raq clings to a rickety calm between war and peace

The departure this month of the last of the 28,500 extra troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leaves Iraq in a rickety calm, an in-between space that is not quite war and not quite peace where ethnic and sectarian tensions bubble beneath the surface.

Politicians and U.S. officials hail the remarkable turnaround from open civil war that left 3,700 Iraqis dead during the worst month in the fall of 2006, compared with June's toll of 490, according to Pentagon estimates.

Signs abound that normal life is starting to return. Revelers can idle away the hours at several neighborhood joints in Baghdad where the tables are buried in beers and a man can bring a girlfriend dolled up in a nice dress.

Despite the gains, the political horizon is clouded: Shiite Muslim parties are locked in dangerous rivalries across central and southern Iraq. Kurds and Arabs in the north compete for land with no resolution in sight. U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who turned on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq could return to the insurgency if the government does not deliver jobs and a chance to join the political process.

Bombings, assassinations and kidnappings still occur almost daily. And those out enjoying Baghdad's night life feel safe only because they are staying inside their own districts in a city transformed into a patchwork of enclaves after years of sectarian violence.

Whether the quiet endures hinges on many factors, including the results of yet-unscheduled provincial and national elections and whether Iraq's religious and ethnic factions can find a fair power-sharing formula.

The country is bedeviled by the question: What happens as the U.S. military vacates outposts in Baghdad neighborhoods, where it has stood as a buffer and occasional arbiter between Sunnis and Shiites and even arrested police and army commanders suspected of sectarian agendas?

The same question is being posed in the United States. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, acknowledged Sunday that he had failed to anticipate how much violence would decrease this year in Iraq, and stressed the importance of compromise among Iraqi politicians. His likely Republican rival, John McCain, touted his early support for sending extra troops to Iraq.

Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations defense expert who advised Army Gen. David H. Petraeus at the start of the troop buildup early last year, has cautioned that Iraq resembles splintered states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, where an international force is still in place 13 years after the conflict ended.

In April testimony to the Senate, Biddle warned: "A substantial outside presence will be needed for many years to come to keep such a peace. If U.S. withdrawals leave us unable to provide the needed outside presence, the result would be a rapid return to 2006-scale violence, or worse."

From Mosul in the north to Basra in the south and Baghdad itself, Iraqis are adjusting to a reality far safer than what came before, but nonetheless a perilous one. People tread carefully. They know no one has been declared victor in the battles that will decide Iraq's future.

The militias and the cops

Abdul sits before a checkered red-and-white tablecloth. Even at the height of the civil war, he never shut his Karada restaurant. During religious holidays, he covered wine glasses with napkins, so as not to offend the Shiite militias in the Baghdad neighborhood.

Fighters with the Mahdi Army militia loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr would come by and threaten Abdul, warning him to close his shop.

Then they offered a second option: Pay us $500 and a case of beer.

But that was nothing compared with the shady policemen who frequented his establishment.

His troubles started in late August when men dressed in camouflage uniforms drove up in the GMC trucks associated with the Interior Ministry national police, a force seen as a proxy for Shiite militias who ran secret prisons and killed with impunity. They told him he needed to raise $50,000 or deliver them a shipment of handguns.

Abdul was convinced one of his customers, an official at the Interior Ministry, had put them up to it. The officer had always refused to pay for food or drinks.

At first, Abdul -- who, like other Iraqis interviewed for this report, was afraid to give his full name -- went into hiding. By fall, Baghdad was less violent and he thought he could find some elements in the police to support him. He stood up to the men. It worked. Afterward, the Interior Ministry official still came to eat in the restaurant, but he paid his bill.

"He is my enemy, but now he fears me," Abdul says. The official even tips. Abdul does not dare to throw him out and remains polite. "These men are gangsters. They are dangerous."

He has no illusions about the future. "There will be more troubles," he says and glances at the mirror with its view of the street for unwelcome visitors.

