13 March 2005, Beirut

Syria makes a show of pulling troops back over Lebanese border Damascus accused of 'play-acting' as intelligence forces stay put

HUNDREDS of Syrian troops crossed back over the Lebanese border yesterday in a high-profile departure choreographed by President Bashar al-Assad to show that Damascus was responding to international demands for a pull-out.

Sixty-two military lorries, eight buses, a tank and a number of jeeps drove across a snowy border crossing into the Syrian village of Jedeidet Yabous, where soldiers were greeted with chants of "Syria, we love you" and handed flowers and sweets.

The Syrian move was greeted with intense scepticism in Lebanon, however, where pro-democracy demonstrators believe that Damascus is dragging its feet on a proper withdrawal and has no intention of ending its 29-year grip on its tiny neighbour.

Although Mr Assad has said that all his 14,000 troops will leave Lebanon, there has been no public commitment that the majority will pull back farther than the Beka'a Valley, in eastern Lebanon, or that thousands of intelligence officers will depart.

Terje Roed-Larsen, a United Nations envoy, said after meeting Mr Assad in Damascus yesterday that the Syrian leader had "committed himself to withdrawing all troops and intelligence services from Lebanon" and that a timetable would be outlined soon. Syrians in plain clothes, however, continued to guard the Beau Rivage intelligence headquarters in Beirut.

The road to Baalbek in the Beka'a Valley was lined with Syrian radar sites, anti-aircraft guns and sandbagged look-out posts from which rifle barrels protruded. " Lebanon, Syria - it is all the same country," a Syrian soldier said at a base in Hammana, east of Beirut. "It is forbidden for you to be here." Minutes later he charged at The Sunday Telegraph's car, cocking his AK47 rifle. "Get out of here," he shouted.

When Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed group that drove Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon almost five years ago, brought hundreds of thousands on to Beirut's streets last Tuesday in support of Syria, protesters' hopes of a swift end to the crisis evaporated. "Even if the troops leave, the Syrian government will stay in Lebanon," said Fadi Attiyeh, 25, a lawyer taking part in the protest in Martyrs' Square. "People have been here 21 days and they are tired. Some are leaving and I cannot see this protest lasting until the election."

The ballot for a new Lebanese parliament is due in May but could be delayed because an interim cabinet has yet to be formed.

On some nights the anti-Syrian protest, which began after the St Valentine's Day assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, now attracts barely 1,000 people.

The demonstrators suffered a blow last week when Omar Karami, the pro-Syrian premier who had resigned 10 days earlier, was re-appointed. "This is changing nothing," said Tony Hanna, 17, who had been to the protest every night for three weeks. "We have no new government. Our only achievement was to get rid of Karami, and now he is prime minister again."

Ominous signs of inter-communal violence, including shots fired by pro-Syrian gunmen in a Christian area of Beirut last weekend, are deterring protesters.

Bitterness over Syria's continuing involvement is acute. A man in a jeweller's shop in Hammana, who would give his name only as Antoine for fear of reprisals, said he would never forget being taken inexplicably by Syrian intelligence agents to their base almost 20 years ago.

He said: "I was held in the dark for a week. They beat the soles of my feet until I could not walk. Sometimes they would offer me coffee and if I did not want it they would beat me again. They want to break your mind."

In Baalbek, a Hizbollah stronghold where visitors are greeted by a statue of Hafez al-Assad, Syria's president until he died in 2000 to be succeeded by his son, the few prepared to speak out against Syria said they believed that it would never bow to demands to leave.

Assaa Shoukair, 33, the owner of a tobacco and perfume shop, said: " Lebanon is a treasure for Syria. They think we are part of Syria. They are being moved around for the cameras. It is all lies and play-acting."

Syria's Ba'ath Party and Hizbollah leaders had orchestrated last Tuesday's pro-Syrian mass rally in Beirut, he said. "Men were being paid to fill up their vans and drive them to the demonstration. Buses were coming from Homs [in western Syria]."

