Iraq Oil Report

The U.S. State Department said oil companies who sign deals in Iraq with the Kurdistan Regional Government are taking a risk, and this is what they tell companies who contact them.

When queried about the Hunt Oil deal signed with the KRG earlier this month, a state department spokesman said he was “not sure how much contact” Hunt had with the U.S. government prior to the signing, but that it hurts efforts at reconciliation and a national oil law.

Read the story from today’s press briefing HERE.

The KRG, relatively autonomous for 15 years, with its own security force, secure borders and economic development, it sets itself apart from the rest of Iraq.

But Baghdad insists any oil sector development must wait until a federal law is in place to govern not only the extent of foreign investment, but the role to be shared between the federal/regional/provincial governments.

The KRG, impatient and ready to continue to move forward, has been signing deals with private oil companies, which Oil Minister Shahristani has called illegal. He rephrased that, however, and said all of the deals the KRG signed prior to February, when a federal oil law was originally agreed upon, would be OK as long as they are retuned, if necessary, to comply with the federal law.

But Shahristani said the Hunt Oil deal was “illegal” no matter what, sparking a back-and-forth with the KRG that looks to remain ugly and not go away any time soon.

Simon Webb reports for Reuters the KRG said such moves by Shahristani are counterproductive.

“The Hunt contract was signed…according to the enacted regional law based on the federal constitution. There is no question about the legality of that or any other deal,” KRG government spokesman Khaled Salih said in a statement sent to Reuters by e-mail.

More Iraq Oil

The long awaited shipment of oil from Kirkuk has made it to Jordan. It’s the first of many more tankers to trek the dangerous road to the Jordanian border at market price minus $22 per barrel.

Any takers on Kirkuk crude? Head to Ceyhan. A tender for 5 million barrels was announced.

Iraq’s oil unions have issued a vaguely worded – or vaguely interpreted – statement saying rogue writers are working on behalf of their enemies to discredit them. The unions, while supported both by the masses and many politicos, have wielded their power and threats to shut down the oil sector if their workers’ rights demands aren’t met. Oh, and they also say the current draft of the oil law is a no-go if certain contracts giving too much rights to foreign/private oil companies are allowed.
The unions are accused of being partisans, a factually inaccurate claim which the leadership in Baghdad uses to delegitimize the unions.

Society, Security and Politics

Rep. Alcee Hastings has sponsored a bill giving special immigration status to Iraqi refugees. The U.S. has let in less than 1,500 displaced Iraqis since the war began while Syria and Jordan have combined to give shelter to more than 2 million.

Security in Diyala province is tense as former Sunni insurgents who pledged to join the federal Iraqi security forces have been refused.

The Biden Bill Flap

Sen. Joseph Biden’s decentralize Iraq bill has caused a stark reaction from Iraqi political leaders. The amendment to the 2008 defense funds bill was widely passed. It calls for U.S. support of weak-center federalism in Iraq, splitting the country by (not-so-fine) Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines.

The Kurdistan Regional Government was the first to opine:

The people of Kurdistan, who have struggled for decades to achieve democracy and freedom, see in federalism the promise of stability and freedom from dictatorial regimes. We welcome this significant resolution in support of federalism, which guarantees the survival of Iraq on the basis of voluntary union.

But Sunnis widely reject anything but a strong Baghdad-run Iraq. IraqSlogger posts the full version of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi’s “national contract” for Iraq, which the leader of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party got Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to sign onto.

Al Sharqiya TV reports the Fadhilla, Sadr Movement, Tawafuq and National Dialogue Front political blocs have all rejected Biden’s bill.

And yesterday the Biden plan was condemned by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite.

Friday afternoon, Iraq’s Ambassador to the United States Samir Sumaida’ie issued the following statement:

The Iraqi people share more than their identity born of the legacy of their ancestors and the long history of their land; they share marriages and families, homes and neighborhoods, schools and hospitals. These unions, in addition to their Iraqi identity, bind them together. Despite the strains imposed by terrorists and extremists, their collective will is to stay united. That will is clearly expressed by the Iraqi constitution which stipulates a united, free, democratic and federal Iraq.