Sadr City

Kadim Mohammed, an employee at the Education Ministry, watches thousands pray on a Friday outside the nondescript stucco offices of Sadr's movement. He's living on the front line of the battle among Iraq's Shiite political factions. The government has erected concrete barriers partitioning Sadr City and sent army officers in to man checkpoints in this Baghdad district of 3 million people.

Mohammed gazes at the Iraqi army trucks just down the road from the prayer gathering. Black flags flutter for the dead. Cars clog up at the checkpoints surrounding the walls. Millions of dollars have been promised to Sadr City, but nothing has materialized since clashes ended in May between the Mahdi Army and the U.S.-backed government forces.

Mohammed expects the worst with elections to come. He watches the prayer-goers shake their fists and denounce the Americans, and he spots posters of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in a beret, fashioned after those worn by the late Saddam Hussein.

Sadr has declared a cease-fire for his fighters, but they are volatile.

Death threats have cropped up on walls against those collaborating with the Iraqi government. Some residents have derisively taken to calling the district Rafah -- a city in the Gaza Strip walled off from the world.

Mosul

In the northern city of Mosul, Khalaf Mahmood doesn't know who is his enemy and who his friend. He feels trapped between Sunni Arab militants and Kurdish security forces in the contest to shape the boundaries between Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of the country.

Mahmood, a Sunni Arab professor of fine arts, lost his 14-year-old nephew in June, seven months after his own brother died in a mortar attack. The boy had been playing on the street one night when a group of men grabbed him and shot him 30 times.

"He was just a child. He was even scared of guns," Mahmood says. Rumors spread that Kurdish fighters were behind the shooting, but Mahmood says he doesn't know who wanted to kill a teenager obsessed with soccer.

Mahmood says he just wants to paint impressionistic landscapes and portraits of women. But such ambitions seem fanciful in Nineveh province. A ballyhooed campaign launched in May to rout Al Qaeda in Iraq has failed to calm the city, and the province's population is polarized along ethnic lines.

"Innocent people are being killed because of false accusations and feuds among young people and some families," Mahmood says.

The painter defends the Kurds as good people, but then grows angry over the Kurdish-dominated army units and the presence of Kurdish peshmerga fighters throughout Mosul and the surrounding suburbs. "The situation will get better if the Kurds withdraw. Then everything will be settled," he says.

Sunni paramilitaries

Graffiti in Adhamiya are reminders that the Sunni district of Baghdad was once the lair of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Now, the members of a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary group patrol the riverside neighborhood's winding alleys and 19th century buildings.

Their leader, Abu Abed, sits in his dark office on a nondescript street. More than a dozen young men, sprawled out in his waiting room, lean Kalashnikovs against the wall. Abu Abed reminds all who listen that he calmed the neighborhood but the government has not rewarded him. He says only 160 of his 800 men have been hired into the national police.

Abu Abed says his group wants to participate in local elections. It has refused to be affiliated with any of the established Sunni political parties in Iraq.

He is honest about his movement's flaws, that his men are prone to gunfights. U.S. officers have compared them to the Sopranos, and one Iraqi living in Adhamiya has called them "the best of the worst."

If unemployment continues and his men are not given jobs, he warns, Al Qaeda in Iraq will make a comeback.

Already, militants are trying to kill his men. Three died in a bombing Thursday. "They are penetrating our base and threatening us. The support from the government is cut, we are weaker," he says.

"Terrorists and militias depend on poverty," he says. "If Adhamiya gets no support, they will return."

Basra

Abu Ali's barbershop stays open till late in the evening in the southern port of Basra. Four months ago, cutting hair was a treacherous business as the city lived under the rule of armed gangs affiliated with Shiite religious parties. Now, after a spring Iraqi army offensive prompted a return to law and order, Abu Ali cuts hair freely, not worried that fanatics might be on the prowl for barbers with a fondness for Western coiffure.

"The climate of fear is broken, and people are not afraid of the gunmen any more," he says.

