Word: baghdad
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...marks the formal implementation of the Iraqi-U.S. Security Agreement that was labored over for months by officials from the two countries. Rituals for the media and the Iraqi public gave national sovereignty a new face on Thursday morning: a formal celebration marked the handover of Baghdad's Green Zone, the center of the U.S.-aided Iraqi government for the past 5 1/2 years, to Iraqi control. And poles bearing the Iraqi flag were placed prominently at the front gates of shared military bases across the country, symbolizing an Iraqi security force in control. There are new, written ground...
...shift leadership to the Iraqis by June - when U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out of Iraq's cities. Another question: What will the consequences of that shift in command responsibility be in terms of security and keeping order in Iraq? (See pictures of a detention center in Baghdad...
...Iraqi counterparts. "I think there is going to be zero difference between what we do now and Jan. 1 and beyond," said Lieut. Colonel John Vermeesch just before the end of 2008. Vermeesch commands some 880 U.S. combat troops spread across five joint Iraqi-U.S. bases in northwest Baghdad. He is one of the battalion commanders in the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, a 4,000-troop force that arrived in Baghdad in mid-October to start a 12-month tour. They say they started complying with the new agreement over a month ahead of schedule...
Brigadier General Kadre Abdel Latif, the director of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations branch in northwest Baghdad, views this as a frustrating new burden - and one the Iraqis aren't ready for. "The army and police - especially the army - impedes our efforts in arresting these [wanted] people," he told Vermeesch during a visit this week. Once information about a target is distributed to Iraqi forces, "the information gets to the wanted people, and they take off." Latif doesn't like the idea of detainees being handed over to Iraqi forces either: they are often released before they...
...last two years. This past fall, they were taken from U.S. military sponsorship and put under Iraqi government control. They are increasingly replacing Iraqi police as targets, despite the overall decline of violence, the report said. This year also marks the first in which civilian deaths outside of Baghdad outnumber those within the capital, a shift that Iraqi officials say reflects the fact that Iraq's largest city has become vastly more secure...