The non-binding resolution passed by the Senate on Wednesday, September 26th implicitly calling for the partitioning of Iraq into three separate entities along ethnic and sectarian lines, will not help to preserve Iraq; rather, it could lead to the break up of Iraq.

It is not a solution; it could complicate rather than simplify a difficult situation. The Iraqi people will not accept sectarian partitioning. Al Qaeda and other extremists must not be given such a victory, when together the multi-national forces, Iraqi Security Forces and the Iraqi people at large, have been making steady gains against them, and beginning to resolve their political differences.

Sectarian violence is a passing problem in Iraq as it was in other countries. It does not follow that the only solution for it is separation. A federal structure not withstanding, pushing for sectarian separation in Iraq at this juncture would encourage the spread of instability, violence and terrorism throughout the entire region. This would not only be detrimental to the interests of its peoples, but also to the interests of the United States.

The shape of a future Iraq will be determined solely by Iraqis themselves. Only they will decide on the finalization and interpretation of their constitution. The contributions made by the United States Congress and the American people are invaluable, and their sacrifices greatly appreciated. However, Congress must not be seen to undermine the will of the very people it helped to empower.

This resolution will not hasten the day American troops come home, which is a goal shared by Iraqis and Americans. If actively pursued, partitioning will do just the opposite.

I sat down with J. Jay Park in Dubai, the man who helped the Somali government craft its new oil law and has worked with all sides in Iraq oil law. He holds training sessions for the Iraq Oil Ministry, and represented Canada’s Western Oil Sands in their contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

We talked about what an oil law is supposed to do, and how it is framed for Iraq’s massive reserves.

He even let me pester him on model contracts, including what the controversial production sharing contract would and wouldn’t be suitable for in Iraq.

Read the entire interview, which I wrote for UPI.

Excerpts:

The attributes from the point of view of the state are: is there going to be fair share of resource revenue going to the state? …

From the point of view of the investor, what they want to know is: is this a regime in which if they make a discovery they will be able to complete that development so they can monetize the investment that they make? …

What many countries have done is they’ve established a state oil company and give it the management and ownership of the existing resource base. The enhancement and the development of that resource base is then within the control of that state oil company. But new exploration operations would then be open for assessment as to how the state should deal with that. Many states take different approaches to that.

Q: But when you just take a production sharing agreement or production sharing contract, and if those were to be one of the model contracts that are available for the Iraq government to sign with an oil company, where do you see this being applicable, in the four annexes, and where would it not make sense to do a production sharing agreement, from the government’s standpoint? In Annex 1, would you sign a PSA in Annex 1?

A: Want the answer? Click HERE.

Iraq’s Oil

Leslie Sabbagh and Tom A. Peter of the Christian Science Monitor write a good piece on security and development in the oil sector. They missed a little, though.

Hits:

At a recent meeting in Amman, Jordan, Iraqi oil officials discussed the possibility of developing fields in southern Iraq with Chevron, the Kirkuk fields with Shell, and the eastern Baghdad fields with Japex.

The Russian company Ivanov is looking at Ghiada in northwest Iraq, while Conoco Phillips and the Iraqi government’s Northern Oil Company (NOC) have an agreement to share information that could lead to the development of a new field in the Kirkuk area, says Manaa Abdullah, the director general of Northern Oil.

Plans are being discussed to build three new major refineries in the north, center, and south. The intent is to produce 6 million barrels a day, and to export 5.2 million barrels by 2010. The NOC would contribute 1.5 million to 2 million barrels, Mr. Abdullah says.

Misses:
Relying too much on U.S. and Iraqi government officials and not cutting through their, to put it nice, unwarranted optimism.

A campaign to stop sabotage on the key Iraqi oil pipeline running north from Kirkuk to Turkey has led to sustained oil exports for the first time since the war began, say US officers and Iraqi officials. …

Iraqi oil officials in Kirkuk say the region’s fields are producing 520,000 barrels a day at the moment, 320,000 of which are piped to Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Ministry of Oil officials say current national production is 2.4 million barrels a day – nearly prewar levels – though outside analysts estimate production is close to 2 million barrels.

