Baghdad // Current

Mayor of Baghdad proposes $3bn metro plan

A year ago it would have been unthinkable. After all it was a city where driving to work became a life or death decision and where... more

bansheewail
added this

Iraq triple bombings kill dozens

A triple bombing in Baghdad has killed more than two dozen people and wounded scores more in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi... more

singrrr
added this

Triple bombing rocks Baghdad - strong recent terrorist trend

At least 28 people have been killed by three bombs that exploded just moments apart in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The first... more

InformedTexan
added this

Reminisces of old Baghdad by one of its last Jews

"One of the last eight Jews in Baghdad, a portly retired accountant, erupts in a bellyful of laughter when asked why he never... more

bedeboop
added this

Powerful Iraqi party claims U.S. killed innocent man

BAGHDAD — The most powerful Sunni Muslim party in Iraq issued an angry statement Saturday accusing Americans of covering up... more

wlwatkins
added this

Health threat in Iraq posed by aging water networks

At least 17 percent of piped water nationwide, and one-third of the water in Baghdad, is not potable, according to a survey by the... more

Future_America
added this

Iraqi ministry members hurt in car bombing

Four members of Iraq's health ministry were wounded after a bomb attached to their vehicle detonated in central Baghdad.... more

nazbags
added this

Iraq's Unschooled Children Evidence of Devastation's Depth

At age 14, Ahmad Razaq has worked more jobs than he can count. He's painted houses, cleaned office buildings and supervised a... more

goldenways
added this

Two families survive Iraq’s militias

Alive in Baghdad brings you interviews with Iraqi families struggling to survive the sectarian violence.

Iraq, Baghdad/Saediya/Adhamiya - The sectarian conflict in Iraq was one of the main problems that has continued to limit stability and security in certain Iraqi provinces. Many people were forced to sell their house and flee to other neighborhoods or to leave Iraq entirely. In other cases they were not able to sell any of their property such as cars or furniture, and had to flee immediately.

According to the International Herald Tribune, the highest number of casualties due to violence was in September 2006 when approximately 2600 Iraqis were killed. According to icasualites.org, more than 3300 civilians were killed in this period. At the end of 2006 the Iraqi Minister of Health shocked the world by announcing that 150,000 Iraqis had been killed during the war by October 2006, more than three times previous accepted estimates.

Many of the casualties were because of the actions of Al-Qaeda and other Sunni militias or insurgents. On the other hand Shia militias such as the Badr Brigade and others were taking different techniques, for example kidnapping and assassinating Iraqis, and both sides created a great number of refugees and internally-displaced families.

Sunni neighborhoods like Adhamiya in Baghdad found themselves hosting Sunni refugees who fled death threats from Shia Areas such as Khalis, Karbala, Najaf, and others. The internally displaced families were desperate to find shelter, some forced to live in tents in camps inside Adhamiya. Some local residents of the neighborhoods donated items like heaters, blankets, and food to help those families. Some families who were lucky were able to make a deal with a Shi’a family who was displaced form Adhamiya, and thereby find a home to shelter them during the worst violence.

Shia areas like Sadr City have hosted Shia refugees from Sunni conflict zones like Abu Ghraib, Anbar province, and Falluja specifically. The Sadr movement has provided some of the help for these refugees, like food, blankets, and helping them by sheltering them in properties belonging to the Sadr Movement. Other families in Sadr City decided to host some of the families in their own homes.

The common rumors in Baghdad are that the Badr Brigade is kidnapping Iraqi Sunnis, and the Mahdi Army is kidnapping Sunni Iraqi as well. On the Shia side the common belief is that Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Army’s main purpose is the removal of all Shia from Iraq and to cut any kind of connection with Iran, and the Iraqi citizens find themselves confused whom to believe, the Iraqi government or a religious militia?

Alive in Baghdad brings you interviews with some of those Iraqi who are suffering all those problems every day.