Outside Baalbek, huts used by Syrian labourers to harvest potatoes and onions, were burnt down, almost certainly by anti-Syrian locals. There is no sign that their hostility will drive the Syrians out, however.

One Syrian worker, said: "We will take our revenge."

The Spectator, 12 March 2005

The Pentagon's new pin-up boy

Toby Harnden talks to Walid Jumblatt, who has seen the error of his anti-American ways. Mukhtara, Lebanon

With his bald pate, droopy moustache and sad, bleary eyes, Walid Jumblatt looks more circus clown than Pentagon pin-up. And if the warlord's eccentric appearance were not enough to dismay White House officials, then his penchant for virulent leftist antiAmericanism would seem to place him firmly in their 'against us' category.

As Lebanon's Soviet-backed chieftain of the Druze, a secretive sect which broke away from Shia Islam in the 11th century and believes in reincarnation, Jumblatt, now 55, played an active role in the country's blood-soaked civil war. In 1983 he announced a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Maronites. 'With the help of our Syrian allies we have removed the Christians and only the Druze villages will remain. . . . Such is our objective.' History records that he tried to be true to his word.

Over the years Jumblatt's colourful pronouncements kept him well away from the Oval Office guest list. In 2003 he not so much as stepped but cartwheeled over the mark.

Reflecting on the news that Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Pentagon chief and top Washington neoconservative, had emerged unscathed from a rocket attack in Baghdad, he said, 'We hope that next time the rockets will be more accurate and effective in getting rid of this virus and his like, who wreak corruption in the Arab lands.'

In case anyone was unsure where he was coming from, Jumblatt noted that the true axis of evil was one of 'oil and Jews'. President George W. Bush was a 'mad emperor' while Tony Blair's 'idiot laugh', 'peacock appearance' and preened hair were signs of a deep moral corruption.

'People who pay that much attention to their appearance are fascists by nature. Or they have psychological or sexual complexes.' Jumblatt was refused a US visa on the grounds that entry could not be permitted to an alien who had used his 'position and prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity'. But that was then.

When what the Bush administration swiftly dubbed 'the cedar revolution' broke out in Beirut, Jumblatt, by now a born-again antiSyrian and de facto leader of the Lebanese opposition, told the Washington Post that he had changed his spots. The neoconservatives had a collective orgasm.

'This process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq, ' Jumblatt ventured. 'I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.' Google hits on the comments so far: 9,620. Jumblatt's stock in the White House: priceless.

Perched on a window seat in his magnificent ancestral home, which takes its name from the nearby village of Mukhtara in the Chouf mountains, Jumblatt rolled those sad eyes and made a pretty good fist of looking sheepish.

'I heard a nice remark about me by Paul Wolfowitz on TV the other day, ' he said.

Wolfowitz had commented, 'Even a man like Walid Jumblatt who has said some not so nice things in the past has had a lot of courage in standing up to the Syrians. We admire that.' Jumblatt, sipping Arabic coffee in a cavernous anteroom decorated with his collections of 19th-century French rifles and Roman glass, appeared genuinely chastened. 'I do appreciate his dismissing my awful remarks wishing him to be dead, ' he said. 'I was in this old, closed mindset of denouncing the imperialist.'

Looking around the Arab world, not least in Beirut's Martyrs' Square, where thousands had gathered to demand an end to a Syrian occupation that began in 1976, Jumblatt concluded that Bush's brand of freedom and democracy was the wave of the future. 'Slowly but surely the Berlin Wall of Arab regimes is crumbling, ' he said, pausing as one of his parrots screeched.

'There was voting in Iraq, voting in Palestine. When Arafat died, Abu Mazen was elected according to the constitution. The Saud family decided it was time for municipal elections. President Mubarak has decided that he's not going to be the sole candidate in September. Things are really moving.'