As Abu Ali labors in his cologne-scented shop, army officers and fighters from the Mahdi Army are not so sure Basra's worst times are behind it.

They warn that many of the worst militants, from splinter factions of the Mahdi Army, had escaped to Iran and were likely to come back more dangerous.

But Abu Ali is happy. He adorns his shop with pictures of fashionable models. He wants his country to move on. "God," he says, "has given us the ability to forget."

Parsons, Military Wasted Millions in Iraq, Inspector Bowen Says

Parsons Corp., one of the largest construction contractors in Iraq, and the Pentagon wasted millions of U.S. tax dollars because of poor oversight and building practices, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said in a new report.

Parsons completed only about one-third of the construction contracts required to build border forts, prisons, correctional facilities and courthouses under a contract worth as much as $900 million, the report said. Parsons received $333 million for individual construction jobs, or task orders, including $142 million for contracts that were eventually canceled.

The Parsons contract ``entailed the most waste of tax dollars'' of the reviews of Iraq reconstruction contracts conducted so far, Inspector General Stuart Bowen said in a statement e-mailed in response to questions about his report. A Parsons spokeswoman said the company did the best it could under difficult conditions.

The audit is the latest to look at Parsons as part of a congressionally mandated review of projects by specific U.S. contractors paid in part from $50 billion of U.S. taxpayer reconstruction funds in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Parsons contract was closed out in August 2006.

Auditors ``identified significant weaknesses in the U.S. government's oversight of the contract,'' Bowen said in his report, released today. ``These weaknesses created an environment that was conducive to waste and inefficiency, as evidenced by the large number of project terminations and cancellations.''

66 Percent Canceled

The audit says 34 percent of the jobs were completed and 66 percent were canceled. The canceled jobs accounted for 43 percent, or $142 million, of what the government paid out on the contract.

The review identified ``multiple instances in which contracts were later awarded'' to other contractors to fix Parsons' work, Bowen wrote in the report.

Bowen's previous audits accused Parsons of sloppy construction and poor management of its Iraqi subcontractors, including $186 million to build public health clinics, $72.5 million for a police academy in Baghdad and $3 million to renovate the Iraqi Security Forces Civil Defense headquarters.

In the latest review, the files examined by Bowen's auditors indicated cases where the U.S. military didn't cite reasons for the cancellations, or referred to concerns over slow progress or ``general dissatisfaction'' with Parsons' performance.

Completed Work

Bowen did say said that, in general, the projects Parsons completed ``resulted in material improvements in Iraqi security and justice infrastructure, including new or reconstructed border control facilities, courts, fire stations and military academies.''

Erin Kuhlman, a spokeswoman for closely held Pasadena, California-based Parsons, noted that portion of Bowen's report.

``Although we certainly would have wished for a better work environment and a better outcome in some cases, we did our best under extraordinarily difficult circumstances,'' she said. ``Had security conditions been more stable, we would have accomplished even more.''

Still, Bowen wrote, some of the projects canceled ``had significant construction deficiencies, some of which were not corrected by Parsons.''

Corrections Facility

One example is $40 million spent on the partly completed Kahn Bani Sa'ad Corrections facility. The U.S. terminated Parsons' role in June 2006 because it failed to complete its work on schedule, after paying the company $31 million.

A second contractor was hired and paid $9 million to fix ``defective work'' and finish the project, but that job was terminated in June 2007 by the U.S., citing security concerns.

The facility was transferred to the Iraqi government in August 2007, which has no plans to use it, Bowen wrote. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it had many ``construction deficiencies,'' according to the report.

``At this point, the entire amount disbursed for this project may ultimately be wasted because the government of Iraq currently has no plans for completing or using this facility,'' Bowen wrote.

Kuhlman said the Kahn Bani project was a ``uniquely difficult assignment'' because the facility was in a region ``plagued by violent sectarian warfare, particularly in the months that Parsons was on the project.'' she said.

One of Parsons' subcontractors was shot and killed there, she said.

