National Accord, a C.I.A-backed group that was formed during his exile years in London, mainly from former Baath Party members like himself who broke with Mr. Hussein.

Two allies he had courted decided at the last minute to run separately. One was Adnan Pachachi, the 81-year-old former foreign minister, who is also favored by the Americans. He registered his Iraqi Democratic Gathering, made up of Sunni and Shiite politicians and professionals. The other was Iraq's faction-ridden Communist Party, which will run as the Union of the People with other leftists.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

MARINES IN HARM'S WAY: With 25 Citizen Warriors in an Improvised War

2004-12-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

December 12, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq — On Tuesday morning, in dawn's chilly half-light, a group of 25 marines mustered beside their Humvees at a base in the beleaguered town of Yusufiya for a raid. The target for Fox Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was the family home of Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, who until recently led the insurgents in Falluja. The sheikh, who is 62, had become a fugitive, rated by American military intelligence as one of the most menacing figures in the 20-month-old war in Iraq.

The marines clambered into three "open back" Humvees, known among the troops as "suicide wagons" - pickup trucks armored only on the sides, with three-foot-high panels.

Though they had no inkling of it, the vulnerability with which they were setting out would soon become the focus of a new dispute over the war. The next day, in Kuwait, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked by a member of the Tennessee National Guard why his unit had to hunt through refuse dumps to find armor for vehicles that would carry them into Iraq.

That confrontation prompted assurances from President Bush to military families that "we're doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones," and a torrent of Pentagon statistics to support the contention that progress had been made in correcting mistakes made 20 months ago, when most of the 12,000 Humvees sent into Iraq for the invasion and its aftermath were unarmored.

Stung by the furor, the Pentagon announced that three-quarters of the nearly 20,000 Humvees now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait carry protective armor. But realities on the ground are less comforting, as the vehicles used in Tuesday's raid showed. All the more poignant, the marines deployed on the raid, like more than 40 percent of all the 140,000 American troops in Iraq, were national guardsmen or reservists, citizen-soldiers, just like Specialist Thomas Jerry Wilson, the 31-year-old who confronted Mr. Rumsfeld over the armor issue.

Rooted in civilian life, these hometown warriors carry a heavier burden in Iraq than in any other American conflict of the last half-century. And Pentagon projections suggest that the proportion of reservists and guardsmen in Iraq could rise to 50 percent, particularly if the troop level of 150,000 planned for the Jan. 30 elections remains in effect afterward.

When scheduled troop rotations are completed early in 2005, the force in Iraq for the balance of the year will be composed of 6 brigades of reservists and guardsmen, and 11 brigades of active-duty soldiers. And many active-duty units have reservists performing support functions.

So in the 21st century, as it was at America's beginnings in 1775, it is the volunteer next door - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker - who bears arms for his or her country, as much as the professional soldier. This presence, in turn, has helped to highlight the Pentagon's miscues in providing the troops at the front with the best available equipment, especially equipment that lowers the risk of serious injury and death.

While statistics are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence gathered by reporters in the field suggests that the old complaint of reservists - that they are often the last to get up-to-date equipment - still has some validity, even though Pentagon officials tend to deny it.

A week with the 2/24 Marines at their bases 15 to 30 miles south of Baghdad, in the heart of the area known as the Triangle of Death, was a window on the demands being made of reservists, and on the resourcefulness and resilience they bring to the challenges. There is little they cannot do, with hard work and improvisation, the battalion's officers say, reflecting the widely varied backgrounds of the men in the Chicago-based unit - doctors, policemen, engineers, teachers, carpenters, truck drivers, lawyers, computer specialists, community counselors, college students, to name a few.

These marines' tasks are as tough as any in Iraq, with the battalion's 1,200 men cast as spear-carriers for the new, more aggressive war-fighting, which found its starkest expression in the battle last month to recapture Falluja. The 2/24 has had no such concentrated target, but its men have been fighting a classic counterinsurgency war, carrying out nighttime raids and creating a permanent American presence.

They operate from new "firm bases" in the towns of Yusufiya and Latafiya and conduct extended vehicle and foot patrols in what had been a virtual no-go area for American troops until a few months ago.

For these men, the Pentagon's claim that all American troops in Iraq now go into combat with armored vehicles is contradicted by the experience of the strike forces that set out on the raids. All vehicles on the 2/24's missions have at least some armoring, but the devil is in the details. Some men ride in fully armored Humvees, with thick steel plating on every surface and the underside, as well as ballistic glass in the windows that can withstand small-arms fire and at least some fragments from roadside bombs.

These vehicles are now rolling off a production line in Ohio at the rate of 350 a month, soon to rise by an additional 100 vehicles a month. They will make, in time, a major difference to men like those who set out to raid Sheikh Janabi's home in the village of Jawan. For now, many of the 2/24's fighters ride in vehicles that are only partly armored, like the open-back Humvees.

The raid was conducted without incident, if also without any trace of the fugitive sheikh. But the unit has lost eight men killed in 60 days, several of them from roadside bombs, and there are few men in the battalion who have not endured the terrifying experience of a "daisy-chained" i.e.d., or improvised explosive device, a string of artillery shells dug into the roadside and set off remotely as an American convoy passes.

On other missions, the marines ride in Humvees that are even more vulnerable, with no protection beyond the bolt-on kits - mostly armored half-doors - that were the quick-fix solution for the rush of bombing casualties in the early months of the war. Matters were so desperate that soldiers of the 82nd Armored Division, deployed around Falluja, hastened through their turkey dinners last Christmas to resume welding metal plating for their Humvees from wrecks of Soviet-made personnel carriers from Saddam Hussein's disbanded army.

Along with the hazards of inadequately protected vehicles, the men of the 2/24 have had to cope with lesser privations. Chief Warrant Officer Jim Roussell, a 53-year-old Chicago police sergeant working with the battalion's intelligence unit, helps navigate predawn raids on insurgent safehouses with a pocket-sized satellite navigation device he bought with $500 of his own money, to make up for a shortage of the full-screen "satnav" devices the Pentagon installs in the best-equipped Humvees.

But one striking thing about life with the 2/24, as with other units struggling with inadequate equipment, was the absence of grinding complaint. These marines have bolted the hardships of their deployment onto the corps ethos of unremitting toughness, to the point that deprivation is less complained about than celebrated, as proof that the marines can overcome. This ethos seeps into the weekly letters that Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, the 40-year-old battalion commander, a state trooper back home in Indianapolis, writes to the battalion's wives.

"Ask yourself," he said in his letter last week, "how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?" Then he answered his own question. "They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed; where 'chief among these are the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues."

Colonel Smith is a rambunctious fellow - driven, intolerant of half-measures, profane in his language. But his spirit is infectious, reminiscent of the eulogy Shakespeare wrote about a rebel commander who died in a doomed uprising against King Henry IV: "For from his mettle was his party steeled."

Among these men of the 2/24, and in countless other units like theirs, that mettle will have to serve for now as a substitute for the other kind of metal.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Marines' Raids Underline Push in Crucial Area

2004-12-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

December 6, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

MAHMUDIYA, Iraq, Dec. 5 - For marines staging a night raid on suspected rebel hide-outs across this insurgent heartland outside Baghdad, heading out of their heavily fortified base at midnight on Friday was a moment to make sinews stiffen.

Clearing the base's maze of dirt-filled blast barriers, Marine Strike Force Two, in a convoy of unlit Humvees, entered some of Iraq's deadliest terrain. Through dark towns and roads, dense palm groves and heaves of broken earth offered potential attackers ample cover. Men standing through Humvee roofs with night-vision goggles scanned the landscape for impending ambushes and roadside bombs.

In the 10 weeks since their battalion began operating in this area south of Baghdad, raids like this one by Strike Force Two have captured more than 250 people identified as suspected insurgents. Others, fleeing or resisting, have been killed.

The raids have taken an American toll, too. Since late September, the Second Battalion of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit has lost eight men. It has deployed in what has become, since November's battle for Falluja, one of the war's most crucial battle zones, some American officers would say its ground zero.

If American objectives in Iraq are to be achieved, commanders say, it is on small, closely knit units like Strike Force Two, with 32 men, and on the raids they stage almost nightly, that success may ultimately depend.

The primary mission of the 2/24 battalion, a Chicago-based Reserve force of 1,200 troops, is to destroy a network of insurgent cells that United States military intelligence has identified as the nerve center of the Sunni insurgency in central Iraq.

Until its capture last month, Falluja, 40 miles northwest of here, served as the insurgents' main fortress. Denying Falluja to the rebels as a sanctuary, American commanders believe, was a crucial first step toward regaining the initiative in the war. But according to American officers, months of intensive intelligence work have shown that Falluja served as a forward base for an insurgency that finds its enduring heartland here - in the powerful tribal families at its core, in uncompromising loyalties to Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hidden munitions. The American commanders call the area, 25 miles wide and 50 miles deep between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, the "throat of Baghdad."

Commanders acknowledge that forces reaching Baghdad after the invasion last year understood little of the tribal underpinnings of Mr. Hussein's power - a social, economic, religious and political matrix that was transformed, after his overthrow, into a platform for underground resistance. While much about the insurgency remains obscure, the commanders are convinced now that much that is crucial to rebel operations is centered in this troubled region south of the capital.

At intelligence briefings in the former chicken factory that serves as the 2/24's forward operating base outside Mahmudiya, American officers ran laser pointers across a satellite map showing towns like Rashid, Yusufiya, Mahmudiya, Latifiya, Iskanderiya, Haswa and Musayyib, saying interrogations of captured Iraqis have shown that these towns, and a score of outlying villages, mostly lying to the west of Highway One, the four-lane highway connecting Baghdad to the south, are the key to many insurgent attacks mounted much farther afield, including bombings and kidnappings in the capital.

The focus of the marines' attention has been on two powerful tribal families, the Janabis and the Kargoulis, feudal overlords of much of the land between the rivers that the 2/24 marines now patrol.

Under Mr. Hussein, the Janabis and the Kargoulis were richly rewarded. Their area was the base for Republican Guard units, munitions factories, weapons research establishments and battlefield testing grounds, as well as a host of new industrial plants and depots. After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when a Shiite uprising across southern Iraq was met with brutal repression, parts of the area around Mahmudiya, Latifiya and Iskanderiya where Sunnis and Shiites mixed were subjected to a form of ethnic cleansing, with Shiites of military age rounded up and shot and their houses bulldozed to make way for new Sunni homes.

Stalwarts of Insurgency

After Mr. Hussein's downfall, American intelligence officers believe, powerful elements in the Janabi and Kargouli families became stalwarts of the resistance, and an insurgent axis developed that turned the region south of Baghdad into a powerful support base for the insurgent stronghold in Falluja.

The tribes' most powerful figure, Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, serving as the chief imam in the Mahmudiya mosque in Falluja, emerged as the effective leader of the insurgency in central Iraq. Shortly before American troops overran the mosque, he fled the city.

One of his brothers, Mehdi, made his power base in Yusufiya, a town that has been a center of the insurgency. Mehdi, too, is a fugitive, probably in Baghdad, American officers say. A third brother, Mahmoud, identified by the American forces as a financier of the insurgency, was detained, and is in Abu Ghraib prison.

American forces moved into this area as Baghdad fell, but a shortage of troops, and command decisions that limited offensives, led early this year to a situation in which much of the region became a rebel stronghold. Journeys through it became a deadly lottery, with daily bombings, ambushes and kidnappings.

Just as the assault on Falluja last month signaled a turn to a more aggressive posture by the United States command, so too has the evolution of American tactics here. Under the 2/24 marines, the policy since September has been to go after the insurgents. New forward bases have been opened in Yusufiya and Latifiya. The marines have conducted regular foot patrols through the towns, making contact with the population. Raids on insurgent hide-outs and weapons caches have become routine.

The marines have fought pitched battles, including one on Nov. 12 at Mullah Fayyad, west of Yusufiya, that began with an insurgent ambush and developed into a fight that lasted more than four hours. Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, the 2/24's commander, said the rebels were trying to open lines of retreat from Falluja.

"This is where the leadership of the insurgency have always lived, and now that they can't be in Falluja, they've got to come home," he said. "But our rule is, 'You ain't comin' home.' "

Colonel Smith, 40, is the embodiment of the new, more aggressive approach - muscular, salty-tongued and impatient. "We're going out where the bad guys live, and we're going to slay them in their zip code," he said.

"People around here are beginning to believe that the Americans are going to stay and go after the bad guys, and they're not going to leave until the job's been done," he added. "As that sinks in, opinion is swinging to our side."

Whether that is true is hard for reporters to gauge, considering that the only approximately safe way to venture into the towns is with a heavily armed Marine foot patrol. Beyond that, it is an axiom of life here that, just as under Mr. Hussein's rule, opinion among Iraqis is intimidation-led. People in the battle zones tend to tell reporters whatever they judge to be safest.

On an hourlong patrol through Yusufiya, though, some signs seemed to favor the marines. People of all ages approached them, some with complaints about relatives detained or wounded in the fighting, but far more with requests for medical attention, inquiries about reopening schools and clinics, or assistance in finding work. The market in the town, closed when the marines arrived in early October, has reopened.

When some in a crowd that clustered about the patrol appealed for the Americans to withdraw from the town so the insurgents would attack elsewhere, a debate ensued, rare for American troops anywhere in Iraq.

"Saddam didn't harm anybody in Yusufiya; at least he didn't kill anybody who didn't cause trouble," said a middle-aged Sunni woman named Fadila. "In any case, the situation was much safer under Saddam than it is now."

The patrol leader, Cpl. Jared Tio, 24, countered with a set piece of his own.

"We want you to live in peace," he told her. "But we need to work together to make this work.

Perhaps the most successful of the marines' tactics have been the nighttime raids. With more than 70 police officers in the battalion, the work-up for the raids at the Mahmudiya base has been strongly influenced by American police tactics. Colonel Smith said he attributed what he called much of the unit's success in tracking down wanted insurgents to Warrant Officer Jim Roussell, a 53-year-old Chicago police sergeant who spent years working with that city's gang unit.

Mr. Roussell, a tall, spare man with a graying crew cut, agreed that tracking down insurgents in Iraq is not so different from hunting down street gang members. "In both cases, you're dealing with young people who are disenfranchised and angry and pick up weapons," he said.

To identify them, he said, the marines' intelligence unit follows family ties, picks up tips from street patrols and develops "snitches," many of them captured insurgents.

"It's ground-level intelligence, it's patrolling, it's interacting with people," he said. "At base, it's straightforward police work."

The raid by Strike Force Two Friday night was based on a tip from an inmate at Abu Ghraib. The man had fingered four brothers in adjacent farmhouses near Mahmudiya as participants in several recent insurgent attacks, including the seizure on Nov. 8 of 12 newly trained men of the Iraqi National Guard near Latifiya.

The 12 were found dead shortly afterward, machine-gunned against the wall of an abandoned mosque.

The Husseinist Profile

The four brothers fit the profile marines have come to expect of insurgents: Sunni Muslims, with experience in Mr. Hussein's armed forces, followed by government-assigned jobs in local industries, living comfortably off a plot of government-granted land. After their capture, they were handcuffed and loaded onto an armored truck for the ride back to the base.

There, they were bundled into a detainee-processing center known among the marines as "the tent of no return," electronically fingerprinted, photographed and lined up for an iris-recognition test.

Throughout the raid, the men protested their innocence, as those rounded up in Americans raids usually do.

"America good! England good! Saddam bye-bye!" said a heavily mustached man who identified himself as Ali, a 14-year veteran of the old Iraqi Army. Around the corner from where he squatted uneasily in his handcuffs, his wife, his mother and his four children sat still amid a tumble of blankets where they were sleeping when the Americans burst through their front door.

They seemed calm, almost puzzled, by the commotion as the marines went through closets and boxes of documents, hunting for evidence of insurgent connections, and assured them that their men would be released if they were found to have no involvement in rebel attacks.

On Sunday, those assurances were fulfilled when Mr. Roussell, the warrant officer, and others in the intelligence unit at Mahmudiya ordered all four men released, having concluded there was no evidence to justify holding them in the killing of the guardsmen, or any other attack.

"It looks like the snitch in Abu Ghraib was acting on a grudge," Mr. Roussell said. "But that's O.K. We're following American principles here, and that means that we've got to be pretty darned sure we've got the right men before we lock them away."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

TROOPS: Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids

2004-11-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

November 29, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

CHARD DUWAISH, Iraq, Nov. 28 - As marines aboard fast patrol boats roared up the Euphrates on a dawn raid on Sunday, images pressed in of another American war where troops moved up wide rivers on camouflaged boats, with machine-gunners nervously scanning riverbanks for the hidden enemy.

That war is rarely mentioned among the American troops in Iraq, many of whom were not yet born when the last American combat units withdrew from Vietnam more than 30 years ago. A war that America did not win is considered a bad talisman among those men and women, who privately admit to fears that this war could be lost.

But as an orange moon sank below the bulrushes on Sunday morning, thoughts of Vietnam were hard to avoid.

Marines waded ashore through soft silted mud that caused some to sink to their waists, M-16 rifles held skyward as others on solid land held out their rifle barrels as lifelines.

Ashore, sodden and with boots squelching mud, the troops began a five-hour tramp through dense palm groves and across paddies crisscrossed by deep irrigation canals.

There were snatches of dialogue from "Apocalypse Now," and a black joke from one marine about the landscape resembling "a Vietnam theme park."

But behind the joshing lay something more serious: the sense expressed by many of the Americans as they scoured the area that in this war, too, the insurgents might have advantages that could make them a match for highly trained troops, technological gadgetry and multibillion-dollar war budgets.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted the river raid as part of a weeklong offensive billed as a sequel to the battle for Falluja, less than 20 miles upriver from the village where the marines landed Sunday.

The 40-foot river craft they used are called Surcs, for Small Unit Riverine Craft, a high-tech update on the Swift boats used in Vietnam. The craft were flown into Iraq aboard giant C-5 transport aircraft and were first deployed with five-man crews during the battle for Falluja this month, patrolling the stretch of the Euphrates that runs along the city's western edge to prevent attempts by insurgents to escape that way after American troops had thrown a cordon around the city.

Those patrols were judged a success by American commanders. Now they are eager to exploit the potential the patrol boats give them for mounting fast, unexpected attacks along the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers run through many of the cities and towns that are rebel strongholds, and the long stretches of verdant riverbank provide ideal hiding places for insurgents and their weapons caches.

The raid, backed by air cover from attack helicopters and pilotless drones, gave the Americans a chance to exploit another new dimension of their strategy for winning the war: twinning American combat units with newly trained Iraqi troops.

After failures earlier this year, when many Iraqi units deserted or refused to fight, the American command wrote a new blueprint for training tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters and used Falluja as the first, critical testing ground. Considered a qualified success there, the best Iraqi units have been an integral part of every major raid in the follow-up offensive here.

In many raids, they have heavily outnumbered American troops, as they did in the operation on Sunday, which included 40 marines and 80 members of a special Iraqi commando unit assigned to the country's powerful Interior Ministry.

As much as they wanted to test their new river boats, American commanders wanted to see how the commandos - many drawn from elite units of Saddam Hussein's special forces - would respond to an arduous and potentially risky mission.

This day, long before the three-mile sweep through the palm groves and citrus orchards and paddies was ended, the mood among the marines had soured as the Iraqis adopted a mostly dilatory attitude toward the tedious business of spreading out in long lines and moving methodically across the terrain, poking haystacks, running metal detectors over piles of palm fronds, peering into thick clusters of bulrushes, and digging in places of freshly turned earth.

"They've just about given up," said Lt. Jerman Duarte, 34, of Houston, his voice edged with exasperation.

Lieutenant Duarte, a native of Guatemala, led the raid in his capacity as commander of a reconnaissance and surveillance platoon that has honed its skills in many of the marines' toughest raids and stakeouts during their five months in Iraq. Among his men, he is known as "El Guapo," the handsome one, for his fine features and his bristling mustache. But his sense of urgency and do-it-by-the-book briskness appeared lost on the Iraqi fighters, who used their rest breaks in the morning sunshine to trade quips about the Americans, not all of them friendly.

As in so much else about the American venture in Iraq, cultural differences played their part. At one point, Lieutenant Duarte bridled when some of the Iraqis resisted his repeated urging that they spread out along the line, preferring to cluster together, ineffectively, at one end. A Marine sergeant told him that the Iraqis were officers and did not feel that they should be asked to work side by side with common soldiers.

One of the Iraqi officers, asked if he spoke English, replied snappily, "English no good. Arabic good. Iraq good." The message seemed clear.

Although recruits in the new Iraqi units undergo strict vetting, American officers say rebel sympathizers have infiltrated some of the new units - some of the soldiers have been caught tipping off rebel groups. If there were sympathies for Hussein loyalists among these raiders, though, the area chosen for the sweep would likely have stirred them. One American officer described the stretch of the Euphrates that runs southeast from Falluja as "Saddam's Hamptons" for the clusters of luxurious villas set along the riverbank, mostly built by favored stalwarts of Mr. Hussein. The territory controlled by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, across the southernmost reaches of Iraq's Sunni heartland, served as an arsenal for Mr. Hussein, with dozens of weapons research facilities, munitions factories, and vast weapons storage sites, including the one at Al Qaqaa, which made headlines last month when the Americans discovered that more than 350 tons of high explosives were missing.

Recent American sweeps in the area have uncovered some of the largest weapons caches found in post-Hussein Iraq. And the raid here on Sunday, about five miles from Al Qaqaa, followed a tip that more large caches might be found there.

But either the tipoff was flawed or the raid missed the target. Altogether, Lieutenant Duarte's men discovered only an old shotgun and three Kalashnikov rifles, two of them in plastic bags that were clumsily buried in a paddy field. They also found two sets of identity documents belonging to a high-ranking member of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. After a marine stumbled across a yellow plastic bag lying in an irrigation panel with what he identified as a severed human head and intestines, Lieutenant Duarte radioed to headquarters and was told to leave it for investigation by the Iraqi police.

In the end, the day's main yield came not from the raid, but from the brutal chance that comes with every foray into the Iraqi hinterland. On the road back to the Marine base at Camp Kalsu, 40 miles from the raiding site, the unit's convoy of armored trucks and Humvees was attacked near the town of Latifiya with a huge roadside bomb.

Unlike a similar device that killed two marines in a nearby incident later in the day, the bomb caused no injuries or damage. But two Humvees broke away from the convoy and pursued two fleeing men with Kalashnikovs into a house about a mile back from the highway, shooting one dead and capturing the other. The men were said to have been found with a cellphone that could have been used to set off the bomb.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

COMBAT: After Falluja, U.S. Troops Fight a New Battle Just as Important, and Just as Tough

2004-11-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

November 28, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

CAMP KALSU, Iraq, Nov. 27 - As American commanders turn their concentration toward the area of sullen towns and villages that straddle the southern approaches to Baghdad, they face a battle that is in many ways as crucial to their hopes as Falluja has been. And they enter a battleground where loyalties to Saddam Hussein and the burning enmity for America are at least as intense.

Without a major success here, the battle for Falluja, 50 miles to the northwest, could come to be seen as a Pyrrhic victory, one that reduced much of the city to rubble, cost more than 50 American combat deaths and prompted many insurgents to move on and regroup for yet more chapters in an ever-lengthening war.

The first days of the new campaign suggest it may outstrip Falluja in the demands it will make on American patience and tactical skills.

Once again, marines are leading the fight here, with the best of Iraq's American-trained troops alongside them. But in this area, known for its ceaseless rounds of suicide bombings and ambushes, there will be no knockout blows with tanks and bombs. Rather, as Marine commanders emphasized when 5,000 troops began the offensive this week, success will be built raid by raid, arrest by arrest, until the latticework of rebel cells in virtually every village and town is weakened and the will to sustain the insurgency is broken.

Commanders expect the main offensive to last another week. But nobody is talking about quick victories, rather of the new raids setting the scene for more later on.

A chart of suspected rebels that was developed over months by American intelligence officers and Iraqi undercover agents, laid out like a genealogical table, measures 10 feet by 4 feet. Unrolled in the command center at this Marine base in the desert southeast of the town of Iskandariya, it lists hundreds of rebel leaders, financiers and fighters, grouped together by family, by tribe and by past links in Mr. Hussein's military, political and intelligence apparatus.

"Every day, we have to stay the course," said Col. Ron Johnson, 48, a native of Duxbury, Mass., who commands the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, whose operational area covers parts of three Iraqi provinces with a combined population of 1.2 million. "We're in here for the long haul," he said.

Still, the mood among Marine officers is cautiously upbeat, and the belief, as put to reporters embedded for the offensive, is that the war here can still be won. The immediate objective is to deal a hard enough blow to the insurgents that plans can proceed for the election scheduled for Jan. 30. On its face, this area, the southernmost extension of the Sunni triangle, running about 60 miles south of Baghdad and about 80 miles across, with the Euphrates River to the west and the Tigris to the east, is about as unpromising a political terrain for those favoring elections as any region in Iraq.

About 60 percent of the population living here, in towns like Mahmudiya, Latifiya, Yusufiya, Iskandariya, Musayyib and Hilla, are Sunnis. The rest are Shiite, a group that accounts for about 60 percent of the Iraqi population and strongly favors the election as a way station to Shiite majority rule.

But the religious breakdown alone cannot explain the insurgency's intensity. Sunnis here were favored for decades by Mr. Hussein, who made the area immediately south of Baghdad into a strategic bedrock of his rule. Many of his Republican Guard units were based here and were locally recruited. Weapons research establishments were concentrated here, as were many of the country's main munitions plants.

The American-led invasion 18 months ago destroyed those privileges, and left many local people unemployed. The disbanding of the Mr. Hussein's army made things worse. The insurgency spread rapidly in the months after Mr. Hussein was toppled, feeding off the combination of idled military skills, huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, and Sunni resentment at the prospect of being politically usurped.

