RAMADI, Iraq — Here in barren Anbar Province, the tribes that were once the main source of support for killing American soldiers are now running in provincial elections that, in the best case, could fulfill American promises to create stability in Iraq by the ballot box. But two weeks before the voting, in Anbar it . . .
Read MoreThe US policy of paying Sunni Arab sheikhs for their allegiance could be risky. Inside a stately guesthouse on the grounds of Saddam Hussein’s palace in Tikrit on the banks of the Tigris, sheikh Sabah al-Hassani jokes that the initials “SH” of the former dictator etched on the walls are his. “I have a weakness . . .
Read MoreWith improved security in the Iraqi capital, customers are buying more tarts and cakes. Over the summer, rarely a day passed without a car bomb going off near the neighborhood where Hussein Faleh has persevered through the worst days in Baghdad. Since 2004, he’s kept The Vanilla Pastry Shop open – and filled with some . . .
Read MoreThe province sits on as much as 20 percent of the Middle East’s oil reserves. It could be an “empire,” says one Shiite militia leader. For the provincial governor, Basra’s future is shimmering skyscrapers. He wants the Iraqi port city to be another Arab metropolis, perhaps the next Dubai. Many Iraqis – businessmen, criminal bosses, . . .
Read MoreWhat happens in the city may provide a window on the future for the rest of Iraq. When British forces took Basra on April 6, 2003, their artillery damaged a statue of an Iraqi soldier straddling a writhing shark. It was commissioned by Saddam Hussein to commemorate the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. . . .
Read MoreWhile Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely driven out of Ramadi, the US is hoping to build on the gains by fixing basic services and mediating tribal hostilities. Col. John Charlton, commander of US forces in Ramadi, keeps a big white board in his office that lists a dizzying array of tasks. It’s a . . .
Read MoreAmid fields of wheat and barley, dozens of armed men emerged along a dirt road leading to the fiefdom of the Bu-Fahed tribe in Hamdhiyah, an idyllic corner of restive Anbar Province, just north of Ramadi. “Welcome to our proud sheikhs. Down with terror,” read banners on the road.
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