Today's Stories

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 11, 2008

It's All Spelled Out in Unpublicized Agreement

Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

By PATRICK COCKBURN

On November 27 the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favor of  a security agreement with the US under which the 150,000 American  troops in Iraq will withdraw from cities, towns and villages by  June 30,  2009 and from all of Iraq by  December 31, 2011. The Iraqi government will take over military responsibility for the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heart  of American power in Iraq, in a few weeks time. Private security companies  will lose their legal immunity. US military operations and the arrest of Iraqis  will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. There will be no US military  bases left behind when the last US troops leave in three years time and  the US military is banned in the interim from carrying out attacks on other  countries from Iraq.     

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after eight months of  rancorous negotiations, is categorical and unconditional. America’s bid to act as the world’s only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control  of Iraq, an attempt which began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in  failure. There will be a national referendum on the new agreement next July, but the accord is to be implemented immediately so the poll will be  largely irrelevant. Even Iran, which had furiously denounced the first drafts  of the SOFA saying that they would establish a permanent US presence in  Iraq, now says blithely that it will officially back the new security pact after  the referendum. This is a sure sign that Iran, as America’s main rival in the  Middle East,  sees the pact as marking the final end of the US occupation  and as a launching pad for military assaults on neighbours such as Iran.      

Astonishingly, this momentous agreement has been greeted with little  surprise or interest outside Iraq. On the same day that it was finally  passed by the Iraqi parliament international attention was wholly focused  on the murderous terrorist attack in Mumbai. For some months polls in the US showed that the economic crisis had replaced the Iraqi war as the main  issue facing America in the eyes of voters. So many spurious milestones in Iraq have been declared by President Bush over the years that when a  real turning point occurs people are naturally sceptical about its  significance. The White House was so keen to limit understanding of what  it had agreed in Iraq that it did not even to publish a copy of the SOFA in  English. Some senior officials in the Pentagon are privately criticizing President  Bush for conceding so much to the Iraqis, but the American media are fixated on the incoming Obama administration and no longer pays much  attention to the doings of the expiring Bush administration.     

 The last minute delays to the accord were not really about the terms  agreed with the Americans. It was rather that the leaders of the Sunni  Arab minority, seeing the Shia-Kurdish government of prime minister Nouri  al-Maliki about to fill the vacuum created by the US departure, wanted to  barter their support for the accord in return for as many last minute  concessions as they could extract. Some three quarters of the 17,000  prisoners held by the Americans are Sunni and they wanted them released  or at least not mistreated  by the Iraqi security forces. They asked for an  end to de-Baathication which is directed primarily at the Sunni community.  Only the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held out against the accord to the  end, declaring it a betrayal of independent Iraq. The ultra-patriotic  opposition of the Sadrists to the accord has been important because it has  made it difficult for the other Shia parties to agree to anything less than a  complete American withdrawal. If they did so they risked being portrayed  as US puppets in the upcoming provincial elections at the end of January  2009 or the parliamentary elections later in the year.     

The SOFA finally agreed is almost the opposite of the one which US  started to negotiate in March. This is why Iran, with its strong links to the Shia parties inside Iraq, ended its previous rejection of it. The first US draft  was largely an attempt to continue the occupation without much change  from the UN mandate which expired at the end of the year. Washington  overplayed its hand. The Iraqi government was growing stronger as the Sunni Arabs ended their uprising against the occupation. The Iranians  helped restrain the Mehdi Army, Muqtada’s powerful militia, so the  government regained control of Basra, Iraq’s second biggest city, and Sadr  City, almost half Baghdad, from the Shia militias. The prime minister Nouri  al-Maliki became more confident, realizing his military enemies were  dispersing and, in any case, the Americans had no real alternative but to  support him. The US has always been politically weak in Iraq since the fall  of Saddam Hussein because it has few real friends in the country aside  from the Kurds. The leaders of the Iraqi Shia, 60 per cent of the total  population, might ally themselves to Washington to gain power, but they  never intended to share power with the US in the long term.     