Early on in American military planning, commanders knew that a campaign to wrest Falluja from the insurgents would necessitate an offensive here, but limitations of logistics, air power and troops dictated the two offensives be staged sequentially. One disadvantage was that this gave the Falluja rebels a ready refuge, one that American generals sought to inhibit by asking Britain to move an 850-soldier battalion of the Black Watch north from Basra to a base just west of the Euphrates.

Marine intelligence officers estimate that 200 to 500 rebels from Falluja, many of them natives of the region south of Baghdad that is the focus of the new offensive, have come here in the past few weeks; some officers say those estimates are too low, as they also say official estimates of 1,200 insurgents killed in Falluja are too high.

Marine intelligence officers say there are 400 to 500 "core leaders" of the Sunni insurgency in the area, many of them former ranking members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party or senior officers in his military. Although they describe the insurgency as heavily decentralized, they have identified two new political groups that knit together these rebel leaders, one of them known as the Return or Restoration Party. These men, they say, have made common cause in the insurgency with the numerous criminal gangs in the area, who also have much to lose in the new American push. The intelligence estimates say that insurgent attacks in the area are carried out by 2,000 to 6,000 rebels, many of them unemployed youths or criminals released from jail by Mr. Hussein before he was driven from power. In many cases, American officers say, captured men have told them that they were paid sums ranging from $20 to $200 to stage ambushes or plant explosives that are detonated by "part-time triggermen," many of them also paid.

If correct, the estimates make for a startling contrast with the American estimates a year ago, when commanders said they believed that there were no more than 5,000 insurgents across the whole of Iraq.

The havoc the rebels have wrought here emerges from the marines' tallies of recent attacks. In a little over a month, the insurgents have mounted 350 separate attacks, including 12 suicide car bombings and nearly 80 remotely detonated roadside bombs. Since midsummer, when the marines deployed into the area, they have lost 18 men. But by far the heaviest toll has been taken by Iraqi policemen and national guardsmen, of whom nearly 150 have been killed, many by bombs.

Attacks on the police have left barely 550 policemen at work across the entire region, a fraction of the number under Mr. Hussein, and many police stations abandoned.

Despite the attacks, Colonel Johnson said he believed the advantage in the war was moving the Americans' way. Rather than seeing the rising tempo of attacks as a sign of growing confidence among the rebels, he believes the insurgents have stepped up their aggression because they fear they are losing the war.

One reason for this, the colonel said, was the growing involvement of Iraqi troops in the fighting alongside the Americans, and the Iraqis' increasing confidence. "Time is not on the insurgents' side," Colonel Johnson said. "Each day, the Iraqi security forces are getting better and better."

Altogether, in the past four months, more than 600 men have been detained in raids across the area, many of them as a result of intelligence delivered by Iraqi troops and intelligence officers.

"I'll tell you, one I.S.F. who is loyal and effective is worth five marines," Colonel Johnson said, using the abbreviation for men in the Iraqi security forces. "They know exactly who these people running the insurgency are."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Tape Condemns Sunni Muslim Clerics

2004-11-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

November 25, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 - An audiotape was posted on the Internet on Wednesday in which a man identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist leader, condemned the Sunni Muslim clerical establishment in Iraq for abandoning the Iraqi resistance movement in the face of the American military offensive in Falluja and other Sunni cities.

"You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," the tape said. "You have stopped supporting the mujahedeen. Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence."

Although the tape's authenticity could not be confirmed, it was posted on an Islamic Web site known as al-Qala'a, which has been a mailbox for Islamic militant groups. American intelligence officials have named Mr. Zarqawi as the man behind dozens of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. He carries a $25 million bounty on his head .

For months before the Falluja offensive began three weeks ago, American officials said that Mr. Zarqawi was based in the city. He is believed to have fled before the American attack, leaving houses where some of the killings he is alleged to have ordered took place. American officials have said that some of the bombings and ambushes in a new wave of attacks in other Sunni Muslim strongholds, including Mosul, bear Mr. Zarqawi's hallmark.

Efforts to assess the new military and political landscape in the wake of the Falluja offensive have been fraught by contradictory strands of evidence, with the tape, suggesting that the insurgents suffered a major setback in Falluja, only the latest.

American hopes that Falluja would be a turning point in the war were dimmed, at least initially, by the concurrent upsurge in rebel attacks elsewhere in the Sunni heartland, especially in Mosul. The fear was that the American forces might have crushed one center of resistance only to ignite others.

But the week since the major fighting in Falluja has also been one of a sudden quickening in political activity before the nationwide election set for Jan. 30, in which voters are to choose a 275-member assembly that will pick a provisional government and draft a permanent constitution. Many Iraqis fear that the election could set off new levels of rebel violence, but the political momentum is building. The leader of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, Abdel Hussein al-Hindawi, said Wednesday that more than 200 Iraqi political parties had registered for the polls, a week before the closing date.

Maneuvering is under way to form consolidated lists of candidates who can draw a major share of the votes.

Mr. Zarqawi's tape, if authentic, would offer support to the assertions of American commanders that the Sunni insurgency suffered a strategic defeat in Falluja.

The commanders have said that the offensive killed at least 1,200 insurgents in Falluja, and that more than 1,000 were taken prisoner. Lt. Col. Dan Wilson of the Marines told reporters on Wednesday that the huge arms caches found in the city had far exceeded expectations.

Western reporters embedded with American forces and Iraqi reporters operating independently have been skeptical about some military reports, noting that independent body counts have not come close to the military's figure. The suspicion remains that many insurgents fled, ready to strike at the Americans from bases in centers like Mosul.

But the angry tone of the tape was hard to reconcile with the notion that the rebels had left Falluja with anything but a defeat. Addressing the Muslim "ulema," an Arabic term for Islamic clerics and scholars, the tape drew a grim picture of the consequences of what it described as their failure to step in to help the Falluja rebels against the Americans.

"You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the country and its people to the Jews and Crusaders, by resorting to silence on their crimes and preventing our youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend our religion," it said.

American troops have responded to a surge in rebel strikes with a crackdown in Mosul. The extent of the rebel challenge was underscored by two assassination attempts there on Wednesday. Khosru Kuran, the deputy governor of Nineveh Province and a Kurd, said that rebels fired on his convoy, killing one of his bodyguards. An Agence France-Presse report said the attack on Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaih was mounted by gunmen in a side street. American troops returned fire, killing all four attackers.

This week, the American forces massed 5,000 troops for a fresh offensive in the so-called triangle of death region stretching south of Baghdad, aiming to drive north to Sunni rebel strongholds closer to Baghdad. American officers, aware of the anger that the attack on Falluja stirred in Sunnis, have been careful to distinguish this new campaign south of the capital from the Falluja offensive.

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the American officer in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that while most of the country's 18 provinces were calm, "there's still a good deal of fighting to be done" in the six Sunni provinces where insurgents were most active.

State Department Worker Killed

The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 - A United States civilian official was killed today when the vehicle in which he was traveling came under fire outside the Green Zone government compound, a Reuters report quoting an unnamed American official in Washington said. The official was said to have identified the victim as Jim Mollen, a State Department employee who was working as an adviser to the Iraqi education ministry.

No immediate statement on the incident was issued by the American military command. It was not clear whether the attack was the same as one reported earlier in the day by the Iraqi police, who told Reuters in Baghdad that a suicide bomber had detonated his car near an American convoy traveling on an expressway overpass in western Baghdad shortly before noon, on the 10-mile route between the Green Zone and Baghdad's international airport that Iraqi insurgents have turned into one of the deadliest stretches of road in Iraq.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Mosul for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

THE OCCUPATION: Drawing From Its Past Wars, Britain Takes a Tempered Approach to Iraqi Insurgency

2004-10-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

October 17, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

AMARA, Iraq - They came with their regimental colors, embroidered flags recording battles in 18th-century India, in the Napoleonic wars, against Ottoman legions in Iraq in World War I, on the Normandy beaches, and in Malaya, Kenya and other colonial outposts after World War II.

For 8,900 British soldiers serving in Iraq, second largest among 31 foreign military contingents to the 140,000 American troops, the banners hanging at their bases are emblems of a collective memory - of how to prevail in foreign wars, and, just as surely, British officers say sardonically, of how to lose them.

Lately, in map-lined operations rooms, on jeep patrols across oil-rich deserts, and in clamorous mess halls serving favorites like steak-and-kidney pie, British soldiers serving at bases across Iraq's southernmost provinces say they have felt the lessons of history pressing in.

With American troops, the British are the tribunes of the two nations that led the Iraq invasion 18 months ago. Now, trapped with the Americans in a continuing war that neither nation anticipated when Baghdad fell, British officers and squaddies, as the enlisted men are called, speak, often like a Rudyard Kipling lament for the blighted hopes of soldiers bearing alien ideals into far-off lands.

"At the end of the day, we are the infidels, the crusaders, and the Iraqis would rather we were not here," said Maj. Jason Jordan, who commanded troops of the Cheshire Regiment besieged in a Basra outpost in August by fighters loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. "But as long as we're not doing any harm, and actually doing some good, they'll tolerate us."

As the insurgency lengthens, the British world-weariness strikes a telling contrast with the more visionary perspective of American commanders.

In recent weeks, the American command has set out to crush Mr. Sadr's fighters in the sprawling Shiite area of Baghdad called Sadr City, as well as the alliance of loyalists of the former government and Islamic militants who form the core of the resistance in cities across the Sunni Triangle. The Americans contend Iraqis will embrace Western-style freedoms in elections scheduled by Jan. 31 if the rebels can be beaten back.

The American offensive resulted in a truce last week under which Sar representatives offered a cease-fire and a turnover of heavy weapons for cash in return for an American pledge not to enter Sadr City. The weapons turnover met with some early success, but American officials cautioned that Mr. Sadr had accepted similar truces before, only to trigger new uprisings.

To prepare for national voting in January, the British have organized town council elections in the south, attracting voter turnouts of 10 percent to 25 percent. But ultimately, British officers say, Iraqis are likely to revert to more traditional governing models, tempered by tribal and religious loyalties, and, perhaps, the instinct for a strongman that helped Saddam Hussein build his dictatorship.

"They do things differently here, and to try and implant a view of democracy that works in North America and the United Kingdom is going to be fraught, to say the least," said Lt. Col. John Donnelly, the overall Cheshire Regiment commander in Basra. "Don't get me wrong, Iraqis do want some sort of democracy, that's a reality, but in the end, their future is for them to decide, not us."

The diverging perspectives have resonated in different fighting strategies. At Falluja, Najaf, Samarra and Tal Afar, and in Sadr City before the truce, the Americans have hit hammer-hard, seeking to root out and kill as many rebels as possible. The British, throughout the war, have favored "less robust" fighting to contain the rebels with defensive actions, not eliminate them.

British officers acknowledge that the different strategies reflect the heavier challenges the Americans have faced. American troops, spread out across 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, have faced rebels from the Sunni and Shiite communities. The British, in the Shiite south, have faced mainly Shiite attacks, culminating in the two widespread Sadr uprisings in April and August.

"Before April, compared to what the American troops in Baghdad and Falluja were facing, this was a holiday camp," said Maj. Justin Featherstone, 35, who led troops of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment in defense of another garrison besieged by Mr. Sadr's fighters in August, in Amara. "We were welcomed here as liberators, and we made a lot of progress. Then Sadr led his uprisings, and it all went horribly wrong."

Beyond the lower-level attacks they have faced, the British cite other reasons for using only "appropriate force," in mainly defensive operations. Long after empire, they say, they relearned the limits of military action from quelling 30 years of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland and as United Nations peacekeepers in Bosnia in the early 1990's.

In August, American forces crushed Mr. Sadr's fighters in Najaf, driving them from the city's golden shrine with tank fire, laser-guided bombs and armored assaults that left much of Najaf's old city in ruins.

In Basra and Amara, the south's two largest cities, Sadr fighters besieged British troops in isolated strongholds, pounding them with rocket, mortar and machine-gun fire that, in Amara, amounted to the heaviest assault British troops had endured since the Korean War.

The British successfully defended the two compounds, killing as many as 300 attackers, with only three British soldiers killed. But the British mounted no major counterstrikes, sparing neighboring localities and, British officers say, limiting civilian casualties.

"When Sadr's people kicked off, we could have jumped in with big boots and killed 400 to 500 people, but we couldn't have defeated them, because they would have melted away into the side streets, and we'd have created another Najaf," Colonel Donnelly said. "We've got to find a solution here that is based on nonviolence, or we'll be here for years and years."

British commanders noted some of the reasons for the tougher American responses, in particular, Mr. Sadr's occupation of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, the holiest in Shiite Islam, and the political and religious imperative of forcing him out; the location of Sadr City, only five miles from the seat of power in central Baghdad, was another special factor.

The Basra and Amara uprisings, the British say, were comparative sideshows, quick to subside once Najaf ended.

Brigadier Andrew Kennett, commander of the British battle group based in Basra, the core of a 12-nation contingent in the southernmost provinces, said one lesson Britain learned from its centuries straddling the globe - often reluctantly and painfully, he said - was the importance of adjusting to local cultures, and of not imposing alien solutions. "We do need to have a mind to the fact that some of these people have a legitimate political point of view," he said, speaking of Mr. Sadr.

British soldiers are encouraged to engage amicably with ordinary Iraqis and are taught simple Arabic phrases and the rudiments of Islamic belief.

As often as possible, they wear berets instead of helmets, travel in aging, soft-sided Land Rovers instead of armored vehicles, and mount foot patrols with lowered weapons, even through neighborhoods where they have recently taken enemy fire.

"Our motto is 'Smile, shoot, smile,' " said Colonel Donnelly of the Cheshire Regiment. "Our attitude is, 'Today, I'm your enemy, and I want to kill you, but tomorrow, I'll be your friend,' " he said.

Another lesson the British have taken from their experiences is the benefit that can flow from modest forms of aid directed at the neediest people in the communities they garrison. Major Featherstone said community leaders in Amara's poorest districts - mostly Sadr loyalists - complained this spring that the British were "complacent and arrogant oppressors who had done nothing" in a year in the city.

He said he asked the leaders to nominate their most deprived people for small grants. Drawing on Britain's $140 million aid budget for Iraq, he approved grants of $50 to $500 to help set up 180 small businesses, including a tea stall, a barber, a grocer, a tailor, a car mechanic, a blanket-sewer and a taxi driver. He said the businesses were "putting food on the table" for more than 2,000 people before the August uprising.

During the rebel attack, more than 600 mortars were fired at the football field-size British compound, Major Featherstone said, but three people who received grants appeared at the compound gates during the siege with receipts for the money they had received, and for 14 other beneficiaries' grants. He said he had a telephone call during the siege from a relative of a Sadr commander named Hussein, who told him that "Hussein wants to know if you're O.K."

Major Curry, at the base outside Amara, said the lesson from these and other experiences was that foreign troops in Iraq had to concentrate on the welfare of local communities, especially on reducing unemployment. "If we give these people something to live for, rather than die for, we will have won this war," he said. "We are not going to win in Iraq just by fighting."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

JUSTICE: U.S. Official Says Early Trials of Hussein and Others Are Unlikely, Despite Allawi's Demand

2004-09-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

September 25, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

AGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 24 - A senior American official helping to prepare for the trials of Saddam Hussein and other top officials of the former government said Friday that "the likelihood of trials in the near future is remote," despite a demand by Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, that they begin by November.

The official gave no estimate of when the trials would start, beyond saying it would depend on Iraqi judges' decisions on how wide ranging each case should be.

The official said Iraqis and Americans working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal, established by the American occupation authority this year to conduct the trials, were working methodically through a mass of evidence against Mr. Hussein and 11 other "high value" detainees who have been designated as the first to face trial. The key in each case, he said, was in establishing "command responsibility" for the widespread killing that occurred under Mr. Hussein's rule, and that was a "very complex" issue. "These cases proceed at their own pace," he said.

Asked to comment on Dr. Allawi's call for the trials to begin by November, made in an interview with The New York Times before Dr. Allawi departed for his visit to the United States this week, the American official replied, "He certainly didn't consult me first." Referring to years of experience working with the war crimes tribunal established in The Hague to try defendants from the wars in the former Yugoslavia, he added, "I'm just giving you my best estimate, having worked these cases for many years."

"You're talking about a 25-year period when you have numerous large crime bases, and investigation has to take place at all these bases," the official added. By the phrase "crime bases," he said, he was referring to events involving killing on a large scale that occurred during Mr. Hussein's rule from 1979 to 2003. Rather than organizing the tribunal's work around investigations of the individual crimes of accused Iraqi leaders, he said, the investigations were focusing on those events, and seeking to trace the role of Mr. Hussein and his associates in each of them.

The official made his remarks during a briefing at the American-run press center in the main government compound in Baghdad. An American Embassy official who set the ground rules for the briefing said the official could not be identified.

Because of recent violence aimed at government officials and at Americans working in civilian roles here, security has been extremely tight, especially for officials involved in the prosecution of Mr. Hussein and his top associates. When they venture out of the Baghdad compound as part of their investigations, they do so in heavily protected convoys or on American military helicopters.

The joint responsibility that grew out of Iraq's resumption of formal sovereignty 12 weeks ago extends to the tribunal, where 35 American lawyers and investigators from a unit known as the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, soon to rise to 50, work alongside dozens of Iraqi judges and investigators in preparing the trials.

When pressed by reporters, the American official refused to comment on recent developments at the tribunal involving the removal of at least two major Iraqi figures from positions of authority in a behind-the-scenes struggle that has drawn the personal involvement of Dr. Allawi. One of the men dismissed, Salem Chalabi, formerly the tribunal's chief administrator, has said he was forced out by Dr. Allawi after only five months of a three-year term so that the interim government could take "political control" of the tribunal and stage accelerated trials of Mr. Hussein and others for political advantage ahead of elections that are scheduled in January.

A senior judge appointed to be the tribunal's president was also dismissed this month, in a personal letter from Dr. Allawi maintaining that his appointment was illegal; the judge had wide powers over the trials, including choosing the five-judge panels that will hear the cases,

The American official said the ousted judge, Naim al-Egaili, had been replaced in recent days by another judge, whom he identified as Jamal Muhammad Mustafa. But the American official refused to discuss the political ramifications. The official went on to say the day-to-day work of the tribunal, investigating the crimes of the ousted government, had not been affected. "No one in any quarter has pressured us to do anything," he said. "I see these things in the press, but that's just the fact. Nothing." In commenting on the timing of the trials, the official said one main obstacle had been the failure of any Iraqi lawyers to volunteer as defense lawyers. Speaking of Mr. Hussein, he added: "He can have access to any lawyer he wants. But the problem from the get-go is that no Iraqi lawyer of record has come forward to represent him."

At a hearing on July 1, most of Mr. Hussein's associates asked for non-Iraqi lawyers, but the American official said none had come forward, either. In any case, he said, Iraqi law stipulates that a foreign lawyer can act here only if the defense case is led by an Iraqi. The official said that if no Iraqi lawyers came forward, the tribunal would ask the Iraqi Bar Association to nominate counsel.

Another problem, the official said, has been the insurgency across Iraq and the obstacle that has posed to on-site pursuit of evidence, especially at more than 260 mass grave sites.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

JUSTICE: Iraqis Battle Over Control of Panel to Try Hussein

2004-09-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

September 24, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 23 - A bitter political struggle has erupted over control of the special Iraqi tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein and his associates, with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his rivals maneuvering for influence over the appointment of judges, the timing of trials, the scope of charges and even who will stand trial and who will escape the death penalty by cutting deals with prosecutors.

That battle burst into the open on Thursday when Salem Chalabi, the American-trained lawyer appointed the tribunal's chief administrator in May, accused Dr. Allawi of dismissing him only five months into a three-year term so as to take "political control" of the tribunal.

International legal experts have become concerned about Dr. Allawi's effort to accelerate the tribunal's work and begin at least the first trial as early as November, before national elections scheduled for January. That would be at least six months earlier than officials have repeatedly said would be the minimum time needed to prepare for trials that will examine the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Mr. Chalabi said Dr. Allawi was seeking to speed some of the trials to gain popularity while moving to "quash any potential indictments" against other former Baath Party officials whom Dr. Allawi, a former Baathist himself, sees as possible allies.

"Show trials followed by speedy executions may help the interim government politically in the short term, but will be counterproductive for the development of democracy and the rule of law in Iraq in the long term," Mr. Chalabi said in a statement e-mailed to reporters from London. He appealed to "the international community," meaning primarily the United States, to "get more actively involved in the work of the tribunal" and end Dr. Allawi's interference.

Dr. Allawi has denied any intention of controlling the tribunal. In an interview in Baghdad last week, he said Mr. Chalabi had not been dismissed, but had resigned. He also denied manipulating tribunal appointments, saying he was only vaguely aware of the man named to be Mr. Chalabi's successor, Amer Bakri, identified by Mr. Chalabi on Thursday as a member of Dr. Allawi's political party, the Iraqi National Accord. Dr. Allawi said he did not know Mr. Bakri's first name. Mr. Bakri could not be reached for comment.

Dr. Allawi said the extent of his involvement with the tribunal had been to urge its officials to speed the trials, meeting a yearning among Iraqis for justice to be done to Mr. Hussein and others who inflicted decades of brutality on them. Referring to Mr. Chalabi and other tribunal officials who have said that it might take another year to bring the first of Mr. Hussein's top associates to trial, and perhaps two years for Mr. Hussein, he added: "It's too slow. It's something we want to get done and put it behind us."

But other Iraqi officials who are not members of the Iraqi National Accord have said that Mr. Chalabi's removal was only one of several moves by Dr. Allawi to take control of key tribunal posts. These officials have circulated a copy of a letter Dr. Allawi sent two weeks ago dismissing a senior judge named as president of the tribunal, Naim al-Egaili, saying his appointment was illegal. The tribunal's president will name the five-judge panels that will preside at the trials, and will also influence other issues, including the order in which Mr. Hussein and his lieutenants will come to trial, and the scope of the charges. No new president has been appointed.

The concern about the tribunal is part of a wider pattern of wariness among United States officials in Baghdad toward Dr. Allawi, who was named interim prime minister in June partly because the Bush administration was attracted by his reputation as a political hard-liner. His history - he was sent to London in the 1960's by Mr. Hussein to oversee Baath Party members there - was cited by American officials at the time of his appointment as an advantage, enabling Dr. Allawi, a Shiite, to reach out to the Sunni minority.

But after 12 weeks, Iraqi and American officials familiar with the relationship between the Americans and Dr. Allawi say, American respect for the Iraqi leader has been tempered by a growing sense that he is careless, even dismissive, of the checks and balances the occupation authority built into transitional political structures here.

Officials who voice these concerns include some who are rivals of Dr. Allawi's or who oppose his long-term political ambitions, but they also include people who have worked with him since the formal transfer of sovereignty.

Under Dr. Allawi and John D. Negroponte, the American ambassador, who wields extensive behind-the-scenes power, the Americans and Iraqis have taken care to keep their disputes hidden. But in recent weeks, Dr. Allawi has taken a number of steps, these Iraqi and American officials say, that have suggested that he may harbor ambitions to mold the government into an instrument of his personal will, curbing dissent and increasing the influence of the Iraqi National Accord.

Last week, Dr. Allawi dismissed Mowaffak al-Rubaie, his national security adviser, after disagreements over how to confront Moktada al Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric. While Dr. Rubaie favored a strategy aimed at coaxing Mr. Sadr's men into the political mainstream, Dr. Allawi insisted on military force.

Iraqi and American officials cite other examples. Asked by Iraqi and American commanders to nominate a list of officers for more than two dozen command posts in the Iraqi armed forces, Dr. Allawi put forward a list drawn entirely from his own political party, according to a knowledgeable Iraqi source who is an opponent of Dr. Allawi's. Senior American officers say care will be taken to see that appointments are not made by political favor.

The stage for a political tug of war over the tribunal was set when Salem Chalabi was chosen for his post by L. Paul Bremer III, chief of the American occupation authority that dissolved in June. Mr. Chalabi is a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, the exile leader who worked for years to encourage an American military overthrow of Mr. Hussein. Mr. Bremer endorsed Salem Chalabi's appointment earlier this year. Ahmad Chalabi was favored by the Pentagon to be Iraq's first post-Hussein president, but has since fallen from American favor.

The Chalabi appointment stirred immediate controversy. The tribunal was already under fire from experts who urged the United States to rely on an international court, like the one trying Slobodan Milosevic and other leaders from the former Yugoslavia. These experts said Salem Chalabi, in his late 30's, lacked legal experience, and that his ties to his uncle gave the tribunal added political taint.

With a $75 million budget from the United States and a team of international legal experts, the tribunal, working from offices in the American command compound in Baghdad, has been sifting through tons of documents and witness statements.

Its most public moment came on July 1, when Mr. Hussein and 11 of his top associates appeared in a temporary courtroom on an American military base near Baghdad airport to be informed that they were under investigation for crimes against humanity, and to be apprised of their legal rights. Shortly after, a judge from Iraq's Central Criminal Court, with links to senior officials in the Allawi government, issued warrants for both Ahmad and Salem Chalabi while they were outside Iraq - Ahmad for currency fraud, and Salem for involvement in the murder of a Finance Ministry official involved in an investigation of the Chalabi family's business dealings.

Both called the warrants part of an Allawi government vendetta, and both have returned to Iraq. Ahmad Chalabi resumed his political activities, seeking allies for a challenge to Dr. Allawi in the January elections. Salem Chalabi remained out of Iraq until last week, when he made a brief trip to Baghdad, met with the judge who issued the arrest warrant, then returned to London. Dr. Allawi and other officials said after he left that Salem Chalabi had resigned, a claim that Mr. Chalabi dismissed in his e-mail message on Thursday.