The pipeline which is supposed to send Iraq’s Kirkuk-area oil to Ceyhan, however, is not working more than it is. It gets fixed, it gets attacked. It was fixed recently and modestly pumping oil, but was attacked again last week and not only calling into question any short-term viability of oil production and exports in the area, but the blast sent oil into the Tigris River, threatening the water supply all the way to Baghdad.

The global energy information firm Platts has Iraq’s average daily oil production in August at 1.99 million barrels per day.

Reuters reports Iraq sold 2.5 million barrels of Kirkuk oil from Ceyhan Wednesday, and will issue a tender for 5 million more.

The agency also reports a major crude line from Baiji to Baghdad was bombed out of commission.

The attacks on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan line have been so frequent between the Kirkuk-Baiji strip, the government has been talking about a new line that would end around Baiji via the KRG area. Adn Kronos International reports talks have started again but it will take some internal and external political finagling for that to happen.

John Fout, political correspondent for TheStreet.com, writes a somewhat more realistically optimistic piece that Federalism in Iraq Could be a Gusher for Oil.

While Iraqis have less and less faith in the national government, which many Iraqis view as stooges for both the United States and Iran (yes, the irony is so good you want to cry), most Iraqis don’t support the weak central government federalism plan, also referred to as soft partition by those who favor it less.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden has garnered enough support for such a federalism plan, or the war so far has gone so poorly many members of Congress are looking for a change, that his amendment to the 2008 defense spending bill was approved by 75 out of 100 Senators Wednesday.

A bit of good news: A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built power line was built and handed over to the Iraq Ministry of Electricity.

Security, Society and Politics

Since the British backed away from Basra — well, actually, since they took control years ago — the security situation has gotten worse. Religious fundamentalism has curbed free society and political and gangland turf wars have crowded out real life in arguably Iraq’s most important province. Most of Iraq’s oil is located in or around Basra, nearly all of Iraq’s exports go through the capital city’s port.

Kim Sengupta writes for The Independent that British troops may have to come back.

The Website of the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR.org, has just published the first two installments of a debate on the statistical measures of violence in Iraq, as well as a detailed analysis of the data. CFR Senior Fellow Stephen Biddle and Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, discuss the accuracy of these numbers here. Dr. Biddle’s analysis can be found here.

Robert Evans reports for Reuters on the growing refugee crisis

And last but not least, at all, a special congratulations to the 2007 winners of the Courage Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation: McClatchy’s Baghdad Bureau: Huda Ahmed, Shatha al Awsy, Sahar Issa, Alaa Majeed, Zaineb Obeid and Ban Adil Sarhan

In the midst of the war in Iraq, the women of McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau risked their lives just to get to work. Driven by the desire to report to the world about the situation in their country, they became the backbone of bureau.

Since the war began in 2003, Iraq has become the deadliest country in the world for journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 100 journalists have been killed, approximately 80 percent of whom were Iraqi journalists. The conflict is the bloodiest for journalists since World War II.

Constantly under duress, the McClatchy reporters have dodged gun battles and tiptoed around car bombs just to do their jobs. They’ve been targeted for their work. They’ve lost family members and friends. Their homes have been destroyed.

* Shatha al Awsy – Awsy has narrowly missed homemade bombs and has avoided gun battles and car bombs, all the while managing tough interviews with government officials and members of parliament. Once, when more than 40 families were killed at an illegal checkpoint, she reported even as she mourned. Because of ongoing threats and the perpetual fear that someone would find out what she did for a living and have her killed, she was forced to destroy all documents that indicated her identity and leave Iraq.

* Zaineb Obeid – A single mother of two, Obeid nearly died when a bomb-laden vehicle detonated near her on her way to work. She was thrown into the air and temporarily lost her hearing. She returned to work only days later.

* Huda Ahmed – Often sleeping in the office to cover late-breaking news after curfew, Ahmed would awaken each day only to start all over again. She covered the battle in Najaf in 2004 and compiled eyewitness accounts of a bombing in Musayyib before she allowed herself to grieve over violence sure to continue. Ahmed is the 2006-07 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow.

* Ban Adil Sarhan – Though she had no previous journalism training, Sarhan doggedly reported, even up to days before the birth of her son. In 2004, insurgents gunned down her husband, daughter and mother-in-law, and Ban continued to receive threats on her own life. She narrowly escaped from Baghdad and now lives in Oklahoma with her son.