Alive in Baghdad brings you interviews with Iraqi families struggling to survive the sectarian violence. Iraq,... more

Vierotchka
added this

9 responses

27 days ago

Patrick Cockburn: Why the Surge is a Mirage

Coverage of Iraq in the U.S. has been all about the surge and its success. But more troops will remain in Baghdad after the surge... more

GRITtv
added this

0 responses

27 days ago

Thousands march in Baghdad against U.S. pact

Saturday, Oct 18, 2008 Thousands of followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets on Saturday in a... more

bansheewail
added this

18 responses

29 days ago

Protesters march against proposed U.S.-Iraq pact

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Thousands of people marched in central Baghdad on Saturday to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security... more

emarston
added this

1 response

1 month ago

Pact May Open US Troops to Iraqi Prosecution

Iraq would have the right to prosecute American troops and Pentagon contractors accused of major, premeditated crimes committed... more

pgpkeys
added this

0 responses

1 month ago

Baghdad security plan burdens residents

Alive In Baghdad: Checkpoints throughout Baghdad still remain, but many people want the government to get rid of them.

The ongoing fighting in Baghdad pushed the Iraqi and US forces to establish checkpoints all over the city, but today many people question them and have begun pushing the Iraqi government to take down the walls that block much of the city.

Baghdad, Iraq - The ongoing fighting in Baghdad pushed the Iraqi and US forces to establish checkpoints all over the city to secure the roads and neighborhoods. Controlling the cars inside the city and preventing them from distributing weapons or bombs was the first aim of these checkpoints. There are four main types of checkpoints in Baghdad, the checkpoints made by US forces those of the Iraqi National Guard, and finally those established by the Iraqi Police or the Ministry of Interior.

There are approximately 500 checkpoints deployed around the perimeter as well as inside the city. Most of the checkpoints are directed by the Iraqi National Guard or Coalition forces. These checkpoints are getting attacked repeatedly by IEDs, car bombs, and sniper attacks. Many Iraqis were killed because of these attacks, for example, they may be driving into a checkpoint or getting killed by stray bullets fired after a car bomb attack.

On the other hand, starting several years ago, militias began using what are known as “fake checkpoints” in order to kidnap or kill people. The fake checkpoints generated great fear among the Iraqi people agains Iraqi forces whether they were military forces or police. It become something very familiar within Iraqi society that if someone was kidnapped or disappeared at one of the “fake checkpoints,” the family should go and look in the morgue looking for that person.

Another type of checkpoint began appearing in late 2007, these ones have been run by the Sahwa “Awakening” Forces, in order to control the Sunni Areas and keep them out of al-Qaeda control and free of any other groups that may be related to al-Qaeda. These Sahwa Forces were selected from the same area they work in, their local knowledge helps them to know everyone coming in or out of neighborhood. These forces have assisted in establishing many of the stability gains in the Sunni neighborhoods.

The Iraqi security forces used to wear masks to hide their identity form other extremist insurgents, and not to be followed when they return home. Many militias also used masks to hide their faces and keep a low profile. In late 2007 the Iraqi government ordered all security forces to take off their masks to give a greater impression of honesty and trustworthiness to the Iraqi people and prevent them form being afraid due to the threat of fake checkpoints.

Today, although security appears to have returned to much of Baghdad, blast walls and checkpoints continue to choke the city streets. These measures helped re-establish security in the capital, but today many people question them and have begun pushing the Iraqi government to take down the walls that block much of the city.

Alive In Baghdad: Checkpoints throughout Baghdad still remain, but many people want the government to get rid of them. The... more

Vierotchka
added this

8 responses

1 month ago

Car bombings in Mosul and Baghdad kill 13

Suicide car bombers struck twice Sunday in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others,... more

sunnyspeaks
added this

2 responses

1 month ago

Revealed: "secret" executions being carried out in Saddam's old intelligence hq

Hundreds of "insurgents" have been executed since 2003, victims of the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learned that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.