But despite the Karl Rove talking points, Jumblatt is not exactly a sunny optimist. There were dark forces, he intimated, that would be difficult to defeat. ' President Bashar Assad of Syria is trying to buy time. If he gets out of Beirut and the foreign policy of Lebanon, he's going to lose a lot of prestige. And there's another aspect money. You have a joint Syrian Lebanese mafia that is strangling the country.'

The Jumblatt family history has left him with a tendency towards fatalism. In 1977, when Walid was a 27-year-old playboy known for speeding along the mountain roads on his Harley in denims and a leather jacket, he heard the rattle of a machine-gun. He ran down from the Mukhtara to find his father slumped in the back of his car, his brains oozing on to the newspaper he had been reading.

Jumblatt's father, Kamal, leader of the Progressive Socialist party, had been murdered by two men wearing Syrian special brigades uniforms. His grandfather Fouad was assassinated in 1921, his aunt was shot dead in 1976 and his ex-wife committed suicide. 'My father once said, "No one in this family dies in his bed" , ' said Jumblatt. 'I'm living on borrowed time.' Did he expect to expire peacefully? 'Let's leave it to destiny. It's the risks of the business.

If you are obsessed by security you are paralysed psychologically.' Nevertheless, the tall, rail-thin Druze is not venturing out of the Mukhtara, where the Jumblatts have lived since about 1650, for fear of meeting death on the road to Beirut just like his father.

The Mukhtara still bears bullet and shrapnel marks from the civil war. 'We were bombed by our own army at one point, ' said his glamorous Syrian wife, Nora. The complex also survived a broadside from the USS New Jersey in 1982. 'They can't blow up all these buildings, ' Jumblatt said proudly as he peered through a Soviet artillery range-finder in his sitting-room. 'They'd need B52s.' Long seen as a weathervane of Lebanese politics, Jumblatt has cleverly used shifting alliances to keep the Druze, under 10 per cent of the population, aligned with those on top.

His rejection of Syria is a recognition that, on balance, Bush rather than Assad is calling the shots. He chuckled at the notion that he is now the darling of the neocons, though he fits almost to a tee the classic definition of the term socially liberal, formerly left-wing, a believer in the efficacy of military power and the universal application of democracy.

He even confessed to reading the works of Robert Kaplan. 'After the compliments of Mr Wolfowitz, perhaps should join the club.' 'What he said showed that he was a civilised, rational person. The difference between the Western and the Eastern mind is that in the West they reason like Descartes, in the Eastern, totalitarian world they don't use reason in the morning you are a traitor and in the afternoon a patriot.'

13 March 2005, Gush Katif

Gaza 's settlers prepare to watch their dead be exhumed during withdrawal

Sharon 's disengagement plan leaves relatives with prospect of bodies being dug up as land is handed over to the Palestinians

WHEN 7,500 settlers are expelled from the Gaza Strip this summer under Israel’s “disengagement plan” they will not be the only Jews to be taken from their land. The 46 occupants of the graveyard there are due to be dug up and evicted also.

Those buried in the Gush Katif cemetery include five victims of terrorist attacks, four members of the Israel Defence Forces and a Holocaust survivor. Just how to organise their removal is one of the biggest challenges facing Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.

Under rabbinical law, exhumation is forbidden in all but the most extreme circumstances. The sanctity of corpses is tied up with the belief that all Jews will be resurrected when the Messiah comes.

Even if a dispensation is given, relatives have to tear their clothes and “sit shiva” – engage in ritual mourning – a second time after disinterment and a third after reburial.

“I can’t believe they would do this to him,” whispered Bryna Hilburg, her voice just audible above the sound of wood pigeons and the cemetery’s Israeli flag snapping in the breeze. “He died in action for his country.”

Mrs Hilburg, 54, was standing over the grave of her son, Sgt Maj Yochanan Hilburg, a member of the Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 naval commando unit killed during a secret raid in Lebanon a month short of his 23 rd birthday nearly eight years ago.

She has still not decided if she will be there when the gruesome ceremony will be performed. “How can I let them fiddle around with his body and not be here to make sure he’s OK,” she said.

