Word: baghdads
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Meanwhile, the parliamentary drama has united Iraqis of all persuasions into a nation of SOFA potatoes: not since Saddam Hussein's trial have so many been transfixed by a legal debate. In restaurants and cafés across Baghdad, TV screens normally featuring music videos and Arabic soap operas were instead tuned to Iraqi news channels that seemed at times to be devoted exclusively to the story. It was democracy as reality TV. Iraqis watched as politicians denounced each other across the parliament floor and as Maliki griped at a press conference that failure to ratify the pact would leave...
...concessions out of Maliki - Tawafuk has demanded a referendum on the security agreement be held next year once it has been adopted by parliament, and more immediately, it seeks amnesty for the (mostly Sunni) detainees in U.S. custody. Under the terms of SOFA, the detainees would be transferred to Baghdad's control at the end of the year, after the U.N mandate covering the U.S mission here expires...
...Iraq (SOI), one of nearly 100,000 Sunnis recruited by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda. Saif Abdallah (not his real name) is paid about $300 a month, and works with a group of 20 others somewhere north of Baghdad. His job? "Some patrols, some checkpoints," he says with a familiar shrug. "The work is not hard." (See pictures of five years of U.S. troops in Iraq...
...After a great deal of pressure from the U.S. military, the Iraqi government this month finally took charge of paying the salaries for the 54,000 SOI in the Baghdad area. (Abdallah's group remains on the U.S. payroll.) In early November, 3,000 SOI were inducted into the police training academy. Al-Ameri says 15,000 to 20,000 SOI will be inducted into Iraqi security forces, but only after further verification. The rest will have to give up their arms and take up other jobs - as carpenters, plumbers, electricians and so on. "We'll give them training...
...pictures of life inside a Baghdad prison...