"The interim Iraqi government has resorted to the use of illegal means to try to remove me and take political control of the tribunal," he said. "My insistence on the independence of the tribunal was proving inconvenient for the secret policy of the government to grant amnesty or otherwise work out deals with senior Baathists inside and outside Iraq.

"Several of these Baathists are concerned about their possible indictment; accordingly, the interim government has moved to take control of the tribunal to quash any potential indictments."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'THE FALL OF BAGHDAD' > Awaiting His Countrymen's Invasion

2004-09-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Review of book by a reporter for The New Yorker who traveled with John F. Burns in Iraq in Spring 2003

September 23, 2004
By JANET MASLIN
THE FALL OF BAGHDAD
By Jon Lee Anderson
389 pages. Penguin Press. $24.95.

n the eve of the American invasion, with much of the international press corps hastily leaving town, Jon Lee Anderson imagined what it might feel like to be on the deck of the sinking Titanic. The lifeboats were leaving, but he had chosen to say behind.

Mr. Anderson continued his brave reporting for The New Yorker. Now he has assembled a book-length description of what he heard and saw. In this measured, keenly descriptive account, hindsight gives way to horror as the early rumblings of war become reality and the city of Baghdad is changed beyond recognition. Every Arab in Mr. Anderson's account, from Saddam Hussein's personal physician to a cheesemaker on the street, reflects the dread, fury and frustration of feeling helpless in the face of this nightmare.

The early sections of this book are its least violent. But they are its most painful, since they are filled with prophetic comments about the grim consequences of an American occupation. Mr. Anderson, whose version of events begins in November 2002, repeatedly hears that Iraqis dislike foreigners, are suspicious of Americans and cynically expect to be exploited for the sake of their oil resources. The book also preserves many now-quaint assertions about the beloved and benign nature of Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Anderson chose to report from Iraq in relative freedom: he was not embedded with troops, although he went through obligatory training about the perils of chemical and biological warfare. (From his notes on warnings about nerve gas: "You're dead, basically.") Even so, he reports the presence of Iraqis assigned to keep an eye on him and the limits on what he was permitted to witness.

"You mean you and I can both see it, but we have to pretend it's not there?" he asks his driver in disbelief, at the sight of one of Mr. Hussein's overweening construction projects. The driver nodded, Mr. Anderson writes, "and from the tense expression on his face I could see that he was perfectly serious."

"The Fall of Baghdad" describes encounters with many alarmed and opinionated prewar sources. "With regards to the probable U.S. attack on Iraq," an Iranian newspaper editor tells Mr. Anderson, "we believe this is aimed at dominating a country that can be a source of cheap energy." He continues: "The U.S. has put its big feet in the region, with the toes in Afghanistan and the heel in Iraq, and we are somewhere in the middle, in the hollow of the foot, and we expect it to put pressure on us at any moment. We do not really believe all the U.S. talk about democracy and fighting terror."

It suits the author's own agenda to repeat such opinions frequently. But Mr. Anderson also knows when he is being spun or patronized: he describes the way one sheik "warmed to his role of Eastern savant, dispensing oracular wisdom to an unlicked cub of the West." Later on, as the talk turns to escape plans and biohazard protection gear, the "hemorrhagic flow of bluster and conspiracy theory" gives way to more pragmatic considerations. The author feels uneasy as an American in Baghdad, though he describes only "a strange, disquieting feeling" rather than a more reflective response.

Mr. Anderson functions as reasonably matter-of-fact observer, even when what he witnesses is overwhelming. As reporters are brought to Iraqi hospitals to view monstrous injuries, he lets the graphic details speak for themselves; no further comment is needed. When familiar places in Baghdad simply vanish, replaced by crater holes, he registers an uncomplicated disbelief. And when the strange mix of sounds - donkey, rooster, cruise missile - becomes overpowering, he is calm enough to hear a symphonic aspect. The guns of A-10 Warthogs, which fire 4,000 bullets a minute, have a special sound, after all.

This is not to say that the author is not frightened: he is, and he vividly describes the perils faced by a reporter in the midst of such danger. (Much of his time is spent with John F. Burns of The New York Times.) But he is also amazed at how little of Baghdad he had seen before, and he is an intrepid explorer of newly revealed places.

Mr. Anderson's accounts of much-described sights - like the dismantling of Mr. Hussein's statue, or a ruined Hussein palace strewn with, among other things, pictures of Britney Spears - are of less interest than his one-on-one encounters with people caught in the crossfire. He sees Iraqis who welcome American marines with cries of "Bush good" and "Mister good good." He also hears the shopkeeper who announces: "You should leave. Go away. I hate you." If the book's considerable strength lies in the candor of such moments, its weakness is for angry, repetitive ranting. Mr. Anderson's descriptions of unalloyed grief among Iraqi civilians and of the vagaries experienced by formerly powerful friends of the old regime are far more moving than his replaying of impromptu speeches. He has too willing an ear for the man on the street who proclaims: "Middle East peace should not be secured on the backs of the Iraqi people. The Americans should see us as human beings, not only as oil." However heartfelt such declarations may be, they have a practiced sameness on the page.

"The Fall of Baghdad" is as current as it is important: it goes as far as mid-June 2004. Although one of Mr. Anderson's acquaintances disappears mysteriously, and turns out to have been detained at the Abu Ghraib prison, the book does not venture into larger details about Abu Ghraib. That is another, even worse story.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

LIFE IN THE BULL'S EYE: Baghdad's Strong Man Struggles to Keep His Grip

2004-09-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

September 19, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Ayad Allawi will have his right wrist in a cast when he arrives in the United States this week for his first visit as Iraq's interim prime minister, and it will provide the 59-year-old neurosurgeon with a powerful talking point. Asked about the wrist in an interview here as he prepared to leave for London, New York and Washington, Dr. Allawi joshed: "I've been shooting people, didn't you know?"

Shortly after he took office in June, stories circulated of Dr. Allawi visiting a detention center in the Baghdad suburb and shooting several detained insurgents dead. The story quickly faded, with American officials saying they had no information to confirm it, and Dr. Allawi dismissing it as a "ridiculous" fiction. But a curious thing happened: many Iraqis who heard the story told friends they would not be unhappy if it were true, because it would show that Iraq finally had a strongman at its helm again, one who might restore order.

In the interview on Thursday at his heavily guarded residence in the Green Zone compound in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi went on to give another explanation. What really happened, he said, was that he lost his temper at his Iraqi aides and pounded the table so hard that a bone snapped. "I was angry," he said.

The issue, aides said later, was that Iraqi government spokesmen had reported that a man arrested by American and Iraqi troops in Tikrit was Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's second-in-command, but a DNA test proved them wrong. An embarrassed Dr. Allawi seems to have concluded that, for that moment, he had been made to look less like a square-jawed sheriff than a bungler.

Now, as he makes his first trip to the United States as America's chief partner in Iraq, Dr. Allawi finds himself at a tipping point.

Twelve weeks after Americans transferred sovereignty to Iraqis, he is more endangered than ever. If Dr. Allawi was popular among moderate Iraqis in the first weeks after his interim government took over in June, it is plain now that his grace period has expired.

In the suicide bombings and attacks on American military vehicles in the last week in Baghdad, at least 75 Iraqi civilians, policemen and police recruits were killed. One constant was the fury that survivors turned on the Allawi government, accused of being the creation of the American troops who brought miseries to Iraq, and of failing so far to stem the growing violence.

Visiting Dr. Allawi at his sprawling residence is a short course in just how bad the situation has become for anybody associated with the American purpose in Iraq. To reach the house is to navigate a fantastical obstacle course of checkpoints, with Iraqi police cars and Humvees parked athwart a zigzag course through relays of concrete barriers. An hour or more is taken up with body searches and sniffing by dogs, while American soldiers man turreted machine guns. A boxlike infrared imaging device can detect the body heat of anybody approaching through a neighboring playground. The final security ring is manned by C.I.A.-trained guards from Iraqi Kurdistan. If Dr. Allawi were Ian Fleming's Dr. No, no more elaborate defenses could be conceived.

This is the man who has been chosen to lead Iraq to the haven of a democratic future, but he is sealed off about as completely as he could be from ordinary Iraqis, in the virtual certainty that insurgents will kill him if they ever get a clear shot.

Even his opponents would not contest that Dr. Allawi is brave. He flies aboard American helicopters to the most dangerous cities in Iraq: Najaf, last month, at the height of the insurrection there; Samarra, more recently, to negotiate with tribal chiefs.

Yet it is increasingly hard to see how he can avoid becoming an Iraqi Kerensky, an interim figure fated to be overwhelmed by forces that seem, increasingly, to be beyond the power of any reasoned effort to contain them. Much of his effort is now dedicated to creating the conditions for elections in January to choose an assembly that will frame a permanent constitution.

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has said he finds it hard to see how an election could be held under current conditions, but Dr. Allawi, in the interview, said he remains unwaveringly committed to the January vote. So are American officials.

The immutable fact, acknowledged by all, is that much blood will have to be spilled in American-led offensives if any election is to be possible. The plan that American commanders and Dr. Allawi have laid out is to regain control of predominantly Sunni Muslim cities - Falluja, Ramadi, Samarra, Baquba, among others - and to do so with Iraq's newly retrained security forces acting as the point of the spear. Simultaneously, they aim to root out the potential for recurrent uprisings in the Shiite population centers that lurks in the shape of the Mahdi Army of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

In post-occupation Iraq, the Americans now advising Dr. Allawi have begun speaking not of insisting on a Jeffersonian democracy but of creating a "working democracy" that excludes rabble-rousers like Mr. Sadr, of building Iraqi forces who can help crush the cleric and other enemies, and of getting out.

For these purposes, Dr. Allawi - the man who waved that gun about the Baghdad campus 35 years ago, the man who pounds his desk when aides embarrass him - is considered a safe pair of hands. His favorite undertaking is to travel with American commanders to review the new Iraqi battalions that will soon be asked to march into the rebels' guns and to exult in what they, together with American soldiers, may accomplish.

In recent days, Dr. Allawi toured a base near the Baghdad airport with Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American officer now charged with righting the mess that had been made of training Iraq's new fighting units, many of which mutinied or disintegrated the moment they were asked to go up against rebels in the spring battles at Falluja and Najaf.

American officers concede that the true mettle of the thousands of Iraqis now pouring out of the training camps will not be known until they are asked to fight for real, but Dr. Allawi, watching recruits attacking mock terrorist safe houses and staging helicopter-borne assaults, could hardly contain his enthusiasm. As smoke cleared from a mock attack, he turned to his new security adviser, Qassim Daoud, and asked, "Qassim, Why do you keep telling me we don't have anything?"

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

For Hussein, a Spartan Life at His Former Palace

2004-09-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

September 19, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 18 - Nine months after American troops pulled him disheveled and disoriented from an underground bunker near his hometown, Tikrit, Saddam Hussein is living in an air-conditioned 10-by-13 foot cell on the grounds of one of his former palaces outside Baghdad, tending plants, proclaiming himself Iraq's lawful ruler, and reading the Koran and books about past Arab glory.

American and Iraqi officials who have visited the former Iraqi leader say he wears plastic sandals and an Arab dishdasha robe, eats American soldiers' ready-to-eat meals for breakfast, and is permitted three hours' daily exercise in a courtyard outside his cell. He has been flown by Black Hawk helicopter to an American military hospital in Baghdad, where doctors ran tests for an enlarged prostate, which they believe could be an early pointer to cancer.

He has undergone hours of interrogation by investigators preparing evidence for his trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. But he has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, or to show remorse for the hundreds of thousands of people killed during his 24-year dictatorship, officials say. He has insisted that his position as Iraq's president gave him legal authority for all he did and that his victims were "traitors." At every encounter, the officials say, he insists he is still the constitutionally elected president.

More than 80 other "high-value detainees" at the same prison - including more than 40 who were on the Pentagon's "pack of cards" of Iraq's most-wanted fugitives - are kept away from Mr. Hussein, said Bakhtiar Amin, the Iraqi human rights minister. Mr. Hussein has been in solitary confinement since his capture on Dec. 13, officials said, because of a fear that he would try to rig evidence or intimidate old associates in the prison. But the core of the group, 11 men who appeared with him in court on July 1, are allowed to exercise together, and to play chess, poker, backgammon and dominos. Offsetting those privileges, they have faced indignities that Mr. Hussein has been spared, including, at the outset, digging their own latrines. But the strict protocol favored by authoritarian governments still rules. "They call each other by their old titles, Mr. Minister of this, Mr. Minister of that," Mr. Amin said. "It is as if nothing has changed."

When Mr. Hussein appeared in court to be advised of his legal rights and of the charges under investigation, officials said it could be two years or more before he was brought to trial. None of the other former officials who appeared with him were likely to come to trial for as much as a year, they said, because of the tons of documents to be processed, as well as the need to interview the thousands of Iraqis who have come forward as potential witnesses.

But the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has decided to speed the legal processes. It has begun a shake-up of the staff at the special tribunal set up last year to hear the cases and hopes to begin the first high-profile trial, probably against Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein's known as Chemical Ali, by November. Mr. Hussein's trial will follow, perhaps next year if the prosecutors are ready, Iraqi and American officials say.

In an interview at his heavily guarded residence in Baghdad on Thursday, Dr. Allawi said the government had "received the resignation" of Salem Chalabi, the American-educated lawyer who has been the court's chief administrator. He is a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, the exile leader who was favored by the Pentagon before the March 2003 invasion, but who has recently been shunned by the American hierarchy here. Ahmad Chalabi has set himself up as a rival to Dr. Allawi among Iraq's majority Shiites, and his nephew, who has been implicated by the Allawi government in a murder case unrelated to the work of the tribunal, has been out of Iraq for most of the past two months.

Small Pleasures

In prison, Mr. Hussein has asked for some vestiges of the pleasures he enjoyed when he moved between dozens of palaces. "This was a man whose regime used a shredder to turn human bodies into ground beef," said Mr. Amin, the 46-year-old rights minister, who spent years abroad as an exile chronicling the abuses of Mr. Hussein's government and petitioning foreign governments and rights organizations to shun the Iraqi government.

"And now he sits there in his cell and asks for muffins and cookies and cigars," he said.

Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants are being held at Camp Cropper, a heavily fortified compound that crouches behind high walls topped with rolls of razor wire, beneath sandbagged watchtowers manned by soldiers with machine guns. The camp lies within a vast American complex known as Camp Victory, which includes a network of palaces as well as lakes that Mr. Hussein filled with fish. Planes using Baghdad International Airport pass low over the prison, 10 miles from the center of Baghdad.

For the trials, courtrooms are being readied in one of the vast, neo-imperialist buildings inside the former Republican Palace compound in central Baghdad that make up the Green Zone, the headquarters for the Allawi government and 2,500 American military and civilian officials. The five-judge panels that will preside at the juryless trials will have the power to impose death sentences on Mr. Hussein and his associates, some of whom wept when they were told at the July hearing that they faced possible execution. For Mr. Hussein and his victims, a trial in the new court building, which The New York Times was asked not to identify for security reasons, will have a special irony. Mr. Hussein, who favored an architectural style emphasizing huge sandstone columns and portals, will face a reckoning in one of the buildings he erected to glorify his rule. In the dock, he will be a short walk away from the Republican Palace beside the Tigris River, once his main seat of power.

The Allawi government believes that the Iraqis, subjected to decades of terror, will begin to recover only when they see the men responsible brought to account. "Without justice, I don't see any possibility of healing the wounds in this society," Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, said. "These people turned Iraq into a 'massgrave-istan' by the scale of their crimes."

"They made an industry of murder," he said.

Establishing Legitimacy

There are political pressures, too. Dr. Allawi will be a candidate in elections set for January, a crucial step toward the goal of a constitutionally established, popularly elected government by January 2006. With the mounting insurgency, he needs to bolster his waning popularity among Iraqis who increasingly blame him for the chaos. By putting top figures from the former government on trial, aides believe, he can remind Iraqis of the trauma that ended with their overthrow.

In the interview, Dr. Allawi said political calculations and a desire for revenge - he was nearly killed by assassins Mr. Hussein sent to his exile home in London, who attacked him with an ax while he slept, leaving him hospitalized for a year - played no part in his decision to accelerate the trials. Rather, he said, what he sought was a catharsis. "We need to bury the past," he said.

Dr. Allawi was a rising student leader in the governing Baath Party in the 1960's when he first met Mr. Hussein. He recalled him as a "thug who enjoyed hurting others," and as a man whose rule had been "like a horror movie." Now, he said, Mr. Hussein was paying the price. "My guess is that Saddam is dying every day," he said. "He is in prison, he is alone, he has lost everything, he has no power, nothing; and to him, that is worse than death."

Western legal experts familiar with the tribunal's work say they doubt the tribunal can meet Dr. Allawi's timetable for a November start to the trials. In many cases, the preparation of evidence is far from complete, and so far, the tribunal has found no Iraqi lawyers to defend Mr. Hussein and his associates.

In July, several defendants, including Mr. Majid, who is alleged to have led the chemical weapons attacks on scores of Kurdish villages that included the bombing of Halabja in March 1998 that killed at least 5,000 people, said they wanted lawyers from elsewhere in the Arab world, but none have come forward. "The high-value criminals have been informed about this, that no Iraqi lawyers are willing to take their cases, and that the foreign lawyers who said that they would didn't come forward, either," Mr. Amin said.

In his cell, Mr. Hussein has a fold-up bed, a small desk and a plastic chair, as well as a supply of bottled water and ice, a prayer mat and a choice of more than 170 books from a library supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross. He reads Arabic-language books with a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles, officials said, including tales from nearly 1,000 years ago, when Baghdad was the capital of the Islamic world.

On visits to the Army's hospital in the Green Zone, Mr. Hussein has staked out his independence in other ways. In the hospital - named for Ibn Sina, a scientific pioneer of the early Islamic world - he has been treated by American military doctors and Iraqi physicians who were on his presidential medical team. Near wards filled with wounded American soldiers, he has undergone blood tests and scans that have confirmed that he has an enlarged prostate gland, medical officials said, as well as a hernia problem and trouble with one of his eyes.

But he has refused a surgical biopsy that might determine whether the prostate condition was cancerous, a decision officials involved said was common among American men of Mr. Hussein's age, 67, who often choose not to take the biopsy when they are told that the condition could take years to become life-threatening. "He has time," one official said. "There is no health issue that would prevent him standing trial."

Another official said Mr. Hussein had helped an American Navy surgeon take blood by gripping a tourniquet on his arm, and remarked, in English, "Perhaps I should have been a doctor, not a politician."

In the courtyard by his cell, Mr. Hussein has placed white-painted stones around the plants he tends, a fact that struck Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, as bizarre. "It's an irony of history," he said. "This is a man who committed some of the biggest acts of ecocide in history, when he drained the marshes in southern Iraq, used chemical weapons against 250 Kurdish villages, and shipped whole palm tree plantations to the charlatan leaders of the Arab world who were his shoeshine boys.

"And now he's a gardener."

Mr. Amin said Mr. Hussein had been denied newspapers, radio and television, and thus knew little about the political events in Iraq that have followed his capture. But he said the former ruler was upset when he was told that a prominent Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, had been named by the United States to replace him as president.

"He was shaken and he was very upset," Mr. Amin said. "He couldn't accept that." He added: "He's a megalomaniac and a psychotic. He has never expressed any remorse for any of his victims. He is a man without a conscience. He is a beast."

Therapy Sessions Declined

An American general said Mr. Hussein had been offered sessions with American military psychologists, but had refused them, as had all his closest associates. Still, all 12 are watched by an American mental health team - especially under interrogation - for any sign that they may be contemplating suicide. None has given cause for concern so far, the general said. Other officials gave a somewhat different picture, saying that some of the men had bouts of depression and complained bitterly about being denied family visits.

In the converted mosque annex at Camp Victory that was used as a courtroom in July, several of the former leaders seemed deeply shaken when told they faced a possible death penalty. Several blamed Mr. Hussein for the killings, and said they were only following orders. Since then, Iraqi officials said, several have offered to cooperate with their interrogators. One is Tariq Aziz, the cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking former deputy prime minister, who was Mr. Hussein's diplomatic emissary; another is Barzan al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein's half-brother.

Mr. Amin said he was hailed by Mr. Tikriti during a visit to Camp Cropper. "Somebody called out, 'Mr. Minister! Mr. Minister!' and said, 'Why are you treating me like Ali Hassan al-Majid? I am not one of them, everybody knows about the deep rivalry within my family' " - a reference, Mr. Amin said, to an incident in the early 1990's when Uday Hussein, the former ruler's oldest son, who was married to Mr. Tikriti's daughter, shot and seriously wounded his father-in-law in the legs during an argument over his treatment of his wife.

"He was depressed, it was a cry for help," Mr. Amin said. "But I told him, 'If you want to see the list of your crimes, I will show it to you. It is a long one.' "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

One by One, Iraqi Cities Become No-Go Zones

2004-09-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

September 5, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At a recent meeting with a group of tribal sheiks, an American general spoke with evident frustration about the latest Iraqi city to fall into the hands of insurgents.

"Not one dime of American taxpayers' money will come into your city until you help us drive out the terrorists," Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in his base in Tikrit, tapping the table to make sure he was understood.

The sheiks nodded, smiled and withdrew, back to the city that neither they, nor the American military, any longer control.

The city under discussion was Samarra, a small metropolis north of Baghdad known for a dazzling ninth-century minaret that winds 164 feet into the air. In the heart of the area called the Sunni Triangle, Samarra is the most recent place where the American military has decided that pulling out and standing back may be the better part of valor, even if insurgents take over.

In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein.

The calls are rising for the Americans to pull out of even more areas, notably Sadr City, the sprawling neighborhood in eastern Baghdad that is the main base for the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. There, leaders of his Mahdi Army are demanding that American soldiers, except those sent in to do reconstruction work, get out.

Negotiations with rebel leaders foundered last week on precisely the issue of the freedom of American soldiers to enter the area; the Iraqi government, possibly with American backing, refused to accept the militia's demand. Even so, the point seemed clear enough: where Iraqis once tolerated American soldiers as a source of stability in their neighborhoods, they increasingly see them as a cause of the violence. Take out the Americans, the Iraqis say, and you take out the problem. Leave us alone, and we will sort our own problems.

"All we want is for the Americans to stay out," said Yusef al-Nasiri, a top aide to Mr. Sadr. "When the Americans come into the city, they insult our people. That's when the people get nervous. It makes them uncomfortable."

That certain Iraqis believe their cities and neighborhoods would be better off without American soldiers is neither new nor surprising; that is what the guerrillas' insurgency, now in its 17th month, is all about. What is new, however, is that the Americans, in certain cases, appear to agree or have decided that the cost to prove otherwise would be too high.

The pullback began in the west, in Falluja, which the Marines surrounded and attacked in April, after the killing and mutilation of four American contract employees. The Marines moved to within sight of the city center, but called off their attack after a public outcry spurred by reports that as many as 600 Iraqis had been killed.

Since then, American plans to have a group of former Baathist officers take control have collapsed, and the city is now run by a group of Islamic fundamentalists called the "Islamic council of holy warriors." The Americans do not go inside.

In recent months, much of the rest of the surrounding area, Anbar Province, has slipped away from American control. Insurgents roam freely in the provincial capital, Ramadi, and the Americans appear to have abandoned a permanent presence inside the city.

Even in the once-friendly Shiite areas, the Americans are giving way to local demands that they stay away. When American fighters expelled the Mahdi Army from the shrines in Karbala and Najaf, a condition for each of the peace agreements was that the Americans pull back.

There is a huge difference, of course, between the pullbacks in Falluja and Samarra and the ones in the Shiite cities. In Karbala and Najaf, the Americans cleared the way for Iraqi police officers. The struggle over Sadr City is over just that - who would take control, the Iraqi police or the Mahdi Army. The Americans, who have watched repeatedly as the Iraqi police have retreated before Mr. Sadr's militia and as the Mahdi Army has broken its promises, clearly fear the worst.

In places like Falluja, Samarra and Ramadi, on the other hand, the Americans and the Iraqi government appear to have forfeited their influence. Residents of all three places say insurgents are in charge.

Falluja, for instance, has become a haven for insurgents and terrorists, including, the Americans believe, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian thought to be responsible for a number of car bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians. In Falluja, the insurgents are free to carry out their own brand of justice, like the public lashings of people suspected of theft and rape, and the videotaped beheading last month of Suleiman Mar'awi, one of the city's National Guard commanders.

Most significant of all, the withdrawal from these cities calls into question the practicality of nationwide elections scheduled to take place before the end of January. At the moment, the Americans appear to be prepared to hold elections without cities like Falluja and Ramadi. But excluding the largely Sunni Arab areas from the elections would raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. Already, one of the country's leading Sunni groups, the Sunni Clerics Association, boycotted the selection of the National Council, which serves as a de facto Parliament here.

"We think the elections will be fake," said Abdul Salam al-Qubesi, a leading Sunni cleric and a member of the association.

There are indications that American commanders would like to reassert their control over some of these no-go zones before the January elections; in purely military terms, they have little doubt that they could. In Falluja, a Marine commander said that at the time he ordered his men to halt their offensive in April, they were just two or three days from capturing the middle of the city.

But the question now, as it was then, is at what cost, not just in American lives, but in American credibility, if Iraqi casualties begin to mount. "We could go into Samarra tomorrow if we wanted to," said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the First Infantry Division. "But we want to arrive at an Iraqi solution."

The problem facing the American leadership here is whether, in places like Falluja and Samarra, there are Iraqi solutions they cannot accept.

John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Journalist From Italy Killed in Iraq by Captors

2004-09-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

By John. F. Burns
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Friday, Sept. 27 - The Arab news channel Al Jazeera reported early Friday that it had received a videotape from a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq showing the killing of an Italian journalist, Enzo Baldoni, who disappeared last week while traveling to Najaf. Italy's Ansa news agency quoted Italian officials in Iraq as confirming the Al Jazeera report.