“He had guns and ammunition and all kinds of things but now I am all there is to protect my child. On the other hand, how can I stand here and watch them desecrate his body?

“Everything’s going to be rolling around - a finger here and a toe there and by Jewish law they have to get everything. Skull and ribs. Teeth. Can you imagine that? There’s no end to the horrors.”

Mrs Hilburg and her husband Sammy, 55, hail from New York. Before they met, she had protested against the Vietnam War; he had been a US Marines Corps corporal wounded twice in Vietnam who had a dim view of anti-war activists.

They moved to Gush Katif 26 years ago, part of a group of idealistic orthodox Jews who viewed Gaza, captured from Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967, as part of the land of Israel and were encouraged by their government to build a home there.

“All of a sudden we are the bad guys,” said Mr Hilburg, a farmer who exports organic cherry tomatoes to Europe. “Judaism takes a very, very serious view of death and the way that it treats its dead. What are we supposed to do with our son? Put him in cold storage?”

Ironically, Mr Sharon, their biggest political foe, was once a champion of the settler movement. Now he argues the settlements in the Gaza Strip, which are surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians, cannot be sustained politically or militarily.

The 21 settlements of Gush Katif are due to be evacuated after July 20 th and the Gaza Strip handed over to the Palestinians.

For 18 years, Eliezer Orbach has been caretaker of the cemetery, which overlooks the Mediterranean and is fringed with zinnias and petunias.

“We cannot leave the bodies here because the Arabs have no pity for the living or the dead. In 1967, we found they had destroyed graves on the Mount of Olives and used the tombstones to pave latrines.”

Etai Yulis, 14, was buried in the cemetery after dying of leukaemia in 1993. His mother Udi said she could not allow him to be taken from what was supposed to be his final resting place. She fears he will have to be exhumed, put in a temporary grave and then dug up and reburied once again.

“How many times can you bury and unbury someone? I’ll prepare a grave by my son’s and they’ll have to bury me, dig me up and take me out with him before I’ll leave this place.”

The problem for Israeli officials is all the more acute because of the Jewish rituals associated with death. Only soldiers are buried in coffins in Gush Katif; the rest are put into the ground in white shrouds so they can be at one with the earth of Israel, making the gathering up of all the remains very difficult.

Soil to a depth of three fingers has to be removed when a body is exhumed. “When bodies are brought to Israel from abroad for reburial they weigh a ton because of all the dirt,” said Mr Hilburg.

The desecration of Jewish graves in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe has made the issue even more emotive. Ultra-orthodox Jews have mounted massive protests in the past against the disturbing of 2,000-year-old remains due to building projects.

Anita Tucker, a member of the local Chevra Kadisha or burial society who had taken part in the ritual purification of several of the women buried in the cemetery, said burials were continuing – the most recent was in January – despite the threat of eviction.

“They are part of the lifecycle here after circumcision ceremonies, bar mitzvahs and weddings. This is home for us and everything will continue as normal because we believe God will help us to stay.

“Each person in that cemetery is someone with a story, someone we all know. They have suffered enough already. Ripping the bodies out of the ground would be like killing them all over again.”

7 March 2005
The winds of change

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Iraq war, TOBY HARNDEN in Beirut, DAMIEN MCELROY in Damascus and PHILIP SHERWELL in Washington report on the ripple of democracy across the Middle East

In a sea of red and white, the young students swayed joyously to the music pumping out from speakers stacked on the stage in Martyrs' Square, Beirut. "Oh, Lebanese arms, hold on tight," they sang in Arabic. "We are back, with our hands held together. Lebanon will return."

A Muslim, wearing a protest scarf wrapped around her hijab, grasped her children to her side. Behind her, a nun walked past, her head nodding in time as if she were in a trance. Each woman was clutching a Lebanese flag, at the centre of which is the cedar tree - a symbol of immortality.

In Washington, the demonstrations, in defiance of a ban on public gatherings, have been heralded as part of a democratic dawn in the Middle East. The term "cedar revolution" has been minted by US officials for the protests and it has even been adopted, albeit cautiously, by the Martyrs' Square demonstrators.