* Alaa Majeed – Bold and unconventional in reporting, Majeed has found and led others to extraordinary stories and embraced journalism as a means to help her country. She proved adept at understanding politics and was unafraid to pursue tough stories about the government, even in a time of turmoil.

* Sahar Issa – An ambitious reporter, Issa tells tales of grief and destruction, even though they’ve struck all too close to home. Her eldest son was caught in a crossfire in late 2005; he was shot and killed instantly. Issa has also faced going to the morgue to claim the body of a nephew who was killed in a market bombing. She found his body in two pieces. Issa continues to report from McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau.

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Former Fed. Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, prophet of U.S. economic stability, sure started a firestorm with the 20 words in his book that said the Iraq war is about oil.

Walid Khadduri reports in Dar Al-Hayat on the ensuing discussion that needs to happen now that the flames have been fanned.

A person with the weight of Greenspan should have been aware of the impact of these comments on US policy toward Iraq and the Middle East in general. It’s important now to search for the necessary evidence to document his comments, examine the background for them and avoid making such mistakes in the future.

Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies also has a take.

The US cannot steal Iraq’s oil in any meaningful way. Iraq almost certainly has far more than the 112 billion barrels of proven reserves it is credited with in most sources. …

The real issue is not taking oil for the US; it is securing oil for the global economy. The US depends on that economy for its growth and at least indirectly for part of every job in the US. It not only needs direct imports, it needs oil to flow from Gulf to all of its major trading partners: Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, and all of the other powers that trade and invest with the US. If they cannot buy oil reliably at market prices, the world economy will weaken and the US economy with it.

I reported on it last week for UPI: Iraq, Oil and Greenspan’s Gospel.

Jasim Dakhil writes for the UK-based Arabic paper Asharq Al-Awsat the debate over ‘war for oil’ is currently clouding a more pressing matter: Squandered Wealth: Oil Smuggling in Basra

The Hunt for Hunt Oil

Richard Wolffe and Gretel C. Kovach write for Newsweek on the relationship between Hunt Oil CEO Ray Hunt and his connections to the Bush administration.

Michael Fletcher writes in the Washington Post on the Hunt Oil stirrup.

SourceWatch has more background on Hunt Oil.

More Iraq Oil

The Irish firm Petrel Resources is one of the firms doing some testing and analysis for the Iraq Ministry of Oil.

It’s leadership is big on Iraq oil chances but if it gets the production sharing agreements on the discovered fields it wants, then there’s another problem it must face: outcry from the oil unions, campaigners and more who will raise the assurances made by the Iraqi government that only fields with real risk – those found in current exploration blocks – will qualify for risk contracts.

Society, Security and Politics

AFP is reporting the Senate may vote Tuesday on a plan to split Iraq into regions. (I wonder how well this plan will be received by Iraqis who are largely none too happy about the current U.S.-administered plan?)

Dahr Jamail writes for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Foreign Policy In Focus project The Royal Treatment: Saudi Involvement in Iraq Overlooked. Dahr is an independent reporting who has covered Iraq largely for Inter Press Service. His new book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq is out this month.

Hiba Dawood’s daily write-up for UPI: the Iraq Press Roundup

Two great forecasters for Iraq politics, which will determine the political and security climate for any oil law and oil sector development, are detailed by University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole website Informed Comment.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari visited Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf on Saturday. Jaafari was expected to meet with representatives of the Sadr Movement later that day. Al-Hayat says that two main interpretations of the visit have been put forward. One is that Jaafari is attempting to repair the rifts in the United Iraqi Alliance, the ruling Shiite fundamentalist bloc created by Sistani in the fall of 2004. In that case he was getting Sistani’s blessing for the effort and seeking his intercession with Muqtada al-Sadr, who has withdrawn his bloc from the coalition.

The second interpretation is that Jaafari is attempting to make a new bloc in parliament that would include the Sadrists, and which would undermine Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. In that case he was seeking Sistani’s blessing for the effort or at least ensuring that the grand ayatollah was not dead set against it.