Enzo Baldoni
Originally uploaded by juggernautco.

A spokesman for Al Jazeera, Jihad Ballout, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the satellite network had received the tape showing the killing but decided against broadcasting it out of sensitivity for its viewers.

"To the best of our knowledge, it indicates that the hostage-takers carried out their threat," Mr. Ballout said. The Italian Foreign Ministry told reporters in Rome that it was checking the report.

Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, condemned the killing, saying, "There are no words for an act lacking any humanity and which at a stroke cancels out centuries of civilization and takes us back to the dark ages of barbarity."

The group that claimed to have carried out the killing, the Islamic Army, issued a statement shortly after Mr. Baldoni's disappearance last Friday saying it could not guarantee his safety unless Italy withdrew its 3,000-member military contingent from Iraq within 48 hours.

The Italian government rejected the demand, saying it would keep its "civil and military" presence in Iraq. A subsequent Italian government statement, issued as the deadline neared, suggested that the Italian troops might be withdrawn if requested by Iraq's interim government.

An American journalist and documentary filmmaker, Micah Garen, was freed by Islamic militants on Sunday, 10 days after he was taken hostage in the southern city of Nasiriya. In his case, the kidnappers made a similar demand, saying he would be killed unless American troops were withdrawn from Najaf within 48 hours.

Mr. Garen, 36, and his Iraqi interpreter were released after a Nasiriya cleric representing the Mahdi Army, the militia force that has battled American troops in Najaf, said Mr. Garen had done a "service" for Iraq with his investigation into the looting of antiquities at ancient sites near Nasiriya.

The cleric also cited a report filed by Mr. Garen in which he said he had film of an Iraqi ambulance being fired on by Italian troops in Nasiriya, killing a pregnant woman.

The French news agency Agence France-Presse quoted colleagues of Mr. Baldoni at the Milan-based news magazine Diario della Settimana as saying they were stunned by reports of his death.

"We were so optimistic," Gianni Barbacetto, one of the magazine's staff, said. "We couldn't believe he wouldn't get out."

Mr. Baldoni, 56, was the 12th journalist this year to be kidnapped in Iraq, according to figures given by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Most have been freed, but two French reporters who also disappeared while driving to Najaf last week remain missing. They are Christian Chesnot, a reporter with Radio France Internationale, and Georges Malbrunot, a reporter with Le Figaro.

Mr. Baldoni appeared in a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera after his disappearance saying that he had traveled to Iraq to write a book about the Iraqi resistance, and that he had worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross.

Colleagues in Italy said that he normally worked in advertising and copywriting and contributed articles to Diario della Settimana.

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INSURGENCY: In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay

2004-08-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and ERIK ECKHOLM

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 - While American troops have been battling Islamic militants to an uncertain outcome in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, events in two Sunni Muslim cities that stand astride the crucial western approaches to Baghdad have moved significantly against American plans to build a secular democracy in Iraq.

Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts who penetrate militant ranks. Even bombing raids appear to strengthen the fundamentalists, who blame the Americans for scores of civilian deaths.

American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib.

In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause.

The national guard commander and the governor were both forced into humiliating confessions, denouncing themselves as "traitors" on videotapes that sell in the Falluja marketplace for 50 cents. The tapes show masked men ending the guard commander's halting monologue, toppling him to the ground, and sawing off his head, to the accompaniment of recorded Koranic chants ordaining death for those who "make war upon Allah." The governor is shown with a photograph of himself with an American officer, sobbing as he repents working with the "infidel Americans," then being rewarded with a weeping reunion with his sons.

In another taped sequence available in the Falluja market, a mustached man identifying himself as an Egyptian is shown kneeling in a flowered shirt, confessing that he "worked as a spy for the Americans," planting electronic "chips" used for setting targets in American bombing raids. The man says he was paid $150 for each chip laid, then he, too, is tackled to the ground by masked guards while a third masked man, a burly figure who proclaims himself a dispenser of Islamic justice, pulls a 12-inch knife from a scabbard, grabs the Egyptian by the scalp, and severs his head.

The situation across Anbar represents the latest reversal for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which sought to assert control with a spring offensive in Falluja and Ramadi that incurred some of the heaviest American casualties of the war, and a far heavier toll, in the hundreds, among Falluja's resistance fighters and civilians. The offensive ended, mortifyingly for the marines, in a decision to pull back from both cities and entrust American hopes to the former Baathists.

The American rationale was that military victory would come only by flattening the two cities, and that the better course lay in handing important government positions to former loyalists of the ousted government, who would work, over time, to wrest control from the Islamic militants who had emerged from the shadows to build strongholds there. The culmination of that approach came with the recruitment of the so-called Falluja Brigade, led by a former Army general under Mr. Hussein, and composed of a motley assembly of former Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, who marched into the city in early May, wearing old Iraqi military uniforms, backed with American-supplied weapons and money.

But the Falluja Brigade is in tatters now, reduced to sharing tented checkpoints on roads into the city with the militants, its headquarters in Falluja abandoned, like the buildings assigned to the national guard. Men assigned to the brigade, and to the two guard battalions, have mostly fled, Iraqis in Falluja say, taking their families with them, and handing their weapons to the militants.

The militants' principal power center is a mosque in Falluja led by an Iraqi cleric, Abdullah al-Janabi, who has instituted a Taliban-like rule in the city, rounding up people suspected of theft and rape and sentencing them to publicly administered lashes, and, in some cases, beheading. But Mr. Janabi appears to have been working in alliance with an Islamic militant group, Unity and Holy War, that American intelligence has identified as the vehicle of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist with links to Al Qaeda whom the Americans have blamed for many of the suicide bombings in Baghdad, which is just 35 miles from Falluja, and in other Iraqi cities.

The videotapes showing the killing of the guard commander, the humiliation of the governor, and the beheading of the Egyptian all display the black-and-yellow flag of the Zarqawi group as a backdrop, and the passages of the Koran chanted as an accompaniment to the killings are drawn from passages of the Muslim holy book that have accompanied some of the videotaped pronouncements by Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Iraqis who have watched the Falluja tapes say the Egyptian's executioner speaks in a cultured Arabic that is foreign, possibly Jordanian or Palestinian.

A Severe Blow in Falluja

Perhaps the harshest blow to the American position in Falluja came with the Aug. 13 execution of the national guard commander, Suleiman Mar'awi, a former officer in Mr. Hussein's army with family roots in Falluja. In the tape of his killing, he is seen in his camouflaged national guard uniform, with an Iraqi flag at his shoulder, confessing to his leadership of a plot to stage an uprising in the city on Aug. 20 that was to have been coordinated with an American offensive. For that purpose, he says, he recruited defectors among the militants' ranks and met frequently with Marine commanders outside the city to settle details of the attack.

American commanders in Baghdad acknowledged ruefully that Mr. Mar'awi had been killed, but they denied that there was any plan for an offensive. Still, Marine commanders at Camp Falluja, a sprawling base less than five miles east of the city, have been telling reporters for weeks that the city has become little more than a terrorist camp, providing a haven for Iraqi militants and for scores of non-Iraqi Arabs, many of them with ties to Al Qaeda, who have homed in on Falluja as the ideal base to conduct a holy war against the United States. Eventually, the Marine officers have said, American hopes of creating stability in Iraq will necessitate a new attack on the city, this time one that will not be halted before it can succeed.

Some of those officers have also acknowledged that Iraqi "scouts" working for the Americans, some disguised as militants, others working for the national guard and police, have been a source of intelligence on militant activities in Falluja, and on the location of bombing targets. The American command says it has carried out many bombing raids since the Marine pullback from the city in May, killing scores of militants. One such raid that was reported this week in a popular Baghdad newspaper, Al-Adala, said that 13 Yemenis had been killed in an air raid in Falluja as they prepared to carry out suicide bombing attacks in Baghdad, and that the Yemeni government was negotiating to bring the bodies home.

Among militants in Falluja, there has been one point of agreement with the Americans - that many of the bombing raids have hit militant safe houses, and with pinpoint accuracy. A clue as to how this has been possible is given in the tapes of the beheadings of Mr. Mar'awi, the national guard commander, and of the Egyptian, a man in his mid-30's who identifies himself on the tape as Muhammad Fawazi. Both men confess to having planted electronic homing "chips" for the Americans. As they speak, the tapes show a man wearing a red-checkered kaffiyeh headdress holding a rectangular device, colored green and encased in clear plastic, about the size of a matchbox.

The tape of Mr. Fawazi's execution breaks from the scene of the Egyptian kneeling in confession to a combat-camera film from a bombing raid on Falluja that has been posted on numerous Internet Web sites in recent weeks. The black-and-white tape, giving the pilot's eye view, shows a district of Falluja on a moonlit night, with the targeting crosshairs fixed on a large, low building across the street from a mosque, whose minaret throws a moon shadow onto the street. The sound of the pilot breathing into his mask can be clearly heard, with an exchange with a controller that speaks for the nonchalance of modern warfare.

"I have numerous individuals on the road, do you want me to take them out?" the pilot asks as the tape shows about 40 men coming out of the building and heading down the street away from the mosque, toward what some Web site accounts said was a firefight between militants and American troops.

After a pause, the controller replies, saying, "Take them out."

The pilot, having fired his weapon, begins the countdown. "Ten seconds," he says.

"Roger," the controller replies. The combat camera swings suddenly, picturing the scene from behind the men below. A huge blast of smoke and flame erupts on the road, enveloping the men, as the pilot cries "Impact!"

The controller then closes the exchange. "Oh dude!" he says, with what appears to be a chuckle.

The execution tape then shifts to scenes of devastation after an air attack on Falluja. It shows a crater, rubble, people piling up belongings, injured being carried into a hospital, and distraught-looking groups of civilians, including children. Shifting back to Mr. Fawazi, it shows him with his hands tied behind his back, looking downcast at the ground, then nervously toward the camera, as the heavyset man towering over him quotes passages from the Koran ordaining death. "He who will abide by the Koran will prosper, he who offends against it will get the sword," he says, his right forefinger pumping in the air, pointing first to heaven, then down to Mr. Fawazi.

"The only reward for those who make war on Allah and on Muhammad, his messenger, and plunge into corruption, will be to be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet severed on alternate sides, or be expelled from the land," the man says. With that, the two gunmen flanking the executioner shout "Allahu akbar!" God is great, drop their Kalashnikovs and tumble Mr. Fawazi face down on the ground. The killer pulls his knife from behind a magazine belt on his chest, grabs Mr. Fawazi by the hair, severs his head, holds it up briefly to the camera, then places it between his rope-tied hands on his back.

Police Chief Presumed Corrupt

On Aug. 21, the Marine headquarters issued a brief news release. The police chief of Anbar, Ja'adan Muhammad Alwan, had been arrested that day in Ramadi on suspicion of "corruption and involvement in criminal activities to include accepting bribes, extortion, embezzling funds, as well as possible connections with kidnapping and murder." A Marine spokesman, Lt. Eric Knapp, declined to offer more details of Mr. Alwan's charges, beyond saying, "everyone knew he was corrupt."

In the Hussein years, Mr. Alwan was a senior police officer and also a high-ranking Baathist, people who knew him at the time say. But unlike many Iraqis who prospered under Mr. Hussein, those Ramadi residents said, he had never been known as a thug. When the Americans arrived, leaders of a local clan that had secretly cooperated with the invaders vouched for him. But soon, one Ramadi resident said, "People started to hate him because he was too cooperative with the Americans." Repeated death threats followed, and the three assassination attempts. The third, in May, especially shook him, acquaintances said, because he survived a rocket attack on his car, but his eldest son lost a leg.

Soon after, the verdict on the streets of Ramadi about the police chief began to change. Although he may have raked in illegal profits, Ramadi people say, he also began cooperating with Islamic militants, even passing American military plans to them. Although such claims are unverifiable, the assassination attempts stopped. But so too, last week, did Mr. Alwan's tenure as police chief. The Marines say that his arrest followed a three-to-five month investigation, that "countless government officials were afraid of him" and that the provincial chief "contributed to crime and instability."

Asked whether Mr. Anbar was also charged with aiding the insurrection, Lt. Knapp, the spokesman, said tersely by e-mail, "We are investigating suspected ties to the insurgency." Lt. Knapp described how the police chief was lured to captivity. "To avoid bloodshed and to make the arrest as clean as possible," he wrote, a Marine officer who had been working with the police invited him to a meeting in an American camp. On his arrival at the gate he climbed into a car where he was advised of his arrest. The e-mail message concluded, "He was then removed from the vehicle, handcuffed, and blackout goggles were put on him for security reasons."

Sabotage by Humiliation

In the case of the provincial governor, Abdulkarim Berjes, Mr. Zarqawi's group, Unity and Holy War, appears to have decided that it could achieve its ends, nullifying American efforts to build governing institutions in the province, by humiliating him - a punishment many Iraqi men regard as worse than death. They then passed the videotape to the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera, the most-watched channel in Iraq. "He cried like a woman," one of the Iraqis who watched the tape said, after viewing the governor's reunion with his kidnapped sons in a militant safe house.

At the end of June, Mr. Berjes, a former Anbar police chief under Mr. Hussein, complained in a discussion at Camp Falluja, the Marine base, that his government was riddled with agents of the resistance. "I can no longer trust anybody," Mr. Berjes said in a farewell meeting with L. Paul Bremer III, the departing leader of the American occupation authority. "I don't know if people are working for me, or for the resistance."

Mr. Berjes was visibly shaken, having survived an insurgent ambush on his motorcade as he drove in his old American limousine to the Marine base from Ramadi.

In fact, Iraqis in Anbar say, the governor had become a despised figure, for the same reason as Mr. Alwan, the Anbar police chief - because he too enthusiastically embraced the Americans and took to calling the resistance fighters "terrorists." Following a common ritual among the resistance, militants sent him a note of formal warning, paraphrased by those who say they had been told about it as saying: "We are watching you. Remember that we consider anybody who cooperates with the Americans a traitor, to be killed under Islamic law."

On July 28, assailants entered the governor's residence in Ramadi, snatching his three grown sons and setting fire to the house. The governor got his final warning: repent and resign, or your sons die. His capitulation was broadcast on Aug. 6, in the video now circulating in Anbar markets. Standing under the Zarqawi group's flag, he glumly recites: "I announce my repentance before God and you for any deeds I have committed against the holy warriors or in aid of the infidel Americans. I announce my resignation at this moment. All governors and employees who work with infidel Americans should quit because these jobs are against Islam and Iraqis."

As the governor is reunited with his sons, a voice on the tape recites the Zarqawi group's attacks on public officials in the past three months. "We killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, and then the deputy minister of the interior," the voice says. "The minister of justice survived our attack, but we killed the governor of Mosul. And now we have captured the governor of Anbar. The list is just beginning, and is far from finished.'' More than three weeks after Mr. Berjes resigned, the government of Ayad Allawi, seemingly hard put to find anyone to take the job, has yet to appoint a successor.

American commanders confess they have no answers in Anbar, and say their strategy is to curb the militants' ability to project their violence farther afield, especially in Baghdad. A recent meeting between Iraq's interim prime minister, Dr. Allawi, and a delegation of tribal sheiks from Falluja who have pledged fealty to Mr. Janabi is said to have reached a standstill accord, with Dr. Allawi promising not to sanction large-scale American attacks on the Anbar cities, and the sheiks conveying Mr. Janabi's pledge to halt militant attacks on the Americans.

But leaving the militants in control could pose a disabling threat to American political plans, which may already have been shaken more than American officials will admit by events in Najaf. Top American officials say that events there, with Moktada al-Sadr's militiamen finally driven from the Imam Ali Shrine, have set the stage for a turn in American fortunes across the Shiite heartland of Iraq. But even there the prospects seem deeply clouded by the failure to effectively disarm Mr. Sadr's surviving fighters as they left the shrine with shouldered rifles and donkey carts loaded with rockets.

Mr. Sadr has signed a new pledge to join the democratic political process that will be the final measure of American success here. But he has abrogated similar undertakings, and many of his fighters vowed to take up arms again. Coupled with the militants' control in Anbar, that could unsettle plans for elections scheduled across Iraq by the end of January - the next crucial step toward a fully elected government by January 2006, an event American officials see as a way station on the path to a draw down or withdrawal of the 140,000 American troops here.

Those Americans say a rapid buildup of the new Iraqi Army, the national guard and the police, coupled with gathering momentum in "turning dirt" on the thousands of reconstruction projects financed by $18-billion in American money, should eventually improve security across Iraq. But the Americans acknowledge that a full, nationwide election in January may not be possible. For now, they have identified 15 cities across the Arab parts of Iraq that they contend can be stabilized to make voting in January possible. For the moment, they say, Falluja and Ramadi are not among them.

Iraqi staff members of The New York Timesin Baghdad contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Two Power Brokers Collide in Iraq

2004-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

by John F. Burns, NY Times
The New York Times
August 22, 2004
Two Power Brokers Collide in Iraq
Link
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq ? In Iraq, of late, it has been a tale of two cities, and of two men of vaulting ambition, each seeking a path to power in the Iraq that will emerge, some day, from the turmoil that has followed the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

In Najaf, Moktada al-Sadr has shown how a portly cleric with a dedicated militia and an artful grasp of Shiite street politics can confront American power. In Baghdad, Ayad Allawi, also portly and Shiite, but secular and backed by American tanks, has used his place as Iraq's interim prime minister to warn Mr. Sadr that the time for his insurrection is running out. Adding to the drama, the two men have joined in conflict over Najaf's Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest shrine in the 1,300 years since the Shiite breakaway that followed the Prophet Muhammad's death.

As the week ended, the confrontation had neither exploded nor subsided. There were signs that Mr. Sadr was seeking a way to back out, sparing himself and his fighters annihilation, and saving what he had sought all along - an enhancement of his claim to have defended his fellow Shiites' faith and pride.

Dr. Allawi, committed to ousting Mr. Sadr and disarming his Mahdi Army but aware that storming the shrine would be a heinous blot on the reputation of any Shiite politician, seemed also to be reaching for a mediated solution, an outcome sure to be favored by Dr. Allawi's patrons in Washington, for whom a bloody showdown in Najaf was likely to be still more unpalatable.

Messy times favor messy solutions. Even Iraqis who sigh for the brute simplicities of life under Saddam Hussein, as many now do, have not forgotten what he did when he, too, was confronted by an armed occupation of the Imam Ali shrine, during the Shiite uprising that followed the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

Tyrannical as he was, Mr. Hussein understood that compromise served him better than soldiers blasting through the shrine's massive gates and walls. After firing rockets, he whispered that chemical weapons might be next, and the rebels fled the mosque. Later, many were carried off to be executed and buried in mass graves.

In his harsher moments, Dr. Allawi may wish that Mr. Sadr is killed in Najaf, as might American troops who have fought the Mahdi Army through the crypts and catafalques of the vast cemetery adjoining the shrine, and down the sinuous streets and alleyways of Najaf's old city; at least nine American marines and soldiers have died, along with at least 400 of Mr. Sadr's fighters, according to the official American count.

But assaulting the shrine, even with the lead taken by Iraqi troops, would be likely to cause an explosion among the Shiite majority. And Mr. Sadr, dead, would be at least as much of a problem for Mr. Allawi's government - and for the Americans - as he has been alive.

Martyrdom is central to Shiite beliefs, and Mr. Sadr's legions would in time be marshaled by another tribune of the streets. The pattern has been set by Mr. Sadr himself, who built his following on the 1998 assassination in Najaf - by agents of Mr. Hussein, most Iraqis believe - of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr, Mr. Sadr's venerated father.

To the Shiite underclass that is his prime constituency, it has mattered little that the younger Mr. Sadr is a religious upstart, a junior cleric in his early 30's who has spared himself hard years of seminary study. Still less, it seems, do followers weigh his indictment as the mastermind of the murder of a rival cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who flew home from exile in the days immediately after the American capture of Baghdad 16 months ago only to be stabbed and shot to death outside the Najaf shrine.

While Mr. Sadr has sought to construct his political future on the back of armed rebellion - in Najaf, in the populous Baghdad slum of Sadr City (named for his father) and in a constellation of towns and cities across southern Iraq, all the way to Basra - Dr. Allawi has placed his bets on the constitutional road to power.

Due process was not always his m鴩er, as Iraqis who knew him as a young medical student on the Baghdad University campus in the 1970's recall. Then, these people say, Dr. Allawi, who qualified as a neurosurgeon, was a zealot for Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party, a man who carried a gun, threatened fellow students and was feared as a regime enforcer.

His reputation as a hard man was one reason, perhaps the main one, he became a prot駩 in exile of the Central Intelligence Agency, and then the favored American candidate for prime minister of the interim government appointed in the spring, shortly before Iraq regained sovereignty on June 28.

In office, he has reinforced his image as a man with an iron fist, visiting Baghdad cellblocks to view captured rebels accused of ambushes, bombings and kidnappings. He has urged policemen and prison guards, bluntly, to show no quarter. He has reintroduced the death penalty, which the Americans suspended last year, and made it applicable to almost any rebel action, even those that do not result in killing.

But while his is hardly the profile of a man with an instinctive feel for the give and take of democracy, Dr. Allawi is wedded to a political blueprint for Iraq that was drawn up under American guidance in the period of formal occupation. This required, first, the appointment of the provisional government Dr. Allawi now heads; second, the convening of a national conference to appoint a 100-member council to oversee the government, review its decrees and call its ministers to account until a National Assembly can be elected. The Assembly is to draw up a permanent constitution, ratify it and lead the country to a fully elected government by January 2006.

While events were moving to a climax in Najaf, the conference met in Baghdad, offering a glimpse of the kind of country this might be if democratic ideals prevail. The proceedings were chaotic, disrupted by tensions over the battles in Najaf, and were compromised by backroom deals that saw organized blocs, religious and secular, securing representation on the new council to the exclusion of smaller, independent groups.

Still, it was the most representative gathering held here for at least 40 years, its members elected in caucuses from every corner of the country. Its very clamor proved how eager Iraqis are, after decades of repression, to have a voice in the remaking of their country.

Just getting 1,100 delegates to Baghdad for the conference, and keeping them safe for the four days of the gathering, was a triumph of sorts for Dr. Allawi's government and its American patrons, considering the shooting gallery that much of the country - and Baghdad itself - have become in recent months. But throwing a cordon of concrete and steel around a conference hall is a far cry, logistically and politically, from the next steps in the constitutional blueprint, the three rounds of national elections scheduled for next year.

The first, by Jan. 31, will choose the assembly that will appoint a new transitional government, and draw up the new constitution. In all this, Dr. Allawi and Mr. Sadr, and the poles they represent in the march to a new Iraq, seem likely to find themselves opponents once again, whatever the outcome of the immediate confrontation in Najaf.

One American official took the optimistic view: that the debate in Baghdad and the battle in Najaf were two sides of the same coin, Iraqis struggling to make their weight felt. The task for those who want a democratic Iraq, he said, was to draw the men with guns - Mr. Sadr's and the insurgents who have turned the Sunni heartland into a war zone - into the political arena. He cited approvingly a conference delegate who had said that all Iraqis, insurgents included, were seeking the same end.

"We are all working to get the Americans to leave," the official quoted the delegate as saying. "Some of us are doing this quietly, and some are doing it violently. But we are all working to the same end."

It was this perception that seemed to have inspired the peace proposal put to Mr. Sadr's representatives by the political and religious figures who flew to Najaf on behalf of the conference. In return for disbanding the Mahdi Army and vacating the shrine, they offered an amnesty for his fighters, and an opening for Mr. Sadr to participate in the political process "in any way he may choose."

Dr. Allawi, too hard-headed to have thought it likely, put the same proposition in his ultimatum to Mr. Sadr, telling him that his choice was to be forced from the shrine in battle, or to disarm his militia and contest elections.

In the end, this seemed to have been more an American than an Iraqi idea. Indeed, most Iraqis seemed to think it chimerical that any of the men who have cast Iraq into the convulsions of war, in the name of Islam or of Saddam Hussein or of wounded Iraqi pride, could be persuaded, by force of argument or arms, to abandon their arms now and take to the hustings.

If there has been one message written in all that the insurgents have done, whether Sunnis or Shiites, these Iraqis say, it is a rejection of the very idea that Iraq's future can be chosen under an American military umbrella - more broadly, of the idea that America and its notions should have any place in reshaping Iraq at all.

When they were done with their spinning, senior Western officials who briefed reporters on the developments in Najaf seemed to agree. Najaf, one said bluntly, represented as crucial a juncture as America has faced in Iraq: one from which Iraq could proceed, with the emasculation of Mr. Sadr's rebellion, to a new period in which Iraqi politicians, not gunmen, could begin to set the country's agenda; or, conversely, if the government became resigned to leaving Mr. Sadr's militia still rooted in the city, to a further slide into chaos.

"If the government takes a hit in Najaf, it would encourage the various armed groups to stand up and say, 'O.K., Najaf belongs to us,' 'Falluja belongs to us,' 'Ramadi belongs to us,' 'Samarra belongs to us,' " the official said. In that case, he said, what would be left would not be a country with an accepted constitution and elections, but a "Lebanon-ization," a fracturing into separate, warlord-ruled fiefs, with the gun supplanting the rule of law.

Retreating into the orotund language favored by diplomats, he suggested that this was hardly what America intended when it came here promising Iraqis something far better than Saddam Hussein. "With different militias controlling different cities, that obviously doesn't promise the political stability Iraq needs," he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Iraq Chief Gives 'Final Warning' to Rebel Cleric

2004-08-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

August 20, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 19 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi gave what he described as a final warning on Thursday to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, saying the cleric should move quickly to fulfill his vow to disarm and leave the shrine in Najaf where his followers have been battling American troops for the last two weeks.

The warning was accompanied by a major intensification of American military attacks on targets in Najaf's Old City, around the Imam Ali shrine, with bombing strikes and an artillery barrage that lasted deep into Thursday night and lit the sky with bursts of flame and smoke.