There are signs that tectonic plates could be shifting throughout the Middle East. Eight million people voted in Iraq in defiance of those who vowed to kill them for doing so. Municipal elections are being held in Saudi Arabia. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has permitted opponents to stand against him as he seeks to be re-elected for a fifth term. After the death of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and the democratic accession of Mahmoud Abbas, there is fresh optimism that a lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians could be on the horizon.

During Lebanon's bloody civil war, Martyrs' Square, named after nationalists who were hanged there by the Ottomans in 1916, marked the dividing line between Christian East and Muslim West. Now, it is the scene of a new unity as Maronite, Druze, Shia and Sunni gather each night to proclaim their patriotic demands. Daubed on the marble plinth where the statues - still bearing the scars of bullets and shrapnel from the civil war - stand are the slogans of the hour: "Nazi Syria"; " Syria = Terrorist"; and " Syria, It's Your Time to Suffer".

The Beirut protests, a demonstration of anger at the Syrian influence in Lebanon, scored their first big success last week when the pro-Syrian Lebanese prime minister Omar Karami resigned. They erupted after a car bomb killed Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister, and 18 others on Valentine's Day. Syria, which has 14,000 troops and thousands of intelligence agents on the soil of its tiny neighbour, has been almost universally blamed for carrying out or at least permitting the murder. Mr Hariri had resigned four months earlier in protest after his arch-enemy Emile Lahoud's presidency was extended for a second term at the behest of Damascus.

President Bashar al-Assad, installed as leader in Damascus when his father died in 2000, is isolated internationally. The 39-year-old British-educated ophthalmologist travelled to Riyadh last week to find that not a single Arab country backed his insistence that Syrian forces, present since 1976, should remain in Lebanon.

The protests which have attracted tens of thousands are laden with portents for the rest of the Arab world, where authority is seldom defied so openly. Some go as far as proclaiming that what is coming to pass is the vision of Washington's neo-conservatives - the Republican revolutionaries who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way of destabilising the Middle East so that freedom could emerge. Ken Adelman, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and influential neo-conservative, trumpeted the "historic events" taking place. "For the first time, people are talking about democracy and human rights in that region. It is a tribute to this president and it's near miraculous."

Certainly, in Martyrs' Square, there is a heady sense of history in the making. "Like most Lebanese, I was against the Iraq war," said Mireille Nammour, 65. "At first it was as if they had stirred up the devil. Now it seems it has created something good that is unstoppable. I never thought I would see this here."

Maria Salam Badran, 40, said the demonstration had been modelled on the "orange revolution" in the Ukraine and that the sense of change in the Middle East was an impetus. "It's part of the mood that's all over this region. We are doing this with the help of Bush and the Europeans and the United Nations."

For Joe Arida, 16, the atmosphere, reminiscent of a rock concert, enhanced the attraction of being there. "We all meet here every night," he said. "The issue is serious, though. We are tired of occupation. We want to be free."

In Damascus last week, the mood was very different. Soldiers in red berets patrolled the streets and stony-faced intelligence agents in ill-fitting suits stepped from the shadows to question people about where they were going.

Abdulaziz Al-Meslat, the leader of the secular Al Nahda party, played with his cuffs as he explained that the scenes in Beirut were not an inspiration for the self-styled Syrian opposition but a concern. "We must change our ideas, not our regime," he said carefully. "We have an accumulation of negatives facing Syria. Demonstrations like these in Beirut are, for a country like ours, an alarm bell. It's a very precarious situation."

It is said that anyone can be an opposition leader in Damascus if they possess a desk, and air-conditioner... and carefully calibrated loyalty to the Assad regime. A 140-strong group of intellectuals last month signed an open letter calling for a withdrawal of troops from Lebanon but this was little more than a cry in the wilderness. There is no "troops-out" graffiti on the ubiquitous marble monuments to the Assad dynasty. Students are keeping their heads down.