Why is the IOC Punishing Iraq?

A few days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I got a chilling insight into the brutality of his rule, in the most unexpected place — the compound of the Iraqi sports ministry. In one corner of a sprawling complex of offices and official residences, behind walls emblazoned with the universal symbol of the Olympic Games, was that most medieval of torture devices: an iron maiden.

It was nearly eight feet tall and looked like a cast-iron coffin. At first, I thought it was somebody's grotesque idea of a joke — a gag gift, perhaps, for Uday Hussein, Saddam's psychopath son and head of Iraqi's sports administration. But when I opened it, I realized its purpose was deadly serious.

There were dozens of sharp spikes, all pointing inward. They were designed to perforate skin and flesh of anybody locked inside, but not deep enough to puncture any vital organs. That way, the torturers could inflict maximum pain on their victim without actually killing him. The spikes still bore the distinctive reddish-brown flakes of dried blood.

The iron maiden confirmed some of the ghastly stories I'd heard about Uday's treatment of Iraqi sportsmen, especially the national soccer team. When they lost a game, they routinely received beatings and an imaginative range of punishments — like being made to kick concrete balls, or forced to run shoeless over shards of glass. Later, I would meet a coach who had spent two terrifying hours in the iron maiden — his torso was riddled with scars from the spikes.

Needless to say, torture didn't make the Iraqi soccer team play better. But once freed from Uday's depravity, the team flourished. At the Athens Olympics in 2004, they went all the way to the semi-finals, losing the bronze medal game by a single goal to the mighty Italians. They had been the Cinderella team of the Games, and like their proud countrymen, I celebrated the team's success. Three years later, as their country was being torn apart by a bloody sectarian war between Shi'ites and Sunnis, the team (comprising of players from both sects) won the Asia Cup, leading to incredible scenes of jubilation on Baghdad's streets. The ghost of Uday Hussein and memories of his torture devices seemed to have been well and truly exorcized.

But more recently, as the team's form has dipped, some painful memories have returned. Iraqi sports officials no longer torture players for poor results, but they seem to have inherited Uday's penchant for dishing out summary, collective punishment. Last month, when the team failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics, the Iraqi Football Federation disbanded the entire squad — players, coaches, and support staff.

Now it turns out that even if the team had qualified, they may not have gone to Beijing anyway — because the International Olympic Committee has banned Iraq from the Games. The reason: in May, the Iraqi government disbanded the country's Olympics Committee and replaced it with new appointees. The government said the old committee has failed to hold proper organizational elections, but many in Baghdad suspect a sectarian motive. They point out that the sports minister, is a a Shi'ite, whereas the country's sports administration had traditionally been in Sunni hands.

The IOC, deeming this as political interference in sporting matters, gave the Iraqi government a deadline in which to reinstate the old committee. Baghdad refused to back down, and now the seven Iraqis who had qualified for the Games — two rowers, an archer, a discus thrower, a sprinter, a weightlifter and a judoka — have been told to unpack their bags.

They're not the only ones suffering the consequences of political wrangling, though. The ban amounts to collective punishment for all Iraqis. The IOC's protestations that it had no choice but to impose its rules are plainly disingenuous. For one thing, Iraq is hardly the only country where politicians meddle with sport. The Games are, after all, being held in China! For another, if the IOC was perfectly happy to let Iraq participate in previous Games when Uday was running Iraq sports. Perhaps locking a football player in an iron maiden doesn't qualify under the IOC's definition of "political interference," but that's a distinction that will be lost on most Iraqis.

In Iraq, car bomb wounds local Sunni politician

Police say a car bomb attack wounded a member of a Sunni political party and his son and killed two of his bodyguards.

Police say unknown gunmen also opened fire on the house of Zaki Obaid Fayadh, head of the local branch of the Iraqi Islamic party, in Fallujah about 40 miles west of Baghdad. Sunday's explosion occurred in Fayadh's garage.

Police say it appears that the bomb was planted under a car.

