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DEL.ICIO.USPeace precarious even in model Iraqi city
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Najim Abdullah Jibouri, mayor of Tal Afar, credits the U.S. military for peace in his city, but worries about the future.
TAL AFAR, Iraq — From a medieval-style Ottoman Turk fortress on a hill, the mayor has a panoramic view of his city — densely packed cement houses mimicking hues of the desert. Some stand empty, abandoned by frightened residents who fled when their city was second only to Fallujah as Iraq’s most violent.
Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri’s office faces a shell of a building — a reminder of the days when mortars fell like rain and mothers wailed for their dead sons and daughters. The apocalyptic force of bombs and bullets, Jibouri recalls, even drove the sparrows away.
In the fall of 2005, Tal Afar was a stronghold for Syrian fighters and al-Qaida cells. Then the U.S. military crushed the insurgency here. In recent months, this city in western Nineveh province has seen relative calm, though it is not free yet of makeshift bombs and small arms fire. Still, in a speech last year, President Bush touted Tal Afar as the role model for all of Iraq.
Litmus test
The mayor knows his small city is seen as the nation’s litmus test. If long-term security and stability cannot even be achieved here, then what does it bode for Baghdad?
Dressed in a tan blazer and dress pants, Jibouri lights a cigarette and takes from his desk a single white sheet of letterhead emblazoned with a map of Iraq bearing the national colors of red, white and green. It is a letter he plans to send to the White House today.
“Mr. President,” it begins, “the words you mentioned in your address that ‘Tal Afar is today a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq’ are indeed true.”
His letter goes on to thank the efforts of “brave U.S. Army soldiers,” but then it asserts, in diplomatic terms, something the mayor is more blunt about in conversation.
Tal Afar’s calm could easily revert to “rivers of blood,” he says. He pauses and stirs the sugar that has settled in his chai tea. “If coalition forces pull out,” he continues, “not just Tal Afar, but all of Iraq will go to hell.”
He attributes the modicum of success here to the U.S. Army and describes American backing as the glue that holds everything together. Once an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, Jibouri was appointed police chief here at a time when no one wanted the job. He has little faith in the ability of the Iraqi army and police to function without corruption and sectarian influence if they are no longer kept in check by the United States.
So, with debate raging in Congress about the U.S. role in Iraq, Jibouri is making a plea to the president. Again.
His first letter to Bush was widely circulated after the president referred to it in his speech. In that letter, Jibouri called American soldiers “avenging angels.” He urged the president to not draw down troops.
“Long term success in Tal Afar, and all of Iraq, will be dependent not only on the capabilities of our security forces to establish the peace,” he writes in his second letter, “but of the reconstruction and economic incentives to maintain the peace and create prosperity among the Iraqi people.”
Heavy security
Tal Afar is patrolled by Iraqi forces as well as U.S. soldiers from nearby Forward Operating Base Sykes, where the 3-4 Cavalry Regiment from Hawaii is based. The Georgia Army National Guard’s Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) patrols the Syrian border, just 60 miles away, to prevent infiltration.
The people here are mainly Turkoman Iraqis, the third largest Iraqi ethnic group. They speak a Turkic language and are descended from Central Asian tribes. Their city has not been spared Iraq’s sectarian divide. The Shiites live south of the Ottoman castle, the Sunnis to the north.
Iraqi army and police, which recently took the lead in providing security, have set up checkpoints throughout the city. The ratio of security forces to the 100,000 or so residents is high.
The heavy security manifests itself in signs of normalcy. In a barren yard, a dozen boys play soccer. Nearby, a hawker has set up a roadside stall selling colorful plastic ware dulled by a thick layer of dust. Men with prayer beads in their hands gather at a chai stand.
The mayor could very well be the president’s biggest fan in Iraq. But he has not always been.
He faults America for purging Baathists from the military and civilian institutions after Saddam’s ouster in 2003. He says that policy resulted in an open invitation to al-Qaida to set up shop in Iraq.
“Suddenly all these people didn’t get paid and began to work with the terrorists,” he says. “If you do not have a salary, what do you do?”
Jibouri knows that eventually, the U.S. military will go home, though he would like a long-term commitment from Bush.
“The insurgency is just waiting for the Americans to leave,” he says.
He knows it will be tough to shore up his ravaged city — tougher if the Americans leave sooner rather than later.
Peace is precarious
About 70 percent of Tal Afar’s residents are unemployed. Jibouri fears poor, restless men could easily be swayed into barbaric acts.
Agriculture used to be the region’s economic driver. A city landmark is the enormous granary which processed wheat harvested in outlying fields. But now people are afraid to drive out to their lands or they can’t afford the fuel to do so.
Tal Afar’s biggest employer is the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, for which more than 2,000 Iraqi police work. The second biggest is probably the U.S. government, which has plunked down millions of dollars in rebuilding projects.
“I depend on the American money,” Jibouri says.
Huge sums also have been promised to Jibouri from the central government in Baghdad. At the moment, he is waiting for a bureaucracy that moves at a snail’s pace to release an approved $37 million.
Jibouri has memories of his boyhood in a vibrant Baghdad — before Saddam, before decades of war and hardship. He grew up a Sunni who married a Shiite, and at 49, he has five children. They don’t live in the city where he is mayor, but in the Kurdish-controlled town of Dohuk, north of Tal Afar.
That alone is an indication that the peace in this city is, at best, precarious.
The mayor dreams of repairing crumbled buildings. He has visions of a verdant park along the gully that winds down the hill and through the city. He wants to see flowers blooming and women walking down the streets wearing handsome clothes.
One day, it might all happen, he says.
For now, he is glad the sparrows have returned to Tal Afar.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Moni Basu
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By Alvin Finkelstein
March 10, 2007 1:13 AM | Link to this
This is first class journalism! AJC has demonstrated again its committment to international news and world class reporting. Hats off to Ms Moni Basu…this is the real story in Iraq told by a dedicated professional willing to go wherever the truth is found.
New York Times and the Washington Post: Eat your heart out!
By Maj Rod Cunningham
March 10, 2007 12:45 PM | Link to this
Moni Basu,
I appreciate you embedding with 3-4 Cav which is attached to the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Maj Cunningham 4BCT, 1 CAV DIV Public Affairs Officer
By CM
March 18, 2007 8:13 PM | Link to this
much better than the elementary school “what I did last summer” crap you posted on the 18th. PS - is Alvin your dad or something? Geez.