Al-Hayat also reports on the worsening security situation in the south. It reports one member of the federal parliament as complaining about a wave of assassinations in Basra. Some 100 persons were cut down just in the past week, he alleged, including two aides to Sistani. He demanded the resignation of the Basra police chief and threatened a vote of no confidence against the minister of the interior if nothing was done to stem the killings.

Sawt al-Iraq in Arabic says that not just one but several parliamentarians are called for the resignation of Minister of the Interior Jawad al-Bulani because of the downward security spiral in the south.

The head of the parliamentary committee on security, Hadi al-Amiri, agreed about the worsening situation but said that the security forces were doing the best they could. Al-Amiri is head of the Badr Organization paramilitary, attached to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and many police and other security men in Basra were drawn from Badr. So, ironically, the head of the parliamentary security committee is also the leader of one of Iraq’s best-trained Shiite militias.

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The Iraq Federation of Oil Unions held a protest in Basra today outside the Southern Oil Company’s office. They claim U.S. troops shot a worker in the Rumaila field, and want action by both the Iraq and U.S. governments.

“They treated him as if he was an animal, they shot at him and kept on moving,” Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told United Press International.

“The attack in the oil fields seems also to be designed to push the Iraqi government to take further harsh and repressive measures against the oil workers at a time when they are resisting the privatization of the industry,” the statement said.

“We want to do things and solve problems in a peaceful way,” Umara said. “We are more likely going to hold a strike and stop working. Meetings are continuing to decide the next step.”

Hiba Dawood mentions this today in UPI’s Iraq Press Roundup.

The Hunt for Hunt Oil

Dallas-based Hunt Oil’s production sharing contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government didn’t just irk Baghdad. It really caused some strain in Washington. A company well-connected to President Bush decided to sign an oil deal which basically went against stated U.S. policy in Iraq.

Today, Bush said he had no idea about the deal.

“I need to know exactly how it happened,” he added. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue-sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously I’m — if it undermines that, I’m concerned.”

Russia’s Wants

Iraqi and Russian foreign ministers have been meeting in Moscow. Kommersant reports Iraq may give Russia priority status on contracts, especially oil, in exchange for Russia wiping out 90 percent of the $10 billion in debt Iraq owes from Saddam-era weapons sales.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari sits down with Interfax Moscow and talks about the controversial Lukoil deal, economic development and diplomatic relations between the two countries.

More Iraq Oil, Electricity

Baghdad water affected by oil leak into Tigris from Kirkuk pipeline explosion. Azzaman has more on its affect on the Tigris River.

Iraq Finance Minister says oil sales next year will fill only 85 percent of budget

Justin Dargin in the Asia Times Online on “The Rise and Fall of Iraq’s Oil Law”

Thomas Frank writes in the USA Today the “Problematic power grid plagues Iraqis”

Security, Society and Politics — the issues that will shape oil exploration in Iraq

IraqSlogger reports while the Mahdi Army has frozen operations, break out squads are targeting U.S. forces.

The Jamestown Foundation recently held an event titled Islamic Movements in Iraqi Kurdistan. The video of it can be viewed HERE.

Spencer Ackerman writes in Iraq Forever? for The American Prospect that “Last week’s intense focus on whether the surge was working obscured the real Bush agenda — a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq.”

Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations writes in Commentary Magazine on How Not To Get Out Of Iraq

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The U.S. media blew up, and the Bush administration responded, when the 20 words from former Fed. Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan’s new book called out the oil motive for the Iraq war.

Greenspan utilized his 15 minutes on the book circuit to explain what he meant to say, an apparent attempt to take the heat off of Pres. Bush.

With the word of war with Iran (no. 2 in both oil and gas reserves) heating up, Greenspan’s explanation is all the more vivid: those who depend on oil will protect the supply.

For more, read my piece today for UPI.

“He is wrong. Oil was not and is not a motivation for our actions in Iraq,” the U.S. State Department’s coordinator for Iraq, David Satterfield, said after a speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies the same day.

“I’m not saying that they believed it was about oil. I’m saying it is about oil and that I believe it was necessary to get Saddam out of there,” Greenspan said.

In other words, he’s not saying the Iraq war was launched because of Iraq’s oil, but Iraq’s oil was a reason — along with now discredited allegations Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida — to launch the Iraq war.