An accompanying offensive in Mr. Sadr's other major stronghold, the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, saw American troops and armor pushing deep into the heart of the intensely populated district, scattering militiamen who have had a virtually uncontested run of the area for months.

With senior officials of the American-led military alliance saying the decision on whether to storm the Najaf shrine was one for Dr. Allawi, not for the United States, there were growing signs that Iraq's provisional government leader was ready to move beyond threats. Aides to Dr. Allawi said an assault led by Iraqi troops, backed by American troops and airpower, could come in days if Mr. Sadr backtracked, as he has before, on the pledge to disband his militia and vacate the shrine.

"This is the final call to them to disarm, vacate the holy shrine, and engage in political work," Dr. Allawi said at a news conference in Baghdad's heavily protected international zone, where the new government has its principal offices alongside buildings that are the seat of American military and political power. "We have left the doors open, and we hope he will abide by the rule of law."

Mr. Sadr, out of sight somewhere in Najaf, sent out conflicting signals. One aide, Sheik Ahmed al-Shaibani, told reporters in Najaf on Thursday that the terms set by a delegation of Iraqi clerics and politicians who visited the shrine on Tuesday - essentially those restated by Dr. Allawi to reporters today - had become untenable. "It's very clear that we reject them," he said.

But another cleric, Ali Smeisim, said Mr. Sadr was committed to fulfilling the delegation's terms. "By so doing, we have put the ball in Dr. Allawi's court," he said.

Later in the day, a report by Agence France-Presse from Najaf, quoting a new letter said to have been written by Mr. Sadr to his followers, quoted him as saying he would not disarm his militia force, known as the Mahdi Army.

"Everyone knows this army is the foundation of the Imam Mahdi, and I don't have the right to dissolve it," he said, referring to the 12th Shiite imam, a ninth century leader of the sect who Shiites believe will one day manifest himself on earth again as the mahdi, or messiah.

A Western official here said Iraqi officials were "trying to figure out" precisely what Mr. Sadr had committed himself to in an earlier letter read to a national political conference in Baghdad on Tuesday. The letter was taken by many of the delegates as an agreement to end the Najaf crisis by disarming, but Mr. Sadr's aides threw doubts on that immediately by stipulating that American and Iraqi forces would have to pull back from positions in Najaf's Old City before steps would be taken to meet Mr. Sadr's side of the deal.

A top Sadr aide issued a plea to the kidnappers of Micah Garen, the 36-year-old American journalist who was taken hostage last week in the southern city of Nasiriya.

The Associated Press quoted the aide, Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, as saying the Mahdi Army was against kidnapping, "especially this journalist who rendered Nasiriya great service." This appeared to be a reference to Mr. Garen's efforts over the last year to film the looting of archaeological sites near Nasiriya that are treasured for what they have revealed of the Sumerian civilization, going back as far as 5,000 years.

Mr. Khafaji's remarks aligned with the position taken recently by Mr. Sadr, who condemned the spate of kidnappings of foreigners across Iraq, some of which have ended in beheadings, calling them un-Islamic. Last weekend, clerics loyal to Mr. Sadr intervened to free a British journalist, who had been kidnapped from a hotel in the southern city of Basra, and appeared with the reporter at a news conference, claiming credit for his release. The American military's attempt to increase pressure on Mr. Sadr appeared to be focused on bombing and shelling rebel strongholds within a few hundred yards of the Sadr stronghold in the Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest Shiite shrine in Iraq. An AC-130 gunship pounded rebel positions from above, while tanks and armored vehicles fired in the streets.

Before the attacks on Thursday night, American troops and Sadr militiamen had traded volleys of gunfire in the Old City, and three mortars apparently fired by the rebels struck a police station, killing seven police officers and wounding at least two dozen others.

The wounded police officers were treated at Najaf's central hospital before being transported to the American base on the city's northern outskirts for further treatment. Some were then flown aboard American medevac helicopters to a military hospital in Baghdad.

Capt. Warren Haggray, a chaplain at the Marine base in Najaf, said he had prayed alongside the father of a teenage officer named Muhammad whose skull was riddled with shrapnel. "For someone to shoot at a building and injure a 19-year-old in that way, God is not in that," he said.

The attacks in Najaf were accompanied by bombing raids in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja and the boldest American offensive in months in Sadr City, where Mr. Sadr's appeals to poor Shiites, and his recurrent insurrections against the Americans, have given him a formidable base.

By late afternoon, clusters of tanks from the First Cavalry Division were in control of an area about two miles into the Baghdad slum, with Apache helicopter gunships skimming rooftops in support. Mr. Sadr's fighters were nowhere to be seen, having abandoned streets that had been their domain for weeks and melted back into the maze of refuse-strewn back streets and alleyways.

"We've never moved in and stayed like this before," said Capt. John Meredith, a tank company commander, according to a pool report filed by an American journalist embedded with the cavalry division. "As far as they'll really stop fighting, we'll see.''

An intelligence officer accompanying the thrust was similarly wary. "They'll probably figure they'll hole up and live to fight another day," said Capt. Randall McCauley.

At briefings in Baghdad, a Western official familiar with the thinking of the top American officials in Iraq, Ambassador John D. Negroponte and Gen. George W. Casey, said the decision on how to proceed in Najaf rested with Dr. Allawi and his government, which took office seven weeks ago as the United States returned formal sovereignty to Iraq.

"I think it would be accurate to say that it's not an American dilemma," one official said. "It's a challenge to the Iraqi government."

The official added that when the Allawi government had reached a decision, "they'll be communicating" it to what is now known as the Multinational Force, the American-led alliance that underpins the provisional government with 160,000 troops.

But the simultaneous ratcheting up of attacks by American troops in Najaf and Sadr City, Mr. Sadr's principal strongholds, suggested that American commanders already had the government's clearance to strike hard, in the hope of pushing Mr. Sadr into what, in military terms, would be tantamount to a surrender.

Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, confirmed that the military operations were planned as a preliminary to tougher actions later. Appearing at the news conference with Dr. Allawi, he characterized Thursday's operations in Najaf as a "cleaning the streets" of Mr. Sadr's militia and said Iraqi forces were poised for a much broader attack.

He offered no details on how the government intended to force Mr. Sadr's followers from the mosque, saying it was prepared to give Mr. Sadr "more time to think."

The Western official who spoke to reporters in Baghdad said those involved knew that attacking Sadr militiamen in the mosque, with troops and armor that would have to approach down "densely populated, narrow streets" and then find ways to clear the mosque without damaging it, "is not going to be an easy military enterprise." Dr. Allawi, the official said, would probably delay for further negotiations.

"Over the next couple of days, I'd anticipate that you'd see emissaries running back and forth," he said.

But ultimately, he said, Mr. Sadr "risks having the iron fist come down on him" if he prevaricates.

He added: "I think the Iraqi people are tired of bloodshed, and there's no doubt that they'd rather not have people storming into the mosque. At the same time, they are tired of all this insecurity, so there is a sense that this cannot continue the way it is. At some point, the Allawi government will say, 'We've done all we can; this far and no further.' "

Rebel in Najaf Sends Messages of Conciliation

2004-08-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

August 19, 2004
NY Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 18 - Displaying the brinkmanship that has made him one of the United States' most powerful adversaries in Iraq, the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr sent last-minute messages of conciliation on Wednesday that appeared to have staved off an imminent assault on his fortress in the country's holiest Shiite shrine.

For two weeks, Mr. Sadr has led his militia force, known as the Mahdi Army, in some of the deadliest fighting with American troops since the invasion 16 months ago. But faced with a deadline of hours from Iraq's interim government to back down or face attack by Iraqi troops, he abruptly signaled a change of course, and suggested he would accept demands to vacate Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, disband his militia and transform it into a political party.

Not for the first time in his months of confrontation with American troops, Mr. Sadr's apparent backing down came hedged with uncertainties, among them that he spoke only through aides, and that they were vague on what exactly he had agreed to. One of his spokesmen in Najaf told news agencies that Mr. Sadr was insisting, before any concessions, on a cease-fire that would require American and Iraqi troops to pull back from positions around the shrine, a move that would yield territory won in recent days.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in Najaf and the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, killing two Americans.

Mr. Sadr's offer was met with applause by delegates gathered in Baghdad to select a national assembly. [Page A12.]

Among senior officials in Washington and Baghdad, however, Mr. Sadr's move was met with deep skepticism.

"I don't think we can trust al-Sadr," said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser. Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, issued a statement calling Mr. Sadr's initiative "strange," after his earlier intransigence, and demanding that he substantiate his offer by having his militiamen "immediately deliver their weapons" to Iraqi forces around the shrine.

Even as American and Iraqi officials were weighing Mr. Sadr's intentions, a menacing new dimension was added to the Najaf crisis by a report on Al Jazeera television that Iraqi militants calling themselves the Martyrs' Squad had captured an American journalist, Micah Garen, and threatened to kill him within 48 hours if United States forces did not pull out of Najaf.

On Wednesday night, the Arab news channel showed video images of a man identified by Al Jazeera as Mr. Garen, kneeling in front of five masked men with rifles. Mr. Garen, 36, whose family home is in New Haven, is an independent documentary filmmaker who spent much of the last year in Iraq researching a film and articles on the looting of Iraq's archaeological heritage.

He was seized by two armed men on Friday outside a gun shop in Nasiriya, 230 miles south of Baghdad. Nasiriya is one of a network of towns and cities across the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq that have been roiled by the spreading insurrection Mr. Sadr and his militia have stirred since the fighting began in Najaf.

In another development, the United States military command said American soldiers guarding Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, had shot dead two Iraqi security detainees after a fight among inmates got out of control shortly after dawn on Wednesday. The command's statement said guards had seen a group of detainees attacking a fellow inmate with stones and tent poles before the disturbance swelled to involve more than 200 men.

"Nonlethal ammunition" was used in an initial attempt to quell the disturbance, the command said, apparently referring to rubber bullets, and when that failed, "lethal force" had been authorized to save the life of the detainee who had been attacked.

Mr. Sadr's latest about-face came after Defense Minister Shaalan flew to Najaf on an American military helicopter on Wednesday and announced that an attack on the Imam Ali Mosque was imminent. Answering Iraqis who have condemned any American involvement in an assault on the shrine, Mr. Shaalan said the attack would be led by Iraqi troops, with "no U.S. intervention" other than air support and tanks to control roads leading to the shrine.

"They have a chance," he said of the rebels. "In the next few hours, they have to surrender themselves and their weapons."

The ultimatum was reinforced by Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, who issued a statement on Wednesday assigning responsibility for the government's decision to Mr. Sadr's intransigence, after the cleric snubbed a delegation of Iraqi religious and political leaders who had traveled to the shrine with an appeal for an end to the rebellion.

Dr. Allawi, once a stalwart of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and later leader of an exile group in London, has been almost as changeable in his pronouncements on the Najaf fighting as Mr. Sadr. He has issued ultimatums, then withdrawn them and resumed negotiations, only to return to threats to settle the confrontation by force. His latest statement, though, seemed unequivocal.

Events in Najaf threatened to overshadow the conference in Baghdad, attended by more than 1,100 delegates who had gathered to establish a new milestone in the country's troubled course to democracy. It was the conference that sent the delegation that flew to Najaf on Tuesday, then drove to the Imam Ali shrine under sporadic mortar and rifle fire, only to be kept waiting for three hours in a darkened reception room before aides to Mr. Sadr told them that he was in a "secret place" and would neither come to meet the delegates nor allow them to come to him.

The hope that Mr. Sadr might have resolved to make a turn for peace, and that he had done so in response to appeals from the what was arguably the most representative political gathering held in Iraq in 35 years, added momentum to the Baghdad conference after four days of often chaotic and contentious debate.

On Wednesday night, the conference closed with an announcement that it had established, as required by the provisional constitution, a 100-member assembly to monitor the Allawi government's decrees and oversee a first round of parliamentary elections in January.

For all that it succeeded in completing its assigned task, choosing the new assembly, the conference itself seemed redolent of how tortured an enterprise the remaking of Iraq had become.

After wrangling that saw smaller groups at the gathering accusing larger ones of hijacking the meeting, it ended by selecting, without voting, the 81 delegates who will occupy seats on the new body that Iraq's provisional constitution had set aside for election. An additional 19 seats were pre-assigned to members of the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council, an advisory body during the period of formal American occupation that ended seven weeks ago.

Charges by many of the delegates that the conference was a vehicle for a predetermined carving up of power appeared to set the stage for further dissension among Iraqi groups that have agreed to work with the United States on building a democracy.

But the strains among the delegates, from every quarter of Iraqi society, were seen by many at the meeting as part of the natural birth pangs of the new Iraq. Mr. Sadr's challenge has been of a different magnitude altogether, posing, at least until now, a mounting threat to the very idea of an American-assisted progress toward a fully elected government by January 2006.

Since the earliest days of the American occupation last year, Mr. Sadr has maneuvered skillfully, and often ruthlessly, to advance his ambition to emerge as Iraq's most politically powerful Shiite cleric, and thus as a potential claimant to outright power in a country where Shiites form a majority.

His first move after American forces toppled Mr. Hussein, according to an indictment drawn up last fall by Iraqi prosecutors, was to orchestrate the death of a rival cleric. This spring, he reacted to the American closing of the Mahdi Army's newspaper by setting off an uprising in Sadr City, then occupying the shrine in Najaf and spreading the rebellion across much of southern Iraq.

American troops who battled his militiamen eventually settled for a series of uneasy truces that left him in effective control of Sadr City and much of Najaf, with other militia bands entrenched in or near every other major Shiite town as far south as Basra. The truces faltered for weeks, then collapsed altogether in Najaf in early August, setting off the latest uprising.

In Najaf and other towns, fighting continued as before. Reporters in Najaf said the day reverberated to continuing exchanges of mortar and small-arms fire, and American officers said one marine was killed in a battle in the cemetery that surrounds the shrine.

American military officials said that another soldier had been killed on Wednesday while on patrol in Sadr City, and that more than 50 Iraqis identified as firing on the Americans had also been killed.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article andAlex Berenson from Najaf. Iraqi employees of The New YorkTimes, whose names are withheld for their security, also contributed reportingfrom Najaf.

8-Day Battle for Najaf: From Attack to Stalemate

2004-08-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2004
By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 17 - Just five days after they arrived here to take over
from Army units that had encircled Najaf since an earlier confrontation in
the spring, new Marine commanders decided to smash guerrillas loyal to the
rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Acting without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials, the
Marine officers said in recent interviews, they turned a firefight with Mr.
Sadr's forces on Thursday, Aug. 5, into a eight-day pitched battle, one
fought out in deadly skirmishes in an ancient cemetery that brought them
within rifle shot of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine.
Eventually, fresh Army units arrived from Baghdad and took over Marine
positions near the mosque, but by then the politics of war had taken over
and the American force had lost the opportunity to storm Mr. Sadr's fighters
around the mosque.

Now, what the Marines had hoped would be a quick, decisive action has bogged
down into a stalemate that appears to have strengthened the hand of Mr.
Sadr, whose stature rises each time he survives a confrontation with the
American military. Just as seriously, it may have weakened the credibility
of the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, showing him,
many Iraqis say, to be alternately rash and indecisive, as well as
ultimately beholden to American overrule on crucial military and political
matters.

As a reconstruction of the battle in Najaf shows, the sequence of events was
strikingly reminiscent of the battle of Falluja in April. In both cases,
newly arrived Marine units immediately confronted guerrillas in firefights
that quickly escalated. And in both cases, the American military failed to
achieve its strategic goals, pulling back after the political costs of the
confrontation rose. Falluja is now essentially off-limits to American ground
troops and has become a haven for Sunni Muslim insurgents and terrorists
menacing Baghdad, American commanders say.

The Najaf battle has also raised fresh questions about an age-old rivalry
within the American military - between the no-holds-barred, press-ahead
culture of the Marines and the slower, more reserved and often more
politically cautious approach of the Army. Army-Marine tensions also have
surfaced previously, notably when the Marines opened the Falluja offensive,
only to be ordered to pull back.

As they replay the first days of the Najaf battle, some commanders are
wondering if a more carefully planned mission would have had a better chance
to succeed.

"Setting conditions for an attack requires extensive planning and
preparations," said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, who commands an Army battalion
that arrived to reinforce the Marine unit here two days after the fight
began. "If you don't have those things in place and you attack, a lot of
times it fails."

When the United States transferred power to the interim government in June,
both American and Iraqi officials insisted that authority for major
decisions on the use of force would be exercised by the new Iraqi
leadership, in particular Dr. Allawi, a former enforcer for Saddam Hussein's
Baath Party who defected in the 1980's and became leader of an exile
political party. Senior United States military commanders emphasized that
while they retained command of their troops, the forces were there to serve
the Iraqi government.

But in the battle in Najaf, at least, the marines here say they engaged Mr.
Sadr's forces at the request of the local Iraqi police. They did not seek
approval from senior military commanders or from Iraqi political leaders,
with the exception of the governor of Najaf. The governor, Adnan al-Zurfi,
an Allawi appointee, refuses to confirm having given the green light,
although American commanders in Baghdad cited his commands repeatedly as the
political cover for the Marine attack.

In past week, the interim government has twice halted major American-led
attacks on Mr. Sadr's forces as they were about to begin. It now says it
will use Iraqi troops for future battles. But it is far from clear, judging
from the lukewarm assessments of American commanders in Najaf, that the
American-trained Iraqi units that fought alongside the Americans last week
are capable of taking the lead in any showdown with Mr. Sadr.

The seeds of the Najaf battle were sown on July 31, when the 11th Marine
Expeditionary Unit, commanded by Col. Anthony M. Haslam, replaced units of
the Army's First Armored Division and First Infantry Division, which had
fought Mr. Sadr's militiamen for weeks in the spring before a series of
truces around Najaf. The marines began to skirmish with the Iraqi fighters
almost as soon as they took responsibility for this holy city of 500,000,
American officers and Mr. Sadr's militiamen say.

Senior officers in Baghdad, as well White House officials who discussed the
battle in Washington, say the latest fighting began when a Marine patrol
drove directly past one of Mr. Sadr's houses in Najaf - violating an
informal agreement that American units would stay away from Mr. Sadr's
strongholds, treating them as part of an "exclusion zone" that was at the
heart of the cease-fire in the city.

Two days later, on Aug. 5, fighters in Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army staged a 2 a.m.
attack on a police station in Najaf. Usually, the police are an easy mark,
but this time, the White House official said, "they shot back" and called
for American reinforcements. When the militiamen pushed forward a third
time, about 7 a.m., American commanders in Baghdad said, the governor, Mr.
Zurfi, called for American reinforcements.

American intelligence officials monitoring Mr. Sadr said he then summoned
reinforcements from around the country, and Ambassador John D. Negroponte,
the top American official in Iraq, "decided to pursue the case," one
official said. One result was a domino effect, with the fighting in Najaf
soon replicated in more than half a dozen cities and towns across southern
Iraq that are Mahdi Army strongholds, including the Baghdad slum of Sadr
City, Diwaniya, Kut, Al Hayy, Nasiriya, Amara and Basra.

The battle in Najaf quickly centered on a huge cemetery adjacent to the Imam
Ali Shrine, which had been off limits to American troops as part of a truce
worked out after earlier fighting in April. At its closest point, the
L-shaped cemetery, more than five square miles of tombs and catafalques and
crypts, is only a few hundred yards from the shrine. Marine commanders in
Najaf acknowledge that they did little planning for the battle, but say they
gambled that they could reach the walls of the Old City so fast that they
would outrun the political firestorm sure to result.

"We just did it," said Maj. David Holahan, second in command of the Marine
unit in Najaf.

Inside the cemetery, the battle was exceptionally fierce, marines said. Mr.
Sadr's guerrillas had secreted away many weapons caches and explosive
devices, and as the marines forced their way forward, they traded shots -
and hand grenades - with insurgents who were sometimes only a few yards
away.

The ferocity of the rebel resistance surprised the marines, who had seen
Saddam Hussein's army disintegrate last year as they marched north to
Baghdad. "The ones we fought the other day are a hell of a lot more
determined," Lt. Scott Cuomo said.

By early evening on Aug. 5, the battalion had sent out an urgent request for
reinforcements. Senior commanders sent the First Battalion of the Fifth
Cavalry Regiment, a heavy Army unit, from Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the First Cavalry Division commander overseeing
American troops in Baghdad, said during a visit to an American base in Najaf
on Sunday, Aug. 15, that the division did not know until the last minute
that the 1,800 marines in Najaf might need reinforcements. The Fifth Cavalry
Regiment's tanks and other armored vehicles were patrolling in Baghdad when
the request for help arrived, he said. By then, American troops in the
capital were under intense pressure themselves, fighting Sadr militiamen in
Sadr City and in skirmishes in other Shiite districts.

Army units began to prepare to move immediately, but the 120-mile drive from
Baghdad, through some of the most rebel-infested territory in Iraq, took two
days, Colonel Miyamasu said, with the forces arriving in Najaf on Saturday.
By then, many marines had been fighting for almost 48 hours straight, in
temperatures that topped 120 degrees each day.

Still, they had managed to press forward to the west and south, reaching the
southern edge of the cemetery, just a few hundred yards from the mosque. But
with the Army battalion unprepared to fight Saturday, the marines decided to
retreat.

The next day, Aug. 8, the Army re-entered the cemetery. But by then, with
political pressures building in Iraq and across the Muslim world, American
forces faced immense pressure not to damage the Imam Ali Mosque. The Army
never tried to reach the south wall of the Old City, and soldiers fighting
inside the graveyard needed permission to fire heavier weapons in the
direction of the mosque. The fight became a stalemate.

"If we had arrived one day earlier or the marines had attacked one day
later, I'm not sure we'd be in this position," Colonel Miyamasu said.

In Baghdad, commanders seemed curiously disconnected. On Monday, Aug. 9, a
senior military official told reporters that American forces had cut off Mr.
Sadr's forces in the Old City and the cemetery from the rest of Najaf. But
no cordon existed, and none would be set up until Thursday, when the second
Army battalion arrived.

Marine officers have said they killed several hundred guerrillas, weakening
Mr. Sadr's forces for future fighting, at a relatively low cost in American
casualties - 8 marines and soldiers killed and about 30 wounded.

"We put a major hurt on his hard-core militia members,'' Major Holahan said.
"Things happened pretty well from a military point of view."

Mr. Sadr's spokesmen have disputed the American figures for their dead,
saying fewer than 30 were killed.

On Friday, the Iraqi government and Mr. Sadr's forces reached a tentative
cease-fire. Although negotiations with an Allawi government delegation from
Baghdad quickly collapsed, amid new threats from Dr. Allawi and his aides of
a resumed push on the mosque, Mr. Sadr appeared to have once again withstood
American threats and firepower.

Iraqi officials have said the new plan is to use Iraqi units to force Mr.
Sadr from the mosque, while assuring fellow Muslims, in interviews broadcast
across the Arab world, that they will allow no damage to the shrine.

"I am disappointed," Colonel Miyamasu said Friday, after the cease-fire was
announced. "A target of opportunity has passed." But he said American forces
would continue to press Mr. Sadr as long as the Iraqi government wanted.
"It's not over," he said. "It's just going to be different."

Alex Berenson reported from Najaf for this article and John F. Burns from
Baghdad.

Iraqi Conference on Election Plan Sinks Into Chaos

2004-08-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
Tuesday 17th August 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 - A conference of more than 1,100 Iraqis chosen to take the country a crucial step further toward constitutional democracy convened in Baghdad on Sunday under siege-like conditions, only to be thrown into disorder by delegates staging angry protests against the American-led military operation in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

After an opening speech by Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, delegates leapt out of their seats demanding the conference be suspended. One Shiite delegate stormed the stage before being forced back, shouting, "We demand that military operations in Najaf stop immediately!"

Shortly afterward, two mortar shells fired at the area where the meeting was being held landed in a bus and truck terminal nearby, killing 2 people and wounding at least 17.

The three-day conference, called to elect a 100-member commission that is to organize elections in January and hold veto powers over decrees passed by the Allawi government, was not halted. But reporters who had been told to wear flak jackets and helmets when entering the convention center complex past American tanks were frantically waved back from the center’s plate glass windows as the mortar shells exploded, shaking the complex and rattling the windows.

In many ways, the scene seemed like a metaphor for America’s problems in Iraq, with the rebel attacks that have spread to virtually every Sunni and Shiite town across this country of 25 million threatening to overwhelm plans for three rounds of national elections next year, ending with a fully elected government in January 2006.

Just as American troops in Najaf have failed so far to quell an uprising by a rebel Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, so on Sunday’s showing here, American political plans for Iraq remain hostage to the violence that has made much of the country enemy territory for the Americans.

The fighting in Najaf, which resumed Sunday after the Allawi government walked out of truce talks, is part of a wider insurrection across southern Iraq by militiamen loyal to Mr. Sadr, who has cast himself as a tribune of the Shiite underclass and as the leader of a national resistance movement against American troops.

The signs in Najaf were of preparations for yet another attempt to force Mr. Sadr and a force of perhaps 1,000 men from his Mahdi Army militia to relinquish control of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiism’s holiest shrine, and by defeating them there, to begin rolling back the challenge he poses to plans to stabilize the country.

After a day of sporadic gunfire and explosions that shook Najaf’s Old City, with the mosque at its center, reporters said they had seen American tanks blocking almost every street leading to the shrine, some as little as 1,000 yards away.

American commanders spoke of tightening the cordon they threw around the Old City last week, but of leaving any attempt to move into the immediate vicinity of the shrine to the Iraqi forces that Prime Minister Allawi said Saturday would now carry the brunt of the Najaf fighting.

By using Iraqi troops, Dr. Allawi and the American officials who are his partners in Baghdad hope to avoid the eruption of fury among Iraq’s majority Shiites - and across the wider Shiite world, particularly in Iran - if American troops were seen to have damaged or desecrated the mosque, which is revered as the burial place of Imam Ali, Shiism’s founding saint.