The party is led by Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi

Obama's Iraq problem lies in believing his own myths

BARACK Obama concedes that America's troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands by his vote against the surge.

Why not just admit that he was wrong?

Come on, senator, this is a lot easier than changing churches. Say: "As a proud American, I'm delighted that the surge has worked so we can move forward with my timetable for withdrawal. Look, if I'd known how successful it was going to be, I would have voted for it. At the time it didn't seem like a good bet, but prognosticators go broke in wartime."

See, that wasn't so bad.

Instead, Obama says that even knowing what he now knows, he still would have voted against the surge. Really? Even knowing that without the surge, he couldn't have safely visited Iraq?

Obama insists that, hypothetically, his own plan might have worked better than the surge: "We don't know what would have happened if I, if the plan that I put forward in January 2007, to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation, to begin a phased withdrawal, what would have happened had we pursued that strategy."

But we do know. Or at least we can wager with some confidence that had we withdrawn within 14 months, as Obama was proposing at the time — before Sunni Arabs, once the insurgency's backbone, felt sufficiently secure to turn against the jihadists — Iraq today would be in bloody chaos, al-Qaida victorious and the U.S. further diminished in the Arab world.

Obama voted against the surge, he said then, because he was convinced that inserting 20,000 more troops into Iraq was likely to make things worse, not better. Now trying to justify that miscall, he says he couldn't have anticipated the Sunni Awakening.

Wait. Obama could anticipate that the war in Iraq would go badly. He could anticipate that the surge wouldn't work. But he couldn't anticipate that the Sunnis would turn on al-Qaida?

Actually, Obama had more information at his fingertips in assessing the probability of the surge's success than he did for any of his other predictions, including assurance from commanders on the ground that local tribal leaders were showing a willingness to take on al-Qaida.

Most Americans, including many in Congress who approved the Iraq invasion, say that if they'd known then what they know now, they wouldn't have supported the war. Why is it so hard for Obama, knowing what he knows now, to say that he should have supported the surge?

To review Obama's statements on the surge since it began is to understand why: pride.

Over and over again — even after Gen. David Petraeus reported in late 2007 that the surge was working — Obama said: It's not working. It won't work. It's a mistake. He essentially was betting his presidential hopes on the surge's failure.

But the surge did work — and the mistake is Obama's.

Most Americans would have little trouble forgiving Obama for not believing the surge would be effective. It was a gamble, as are all strategies in war. Even with reports on the ground that locals seemed increasingly willing to rise up, there was reason enough by 2007 to doubt the wisdom of America's commander in chief.

It is less easy to forgive the kind of wrongheaded stubbornness now on display. As recently as July 14, Obama wrote in a New York Times op-ed that "the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true." He mentioned the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, money spent in Iraq and said that the surge had failed to produce "political accommodation."

Fine. But the larger, more important point is that the surge was necessary and successful. Those facts outweigh all other considerations past and present. Moreover, a recent U.S. Embassy report stated that 15 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for Iraq are being met in a "satisfactory" fashion.

Obama has fallen to pride in part because he has bought his own myth. By staking his future on a past of supernatural vision, he has made it difficult to admit human fault. The magic isn't working anymore. And Obama, the visionary one, can't even see what everyone else sees: He was wrong.

Charges dropped against Marine sniper in Iraq shootings

The Marine Corps on Thursday dropped all charges against a Camp Pendleton sniper accused of wrongly shooting two men he thought were planting roadside bombs in Iraq.

Sgt. John Winnick II, 24, of San Diego, had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and dereliction of duty in connection with the June 17, 2007, incident near Lake Tharthar in western Iraq.

Prosecutors contended Winnick had violated the rules of engagement by shooting too hastily at a truck driver carrying a satchel and his three passengers. The four men got out at an intersection where roadside bombs previously had been planted.

Winnick and several other snipers had been staking out the crossroads.

All four men were wounded, two fatally, but no bomb-making materials were found.