The Assad government may be isolated and shaken by recent events but it is also defiant. Mehdi Dallagh, a Syrian cabinet minister, lists the charges against Damascus - support of terrorism against Israel, the murder of Mr Hariri, a role in the Iraqi insurgency - saying: "I would not be surprised if they blamed us for planning the tsunami."

Commentators in the Syrian state-controlled media claim that a neo-conservative blueprint to impose American values on the Middle East by destabilising Syria is circulating in Washington. Perhaps ominously, this theory is also gaining currency in Beirut. "After Iraq, the next step for the neo-conservatives running the Bush administration is to destabilise Syria by manipulating the opposition in Lebanon," said Bassem Yamout, a pro-Syrian Lebanese MP.

The Beirut demonstration was "becoming like a party", he said dismissively. "If you want to have a date it's always in Martyrs' Square now. Unfortunately, it's an American-guided process.

"What you are seeing on television is only a small part of this country. The demonstrators do not represent a majority view. Maybe we'll get to the point where this majority will go onto the streets and show its real strength. If this happens, matters will escalate."

For the time being, Lebanon is without a government. Elections are due in May. In the meantime, Mr Lahoud is resisting pressure to resign and only a partial withdrawal of troops is being proposed by Mr Assad. Even with the troops gone, Syrian influence will still pervade. Powerful pro-Syrian forces in Lebanon, such as Hizbollah, the populist Shia movement listed as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department, are determined that Mr Assad's regime should be preserved.

There is little sign that there is any democratic awakening on the cards in Syria . "It is very difficult to be part of a worldwide movement to promote liberty and democracy," said Mr Al-Meslat. "Syrian minds are metered to think in one direction by a government structure that is built to preserve its own interests."

So far, Mr Assad has scorned Mr Bush's calls for democratic reforms, instead seeking a strategic alliance with Iran. Danielle Pletka, vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank with close ties to the White House and neo-conservatives, said the Syrian regime was "frozen in time".

While momentous changes were happening, she argued, it would be premature to declare victory. "Since the Iraqi elections, we've seen shock waves spread through the Middle East. It's still early days, but it's a significant trend and goes in the opposite direction of the past 50 years.

"But the hardest times could be ahead. The more we succeed, the more opposition we'll face from the dictators out there. A lot hangs in the balance right now."

Mr Bush's language has been increasingly tough. On Friday, he said that a full Syrian withdrawal and not "94 per cent" was "non-negotiable" and had to happen before the May elections. "I don't mean just the troops out of Lebanon," he said, "I mean all of them out, particularly the intelligence services."

A leading opposition figure in Lebanon, however, warned that Syrian determination to resist was not to be underestimated. "I can't tell the kids in the square this because they would get demoralised," he said wearily, asking to remain anonymous for fear of assassination.

"But Bashar Assad will kill us one by one and will use Hizbollah to the end to keep Lebanon. Every inch he moves from Beirut means he loses his prestige and maybe even his position in Damascus. Do you think he's going to leave that easily?"

6 February 2005, Baghdad

Iraqi officer lauded for deadly election embrace

SPOTTING an explosives belt around the waist of man he was frisking on election day in Iraq, Capt Abdul Amir Khadam locked the suicide bomber in a fatal embrace and wrestled him away from the polling station.

They had moved about 20 yards when the struggling terrorist, believed to have been Sudanese, detonated the belt, killing himself and the police officer. The incident has already come to symbolise new hope for Iraqi democracy and the willingness of members of Iraqi security forces to give their lives for their country’s future.

Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, hailed “Martyr” Capt Khadam, 29, as “ Iraq’s real national hero” in a speech. There is already talk of erecting a statue to commemorate his sacrifice and re-naming the school in Baghdad’s Mansur district where the polling station was set up after him.

“I saw people scattering from the voting line and then there was a loud explosion,” said Maher al-Azzawi, 21. “There were pieces of flesh and bone flying through the air. The bomber’s head landed on the road and I could see he was African.”