The occupation has always been unpopular in Iraq. Foreign observers  and some Iraqis are often misled by the hatred with which different Iraqi  communities regard each other into underestimating the strength of Iraqi  nationalism. Once Maliki came to believe that he could survive without US  military support then he was able to spurn US proposals until an  unconditional withdrawal was conceded. He could also see that Barack  Obama, whose withdrawal timetable was not so different from his own,  was going to be the next American president. Come the provincial and  parliamentary elections of 2009, Maliki can present himself as the man who  ended the occupation. Critics of the prime minister, notably the Kurds,  think that success has gone to his head, but there is no doubt that the  new security agreement has strengthened him politically.    

It may be that, living in the heart of the Green Zone, that Maliki has an  exaggerated idea of what his government has achieved. In the Zone there is access to clean water and electricity while in the rest of Baghdad people  have been getting only three or four hours electricity a day. Security in  Iraq is certainly better than it was during the sectarian civil war between  Sunni and Shia in 2006-7 but the improvement is wholly comparative. The  monthly death toll has dropped from 3,000 a month at its worst to 360  Iraqi civilians and security personnel killed this November, though these  figures may understate the casualty toll as not all the bodies are found.  Iraq is still one of the most dangerous places in the world.  On  December 1, the  day I started writing this article, two suicide bombers killed 33 people and  wounded dozens more in Baghdad and Mosul. Iraqis in the street are  cynical about the government’s claim to have restored order. “We are  used to the government always saying that things have become good and  the security situation improved,” says Salman Mohammed Jumah, a  primary school teacher in Baghdad. “It is true security is a little better but  the government leaders live behind concrete barriers and do not know  what is happening on the ground. They only go out in their armoured  convoys. We no longer have sectarian killings by ID cards [revealing that a  person is Sunni or Shia by their name] but Sunni are still afraid to go to  Shia areas and Shia to Sunni.”        

Security has improved with police and military checkpoints everywhere  but sectarian killers have also upgraded their tactics. There are less  suicide bombings but there are many more small ‘sticky bombs’ placed  underneath vehicles. Everybody checks underneath their car before they get into it. I try to keep away from notorious choke points in Baghdad,  such as Tahrir Square or the entrances to the Green Zone, where a  bomber for can wait for a target to get stuck in traffic before making an  attack. The checkpoints and the walls, the measures taken to reduce the  violence, bring Baghdad close to paralysis even when there are no bombs.  It can take two or three hours to travel a few miles. The bridges over the  Tigris are often blocked and this has got worse recently because soldiers  and police have a new toy in the shape of a box which looks like a  transistor radio with a short aerial sticking out horizontally. When pointed at the car this device is  supposed to detect vapor from explosives and  may well do so, but since it also responds to vapor from alcohol or  perfume it is worse than useless as a security aid.     

Iraqi state television and government backed newspapers make  ceaseless claims that life in Iraq is improving by the day. To be convincing  this should mean not just improving security but providing more electricity,  clean water and jobs. “The economic situation is still very bad,” says  Salman Mohammed Jumah, the teacher. “Unemployment affects everybody  and you can’t get a job unless you pay a bribe. There is no electricity and  nowadays we have cholera again so people have to buy expensive bottled  water and only use the water that comes out of the tap for washing.” Not  everybody has the same grim vision but life in Iraq is still extraordinarily  hard. The best barometer for how far Iraq is ‘better’ is the willingness of  the 4.7 million refugees, one in five Iraqis who have fled their homes and  are now living inside or outside Iraq, to go home. By October only 150,000  had returned and some do so only to look at the situation and then go  back to Damascus or Amman. One middle aged Sunni businessman who  came back from Syria for two or three weeks, said: “I don’t like to be here.  In Syria I can go out in the evening to meet friends in a coffe bar. It is  safe. Here I am forced to stay in my home after 7pm.”     