In a further sign that a new push against Mr. Sadr might be imminent, the Allawi government ordered the expulsion of all reporters working in Najaf, Iraqis as well as Westerners, and even warned Najaf residents working as freelancers for Western news outlets to cease work.

"I received orders from the interior minister, who demands that all local, Arab and foreign journalists leave the hotel and the city within two hours," Gen. Ghaleb al-Jazairi, Najaf’s police chief, told newsmen at the hotel on the edge of the Old City that has become a news media headquarters. He gave as his reason the government’s inability to protect the journalists if major new battles erupted.

Taken at Gunpoint, U.S. Journalist and His Interpreter Are Missing in Iraq

2004-08-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

August 17, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 16 - Micah Garen, an American journalist who was investigating the looting of ancient artifacts in Iraq, was missing along with his Iraqi interpreter on Monday after the two were led at gunpoint on Friday from a shop in the southern city of Nasiriya, according to news reports and the men's families.

Mr. Garen's family, in New Haven, said they had received information that he was still alive, but declined to release any further information, saying that his well-being required them to say as little as possible.

According to APTN, the television arm of The Associated Press, a shopkeeper in Nasiriya said in an interview on Monday that two armed men had entered his shop on Friday evening and led away Mr. Garen and his interpreter, Amir Doshe. A senior official in the city, Adnan al-Soirafy, quoting information given by the interpreter's family, confirmed that the two men had disappeared.

Mr. Garen, 36, a documentary filmmaker specializing in archaeology, has spent much of the past year investigating the looting of ancient artifacts from sites near Nasiriya that date to the Sumerian civilization, as many as 5,000 years ago. He told friends that his research for a film on the looting had uncovered gangs that have made a virtual industry of ransacking sites and exporting the looted treasures to antiquities markets across the world, and that he considered some of the gangs potentially dangerous.

The range of possible abductors also included insurgent groups that have virtually paralyzed normal life in Nasiriya, 230 miles south of Baghdad, in recent weeks. The most powerful of these is the Mahdi Army, the militia force loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose insurrection has reached at least eight cities across southern Iraq.

Mr. Garen's father, Alan Garen, e-mailed a brief statement on behalf of the family to The New York Times on Monday from New Haven, where he is a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. The statement said his son "went to Iraq fully aware of the dangers, but determined to alert the world to the tragic loss of an irreplaceable archaeological heritage."

But Dr. Garen, who offered no further explanation, appeared to leave open the possibility that the abductors could have been from the gangs of looters, or from other groups that felt threatened by his son's work.

"His remarkable intelligence, charm and thirst for understanding led him to seek information from all available sources," the statement said. "He refused to turn aside in the face of injustice and inhumanity even from those with the power and responsibility to provide protection, and he is now in mortal danger."

A spate of kidnappings has struck Iraq in recent months. Criminal gangs have targeted Iraqis, often abducting women and children and demanding large ransoms. But the most deadly abductions have been of foreigners, particularly truck drivers who have been part of the supply chain for American troops. Most of the abductions have taken place in the Sunni Muslim areas west of Baghdad, especially around Falluja, and some have ended with beheadings.

Abductions have also been common in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq, but have less often ended with killings. Mr. Sadr, the Mahdi Army leader, has condemned the practice, and his representatives in Basra intervened over the weekend to secure the quick release of a British journalist who had been taken at gunpoint from his hotel room.

Mr. Garen has a reputation among other reporters for his intrepid style. During his investigation of the archaeological looting, he has told friends about finding large networks of looters and smugglers and that there was evidence they had received protection from some Iraqi officials. In recent weeks, he was working on a written account of his experiences that he had offered for publication in The New York Times.

Often, he has driven long distances to and from Baghdad, across territory that many reporters consider too dangerous because of frequent ambushes, bombings and other attacks by rebels. He made one such journey on Friday, having lunch with friends in Baghdad before beginning the four-hour drive to Nasiriya in what he expected to be a last, quick visit to complete his fieldwork on the documentary and the article for The Times.

From the accounts of his abduction, it appeared that he was picked up shortly after arriving in Nasiriya on that journey.

Talks Fall Apart for Shiite Rebels and Iraq Leaders

2004-08-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

August 14, 2004
By Alex Berenson and John F. Burns

NAJAF, Iraq -- Truce talks between Iraq's interim government and Moktada al-Sadr's rebels collapsed Saturday, prompting American commanders to prepare new battle plans for breaking Mr. Sadr's grip on this holy city and the Imam Ali mosque, the Middle East's most sacred Shiite shrine.

"I feel deep sorrow and regret to announce the failure of the efforts we have exerted to end the crisis in Iraq peacefully," Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser to Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, said at a news conference in Najaf on Saturday afternoon. "Our goal was to spare blood and preserve security, and persuade the militias to lay down their weapons."

Although few details of the talks were offered by Dr. Rubaie the central issue seemed, once again, to have been the demand that Mr. Sadr disarm his fighters and withdraw them from the city. Mr. Sadr's aides said they had demanded that both sides, the American forces and Mr. Sadr's militia force, the Mahdi Army, withdraw. They said the cleric also wanted pledges by the government to release scores of Sadr fighters taken captive during the recent fighting, and to give amnesty to all who had taken part.

The amnesty demand was certain to be rejected by American commanders, who successfully curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions wounding or killing American troops.

Dr. Rubaie said he was leaving Najaf immediately to fly back to Baghdad, 120 miles to the north, where he was expected to join crisis talks on the next step in confronting Mr. Sadr, a populist Shiite cleric who has used the Mahdi Army to stir a fresh insurrection in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq. Since he initiated uprisings across the south in the spring, Mr. Sadr has entrenched himself as the most identifiable leader of armed resistance to the American role as the effective power in Iraq, and as a serious challenger for political predominance among Iraq's majority Shiite population.

The fighting in Najaf has set off the most serious challenge yet faced by the Allawi government in the seven weeks since it took power, with the return of sovereignty to Iraq. It confronts American military commanders with a widening series of attacks that have spread to a dozen or more Shiite towns and cities across a 300-mile swath of territory south of Baghdad.

Commanders of the 3,000 American troops that are deployed around Najaf, mainly from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Army's First Cavalry Division, kept a tight lid on preparations for a resumed offensive, though they said new attacks could begin within hours but would not necessarily center on Najaf's Old City and the area around the shrine. Reporters embedded with American units were told to expect heavy fighting in the days ahead, considering that the truce that began on Friday allowed both sides to regroup.

As the talks imploded, fresh convoys of Sadr supporters were arriving in Najaf from the cleric's main stronghold in Sadr City, the sprawling Baghdad slum that is home to two million Shiites, and from cities as far south as Basra, 200 miles away.

An Iraqi freelance reporter working for The New York Times said one convoy of 200 men had arrived in Najaf with food supplies from Falluja, the city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been the center of the insurgency mounted by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority and by Islamic militant groups that have carried out a wave of terrorist bombings, and ambushes and kidnappings.

There was no immediate sign of Mr. Sadr on Saturday. On Friday, he was reported by aides to have suffered shrapnel wounds during a firefight near the shrine on Friday, before fighting was halted for the talks, and he later reappeared that evening in the Imam Ali shrine vowing to fight on in Najaf "until victory or martyrdom."

One of his aides, Ali Sumeisim, who took part in the talks, told reporters that Dr. Rubaie had backtracked on an outline agreement that would have had both sides pull back from the old city, leaving the shrine under the control of the aging ayatollahs who form Iraq's Shiite clerical hierarchy.

Mr. Sumeisim accused American commanders, along with Dr. Allawi, of using the talks as a smoke screen, while plotting a violent showdown intended to wipe out the Mahdi Army.

"Today a vicious plot is being woven to commit a massacre in Iraq," he said. "I call on all honest people in the world, on all Muslims, to raise their voices and expose the truth."

Dr. Rubaie said Dr. Allawi had given him a two-day deadline for reaching an agreement with the rebels in contacts that began Thursday, after intermediaries brought a letter from Mr. Sadr to Baghdad asking for talks. He said that the deadline had been extended for a third day on Saturday, and that Dr. Allawi and other senior ministers had concluded that "there is no use to continue."

But Dr. Rubaie, a 57-year-old neurologist who spent years in exile in Britain before returning to Iraq after American troops toppled Saddam Hussein's government 16 months ago, said he was "leaving the door open" for Mr. Sadr to reopen talks, if the cleric was prepared to appear personally for negotiations.

The failure of the talks appeared to have brought the Iraqi leadership in Baghdad, and the American officials who are their cohorts in power, back where they were earlier in the week. American units then were preparing to push forward into the old city in a climactic effort to dislodge the Sadr militia. The plan was to spare Shiite religious sensitivities ? trying to avoid an explosion of fury across Iraq, and the rest of the Shiite world ? by having American-trained Iraqi units take the lead in attacks in the immediate vicinity of the shrine, which is the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, regarded as the founding saint of Shiism.

The fighting that began in Najaf 10 days ago pitched both sides into a game of brinkmanship, with stakes that run to the political future of Iraq.

When Mr. Sadr began a series of uprisings in April that spread all across southern Iraq, he gave notice of his determination to mount a violent challenge to the American presence here, and to use his defiance as a path to political pre-eminence among Shiite leaders. American officials resolved early on to do everything possible to curb his growing power, regarding him as dangerously volatile and violent, as well as too close for American comfort to the ruling ayatollahs of Iran, who have funneled weapons and finance to the Mahdi Army.

But Mr. Sadr has proved an artful adversary, compensating for superior American firepower with tactics that have given him a personal exemption from attack, even as the Americans have gone after his fighters with ferocity.

In what has virtually been hand-to-hand combat, more than 360 Mahdi Army fighters were killed this week in the vast cemetery that adjoins the Imam Ali shrine, according to American officers. In Najaf, Mr. Sadr's trump card has been control of the shrine, which American commanders say has been turned into an armory and a platform, from its roofs and behind its ancient walls, for firing at Americans soldiers and their allies with mortars, rockets and assault rifles.

In the spring, American commanders accepted a series of truces that had American forces withdraw to the outskirts of Najaf, accepting an informal "exclusion zone" covering much of the city where American forces would not enter. In return, Mr. Sadr pledged to disarm his fighters and return control of the city to the police and national guard units that are under Iraqi government control.

In practice, American and Iraqi officials say, the pledges were never kept, and Mr. Sadr's fighters continued to control whole neighborhoods, build up weapons caches and attack government buildings and police stations, sometimes taking captives, especially policemen, to be tortured and killed.

According to American accounts, the fighting that began a week ago on Thursday was set off by a new attack by Sadr forces on a center-city police station. But with an Iraqi government in office since late June, American commanders were ready for a new effort to dislodge Mr. Sadr from the city, this time one that they said would not end in an inconclusive standoff that rested on unenforceable pledges from Mr. Sadr. For eight days, until both sides suspended fighting for the talks on Thursday, American forces engaged in some of the most violent fighting of the war.

Copyright 2004 New York Times Company

COMBAT: U.S. Switches Tactic in Najaf, Trying Isolation

2004-08-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

August 13, 2004
By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 12 - Faced with a populist Shiite cleric who has bunkered a heavily-armed militia force in the sect's holiest shrine, American commanders in this city of 500,000 resorted reluctantly on Thursday to a scaled-down objective, throwing a wide cordon of troops and armor around the city's heart and announcing that they planned to "further isolate" the militiamen.

Only days after the new Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, flew into Najaf on an American military helicopter and announced that there would be "no negotiations or truce," he and the American officials in Baghdad who are his indispensable partners in power appear, for now, to have backed away from a showdown. Instead, they are pursuing a combination of negotiations and a tightening blockade around the mosque.

Raising the morale of the militiamen, loyalists of the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, have spread their insurrection across central and southern Iraq, the country's Shiite heartland.

[Reuters reported Friday that Mr. Sadr was wounded in the American bombardment of Najaf, but his exact condition remained unknown. Mr. Sadr "was wounded in American bombing," Ahmad al-Shinabi, a spokesman for the cleric, said. "He suffered three injuries to his body. We don't know his exact condition or to where he was taken.'' Another spokesman confirmed the report, but there was no independent confirmation.]

His militiamen have attacked in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum, as well as in Diwaniya, Kut, Al-Hayy, Nasiriya, Amara and Basra, towns that are among the largest Shiite population centers, each of them a way station for American and British troops in the invasion 16 months ago that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The fiercest fighting, apart from Najaf, appeared to have been in Kut, a city about 150 miles south of Baghdad that was briefly taken over by Mr. Sadr's fighters in the spring.

According to Qassim al-Mayahi, the head of al-Zahra hospital, 84 people were killed and more than 170 wounded, many of them civilians, in fighting that began with rebel attacks on government buildings on Wednesday. A police commander said the attacks subsided only after American warplanes staged a two-hour bombing raid before dawn on Thursday of a district where Mr. Sadr had a militia base. At a news conference on Thursday evening, the Iraqi interior minister, Falah Naqib, painted a grim picture of the situation created by the Sadr forces, calling it "a war." Dismissing Mr. Sadr's claim to be the leader of a national resistance movement, he said: "This doesn't fall into the category of national resistance. It is an assault on the Iraqi people."

Qassim Daoud, a minister of state in Dr. Allawi's cabinet, said there could be only one response. "The only solution is the rule of law," and bringing an end to attempts by Mr. Sadr to seize power, he said. "These people are trying to deprive the Iraqi people of their rights," he added.

The situation in Najaf was redolent of events in April , when American commanders, confronted then as now by an uprising stirred by Mr. Sadr, built up a powerful strike force around Najaf with a vow to uproot the cleric and his fighters from the Imam Ali mosque, then decided that the political costs of attacking or damaging the shrine compelled an accommodation.

Then, Mr. Sadr won agreement to an "exclusion zone" in Najaf's center that left him free to build his militia and advance himself as the authentic leader of Shiite resistance to American military occupation.

This time, senior American officials in Baghdad said, the aim will be to constrict the fighters much more tightly, moving in from the initial cordon, set about a mile from the mosque at the closest point on Thursday, to a blockade line closer in, with Iraqi police and national guardsmen moving farther forward.

The officials said the aim would be to halt the flow of men, weapons and ammunition, as well as food and other supplies, into the area around the mosque, and to prevent any fighters from leaving until they have surrendered their weapons.

Simultaneously, the American force of about 3,000 Army and Marine troops, appeared to have orders to pursue and kill any militiamen outside the old city.

At nightfall on Thursday, American troops outside the cordon stormed a cluster of buildings that formed one of the Sadr strongholds. Backed by American warplanes that pounded the area and unleashed a huge plume of black smoke, a Marine strike force battled through to a house used by Mr. Sadr, which the Americans said had been abandoned before the attack, and to a school and hospital taken by the militiamen.

About 50 rebels were inside, said Maj. David Holahan, second-in-command of the Marine unit involved, and nearly all were killed.

"The city's going to get cleared out," he said, voicing the spirit of the military units preparing for a full-scale assault on the inner city.

It remained unclear what Dr. Allawi's government and the Americans might be willing to negotiate - and what might be offered by Mr. Sadr, who has retreated into hiding since a news conference in the shrine earlier in the week in which he vowed to "fight to the last drop of my blood."

A representative of Mr. Sadr's in Baghdad, Sheik Mahmoud al-Sudani, said Thursday that "when the threat to the holy shrine is ended, the Mahdi Army will dissolve." Mr. Sadr made similar pledges in the spring.

In a statement issued in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi, whose vows to crush the insurgents are a hallmark of his first weeks in office, made it clear that concerns about Shiite reaction to an assault on the mosque had given him pause. "I would like to relay to the noble people of Iraq that the holy shrine will remain safe from all attacks that could possibly harm its sacredness," he said.

The goal now, he said, would be to get the rebels in the shrine to surrender their weapons and leave, taking advantage of a 30-day amnesty for rebels announced last weekend.

One aide said that Dr. Allawi, himself a Shiite, had been influenced by a growing number of calls for restraint from other leading Shiites in the new political establishment in Baghdad. As well, they said, he had taken note of a statement issued from a London hospital on behalf of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered of Iraq's Shiite religious leaders, who left the country just before the uprising reignited. Aides have said that Ayatollah Sistani, who is 73, is suffering from a heart condition.

Throughout Mr. Sadr's insurrections, dating to March, Ayatollah Sistani has remained noncommittal, a stance many Iraqis say reflects both his contempt for Mr. Sadr as a religious upstart and an acknowledgment that he has a widespread following that may have to be factored in to any future political arrangements.

The ayatollah said Najaf and other Shiite cities were "experiencing tragic circumstances now, in which sanctities are violated, blood is shed, and properties destroyed, with no deterrence." He went on to call for a negotiated solution. "His eminence calls on all factions to work seriously to end this crisis soon, and lay principles to ensure that it does not occur again," the statement said.

By late Thursday, negotiations were reported to have begun in Najaf between representatives of Mr. Sadr and a personal emissary of Ayatollah Sistani's, Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear physicist. Also in the city, and joining Mr. Shahristani in the negotiation effort, officials in Baghdad said, was Muwaffak al-Rubaie, national security adviser to Dr. Allawi.

Mr. Sadr, a shrewd tactician, may feel that he is negotiating from a position of strength. Western reporters who found a way through the American cordon on Thursday and reached the mosque said there were hundreds of militiamen in the surrounding streets and alleyways, with many fighters ensconced in the mosque itself, perhaps as many as 1,000 in all.

One reporter, speaking by telephone, said the fighters appeared to have plentiful food, water and ammunition, and to be in relatively good spirits, despite eight days of often heavy fighting in the vast cemetery adjoining the shrine and frequent air attacks. "They're sitting in their foxholes, their basements and their hotels, with their rocket-propelled grenades, their mortars and their Kalashnikovs, just waiting for the Americans to come," said the reporter, who asked not be identified. "They're a little nervous, of course, but they don't seem to be exhausted. Much of the time, when they're not praying, they're laughing."

The reporter saw many of the men, armed, inside the mosque - confirmation, seemingly, of claims by Dr. Allawi's government, and American commanders, that it has become a fortified base. But he said that, after 12 hours inside the mosque, moving around its vast courtyard and areas leading from it, he had seen no sign of major weapons stockpiles, though there might have been some in parts of the 1,000-year-old complex that he was not in.

"There are a lot Kalashnikovs leaning against the wall," he said. "And there doesn't seem to be any shortage of ammunition."

The ease with which reporters reached the mosque, using side roads and alleys to skirt American tanks, suggested that closing access to the shrine for militiamen may not be easy. But the impact on the residents of the Old City seemed likely to be severe. Many were seen fleeing the area on Thursday, responding to Humvees that had toured the city earlier urging people to leave areas where fighting was likely. One American unit turned back a man leading a donkey loaded with food toward the Old City, saying the supplies could be heading for the rebels.

Sadr City was mostly quiet on Thursday, with American tanks guarding all main access roads into the capital, and closing highway overpasses and bridges. But the sense of crisis that has kept parts of the city effectively shut down for days was heightened by American helicopters and combat jets that patrolled ceaselessly above.

Alex Berenson reported from Najaf, Iraq, for this article and John F. Burns from Baghdad.

Copyright 2004 New York Times Company

Chalabi Returns to Iraq, Expecting Arrest but Vowing to Fight in Court

2004-08-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

August 12th, 2004
by Sabrina Tavernise and John F. Burns

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 11 - Under a veil of secrecy and threat of arrest, the embattled former exile Ahmad Chalabi swept back into Iraq on Wednesday night, vowing to face criminal charges against him in court. And in a fresh sign that Mr. Chalabi is facing a confrontation with the new Iraqi government, the Iraqi police forced him from his state-owned offices.

Mr. Chalabi crossed into Iraq from Iran shortly after 3 p.m., and drove with a convoy of cars toward Baghdad, said his spokesman, Haidar Musawi. An Iraqi judge ordered Mr. Chalabi and his nephew, Salem Chalabi, arrested on criminal charges over the weekend.

Mr. Musawi declined to say whether Ahmad Chalabi had reached Baghdad, saying only that he was "safely back in his own country" and that he was expecting to be arrested. In Washington, Mr. Chalabi's lawyers took action against a 12-year-old conviction on bank fraud charges in Jordan.

In Baghdad, dozens of police officers from the Interior Ministry's Special Crimes Unit arrived at Mr. Chalabi's offices to evict his organization. Mr. Musawi said that an American had come with the officers but soon left. Working late into the night, workers hauled furniture, computers and air-conditioners out of four office buildings near a sprawling mansion that is one of Mr. Chalabi's residences.

It was the latest sign of a remarkable reversal of fortune for Mr. Chalabi, who rode into Baghdad last year dressed in camouflage and under the protection of American tanks. But some of the information his organization gave the Bush administration about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs was discredited, and his star fell. American and Iraqi forces raided his home in May, and American officials say they believe he passed classified information to Iran.

Beyond the question of whether the government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will arrest Mr. Chalabi - and his nephew, Salem, if he returns from London - there are a tangle of implications. Among these is whether Dr. Allawi will attempt to curb, or even dismantle, the tribunal set up by the American occupation authority to try Mr. Hussein and other high-ranking officials of the ousted government.

While Ahmad Chalabi was still in favor with the Pentagon, Salem Chalabi, an American-trained lawyer, was appointed chief administrator of the court in an order signed by L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the occupation authority, himself a Pentagon appointee. Salem Chalabi maintained tight control of the tribunal's work, shrugging off criticisms that a court established by Americans, with a staff dominated by American lawyers, would not be accepted as impartial.

Now, Iraqis familiar with Dr. Allawi say, the new prime minister is eager to stamp his authority on every aspect of government activity across Iraq, and may not look favorably on a tribunal that was set up outside the established Iraqi court system.

The trials will have a major political resonance here, and details such as the timing of the trials, the choice of judges and prosecutors, the charges, and above all who will be tried among the ousted leaders, and who, if any, will be freed will be important to any Iraqi government.

With Salem Chalabi unlikely to be able to resume his work at the tribunal, and stripped of his uncle's political protection, some Iraqi lawyers believe, the tribunal might be reconfigured to give the Justice Ministry greater influence, the kind it has over other courts.

A hint of this has come in remarks made to reporters by Zuhair al-Maliky, the investigative judge who issued the arrest warrants for the two Chalabis. In an interview last week, he was harshly critical of Salem Chalabi and of the tribunal. "In defense of Saddam and the others, the lawyers will say that the court was established by the Governing Council, which was appointed by the Americans; and that the judges were appointed by Mr. Salem Chalabi, who had lived outside of Iraq almost all of his life," Judge Maliky said.

The Chalabis, for their parts, contend that Judge Maliky was appointed by Americans, and is himself an American puppet.

Ahmad Chalabi has been working to remake himself politically. The suit his lawyers filed in Washington, challenging his 1992 conviction on bank fraud charges in Amman, was one effort to improve his battered reputation.

Marissa Khurma, a spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy, said the government was surprised by the suit but had not received a copy and could not comment.

The case involves the Petra Bank in Amman, which Mr. Chalabi founded in 1977 with encouragement from the Jordanian royal family. It grew to be the second largest bank in Jordan, with a branch in Washington.

But in 1989, the Jordanian government issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Chalabi, who fled the country. An Arthur Anderson audit showed that several hundred million dollars were missing from the bank, and a military tribunal convicted Mr. Chalabi in absentia of embezzlement, theft, forgery and currency speculation, among other charges. He was sentenced to 22 years of hard labor and ordered to repay $230 million.

The suit filed Wednesday accuses others of taking the money, naming as defendants Saeed el-Nabulsi, former director of Jordan's Central Bank; and Mudhar Badran, the former Jordanian prime minister. It says that Jordan convicted Mr. Chalabi as a punishment for his opposition to Mr. Hussein and fear that he would disclose information about illegal Jordanian arms sales to Iraq. And it adds a dramatic twist, saying the Jordanian authorities sought to arrest Mr. Chalabi so they could turn him over to Iraqi secret service agents. "This order was part of a plot to have him kidnapped by members of the Iraqi Mukhabarat and taken from Jordan to Baghdad, where, like many other dissidents before him, he would have been tortured and killed," the suit states.

Despite the day's troubles, there were signs that Mr. Chalabi might be enjoying the new attention. In an appeal to poor Shiites, his staff printed posters with his face and the words, "We'll be back to stop the massacre at Najaf," the city where the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has been under siege by American and Iraqi forces since last week.

As for Mr. Chalabi's relationship with Mr. Sadr, Mr. Musawi said that the two men "are not that close. Yet."

Copyright 2004 NewYork Times Company

COMBAT: U.S. Troops Fight Iraq Militiamen on Two Fronts

2004-08-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

August 11th, 2004
by JOHN F. BURNS and ALEX BERENSON, NY Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 - American troops fought simultaneous battles on Tuesday with rebel Shiite militiamen in Najaf and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City. But American commanders, preparing new battle orders, appeared to have deferred for the time being any decision to mount full-scale assaults on the rebels, weighing the consequences for their wider aim of bringing stability to Iraq.

On the sixth day since fighters loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr renewed their challenge to the American presence here, American units showed signs of rising impatience. In Najaf, loudspeakers atop patrolling Humvees urged residents to evacuate the city and warned Mr. Sadr's fighters to "leave the city, or you will die." As night fell in Sadr City, tanks and attack helicopters moved into militia-controlled neighborhoods, and American attack jets and pilotless Predator drones patrolled overhead.

Faced with the uprisings in Najaf and Sadr City, and rebel attacks in Basra and other southern cities, the new Iraqi-American hierarchy in Baghdad - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Ambassador John D. Negroponte and Gen. George W. Casey, the military commander -appeared to have reached a watershed as critical as any since American troops toppled Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003.