Samir Khadam, 34, said: “My brother was a true martyr. Some would call the bomber ‘martyr’ but their thinking is perverted. He was a criminal who came to Iraq to murder us just for voting. He is nothing but dust now but my brother lives on in heaven and our hearts.”

His eyes still red and his knuckles raw from punching the wall in anger when he was told of his brother’s death, Mr Khadam said that the police officer had wanted to marry and longed for children. “Now all the children of Iraq are his.”

Capt Khadam, an orphaned Shia who joined the police when he was 18, had intended to vote for Mr Allawi on election day but did not live long enough to have the chance. He had briefly celebrated when Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003 and then went back to work.

“Many of us tried to persuade him not to continue but he said it was his duty. He had longed to be a policeman since he was a child. It was the only thing he knew. He wanted order and he wanted to help people and for him this was the best way.”

Fearing reprisals against the family, Mr Khadam set off secretly in a battered minivan, with his brother’s body in a makeshift coffin strapped to the roof, to drive three hours’ south to the “city of the dead” cemetery at Najaf. He wept as the shattered corpse was cleaned and then buried in what for Shias is the holiest ground.

The funeral in Baghdad on Thursday was targeted by insurgents and the black banner proclaiming Capt Khadam’s “martyrdom” ripped down. “The terrorists were waiting to ambush the police chief and the other officers,” said Mr Khadam.

“They tried to run and then there was lots of shooting. Two cars were stopped and rockets, hand grenades and a machine gun seized. Now we are even more afraid the terrorists will take action against us.

“But this will not stop us from being proud not only of our brother but of our first real election. We hope he has played a small part in making Iraq safe for many more voting days. Next week, I am going to apply to become a police officer. My brother has inspired me and I think many others.”

6 February 2005, Baghdad

I will bring al-Sadr into government, says the man tipped to be Iraq's new PM

Al-Jaafari offers to accommodate radical cleric whose Mahdi army has killed coalition troops

A LEADING contender to become Iraq's new prime minister has offered to welcome Moqtadr al-Sadr, the demagogic Shia cleric behind bloody uprisings against coalition forces, into a new government expanded to include those who boycotted the election.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a moderate Shia whose United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list is certain to top last weekend's poll, told The Sunday Telegraph that Sadr, wanted for alleged involvement in the hacking to death of a fellow cleric, was "a good person" who could play a constructive role in the new Iraq. "Moqtadr Sadr's father was killed by Saddam Hussein," he said. "He has a large number of followers. We can involve them. If they are not killers, and if we have no evidence against them, then we can give them a chance to share in the political process."

His comments show the lengths to which Iraq's likely new leaders are prepared to go in order to divide the insurgency and marginalise its most fanatical elements. Last spring, American spokesmen were insisting that of Sadr, whose Mahdi army killed soldiers but generally refrained from targeting civilians, and will please Sunni politicians. Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian elder statesman Sadr, whose rebel Mahdi army has killed British and American troops, be "killed or captured". Sadr, who on Friday called for all coalition troops to be withdrawn, also has ties with figures in Iran who might welcome failure in Iraq.

As he staked his claim for the premiership, Dr Jaafari, who lived in exile in Britain before the US-led invasion of Iraq and still maintains a family home in Wembley, north London, also said there could be a role for leaders of Iraq's Sunni minority who boycotted the poll. "It's not necessary that all those who are going to share in the government should have participated in the election," he said. "We have Sunni brothers who do not believe in elections and we respect them. We think they are very honest and talk frankly."

Dr Jaafari, 57, sipped lemon tea in his office in a mansion that overlooks an ornamental lake in the heavily protected Green Zone, as he set out his ambitious agenda for drawing both Sunni rejectionists and disaffected Shia into government.

He lives under constant threat of assassination and, although the notion initially offended his sensibilities, American guards use sniffer dogs to check all electronic items brought into the building, while a US Army Humvee is stationed outside.

