January 19, 2011

The scary sounds of victory

Iraq has just defeated North Korea, 1-0, to advance to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup of Nations soccer tournament. Baghdad was riveted to the match, but even if you weren't watching, you'd have known instantly that Iraq prevailed when the sound of celebratory gunfire and fireworks pierced the cold air.

Perhaps I should take it as a happy sign that the loudest booms one tends to hear in Baghdad these days are at the end of victorious soccer matches. But the soccer-crazed Iraqi fans' peculiar ritual unfortunately is no laughing matter. Three nights ago, when Iraq beat UAE, three people were killed in Diyala province in celebratory gunfire, which has become such a scourge that the Health Ministry has asked officials to ban the practice.

So just what does 'celebratory fire' sound like? I stepped outside our offices in central Baghdad tonight to record a bit of the excitement. Have a listen.

January 14, 2011

Biden says Iraq is 'in a good place'

The news out of Vice President Biden's one-day stop in Iraq yesterday - his seventh trip here in two years - might just be that there was no news at all.

Biden met with the predictable list of top officials: Prime Minister Maliki, President Talabani, Iraqiyya leader Iyad Allawi, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, U.S. Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, commander of U.S. forces Gen. Lloyd Austin and others. He spoke to U.S. troops and reiterated that the December deadline for withdrawing all forces would be met. The trip was most notable for the almost bland message that the Obama administration wanted to convey.

"I've got to say, it was very positive across the board," a senior administration official told reporters today on the flight home, following a stop in Afghanistan. "I think we came away feeling that the Iraqis … were in a good place."

How things have changed in Baghdad, where violence is down and political life has begun to assume a semblance of normality. The big crises in the Middle East this week are in Lebanon and Tunisia, not here. It's possible, apparently, for the American vice president to come to Iraq now and for it not to be a major news story.

Biden's meetings were held behind closed doors, so there was little coverage in the Iraqi media. U.S. reporters also had little new to write and a few major news organizations with bureaus in Baghdad - including this one - chose not to write a story at all.

Asked what the purpose of Biden's visit was, the administration official said it was to underscore that Iraq has had a "very significant achievement" in forming most of its new government. He raised the usual laundry list of challenges - an oil law, disputed internal boundaries, relations with neighboring countries, ending U.N. Chapter VII sanctions - with Iraqi officials.

Biden acknowledged that Iraq has "a long way to go," and just as he arrived three bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding a dozen. But gone are the days that a visit by an official from Washington would snarl traffic, dominate the headlines here and back home and produce days of news coverage. It's now possible to fly in for a day of meetings and fly home like just another business trip. That's perhaps the biggest takeaway of the Biden visit.

January 13, 2011

Vice President Biden arrives in Baghdad

Vice President Joe Biden is in Baghdad again, his seventh trip here in the last two years.

Biden arrived last night and met first thing this morning with the U.S. ambassador, Jim Jeffrey, and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin. The visit was his first since Iraq announced a new government last month, led by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and including members of all the country's major political blocs.

"I'm here to help the Iraqis celebrate the progress they made," Biden told reporters at a brief photo-op at the U.S. Embassy. "They formed a government. And that's a good thing. They have a long way to go."

Biden is expected to meet later today with Iraqi leaders including Maliki, his rival Iyad Allawi, President Jalal Talabani and the new parliamentary speaker, Osama al Nujaifi.

As if to welcome the vice president, at least two explosions occurred in Baghdad this morning, with news reports saying that two people were killed and about 11 injured.

December 24, 2010

Are Iraqi lawmakers stealing from their security guards?

Iraq's parliamentarians earn about $270,000 a year in salary and benefits. So why are they stealing money from their security guards?

This is the charge leveled against lawmakers by the guards themselves, who quietly stepped forward in recent months to complain that they weren't receiving their full allotted salaries of roughly $600 a month. One guard reportedly said that he was receiving only about $210, and there were reports of lawmakers' offices inflating their payroll with "ghost employees" to skim off more money.

This practice is hardly the norm among all lawmakers, but it's become enough of an issue that the new parliamentary speaker, Osama al Nujaifi, earlier this week set new rules to regulate allocations and benefits. Lawmakers will now have to produce official documents from each security guard as a condition to receive funds, in an attempt to crack down on ghost employees. And Nujaifi also said that guards now could come to parliament themselves to receive their salaries directly.

It's part of an aggressive series of moves by Nujaifi in his first days as speaker, and it suggests that the Sunni politician from the northern city Mosul is going to make something out of his position, perhaps building it up into a counterweight to the powerful office of the prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite. Nujaifi has also backed an investigation demanded by Sunni lawmakers to investigate the abrupt closure last month of the popular independent Baghdadiya TV channel, which was denounced by free-speech groups.

Given the disdain with which most Iraqis view their politicians, Nujaifi can certainly score points in the new government by cleaning up corruption and thievery and by trimming the fat from Iraqi officialdom. The funds allocated to each lawmaker's office for hiring contract employees is about $20,000 per month, spread over as many as 30 people. The monthly base salary (not including car, housing and expense allowances) for just one lawmaker? About five times that.

(With reporting by Sahar Issa in the McClatchy Baghdad bureau)

December 22, 2010

In Baghdad, concrete walls for Christmas

It's not going to feel like much of a Christmas in Iraq this year.

This morning, at Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad, the mood was somber. I counted three worshippers. One was a girl, a tiny brunette of no more than 10 years old, who walked to the front of the church clutching her school report card. She knelt at the altar in front of a picture of her cousin, who was inside the church during evening mass on Oct. 31, when terrorists stormed the building and took the worshippers hostage before detonating suicide vests. Dozens were killed, including the girl's cousin.

The attack, and a smattering of others in recent weeks against Iraq's vanishing Christian community, have led to a feeling of siege this Christmas. Human rights groups say that Christians have been targeted with rocket attacks and received threats by mail and text message. On Wednesday, wire services reported that Christians in three Iraqi cities had decided to cancel Christmas observances after receiving threats.

The Chaldean Catholic archbishop in the northern city of Kirkuk told AFP that he and 10 other Christian leaders received warnings from the Islamic State of Iraq - a terrorist group linked to al Qaida in Iraq, which claimed responsibility for the Baghdad attack - that persuaded him to cancel the traditional Christmas feast. Only masses will be held, and only in the morning, Monsignor Louis Sako said.

AP reported that Santa Claus wouldn't be coming to Kirkuk this year, saying an appearance outside one of the town's churches had been called off.

In Mosul and Basra, two other Baghdad cities that are home to members of the dwindling Christian community - which stands at about 500,000 now, down from more than 1 million in the Saddam Hussein era - Christian leaders have told their flock not to put up Christmas decorations.

In Baghdad, Christian leaders said they planned to go ahead with subdued Christmas commemorations - amid intense security precautions. Concrete blast walls now surround Our Lady of Salvation church, put up several days ago, a security guard said. A church in the capital's Zafaraniyeh neighborhood has done the same. Outside another church I visited this morning, tangles of barbed wire were scattered across the road.

Human rights groups have called on the new Iraqi government to do more to protect its Christian community. Violence in Iraq this year was at its lowest since 2003, but it remains a dangerous place for minorities. Dozens of Christian families have fled Iraqi cities this fall for the relative safety of the northern Kurdistan region and for neighboring Syria and Jordan.

For them, and for their thousands of brethren remaining in Iraq, it will be a Christmas tinged with indescribable sadness.