Winnick said he believed he was protecting his fellow Marines from insurgent bombers.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, followed the advice of the pretrial hearing officer in dismissing the charges.

Olympic officials bar Iraq from Beijing Games

Four years after its athletes received a huge ovation at the first Olympics after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was told Thursday that its seven-member team would not be allowed to compete in Beijing because of a dispute with the International Olympic Committee.

Olympic officials informed Iraq that it was barring the team because the government had dismissed the country's Olympic committee and appointed a new body chaired by its youth and sports minister.

The IOC action two weeks before the Games' opening ceremony came after it had threatened in June to bar Iraq from participating.

Iraqi officials have charged that the IOC was misrepresenting their efforts to rebuild the country's executive Olympic body after a mass kidnapping two years ago. They said the new panel was appointed because after the kidnapping, the executive committee had been beset by corruption and a shortage of members.

"I am deeply saddened for the Iraqi athletes who did nothing wrong," said Anita DeFrantz, the senior American member of the IOC. "It is hard to understand how a government in today's world could purposely deny them their opportunity by fiat."

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies laid out hope that last-minute talks could save the day. "If there can be some movement and if a resolution can be found, that's still an open door," she told CNN. She estimated that Iraq had about a week to salvage the situation.

None of the seven Iraqi athletes, who were to compete in track and field, rowing, archery and weightlifting, were considered medal contenders. The track and field athletes, both sprinters, stand the best chance of still being able to compete because the deadline for entries in that sport comes after the Aug. 8 opening ceremony, according to the IOC.

While the IOC accused Iraq's government of meddling in sports, Baghdad accused the IOC of failing to meet with Iraqi officials and of being under the thrall of favorites dating back to 2004, when the first post-Hussein Olympic committee was set up under the sponsorship of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

"It was an unfair decision against the Iraqi Olympic movement and Iraqi sports," said Basil Adel Mehdi, an advisor to the minister of youth and sports. "It is a punishment against Iraqi athletes."

The dispute is in part a legacy of Iraq's civil conflict. More than 30 employees of the Iraqi Olympic organization were kidnapped by about 60 men dressed in Iraqi government security uniforms in July 2006. The chairman and three others on the 11-member national committee were never found. At the time, some sports observers suggested the abduction might have been linked to internal power struggles.

Star athletes in soccer, wrestling and martial arts also have been killed since 2006.

After the abductions, the committee dwindled from 11 members to three. In May 2007, the government made its first attempt to fill the empty slots, adding three more members, Mehdi said. A year later, the government disbanded that committee and appointed a new, temporary body.

Mehdi, who is the brother of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, said that the old executive committee had been beset by corruption and that former members of Hussein's Baath Party had continued to exert influence there. He accused former Baathists of playing a role in sabotaging Iraq's relations with the IOC.

Mehdi accused the IOC of ignoring Iraqi government explanations and being evasive about planning a meeting to settle the dispute. In turn, the IOC says the Iraqi government did not respond to invitations to meet with Olympic officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, after they were warned in June.

The predominance of Shiites in the Ministry of Youth and Sports had fanned concerns that sectarian issues were at play in the case. Mehdi denied that. He said that the original executive body was appointed in 2004 under the U.S. occupation, and that it had been meant to serve for just one year before new elections. But instead of holding elections, committee members decided to extend their terms to five years.

Iraq participated in its first Olympics in 1948. It has won one medal, in 1960, a weightlifting bronze by Abdul Wahid Aziz.

But perhaps Iraq's greatest Olympic moment was in 2004 in Athens, where the men's soccer team reached the semifinals before finishing fourth. The soccer team failed to qualify for this Olympics.

There had been some question about whether Iraq would be allowed to attend the Athens Games, as well. The Iraqi Olympic committee was suspended by the IOC on May 17, 2003, but it restructured at that time and was reinstated Feb. 27, 2004. The delegation of Iraqi athletes was well received in Athens, getting one of the largest ovations during the opening ceremony.