With elections planned by the end of January, many Americans and Iraqis here say that Mr. Sadr's challenge offers a difficult choice. Either it will have to be answered with force now, at the risk of igniting an explosion of anger among Iraq's majority Shiite population, or with negotiation as it was at the time of Mr. Sadr's last lengthy uprising in the spring, with consequences that could cause the election plans and much that lies beyond them to unravel.

When he emerged from hiding on Monday to speak to reporters at Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, the holiest in Shiite Islam, Mr. Sadr rejected Dr. Allawi's urging over the weekend that he take part in the elections. Mr. Sadr said efforts to build a democracy in Iraq could begin only after American troops leave.

Perhaps the biggest threat posed by the rebels, to shut down oil exports flowing from the country's richest southern oil fields, appeared to have receded for the moment with the announcement by the Oil Ministry in Baghdad that full production resumed on Tuesday after quick repairs to a pipeline that was blown up by saboteurs on Monday. An official said the two main export pipelines flowing to shipping terminals from oil fields near Basra were pumping again, though the risk of renewed rebel attacks remained high.

For days, American troops had avoided plunging into Sadr City, remaining mostly on the western rim of the sprawling district, pushing back militia bands threatening to break for the center of Baghdad, five miles away. It was not clear on Tuesday night how deep the new offensive had gone. But reporters returning from another day of skirmishes said practically all of Sadr City appeared to be under the effective control of militiamen who hide down side streets and alleys, promising a potential bloodbath in the event of any full-scale challenge from the Americans and Iraq's new security forces.

In Najaf, American armor and helicopter gunships continued to attack around the vast cemetery that adjoins the Imam Ali shrine, now a base and armory for Mr. Sadr.

Thunderous explosions were audible miles away, and black smoke curled into the sky after an American jet bombed an inner-city hotel 400 yards from the shrine that American officers said had been used as a firing point by the rebels. At a base 20 miles away, senior Army and Marine officers, awaiting orders from Baghdad, met to plan a wider assault on the old town, a warren of alleyways and bazaars surrounding the ancient shrine where hundreds of militiamen have been reported to be holed up.

American officers said the command in Baghdad was preparing to move another 1,000 American troops into the city, on top of the 2,000 already available to commanders there, with a view to pressuring the rebels and adding punch to a new offensive. American forces planned attacks on the old city before, during Mr. Sadr's uprising in April. But they pulled back and signed a series of fragile truces with the cleric because of concern about the repercussions, among Iraq's 15 million Shiites, of damaging the Imam Ali shrine or of wounding or killing Mr. Sadr, a populist leader in his early 30's who is the scion of one of Iraq's most revered clerical dynasties.

The officers who spoke of plans for a new offensive acknowledged privately that they hoped that the disclosure of the plans, and of the American troop reinforcements, would persuade Mr. Sadr to back down and disband his militia, known as the Mahdi Army. Another option discussed by some American officers - using the fledgling Iraqi security forces to carry out an assault on the mosque, and keeping American troops back to blunt Shiite objections - appeared to have been ruled out after American commanders concluded that the Iraqis fighting in Najaf have had trouble achieving minor combat objectives.

Still, American commanders insisted that they were ready to press ahead if Mr. Sadr fails to surrender. "All indications are that we are committed this time," said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, who commands the First Battalion of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, the Army unit that took over the fighting in the cemetery on Sunday, relieving units of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. "There's a will to win this fight. There are a lot of people we don't want to let down, including ourselves."

Mr. Sadr, who vowed Monday that he would fight "to the last drop of my blood," showed his canny, mocking brand of politics when an aide in Baghdad announced that the Mahdi Army had declared a curfew across the capital, starting at 1 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m. the next day, beginning immediately and continuing until hostilities against Mr. Sadr's fighters end. A day earlier, American forces imposed an indefinite curfew on Sadr City, one of the cleric's strongholds, ordering the slum's two million people off the streets from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m., the most stringent curfew in the 16 months since American troops captured Baghdad.

A representative of Mr. Sadr in Baghdad, Qais al-Khazali, called on "all citizens, and especially employees" to obey the curfew and remain at home during the curfew hours, and to support the militiamen in their fight against the Americans. In a statement broadcast on the Arabic-language television channel Al Arabiya, he renewed the militiamen's warnings to Iraqi police, soldiers and national guardsmen, saying they should refuse to "assist the occupiers," or face reprisals.

The Sadr curfew, and a video-taped warning from another Sadr-linked group of attacks on Iraqi government workers who report for duty, appeared aimed at crippling the capital's economy. American commanders have said that 15,000 jobs provided to Sadr City residents to work on $70 million in new sewer, water and electricity projects have been scuttled, at least for now, by the uprising in the slum.

The rebels' call for a citywide curfew appeared to have an almost immediate effect. By late afternoon on Tuesday, a tour of half a dozen of the city's inner neighborhoods showed that traffic that has choked many streets since the American-led invasion last year was sharply down. Gas stations that have had long lines in recent weeks after rebel attacks on refineries, pipelines and road tankers were mostly empty, or closed. Many other businesses were shuttered, and those that were open said they were ready to shut at a moment's notice.

For American commanders, one reason for mounting a full-scale offensive on Sadr City would be to curb attacks on Baghdad. Since the uprising in the spring, the United States command has concentrated mainly on containing the Sadr militiamen in the slum, not challenging their control there. But leaving Mr. Sadr's fighters free rein has meant that Sadr City has become a Shiite counterpart to Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city 35 miles west of Baghdad. Falluja has been under rebel control since a Marine offensive there was halted in the spring. As long as the two cities are under rebel control, they will pose a threat to any effort to achieve lasting stability in Baghdad.

The threat from Sadr City has been underscored in recent days by repeated nighttime mortar and rocket volleys fired from somewhere in the vicinity of the slum and aimed at the International Zone, the newly renamed American command center in what used to be Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace compound.

Americans officers have often mocked the errant marksmanship of the Iraqi rebels. But the volleys recently have become much heavier, sometimes as many as 30 heavy mortars and battlefield rockets in a night, and an increasing number of them have struck inside the secured zone, where the Americans and Dr. Allawi work. On Monday night, one shell hit and severely wounded the Iraqi interpreter for General Casey, the American military commander. American officials said the man was expected to survive.

The American offensive that began Tuesday night appeared to have curbed the shelling.

In Najaf, the American appeal to residents to evacuate appeared to have prompted at least a partial exodus. An Iraqi reporter working for The New York Times said that the Humvees making the appeal passed through neighborhoods that account for about 75 percent of the city's population, and that traffic leaving the city picked up quickly in neighborhoods where people had previously stayed off the streets.

John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Iraqis Ordering Chalabi Arrest; He Vows Fight

2004-08-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

August 10, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 8 - Ahmad Chalabi, the exile leader who returned to Iraq last year hoping to run the country with American support, was ordered arrested on counterfeiting charges, Iraqi officials said Sunday night.

Mr. Chalabi, whose fortunes fell into eclipse during the American occupation, was traveling in neighboring Iran and could not be reached for comment. In a television interview, he rejected the charges, calling them politically motivated, and vowed to return to Iraq to fight for his name.

At the same time, Mr. Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, was also ordered arrested on a separate charge relating to the murder of an Iraqi official. The younger Mr. Chalabi is spearheading the prosecution of Saddam Hussein. He was on a visit to London, and denied the charges against him.

Francis Brooke, a Washington adviser to Mr. Chalabi, said the charges against both men were categorically untrue and said both would return to Iraq to defend themselves. He said that the elder Mr. Chalabi would leave a vacation cabin in the mountains outside Tehran immediately and that the younger man would return to Iraq later from his home in London. Mr. Brooke assailed the magistrate who issued the charges, calling him an unqualified political appointee of L. Paul Bremer III, the former chief administrator of Iraq.

"I see him, personally, as acting as an agent of the U.S. government," Mr. Brooke said of the magistrate, Zuhair al-Maliky.

Details were sketchy on Sunday night, but Iraqi officials said they suspected that Mr. Chalabi had been counterfeiting old Iraqi dinar notes used during the reign of Saddam Hussien and exchanging them for newly minted notes, which came into circulation earlier this year.

The charges against the younger Chalabi, Salem, appear more serious, alleging his involvement in the killing of Haithem Fadhil, a director general of the Iraqi Finance Ministry, in June.

"They should be arrested and then questioned,'' Judge Maliky told The Associated Press. "If there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial.''

If tried and convicted, Salem Chalabi, 41, could face the death penalty, the judge said. Capital punishment was restored by Iraqi officials on Sunday. His uncle, if tried and convicted, would face a sentence to be determined by the judges. One Iraqi newspaper, Al Ghad, reported that the case against the senior Mr. Chalabi was initiated by a complaint by the central bank, and that the other case followed a suit lodged by an individual who was not identified. The newspaper said Mr. Fadhil had been auditing the Chalabi family's financial holdings and real estate in Iraq.

The criminal charges against the senior Mr. Chalabi marked a personal nadir; as recently as six months ago he maintained the status of being the Bush administration's favored leader in Iraq. Pentagon officials favored him and once saw him as a likely successor to Mr. Hussein.

The relationship between the administration and Mr. Chalabi deteriorated markedly in recent months, as prewar intelligence provided by him about the military abilities of Mr. Hussein's government and its relationship to the terrorists of Al Qaeda was largely discredited.

But the charges also point to the first signs of full-scale political strife in Iraq.

The man presiding over the new government, Ayad Allawi, is a longtime rival of Mr. Chalabi in Iraq and also within the corridors of the American government. The move to arrest the two Chalabis, whether justified or not, will no doubt give rise to fears that Dr. Allawi, the interim prime minister ahead of elections scheduled for next year, is carrying out a political vendetta.

Mr. Chalabi's first fall came in May, when the Iraqi police, backed by American forces, raided his home and headquarters in Baghdad. American officials said later that they believed that he might have passed classified American information to Iranian agents.

While Dr. Allawi emerged as the new American ally here last June, Mr. Chalabi and his group, the Iraqi National Congress, were all but excluded from the new government.

Judge Maliky is the country's top investigative judge and a political maverick who has not shied from taking on some of the country's most powerful leaders.

The counterfeiting charge against Mr. Chalabi is not the first accusation of financial wrongdoing. In 1991, a Jordanian court convicted him in absentia for bank fraud and sentenced him to 22 years in jail. Mr. Chalabi has said the fraud prosecution was backed by Mr. Hussein.

In Washington, the Bush administration said it had no comment on the charges against the Chalabis. "This is a matter for the Iraqi authorities to resolve, and they are taking steps to do so," said a White House spokeswoman, Suzy DeFrancis.

Mr. Chalabi and the Bush administration also fell out on the question of how drastically former members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party should be purged from the new Iraqi government. Mr. Chalabi pushed for a near total ban, but as American officials tried to rebuild a functioning Iraqi state, they decided on a more permissive stratregy.

With both men out of the country on Sunday, the warrants against them seemed issued with a view toward discouraging them from returning, and thus from playing any further role, at least from inside Iraq, in the political rivalries that are sharpening in the majority Shiite population as elections scheduled before the end of January draw nearer.

Mr. Chalabi has continued to maneuver for a possible appointment as prime minister after the elections, aligning himself with a powerful Shiite religious group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, that could emerge as a crucial power-broker after the voting.

Dexter Filkins reported from Istanbul for this article and Patrick Healy contributed reporting from New York.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

U.S. Says Its Grip on Iraqi Militia in Najaf Is Tight

2004-08-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

August 10th, 2004
by Alex Berenson and John F. Burns, New York Times

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 9 - American forces besieging militiamen of a rebel cleric in a shrine and cemetery sacred to Shiite Muslims tightened their cordon on Monday, United States military officials in Baghdad said, and they warned the rebels that they could not receive any outside support. But the warnings drew an immediate riposte from the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who emerged from days of silence to reject demands for the militiamen to surrender.

"I will defend Najaf until the last drop of my blood," Mr. Sadr said at a news conference in the Imam Ali shrine, which has served as a stronghold for his Mahdi Army since his uprising in the spring against the foreign occupation of Iraq.

The repercussions of the latest fighting, which began in Najaf last week and quickly spread to other centers of support for Mr. Sadr, intensified when officials of the state-owned oil industry said Iraq's largest oil fields, in the southern region around Basra, had stopped pumping oil on Monday after Mr. Sadr's militiamen had threatened to attack oil fields, refineries and pipelines. About 1.8 million barrels a day, 90 percent of Iraq's oil exports, are shipped from terminals in and near Basra.

While senior American military officials in Baghdad appeared confident that they had Mr. Sadr's forces in Najaf contained, officers and soldiers on the front line painted a different picture. They said that rebels move freely between the cemetery and Najaf's old city, and that American forces do not fully control the cemetery, which is three miles long and two miles wide.

In Baghdad, American military officials announced a curfew of 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. in the capital's Sadr City neighborhood, home to more than a million Shiites and, with Najaf, a center of support for Mr. Sadr. The measure, the most stringent of its kind in the 16 months since the country fell to the American-led invasion, appeared to be aimed at regaining some control over Sadr City from Mr. Sadr's militiamen and preventing the area from being used for rocket and mortar attacks on the American military and civil headquarters. Despite the curfew, rebels resumed their shelling on Monday night.

In Najaf, Mr. Sadr used his news conference to shred efforts by Iraq's American-appointed prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to lure the cleric away from armed confrontation. Over the weekend, Dr. Allawi invited Mr. Sadr to contest parliamentary elections scheduled to take place by the end of January, and suggested that the militiamen who have fought in Najaf and other cities might not be under his control. His suggestion was echoed by American military spokesmen. Brushing aside the fact that most of the rebels in Najaf, Nasiriya, Basra and Sadr City, the areas worst affected by the fighting, have worn the black trousers and shirts of Mr. Sadr's militia, the Americans have said repeatedly during the five days of renewed fighting that they, too, had doubts that the cleric was the instigator of the violence.

But some American military officers have said that this presentation of the situation was a convenient fiction, propagated by the Allawi government and the American command to allow their forces to hunt down as many of Mr. Sadr's fighters as possible while exempting Mr. Sadr from any deliberate attack.

During the uprising by Mr. Sadr's forces in April, American commanders said they intended to kill or capture him, but that threat was dropped out of fear that any harm to the cleric could touch off a still wider conflagration among Iraq's majority Shiite population.

In any case, Mr. Sadr himself exploded any pretense that he was not the leader of the current fighting with his defiant posture at the news conference on Monday. Appearing in the mosque, only a few hundred yards from the closest American troops, he effectively mocked the Americans and the cordon they have thrown around the shrine. "I am an enemy of America, and America is my enemy until the last day of judgment," he said.

As for taking part in elections, he was similarly scornful. "The occupiers must go, and then the democratic process can start in Iraq," he said. "I will stay here to support the fighters, and I call on all religious dignitaries to do the same."

As for Dr. Allawi, Mr. Sadr said the Baghdad government should be "on the side of the people and not use the same weapons as Saddam Hussein."

The reference to Mr. Hussein appeared to refer to some of the tough policies adopted by Dr. Allawi in an effort to quell the insurgency and broaden his government's tenuous popular support. On Sunday, the prime minister visited Najaf and vowed that there would be "no negotiations" with the Sadr militiamen in Najaf, then returned to Baghdad and said his government was restoring the death penalty for a range of crimes that appeared to cover almost any insurgent activity.

Mr. Sadr's defiance posed a seemingly insoluble quandary for the American command, similar to the one it faced when Mr. Sadr's fighters seized control of Najaf in April. Then, the United States commanders settled for a shaky truce that kept American forces on the outskirts of the city in return for Mr. Sadr's promise that his fighters would disarm and hand control of the city back to Iraqi authorities. The deal was similar to one made in the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, and provided a template for a wider American policy that effectively kept United States forces out of cities with a strong rebel presence, with the hope of lowering American casualties and providing breathing space for political negotiations.

The terms of the Najaf truce were never fully put in place, and Mr. Sadr's fighters continued to control large parts of the city. Then, last Thursday, after increasingly bloody clashes around the city's government buildings, and an incident in which Iraqi units surrounded Mr. Sadr's headquarters, the cease-fire imploded. The United States command said Mr. Sadr's men attacked a police station, prompting the Najaf governor to call in help from an American quick-reaction force.

Now, American commanders in Najaf are essentially back where they were in the spring, but with their forces even deeper inside the city. The difference is that an Iraqi government has replaced the American occupation authority, and American commanders are saying that their actions will be decided by that government. In practice, though, any American assault that further endangered the holy sites, even if Dr. Allawi approved it, would pose big political risks.

The new political situation has so far emboldened the Americans that units of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Army's Fifth Cavalry Division have battled for the past days in and around the huge cemetery that has been used for a millennium by devout Shiites eager to rest in eternity near the shrine and burial place of Imam Ali, the most sacred figure in Shiite Islam. Spokesmen for the United States command say they have explicit authority from Dr. Allawi to enter the cemetery, where they claim to have killed more than 360 rebel fighters, and to advance on the shrine itself, if that proves necessary to dislodge the rebels.

A senior military official told reporters in Baghdad on Monday that the command would wait a few days to see how the rebels responded to their situation in the area of the mosque.

But he also hinted that an assault on the shrine had not been ruled out. "At the moment we are not conducting operations in that area, but we are ready to do so at a moment's notice," he said.

The spokesman laid down a possible rationale for an assault, saying that the rebels had used the shrine and the cemetery to stockpile arms and ammunition, and were fighting from behind tombs and headstones. All of this, the spokesman said, stripped the shrine of protection under the Geneva Conventions. "The use of that site makes it a legitimate target under international law," he said.

At an American base on the outskirts of Najaf, American troops appeared to be preparing for a renewed assault into the city. Army and Marine planners said they were examining ways of using Iraqi forces to clear the rebels from the shrine.

The command in Baghdad said that cumulative American losses in the fighting by noon Monday included 4 killed, and 19 wounded.

The ripple effects of the fighting in Sadr City and Najaf continued to be felt in other Shiite cities, particularly Basra, which was relatively quiet in the months when Baghdad and other cities were roiled by the insurgency. British units engaged in running gun battles with Sadr fighters on Monday. A British spokesman said one British soldier had been killed, The Associated Press reported.

Alex Berenson reported from Najaf for this article and John F. Burns from Baghdad.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Iraq's Premier Takes Hard Line Against Rebels

2004-08-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

August 9, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALEX BERENSON

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 8 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, reinforcing his reputation as a man ready to deal harshly with his adversaries, flew into the embattled city of Najaf on Sunday and said that there would be "no negotiations or truce" that would spare rebel fighters from American and Iraqi forces who have been waging a violent contest for control of the city's heart.

In Baghdad, Dr. Allawi's aides later announced that the government had approved a decree restoring the death penalty for a range of crimes, including some so broadly phrased that they appeared to cover virtually every kind of insurgent attack. A suspension of the death penalty was one of the earliest moves taken by the American occupation authority last year.

The two actions on Sunday, coming amid some of the fiercest fighting of the 15-month insurgency, seemed to set a new benchmark for Dr. Allawi, whose political trademark since his youth in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party has been one of relentless toughness. The restoration of capital punishment had been expected since he took office in June, with a twin-edged vow to curb the insurgency by reaching out to disaffected groups that have joined or condoned it, and to prosecute the war fiercely against those who fought on.

After he returned to Baghdad Sunday night, Dr. Allawi presided over yet another move, perhaps his boldest yet, to curb challenges to his power. The country's top investigative judge confirmed that he had issued warrants for the arrest of one of Mr. Allawi's fiercest political rivals, Ahmad Chalabi, once the Pentagon's favorite to become Iraq's new leader after Saddam Hussein, and of Mr. Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, who is chief administrator of the Iraqi Special Tribunal that was set up by the Americans to try Mr. Hussein and top associates in the ousted government.

In Najaf, the scene of intense fighting in recent days, Dr. Allawi laid down a hard line against the militiamen of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

"All the Mahdi Army fighters should abandon their weapons and leave the city," he said, referring to Mr. Sadr's militiamen, after meeting with Marine commanders at an American base on the outskirts of the city. He promised that an end to the fighters' occupation of Najaf's old city and its golden mosque, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines, would be followed by generous government financing for the city's reconstruction, but said that there would be no negotiating with the militiamen.

"This is the core of the matter, and we will not waver," he said. "There will be absolutely no negotiations and no truce."

On Saturday, his government had declared a 30-day amnesty for a range of relatively minor crimes involving support for the insurgency, but not for killing. That was followed, on Sunday, by the death penalty decree, which was wider in its scope than some Iraqis had expected when Dr. Allawi let it be known that he favored the move.

The move seemed certain to have a deep resonance for a people traumatized by the grim carousel of executions under Mr. Hussein, yet struggling now to cope with bombings, assassinations and other violence that have bludgeoned the country since Mr. Hussein's fall. At a news conference announcing the decree, Dr. Allawi's aides said the government was responding to Iraqis' demands for a "secure life," freed from the terrorist attacks that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians since the American-led invasion last year.

Officials at the news conference said the crimes eligible for execution would be a fraction of those that drew the gallows or firing squad under Mr. Hussein, involving more than 120 provisions in Iraq's criminal code, many of them essentially political crimes. The officials said that the reduced list of capital crimes had been scoured to eliminate any possibility of execution once again becoming a political tool, and said that they intended to make the restoration of capital punishment temporary, to be rescinded again when the insurgency has ended.

But the decree set out several wide categories of crime that could draw a death sentence for insurgents, including "endangering national security," "crimes affecting transportation" like ambushes and hijacking, and attacks on the country's infrastructure, as well as kidnapping and murder. Along with these, the decree provided the death penalty for drug trafficking, for rape, and, in a provision that appeared to be specially drawn to cover Mr. Hussein and his associates, for any activity relating to biological or chemical warfare.

Iraqi officials who outlined the new decree seemed uncertain when asked if it would be applied retroactively to acts committed in support of the insurgency in the 14 months since the death penalty was suspended by L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the American occupation authority. The officials said the penalty would be available to the courts with immediate effect, but added that it was a matter for legal experts, to determine whether that meant that it applied only to acts committed after the new decree was signed.

Privately, aides to Dr. Allawi said they believed that the penalty could now be applied to any insurgent act committed since the United States-led invasion. If this proves to be the case, the first executions could come quite quickly, an objective that Dr. Allawi seems likely to approve. Courts in Baghdad and other cities have been sitting for months to hear cases against people accused of involvement in bombings, ambushes and kidnappings, but have been limited to imposing lengthy jail terms.

In the case of Mr. Hussein and his associates, there appeared to be little doubt that capital punishment would apply. When he appeared with 11 aides for arraignment before a special tribunal in Baghdad on July 1, the investigating judge told each of them that the crimes of which they were accused carried the death penalty under Article 406 of the Iraqi criminal code - a provision that was part of the code under Mr. Hussein.

Officials at the news conference on Sunday said there was no doubt that Iraqis wanted the death penalty back as a punishment for those who were killing innocent civilians in the insurgency.

"Iraqis want to see those who are committing these crimes punished," said Adnan al-Janabi, a minister of state in the Allawi cabinet.

Dr. Allawi's trip to Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, in an American Black Hawk helicopter, gave him a close-up look at conditions in the city, which passed through its fourth day of fighting on Sunday. An Iraqi reporter said mortar rounds exchanged between Mr. Sadr's loyalists and Iraqi security forces landed close to the building in the center of Najaf where Dr. Allawi, accompanied by his defense and interior ministers, was meeting with Adnan Zurfi, the governor of Najaf.

One Western reporter who found a way past American checkpoints sealing off the city said that several hundred rebels were roaming the streets of the old city on Saturday, close to the golden mosque, and that they were derisive when told of the Marine claims that large numbers of rebels had been killed in the cemetery that was the scene of the fiercest fighting. These fighters put their own losses at no more than 40 killed. Spokesmen for the United States command in Baghdad said on Sunday that three Americans had been killed and about 20 others wounded.

The fighting on Sunday, as on Saturday, was relatively light compared with the clashes on the previous two days, when Marine commanders said 300 rebels had been killed.

In the cemetery, an American Army battalion that was moved into the city to replace exhausted Marine units clashed with the Sadr fighters, then pulled back. Marine officers said many of the fighters who had made their base in the cemetery had been killed or moved out, shifting the focus of the battle into nearby streets and other areas of the city.

There was still no trace of Mr. Sadr, who has remained out of sight since the Najaf fighting started.

John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf.

Copyright 2004 New York Times Company

Tentative accord reached in Najaf to halt fighting

2004-08-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

August 8, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS and JOHN F. BURNS

Najaf: Aides to the country's most powerful Shiite leader said they had reached a tentative agreement on Thursday to end the three-week siege in this Shiite holy city, after a day of chaos and bloodshed here that left at least 74 Iraqis dead and more than 300 wounded.

Hamed al-Khaffaf, an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said that Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric whose fighters have held the Imam Ali Shrine since early August, had agreed to the conditions set forth by Ayatollah Sistani to end the siege.

The proposal, which the interim Iraqi government quickly accepted, calls for the withdrawal of Mr. Sadr's fighters from Najaf and the neighboring city of Kufa, as well as a pullout of American forces and the introduction of Iraqi police officers into Najaf. The agreement would allow Mr. Sadr and his fighters to keep their guns and go free.

In celebration of the accord, thousands of Shiites marched to the shrine through the battle-scarred city on Friday morning.

"We pray today that Najaf will recover,'' Kassem Hameed, a 52-year-old oil worker who came from Basra on Thursday to support Ayatollah Sistani, told Reuters. "The military operations have only brought destruction."

In a statement broadcast Friday morning over the shrine's loudspeakers, Mr. Sadr told his men inside the mosque to lay down their weapons and join the pilgrims outside, Reuters reported. It was not immediately clear if the militia intended to leave the mosque for good.

The deal was struck during a face-to-face meeting between the two men after the momentous homecoming of the 73-year-old Ayatollah Sistani to the city earlier in the day. The ayatollah had left the country just after the fighting began to receive treatment in London for a heart ailment. His return was well timed, coming just after Mr. Sadr's forces had been decimated by a series of blistering American attacks.

