From the Times Online:
General Mohan al-Firaiji, a four-star commander newly appointed by the Government in Baghdad to take charge of security in Basra, along with General Jalil Khalaf, a new police chief in the southern city, persuaded the Shia militia groups “to leave the British aloneâ€. In return, the 500 British troops at Basra Palace would withdraw.
From Deborah McAleese at the Belfast Telegraph:
The welcome calmness in and around the Basra area is in stark contrast to my arrival in Baghdad where the sound of gun fire and explosions from the red zone are a common background noise.
From The Guardian:
‘We don’t want to have a clash with those who have become involved in the awakening campaign,” a spokesman for the 1920 Revolution Brigades, one of the largest guerrilla organisations fighting the US occupation, said yesterday. “We will give time to people who have been harmed by al-Qaida and its violence. We are now fighting the Americans more outside the cities.” But he dismissed as disinformation a claim in last week’s Economist that members of the Brigades now “accompany the Americans as guides on patrols”, pointing to a video of a successful attack by the group in the past week on a US humvee just broadcast on al-Jazeera as his answer. “Resistance will continue until the occupation forces leave our country.”
From Reuters:
Gunmen kidnapped Abdul-Razzaq Hashim, the head of Basra International Airport, from his house in the airport compound near Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, police said.
From the Telegraph:
Up to 40 people are being killed each day in Iraq’s second city, say officers who have set a two-week deadline for security to be improved before they approach the British for help…
“We can’t control Basra any more,” said one Iraqi colonel, who disclosed that political divisions were leading to bloodshed even within the ranks of the army. “Our forces in the streets don’t obey us — they obey their parties…”
“We stand between two fires,” he said. “The first is the shame of telling the British that we need help, because the people will consider us as losers. The second is the number of the dead people?.?.?.?We have drawn up a plan to try to make the situation good in two weeks.
If we can’t do it we will ask for help from the British before another 1,000 soldiers leave Iraq. If there are no British left, we will be executed by the militias.”
From Time:
U.S. military officers in Iraq often wonder about the possible presence of Iranian operatives in cities south of Baghdad like Karbala and Najaf, two key strongholds for Shi’ite militias thought to have links to Tehran. Many soldiers believe those two cities, home to more than 1.5 million people altogether, are where Shi’ite militants gather, train and arm themselves with help from Iran for attacks against U.S. forces farther north. Some intelligence even suggests that Iran’s elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard, has opened training camps in the area for Iraqi guerrillas. But getting a clear picture of the happenings there and in other cities in that region is hard for one simple reason: U.S. troops don’t go there anymore.
From the CSM:
It was a simple text message. “Quit your job or be killed.” Loay Mohammed Al-Tahar had known he was working in a dangerous job, interpreting for British military special units that were arresting and interrogating militias in Basra. But he didn’t realize just how dangerous. Until then.
“I took it seriously because they’d already killed three guys I knew,” he says. They were among the scores of Iraqis murdered since 2003 who had worked for multinational forces in Iraq. “I decided to resign.”
He fled to Syria, where he sought help from the British Embassy. No help. He and two other interpreters petitioned Downing Street. There was no immediate response.
But with the help of Army officers, rights groups, and a series of front-page articles in The Times newspaper, the campaign snowballed to such an extent that Britain on Tuesday finally agreed to grant “resettlement allowances” and, in certain cases, asylum.
From Earthtimes:
Basra is Iraq’s oil capital, a province where around 80 percent of Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of proven reserves are located in or near. It’s also the main port for exporting 1.6 million barrels of oil per day.
“The task is very difficult and conditions are extremely dangerous because each party believes that it represents the law, and each element thinks himself as a state hero,” Police Chief General Abdul Jalil Khalaf told Gulf News. “The city includes tens or even hundreds of militias and I am ready for the task…”
“The issue of oil is the essence of conflict between armed militias, whether these are affiliated to political parties or smuggling gangs,” said economist Fadhil al-Jamaly. “I believe fighting will break out between the outlaw armed groups because of the weakness of state security forces and also the penetration of these militias in these forces.”
From Iraq Updates:
The forensic medicine department in Basra received on Thursday morning two unidentified bodies from two separate places in the city, a medical source said…
“The two corpses bore signs of gunshot wounds,” he noted.
From the IWPR:
As the violence has escalated in Basra, journalists have become increasingly under attack. They say inadequate security provision means they are at the mercy of militias and kidnapping gangs.
Several reporters have fled the city after receiving threats connected to their work, and at least three have been killed over the last three years, including 40-year-old Abdul Hussein Khazal, a local newspaper editor and correspondent for the US-backed al-Hurra channel.
Khazal and his three-year-old son were shot to death outside of his house in February 2005.
Read Hugh Hewitt getting hosed by a Lt. Col. What did Hewitt expect him to say?
From McClatchy:
Women in Basra have become the targets of a violent campaign by religious extremists, who leave more than 15 female bodies scattered around the city each month, police officers say.
Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra’s police, said Thursday that self-styled enforcers of religious law threatened, beat and sometimes shot women who they believed weren’t sufficiently Muslim.
Read the commenters at Hot Air hosing each other.
Newsday’s getting some pushback.
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