The hangings are carried out regularly -- from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell -- in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims -- there have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq -- are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

The secrets of Iraq's death chambers lie mostly hidden from foreign eyes but a few brave Western souls have come forward to tell of this prison horror. The accounts provide only a glimpse into the Iraqi story, at times tantalizingly cut short, at others gloomily predictable. Those who tell it are as depressed as they are filled with hopelessness.

"Most of the executions are of supposed insurgents of one kind or another," a Westerner who has seen the execution chamber at Kazimiyah told me. "But hanging isn't easy." As always, the devil is in the detail.

"There's a cell with a bar below the ceiling with a rope over it and a bench on which the victim stands with his hands tied," a former British official, told me last week. "I've been in the cell, though it was always empty. But not long before I visited, they'd taken this guy there to hang him. They made him stand on the bench, put the rope round his neck and pushed him off. But he jumped on to the floor. He could stand up. So they shortened the length of the rope and got him back on the bench and pushed him off again. It didn't work."

There's nothing new in savage executions in the Middle East -- in the Lebanese city of Sidon 10 years ago, a policeman had to hang on to the legs of a condemned man to throttle him after he failed to die on the noose -- but in Baghdad, cruel death seems a specialty.

"They started digging into the floor beneath the bench so that the guy would drop far enough to snap his neck," the official said. "They dug up the tiles and the cement underneath. But that didn't work. He could still stand up when they pushed him off the bench. So they just took him to a corner of the cell and shot him in the head."

The condemned prisoners in Kazimiyah, a Shia district of Baghdad, are said to include rapists and murderers as well as insurgents. One prisoner, a Chechen, managed to escape from the jail with another man after a gun was smuggled to them. They shot two guards dead. The authorities had to call in the Americans to help them recapture the two. The Americans killed one and shot the Chechen in the leg. He refused medical assistance so his wound went gangrenous. In the end, the Iraqis had to operate and took all the bones out of his leg. By the time he met one Western visitor to the prison, "he was walking around on crutches with his boneless right leg slung over his shoulder."

********CONTINUES****************Hundreds of "insurgents" have been executed since 2003, victims of the same summary justice they mete out to their own... more

goldenways
added this

22 responses

1 month ago

Fewer black funeral banners blanket Baghdad

This is the way almost all Iraqi families announce the deaths of relatives. When a loved one dies, hanging the banners is the first order of business.

If it was a violent death, as many here are, a banner is hung at the scene of the attack. Another is nailed up at the victim's house, another along the main road into his neighborhood and perhaps another at his mosque.

They are always made from black cloth, and the names of the dead are always painted in yellow. The other details — a list of relatives left behind and the place and dates of the funeral — are usually painted in white. Most banners are around four feet long and three feet wide.

It is a custom that existed here long before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, but over the last five and a half years, the banners have taken on new meaning. They are an informal measure of security, a way for residents to gauge whether their neighborhood is becoming more or less dangerous.

Between 2005 and 2007, at the height of violence, the banners blanketed Baghdad. They still hang on buildings and blast walls across the capital, but in far fewer numbers.

"There was a time when you could see one almost everywhere you looked," said Mohammed Hussein Abbas, a high school teacher from Baghdad. "The banners were everywhere."

About 350 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence across Iraq last month, half as many as a year ago.

"The walls of the hotel on the corner there used to be covered," said Abbas, pointing. "Of course people are still being killed, but not as many."

As soon as a family receives news of a death, one or two relatives are usually asked to handle the funeral banners, often cousins, nephews or uncles of the deceased.

Most banners are hand-painted by professional sign makers. Each one typically costs about $4; families who bring their own cloth are charged a dollar less.

Banners can be painted and dried while mourners wait, usually in less than half an hour.

"Even though my business has gone down, I am happy," said Ali Kasim Hashim, who earns his living painting funeral banners in a small Baghdad shop he shares with his father, a portrait artist. "Security is the most important thing for Iraq, so I don't mind having fewer customers."This is the way almost all Iraqi families announce the deaths of relatives. When a loved one dies, hanging the banners is the... more