The degree of optimism or pessimism felt by Iraqis depends very much  on whether they have a job, whether or not that job is with the  government, which community they belong to, their social class and the  area they live in. All these factors are interlinked. Most jobs are with the  state that reputedly employs some two million people. The private sector  is very feeble. Despite talk of reconstruction there are almost no cranes  visible on the Baghdad skyline. Since the Shia and Kurds control of the  government, it is difficult for a Sunni to get a job and probably impossible  unless he has a letter recommending him from a political party in the  government. Optimism is greater among the Shia. “There is progress in  our life, says Jafar Sadiq, a Shia businessman married to a Sunni in the  Shia-dominated Iskan area of Baghdad. “People are cooperating with the  security forces. I am glad the army is fighting the Mehdi Army though they  still are not finished. Four Sunni have reopened their shops in my area. It  is safe for my wife’s Sunni relatives to come here. The only things we need  badly are electricity, clean water and municipal services.” But his wife Jana  admitted privately that she had warned her Sunni relatives from coming to  Iskan “because the security situation is unstable.” She teaches at  Mustansariyah University in central Baghdad which a year ago was  controlled by the Mehdi Army and Sunni students had fled. “Now the Sunni  students are coming back,” she says, “though they are still afraid.”    

They have reason to fear. Baghdad is divided into Shia and Sunni  enclaves defended by high concrete blast walls often with a single  entrance and exit. The sectarian slaughter is much less than it was but it  is still dangerous for returning refugees to try to reclaim their old house in an  area in which they are a minority. In one case in a Sunni district in west  Baghdad, as I reported here some weeks ago,  a Shia husband and wife with their two daughters went back to  their house to find it gutted, with furniture gone and electric sockets and  water pipes torn out. They decided to sleep on the roof. A Sunni gang  reached them from a neighboring building, cut off the husband’s head  and threw it into the street. They said to his wife and daughters: “The  same will happen to any other Shia who comes back.” But even without  these recent atrocities Baghdad would still be divided because the memory  of the mass killings of 2006-7 is too fresh and there is still an underlying  fear that it could happen again.   

 Iraqis have a low opinion of their elected representatives, frequently  denouncing them as an incompetent kleptocracy. The government  administration is dysfunctional. “Despite the fact,” said independent  member of parliament Qassim Daoud, “that the Labor and Social Affairs is  meant to help the millions of poor Iraqis I discovered that they had spent  only 10 per cent of their budget.” Not all of this is the government’s fault.  Iraqi society, administration and economy have been shattered by 28  years of war and sanctions. Few other countries have been put under  such intense and prolonged pressure. First there was the eight year Iran- Iraq war starting in 1980, then the disastrous Gulf war of `1991, thirteen  years of sanctions and then the five-and-a-half years of conflict since the  US invasion. Ten years ago UN officials were already saying they could not  repair the faltering power stations because they were so old that spare  parts were no longer made for them.      

Iraq is full of signs of the gap between the rulers and the ruled. The  few planes using Baghdad international airport are full foreign contractors  and Iraqi government officials. Talking to people on the streets in Baghdad  in October many of them brought up fear of cholera which had just started  to spread from Hilla province south of Baghdad. Forty per cent of people in  the capital do not have access to clean drinking water. The origin of the  epidemic was the purchase of out of date chemicals for water purification  from Iran by corrupt officials. Everybody talked about the cholera except in  the Green Zone where people had scarcely heard of the epidemic. .    

The Iraqi government will become stronger as the Americans depart. It  will also be forced to take full responsibility for the failings of the Iraqi  state. This will be happening at a bad moment since the price of oil,  the state’s only source of revenue, has fallen to $50 a barrel when the budget  assumed it would be $80. Many state salaries, such as those of teachers,  were doubled on the strength of this, something the government may now  regret. Communal differences are still largely unresolved. Friction between  Sunni and Shia, bad though it is, is less than two years ago,  though  hostility between Arabs and Kurds is deepening. The departure of the US  military frightens many Sunni on the grounds that they will be at the mercy  of the majority Shia. But it is also an incentive for the three main  communities in Iraq to agree about what their future relations should be  when there are no Americans to stand between them. As for the US, its  moment in Iraq is coming to an end as its troops depart, leaving a ruined  country behind them.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006. His new book 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq' is published by Scribner.         

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