“When we went into Iraq, I said it’s all about getting rid of Saddam Hussein,” said Robert Ebel, senior adviser in the Energy Program at CSIS. “Once we got rid of Saddam Hussein, then the day after it would be about oil.”

More on Iraq Oil

Bush/Petraeus/Crocker kept repeating last week the fact that the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Turkey was reopened after spending most of the war years under attack and out of commission, a small sign of progress. A bomb blast Tuesday morning corrected that.

Total and Chevron announced earlier this year they’ve joined forces to bid for Iraq’s oil development. Hassan Hafidh of Dow Jones Newswires reports the duo has now pitched a development study to the Iraq Oil Ministry on the huge Majnoon field, though the Ministry says it will not give them preferential treatment in bidding.

Shipments of preferred price oil are heading to Jordan now.

Fending off attacks on the oil pipelines and power infrastructure around Baghdad requires Russian helicopters on shoot-to-kill orders.

The fuel shortage is now threatening southern Iraq’s once vibrant fishing industry.

The Hunt for Hunt Oil

As I warned when Texas-based Hunt Oil first signed a production contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Bush-connected CEO would be in the cross-hairs.

Janet Ritz writes for the Huffington Post:

Which leads to questions about the Bush Administration’s involvement in the deal, given that Ray L. Hunt, the head of Hunt Oil (and one of President Bush’s guests to the May, 2007 State Dinner for Queen Elizabeth II), was appointed to a two two-year terms on President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board …
Established by Eisenhower in 1956, the PFIAB was formed “as a nonpartisan body offering the President objective, expert advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign intelligence.” The question then becomes, considering the known oil affiliations within the current administration, how objective is that advice and how is information from the board being utilized by its membership?

Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times that the deal directly conflicts with official U.S. policy to prop up Baghdad, not so much Irbil.

What’s interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government - which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January - won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

Meanwhile, in Basra …

Sam Dagher writes an excellent three-part series for the Christian Science Monitor on the threats to safety, security and freedom in Basra. Most of Iraq’s oil is in or around Basra, and nearly all its oil exports head to the international market through there. Basra is arguably Iraq’s most important city.

Part 1: Basra Oil Fuels Fight to Control Iraq’s Economic Might

An exasperated senior official, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, describes the onslaught by parties and militias intent on controlling the company by forcing their loyalists into key management positions. Some are beholden to the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad, which is controlled by the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the dominant Shiite coalition to which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs.

“There is an invasion by parties and militias … we are a mouthwatering prize,” he says, adding that recently 8,000 people, most of them illiterate, were pushed on to the company’s payrolls.

Part 2: In The ‘Venice of the East,’ A History Of Diversity

The city’s cosmopolitan flair is evident in its people, cuisine, dance, and the music that once echoed on its streets.

The city was once full of different religious groups: Shiites, Sunnis, Christians of all sects, ancient communities like the Sabean Mandaeans, Armenians, and Jews. But most, other than the Shiites, have left.

Part 3: ‘Shiite Taliban’ Rises As British Depart Basra

The billboard in Umm al-Broom Square was meant to advertise a cellphone service. Instead, it has become a message to those who dare to resist the rising tide of fundamentalist Islam in Iraq’s second largest city.

The female model’s face is now covered with black paint. Graffiti scrawled below reads, “No! No to unveiled women.”

Politics and Security

My UPI colleague Shaun Waterman reports that Iraq’s government may want the Blackwater security forces out of Iraq, but they may not get it.

Iraqi Interior Ministry officials told reporters in Baghdad Monday they would revoke the company’s license and initiate criminal proceedings after Blackwater contractors providing security for U.S. diplomats allegedly opened fire from aircraft into a Baghdad street — killing 11 people, according to some reports.

The problem is, Blackwater does not have or need a license, and its employees are not subject to Iraqi criminal jurisdiction.

What the Iraq media is saying: the Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood

University of Michigan’s Middle East expert Juan Cole talks to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo about Anbar province now that the person Pres. Bush heralded as the leader of the anti-al-Qaida surge has been assassinated.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast writes Sheik Abu Risha wasn’t a leader in Anbar at all.
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A note about Monday’s post: there wasn’t one. Technology glitch. But today’s monster post should make up for it. More tomorrow.