The Americans halted combat operations on Thursday, but made clear they were prepared to resume and assault the shrine if Mr. Sadr did not quickly sign on to the pact.

The deal announced Thursday followed a day of horrific violence, underscored by the execution of an Italian journalist, Enzo Baldoni, who disappeared last week while traveling to Najaf.

In the neighboring city of Kufa, a mortar attack on a mosque where thousands of Iraqis were gathering left dozens dead and wounded. At least 35 Iraqi civilians were killed in two other incidents, when the Iraqi police fired into crowds of civilians who were trying to move toward the Shrine of Ali.

One of those incidents occurred in the late afternoon, as thousands of Iraqis had gathered at the gates of Najaf's old city to heed Ayatollah Sistani's call to march on the holy shrine. But as the crowd pushed forward, a line of police officers appeared to panic, first firing into the air and then directly on the crowd.

The police officers fired dozens of rounds, setting off a stampede of terrified people who ran, fell and tripped over one another as they tried to flee. At least 15 Iraqis were killed and 65 more wounded. Some of the injured said the police had fired on the crowd after they had been fired on themselves, but the claim could not be verified.

But for this day, at least, the greater emphasis was on peace. If Mr. Sadr sticks to the deal, it will end one of the bloodiest episodes since the United States invaded the country, a grinding urban battle that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead and much of Najaf in ruins.

The crisis, touched off when Mr. Sadr's men attacked an Iraqi police station earlier this month, has posed a difficult challenge to the interim Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which took office less than two months ago.

"Mr. Moktada al-Sadr agreed to the initiative of his eminence al-Sistani," Mr. Khaffaf told reporters at a news conference outside the house where the grand ayatollah was staying. "You will hear good news soon from the government and Mr. Moktada al-Sadr."

But deals with Mr. Sadr have crumbled before, and there were signs that this one could prove just as ephemeral as the others. Several times this month, and during the uprising called by Mr. Sadr last spring, American and Iraqi negotiators believed they had reached agreements with Mr. Sadr, only to learn that they had been mistaken.

Mr. Sadr did not participate in the news conference called by Ayatollah Sistani's aides on Thursday night. He was spied slipping out to the street just as it got under way. Later, Mr. Sadr's promised public statement failed to materialize.

As to highlight the extremely tenuous nature of the deal, Ayatollah Sistani's aides declined to discuss crucial aspects of the agreement, like how and when Mr. Sadr's fighters, the Mahdi Army, might actually pull out of the shrine.

"It's too early to talk about details," Mr. Khaffaf said.

By not insisting that Mr. Sadr appear publicly to announce the pact, Ayatollah Sistani's men seemed to be trying to offer the young cleric a face-saving way out of the crisis.

"There will be a mechanism that will preserve the dignity of everyone in getting out of the holy shrine," Mr. Khaffaf told Al Jazeera television.

The agreement does not require the surrender of Mr. Sadr, who is under indictment for murdering a rival cleric in Najaf last year, or any of his fighters. That seemed to raise the prospect of a repeat of the peace agreement reached in May, when Mr. Sadr was allowed to retreat gracefully with his army intact, only to return again.

In a statement earlier in the day, Dr. Allawi seemed willing to forgive Mr. Sadr. "We'd like to stress again that we would provide Moktada a safe passage if he chooses to stop the armed conflict," the prime minister said in a statement.

Mr. Khaffaf said the first step in implementing the agreement would be to allow the tens of thousands of Iraqis who heeded Ayatollah Sistani's call to march on the shrine to do so. As with much else in the agreement announced Thursday night, Mr. Khaffaf spoke vaguely about how the march would proceed but said the demonstrators had to be out of the city by Friday at 10 a.m.

Senior American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad said the 24-hour cease-fire was agreed to in discussions in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday night between Ayatollah Sistani and two officials of the Allawi government. They said the Iraqis had returned to the capital saying they had Ayatollah Sistani's commitment that he would make a public demand that the last of the militiamen disarm and leave the shrine, and that if Mr. Sadr defied the demand they had the ayatollah's assurance that he would support an assault on the shrine by Iraqi commandos.

The officials said American military pressures had eliminated virtually all resistance by the Mahdi Army outside the shrine itself. Intelligence reports indicated there were weapons hidden in the shrine, the officials said. Planning for an assault was based on the assumption that these would be used by some of the hundreds of Sadr supporters remaining in the shrine, who have told reporters in recent days that most of the fighters had left.

Without an order from Mr. Sadr for these remaining fighters to leave, one American official said, "There will be a fight."

Either way, the officials said, the Allawi government and American commanders believed the three weeks of fighting in Najaf would end quickly, either with a last-minute Sadr capitulation or with Iraqi forces storming the shrine. They said that a battalion of 500 Iraqi troops was ready for the assault, and that Iraqi and American commanders were confident the Iraqi troops would not fail.

"We're close to being in a position to finish this," an American official said.

Still, some officials at the American command complex in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in Baghdad acknowledged that things could go still go awry.

Since American troops toppled the Hussein government 16 months ago, Ayatollah Sistani has been careful to maintain an equivocal position on American military actions, usually condemning any use of force, by the Americans or the rebels. That left open the possibility that in Najaf, he could distance himself from the Americans by condemning the damage inflicted on the Old City by American bombs and tanks, and even leave Mr. Sadr free to claim that he acted all along to defend the shrine against American attacks.

One of the last American actions before the cease-fire went into effect involved the use of a 2,000-pound, laser-guided bomb to strike a hotel about 130 yards from the shrine's southwest wall, in an area known to American commanders as "motel row."

Dexter Filkins reported from Najaf for this article and John F. Burns from Baghdad.

Marines Pushing Deeper Into City Held by Shiites

2004-08-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

By Alex Berenson and John F. Burns

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 7 - Marine commanders battling Moktada al-Sadr's rebel militiamen in this Shiite holy city said Saturday that the fighting had cleared the rebels from the ancient cemetery in the heart of the old city, but that more fighting lay ahead in the streets and alleyways nearby as an American-led offensive moved to the end of its third day.

As the cemetery battle drew to a close, there was little sign that American commanders, who said they were acting under orders from the new Iraqi government, intended to heed appeals for a cease-fire from clerics and others claiming to represent Mr. Sadr.

The marines described engaging in hand-to-hand fighting in the vast cemetery, which lies adjacent to the ancient Imam Ali mosque, a golden-domed shrine that is one of the holiest in Shiite Islam. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which returned to Iraq recently after taking part in the American-led invasion last year, had endured the fiercest battle of all its engagements in Iraq, the commanders said.

"The engagements in the cemetery were done on foot, encountering numerous fighters at a range when you can smell a man, and it's hand-to-hand combat," said Col. John Mayer, who leads the battalion that took part in the fighting. He spoke at a forward Marine base on the outskirts of Najaf, about three miles from the scene of the fighting, as fresh Marine units prepared at dusk for nighttime deployment into the city.

American accounts of the fighting on Saturday said that there had been only sporadic exchanges of rifle, rocket and mortar fire after the intense battles of the previous 48 hours, in which the marines and an allied force of Iraqi police officers and national guardsmen claimed to have killed more than 300 fighters wearing the black outfits of the Mahdi Army, the militia force loyal to Mr. Sadr. Spokesmen for the militia have countered the claims, saying only 40 of their fighters had been killed.

The United States command said American losses in the fighting up to noon on Saturday amounted to two marines and one soldier killed, and about 20 American servicemen seriously wounded.

Reports from Najaf told of a city now largely deserted, at least in the area of the old city where the fighting has been concentrated. American troops sealed off the city with checkpoints to incoming traffic but allowed fleeing families to pass. Shops and other businesses remained closed. The few people who ventured out on foot could be seen clearing rubble, seemingly oblivious to the rattle of nearby machine-gun fire. All power, water and telephone lines were cut.

In Baghdad, representatives of the cleric met Saturday with a United Nations official, Jamal Benomar, who offered himself as an intermediary, along with a group of Iraqis from a range of political and religious groups. Mr. Benomar said Mr. Sadr's envoys appeared to be reaching for a cease-fire. "In a nutshell, they are keen to meet with the government and come to a settlement," Mr. Benomar said.

But there was little sign a cease-fire would be accepted by the Iraqi government and American commanders. Instead, the indications at nightfall were that the American and Iraqi units intended to press the battle, in the hope of breaking the back of Mr. Sadr's force in Najaf once and for all.

The Iraqi police commander in the city, Gen. Galib Hadi al-Jazaery, told reporters at the Marine base that Iraqi police officers and guardsmen had surrounded and attacked a house that Mr. Sadr has used as a headquarters in recent months. But the force did not find the cleric, who has several other known redoubts in Najaf and the neighboring city of Kufa. "We want to rid the city of this devil," General Jazaery said.

Much in the immediate future of Iraq depends on the Najaf fighting, and on lower-intensity skirmishes in the last 72 hours in other urban areas across central and southern Iraq, including the sprawling slum of Sadr City, on Baghdad's outskirts, and the southern city of Nasiriya. The central question is whether the decision to confront the militiamen, and to do so in a place of the highest religious sensitivities, Najaf, will win the support of Iraq's Shiite majority, or provoke a potentially crippling backlash against the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which took formal power from the Americans when the country resumed its sovereignty on June 28.

On Saturday, after remaining silent during the first 48 hours of fighting, Dr. Allawi gave a news conference in Baghdad in which he appeared intent on reinforcing his appeal to Iraqis as the strongman many have said they wanted during the 15 months of lawlessness and insurgency that followed the American invasion last year.

He turned aside appeals for a cease-fire, saying prisoners taken during the fighting included "more than 1,000 criminals," at least 400 of whom had been released from prisons under an amnesty declared by Saddam Hussein six months before he was toppled from power.

"What has occurred in Najaf is pitiful," the prime minister said. Referring to the militiamen, he continued: "These attacks have aimed at destabilizing the government. These people are trying to deprive our people of their freedom and progress. Our country has gone through too many wars, and too much hardship, and I'm confident our people will choose the path toward peace and prosperity."

Specifically, Dr. Allawi described the fighting as an attempt to undermine the new government's efforts to improve security, to strengthen the flagging economy and to prepare for parliamentary elections scheduled for the end of January. A fully elected government is planned by January 2006. At one point, he invited Mr. Sadr, the rebel cleric, to abandon reliance on his militia and to run in the January elections, an idea that Mr. Sadr had already contemptuously rejected.

Dr. Allawi, a Shiite who trained as a physician and joined Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party as a student but defected to the exiled opposition 20 years ago, showed some of the political deftness he will need if he is to emerge from the tangled machinations of Shiite politics as a contender for power in the elections.

He suggested at the news conference that the militiamen fighting in Najaf, whom the Americans have said have mostly worn the black outfits of Mr. Sadr's militia, might not be Sadr loyalists at all, but "people using his name." He said he had been receiving "positive messages from Moktada al-Sadr." But he gave no details, and did not clarify whether he was referring to private communications from the rebel cleric or to discussions in Baghdad earlier on Saturday between representatives of Mr. Sadr and Mr. Benomar.

Dr. Allawi's suggestion that Mr. Sadr might not be responsible for the men battling in Najaf appeared intended to provide an alternative to an all-out showdown with potentially grim implications for both men.

If the Najaf fighting has shown Dr. Allawi at his most combative, he used his news conference to brandish a carrot along with the stick. He announced that he had signed a decree offering a 30-day amnesty period for people involved with the insurgency that has paralyzed wide areas of the country. The terms of the amnesty cover only relatively minor actions - among them, possessing illegal arms and explosives, failing to disclose information about terrorist groups, and otherwise helping with attacks. But under American pressure, the amnesty offer would not include anybody who has engaged in killing United States troops.

Throughout the clashes, American military spokesmen have stressed the point that fighting with the Sadr militia has been undertaken under the political authority of the new government. They have said that the Najaf battle was triggered at early light on Thursday when the city's Iraqi governor appealed for the marines to send a quick reaction force to a tent camp 30 miles east of the city to support Iraqi policemen and national guardsmen defending a police station in Najaf's old city from waves of attack by the militiamen.

At dusk on Saturday, Brig. General Erwin F. Lessel III of the Air Force, the deputy operations director for the American command in Baghdad, said that Najaf had been mainly quiet for much of the day, after two days of intense fighting, but that there had been periodic exchanges of rifle and rocket fire in the area around the cemetery. General Lessel said there was no immediate expectation of a cease-fire. "We're going to continue operations," he said. "We are not negotiating at this point." But he added that the political decisions were for Dr. Allawi, not for American commanders. "The Iraqi government has the lead," he said. "We are there in a supporting role, and we will support the government in its decisions. It was their resolve, their commitment to take this course of action, and there's no indication that they're going to stop."

United States military spokesmen have stressed that it has been the Sadr fighters, not the Americans, who turned the mosque and its vicinity into a battleground. They have said that Mr. Sadr's fighters have fired rifles, mortars and rockets from within the mosque or its roofs, as well as the cemetery, and that the marines have fired back only when fired upon.

The 11th Marine Expeditionary Force, the American unit leading the fighting, issued a statement on Saturday saying that the militiamen had stored "large weapons caches" in the cemetery and had launched numerous attacks from the site, violating a cease-fire agreement reached with American forces in May.

The statement added: "While the international laws of armed conflict normally identify sites like this as protected places, such status is forfeited if the site is used for military purposes. The actions of the Moktada militia make the cemetery a legitimate military objective, which was only assaulted due to necessity and self-defense. During the fighting, the marines made every effort to minimize collateral damage and preserve the cemetery."

Copyright 2004 New York Times Company

Copter-Borne Medics: Disciplined Ballet, Choreographed to Save G.I.'s

2004-08-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

by John F. Burns, New York Times
August 6th, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 5 - For days, an unnatural quiet had settled on the Army's 45th Medical Company, one of four airborne medical evacuation units supporting 130,000 American troops in Iraq.

Little was heard of the three rings on the radios carried by the standby crews for the Black Hawk helicopters, signaling casualties requiring urgent airlift after a bomb or an ambush or a firefight somewhere out in the 125-degree heat of the Iraqi summer.

But the dog days of August, and the long hours of watching James Bond movies and Nascar races on the Pentagon's TV channel, ended abruptly for the unit on Thursday, about the time crews were rotating out for lunch at the Taji military base, a few miles out in the scrubland beyond Baghdad's northwestern outskirts.

After weeks of relative quiet, American troops were taking casualties in renewed fighting in Najaf and in Sadr City, strongholds of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

For Chief Warrant Officer Joseph E. Carroll, 33, of Boulder, Colo., co-pilot of "Medicine Man 23," one of the 12 Black Hawks the company flies in Iraq, the fighting brought a return to the tightly disciplined, hair-trigger routines that have taken the unit through nearly 1,400 missions, carrying more than 2,000 sick or wounded American and Iraqis, since it arrived from its base in Germany six months ago.

Running to the helicopter with another pilot, a crew chief and a flight medic, Mr. Carroll had the helicopter airborne in barely three minutes, headed out for a First Cavalry Division base known as War Eagle, on the edge of Sadr City, where medics waited with five American soldiers who had sustained shrapnel wounds when they were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Barely 20 minutes after takeoff from Taji, the Black Hawk, with red crosses on its nose and fuselage denoting an unarmed air ambulance, was racing back west across the Tigris River, low and fast to guard against ground fire, for a touchdown beside the American-run Ibn Sina military hospital in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone.

Within an hour, Black Hawks and Humvees delivered 15 wounded soldiers to the hospital, setting off frenetic activity in the trauma center, a 100-yard dash for medics who pushed the stretcher trolleys from the landing zone, adjusting intravenous drips as they raced across the burning tarmac to the center's glass doors.

At least two of the soldiers were scheduled for neurosurgery for shrapnel and gunshot wounds to the head, and others faced painful days, possibly weeks, recovering from less life-threatening wounds to the neck, chest and legs.

But by nightfall, all 15 had been stabilized, and a number were walking around, and even preparing to return to their units. In a war in which more than 900 soldiers have died and nearly 6,000 have been wounded, the day's toll, though worse than on many recent days, was still far below the worst that Ibn Sina's medical teams knew, back in April, when Mr. Sadr, the cleric, ignited an uprising that on some days sent dozens of wounded Americans to the hospital.

According to Maj. Christopher M. Knapp, 40, of Muskego, Wis., the unit commander, only about 1 percent of the wounded soldiers carried aboard the helicopters have died on board. Col. John J. Donnelly, chief of staff of the Army's Second Medical Brigade, said the death rate among wounded soldiers is about 8 percent in Iraq, down from 15 percent in Vietnam.

For Mr. Carroll and more than 100 other crewmen at Taji, Thursday was one more day to tick off in a slow countdown to the end of their 12-month hitch here. Flying medevac missions is an intensely hazardous undertaking in Iraq, where the unarmed Black Hawks have frequently come under ground fire.

"I've seen tracer fire going past the nose of the aircraft at night, so close that after we've landed we have had to check the rotors for damage," Mr. Carroll said, relaxing between missions at Taji, a huge American encampment that used to be the headquarters of Mr. Hussein's armored units, and a site for secret weapons development projects.

Other pilots described making steep, terrain-hugging turns after coming under rocket fire, or seeing the launch smoke, then hearing the boom, from surface-to-air missiles fired by insurgents crouching on rooftops or hiding in palm groves. Some even described people throwing stones, though for every account of hostility from people on the ground there were others describing Iraqis waving as the helicopters fly by, and even, in one case, a village where the words "We love you America" had been traced in the dirt.

To Mr. Carroll, as well as other crewmen, the risks of being shot down are offset by what they describe, after months of escaping damage or injury in flight, to be the insurgents' amateurishness with weapons.

"The Iraqis have shown that they don't have any marksmanship," he said.

Other pilots are less confident, and say the unit has been riding its luck. In January, shortly before the 45th Medical Company arrived, another unit flying Black Hawks lost an aircraft, with nine soldiers killed, when a rocket-propelled grenade caused the pilot to pull sharply away from his flight path, striking power lines that brought the helicopter down.

One of those killed was Chief Warrant Officer Aaron A. Weaver, a pilot who survived the bloody 1993 ambush in Somalia recounted in the movie "Black Hawk Down," then contracted cancer, before recovering and returning to flying in Iraq. Mr. Weaver was flying to Baghdad as a passenger, for a cancer check-up, when he was killed.

Facing an enemy with scant respect for the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on ambulances, is far from the only challenge.

In Iraq, there are sudden sandstorms, children's kites that fly almost invisibly from myriad rooftops, and the searing heat, now at its worst, which degrades avionics systems, exhausts crews and causes huge thermals that can turn any flight into a succession of gut-wrenching bumps.

But worst of all are the power lines that sweep across the landscape, many of them poorly mapped, or not mapped at all. Compounding the threat, many lines were looted for their copper wire after the American invasion last year. Many of these have now been repaired, so that aircrews can be confronted, without notice, with power lines that have suddenly reappeared.

Traveling aboard the Black Hawks, over three days of day and night missions, a reporter embedded with the unit listened as the crew's "backenders," the crew chief and the flight medic. watched through the open hatches where Black Hawks ferrying soldiers into combat have machine guns.

"Wires right at two o'clock, two miles," one crew chief urged over his headset, as the helicopter flew south toward a base near Al Mussayib to pick up two marines injured when their Humvee hit a land mine.

On another mission, to pick up an American soldier with suspected appendicitis from the prison at Abu Ghraib, the pilots asked the backenders to keep a special eye out for anybody on the ground preparing to fire a weapon.

Otherwise, the crews' exchanges as they skimmed low across the terrain betrayed little tension. Rarely if ever venturing outside the Taji base, except aboard the helicopters, they have their own perspective on Iraq.

In their world, Mr. Hussein's ousted regime is ever-present, in the form of the huge palaces that loom over Iraqi cities' desultory stretches of two- and three-story concrete buildings. The palaces, bombed and derelict now, or converted into American military bases, serve as helpful reference points along the ever-varying flight paths the pilots follow, especially in Baghdad.

But from the air, too, more starkly than on the ground, there is also the new world of Iraq beyond Mr. Hussein, a world where almost every roof has a satellite television dish, banned by the ousted dictator except for his acolytes; where markets that were once nearly deserted for lack of spending power are now crowded from dawn to dusk; where almost every open space, as the sun sets, is busy these days with men and young boys playing pick-up games of soccer.

"Down there, right now, that's the new Iraq", said Capt. Roderick P. Stout, 28, of Gainesville, Fla., commanding a flight that carried the soldier from Abu Ghraib to the Ibn Sina hospital. "They're out there playing, they're out there shopping. That's good."

Powell Travels to Baghdad in Effort to Improve Morale

2004-07-31T10:54:00.000-07:00

By JOHN F. BURNS
July 31, 2004

Lloyd Francis Jr./Associated Press

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell greeted troops and American Embassy staff members on Friday at the embassy annex in the Green Zone after a speech thanking the military and staff for sacrifices made in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 30 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday to tell anxious and embittered Iraqis that the United States will stand by its pledge to bring "peace, freedom and democracy" to their country, and to issue a rallying cry against kidnappers, bombers and others who, he said, wanted to return the country to a "Saddam Hussein-like" past.

Mr. Powell's visit, his third in the 16 months since Baghdad fell to American troops, appeared to be aimed in part at improving the uncertain morale of the Iraqi interim government. In its first month, the government has seen its hopes of drawing support from Iraq's 25 million people blighted by a wave of kidnappings of at least 25 foreigners, four of which have ended in grisly, videotaped beheadings, and by bombing attacks like the huge blast on Wednesday in the city of Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad, which left about 70 dead. Bombings have killed many more Iraqis than American troops.

After a round of meetings with Iraqi government ministers, and with the two top Americans in Iraq, Ambassador John D. Negroponte and Gen. George W. Casey, Mr. Powell used a news conference to issue an emphatic reaffirmation of the American commitment here.

His one tangible promise was to speed up the flow of the $18 billion in American reconstruction aid, less than $500 million of which has been released so far, so that Iraqis could see the realization of long-promised improvements in water, electricity and other areas.

"Reconstruction and security are two sides of the same coin," Mr. Powell said, because Iraqis who see their lives improving will be less likely to support or condone the insurgency. But he delivered what amounted to a stiff lecture for Iraqis, and for countries that have wavered or retreated from the American-led effort here in the face of the kidnappings and insurgent attacks, saying they should weigh their actions carefully before buckling to those who aim to frustrate American goals.

"These are killers and murderers who are killing innocent people who have come to Iraq to help the Iraqi people to a better life," Mr. Powell said in answer to a question about the kidnappings and beheadings, the most recent of which involved two Pakistani truck drivers who were killed Wednesday. "There is nothing romantic about this; there is nothing justified about this. These are murderous acts, they are terrorist acts, and the world must stand united."

Mr. Powell seemed incensed after an Iraqi reporter made what amounted to a statement in support of the insurgents in Falluja, the rebel-controlled city 35 miles west of Baghdad, saying their leaders were not foreign-based terrorists, as American officials have alleged, but Iraqis defending their homes and families against American military excesses. "The United States does not wish to be an occupying authority," he said. "The United States wants to help the sovereign government of Iraq protect its people and build a better life," adding that nothing it had done justified bombings, kidnappings and other "killings of innocent people."

"Those who are setting off these bombs, those who are conducting these kidnappings, are doing them for the purpose of returning to the past, returning to the days of a Saddam Hussein-like regime which will fill mass graves, which will have rape rooms again, which will destroy the infrastructure which was destroyed by 35 years of dictatorial leadership, not by the conflict of last year," Mr. Powell said. "I don't think the Iraqi people want to go back to the past."

One possible sliver of good news, though unconfirmed, was that the latest threat of a beheading, this time of an Indian truck driver, appeared to have been put off, at least temporarily, by the intervention of a tribal leader with influence in the Sunni Muslim area west of Baghdad, where many of the kidnappings have taken place. A shadowy group calling itself the Bearers of the Black Banners had videotaped the driver in an orange jumpsuit - a preliminary to several previous beheadings. They vowed to kill him by 7 p.m. Baghdad time on Friday if the Kuwaiti trucking company that employs him failed to abrogate its contracts to run food supplies to American troops in Iraq.

The tribal leader, Sheik Hisham al-Dulaymi, told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya television channel by telephone about two hours ahead of the deadline that an executive of the Kuwaiti company, reversing the company's previous stand, had "presented its apology" for dispatching seven Indian, Kenyan and Egyptian drivers held by the group, including the man on the videotape, on their missions into Iraq. The sheik, who is based in the rebellious city of Ramadi, 65 miles west of Baghdad, said the Kuwaiti executive had undertaken to make himself available for "negotiations" on Saturday.

Asked if he thought the Indian's captors would suspend the threatened execution, the sheik replied, "If they hear my appeal through your channel, I am sure, in the name of decency and humanity, they will not behead the hostage who was supposed to be decapitated today."

At midnight, five hours past the deadline, the kidnappers had made no further contact with the Arab-language news channels that had received telephone calls and videotapes confirming previous beheadings. At the same time, there were unconfirmed reports of at least one more kidnapping of a truck driver, this time of a Somali.

In the 12 hours before Mr. Powell arrived here from Kuwait, where he returned to spend Friday night before flying to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on Saturday, the scale of the fighting that continues to tie down 130,000 American troops - and its effects on Iraq's civilian population - were underscored by a new battle in Falluja. Details were scarce, since the risk of kidnapping has deterred Western reporters, and even some Iraqi journalists, from entering the city for much of the past three months. But doctors at a local hospital said at least 13 people were killed and a dozen others wounded, when American troops and insurgents engaged in overnight clashes. Video from Associated Press Television News showed a wounded man lying in a hospital with his trousers covered in blood, saying that his mother and sister had been killed.

"What is our fault?" the man said.