Word: baghdad
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...Death Squads of Sadr City Re "Baghdad's Ground Zero" [Jan. 29]: Despite its best efforts to bring peace to Iraq, the U.S. has failed. Innocent Iraqis and U.S. troops are being killed in a useless war. It is high time that the world community ask the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq. America cannot bring peace to the country, so it should immediately stop interfering in Iraq's matters. Shailesh Kumar Bangalore, India...
...Some Sunni groups fear that their less oil-rich areas could lose out when Iraq's potentially huge wealth is distributed. The ability of regions to sign their own contracts was bitterly argued for months by negotiators from Kurdistan, where there is deep distrust of Baghdad's politicians. Under the law, companies can deal with both the central Ministry of Oil, as well as regional entities. But that concession has provoked intense anxiety that Iraq could break apart, if some regions - or perhaps even powerful Shi'ite clans in southern Iraq - calculate that they can finance autonomous states from their...
...risks - insurgents regularly blow up pipelines and kill contractors - will be allowed to export their oil after paying the government a minimum 12.5% royalty, although there are usually also cash signing bonuses to the government, and most "profit oil," extracted after operating costs are met, would likely go to Baghdad. Regional governments - only Kurdistan has one right now - can sign their own contracts under the law, a dizzying change from decades when Saddam dictated the terms and stifled oil production in Kurdistan. A Baghdad-based Federal Council on Oil & Gas will be formed; it will have 60 days to appoint...
...strong enough to kill it. Among the parliamentarians arguing against the law are Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, which fears that foreign oil companies will move into Iraq in force, and stay long after U.S. soldiers have left. But logistically they will have to race back to Baghdad to vote against it. Many parliamentarians, like al-Mutlaq, spend much of their time outside Iraq - al-Sadr himself is frequently in Iran. "I'm going back for this very reason," al-Mutlaq says. "We cannot yet figure out how many people will stand against it." He says he is certain...
...fact, Cordesman fears that the brutal Shi'ite control of Basra and southern Iraq will spread to greater Baghdad and make the already bad situation there that much worse. Shi'ite militias in the capital appear to be standing down and not challenging U.S. and Iraqi forces as they attempt to quell the bombings and bloodshed that have gripped the city for the past year. That leaves insurgent Sunnis as the main target of the effort. "In effect," Cordesman says, "both the U.K. and the U.S. may end up acting to expand Shi'ite influence in very different ways." That...