The new assembly, which will draw up Iraq's constitution, is supposed to have 275 members, but Dr Jaafari, a physician who advocates a moderate Islamic state, said more seats could be added: "In politics, nothing is fixed. We are dealing with something new."

Even former members of the Ba'ath Party, which forced him into exile, could take part so long as they did not have blood on their hands. "We have to be open to all those within our country, with the exception of those who have killed our people," he said.

That formulation would open the door to followers of Iraq who was foreign minister before the Ba'athists seized power in 1968, said former insurgents, particularly disaffected supporters of Saddam's regime, could be accommodated. "If they have committed terrible crimes, that's another matter, they have to be tried in a court of law," he said. "But others... there is a possibility of involving them."

Dr Jaafari's name was second on the UIA list, which had the blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shia Islam's most revered religious leader. It is believed that Abdel Aziz Hakim, the cleric who headed the list, is not interested in becoming prime minister, but Adel Abdel Mahdi, now finance minister and also on it, is a strong contender.

Early results from some mostly Shia provinces last week suggest that the UIA has won a wide victory over the rival and secular "Iraqi list", headed by Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, whom many Shia leaders regard as unacceptable. Polls last year found Dr Jaafari to be Iraq's most popular politician and its most recognised leader after Mr Sistani.

Dr Jaafari is stressing secular values, in an attempt to reassure potential partners in what may be a multi-party government. Limiting the rights of women was unacceptable, he said. "This would cause a problem between me and my wife because she is a surgeon. She can open an abdomen but not drive a car? It is not logical."

Asked if Dr Allawi could remain prime minister, Dr Jaafari suggested it would be undemocratic to give the job to a man who finished a distant second: "We have to respect the choice of the voters and prove we are really taking into consideration the process of election." He was ready, he confirmed, to lead Iraq. "My goal was the election and I have no larger ambition. But suppose my people choose me, probably I'm going to agree."

Mr Pachachi said: "The horse trading has already begun."

The Spectator, 5 February 2005

Forget Islam, Insurgents Serve Darwinism

Toby Harnden in Tikrit on the failures of the increasingly stupid terrorists

Sitting beneath a Dallas Cowboys Tshirt pinned to the wall of his office deep inside a former Baathist presidential palace, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stockmoe lolled back in his chair and roared with laughter at the fatal idiocy of so many of his enemies.

'We've had well over a dozen examples of these knuckleheads doing stupid things, ' he chuckled. 'Here's a funny story. There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone. They didn't have a baseplate so they were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated.

‘Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off.' Abandoning the lifeless carcasses and smouldering wreckage of the car, the third brother sought refuge in a nearby house.

The occupants were less than impressed, related Stockmoe, slapping his thigh. 'So they proceeded to beat the crap out of him and then turned him over to the Iraqi police.

It was like the movie Dumb and Dumber.' There have been so many examples of such incompetence that Stockmoe, who leaves Iraq this week after a year as the US army's 1st Infantry Division's senior military intelligence officer, has been doling out unofficial Darwin Awards in honour of the most side-splittingly useless insurgents.

Created in 1993 by a Stanford University student, the official Darwin Awards commemorate those who 'contribute to the improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it in a really stupid way'.

According to Stockmoe, Iraq's gene pool is in better shape each day. Military intelligence officers have long been the butt of jokes that their specialisation is an oxymoron. And it is perhaps a rash soldier who mocks an adversary that has killed well over a thousand troops in just over 18 months.

But Stockmoe has a serious point, and a close look at insurgent attacks since the Fallujah offensive in November reveals that while the numbers might have increased, they are becoming less effective. The nine election-day suicide bombers averaged about three victims each, a strike-rate so bad that Allah might soon start rationing the virgins to show his displeasure.

Such is the desperation — and decadence — of the insurgents that they have begun using mentally retarded youths for suicide bombings. This is a way of preserving brighter recruits, but the downside is that they get caught, blow themselves up prematurely or kill the wrong people.

The gap between the rhetoric and the actions of Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the Jordanian Salafist who leads the most brutal strand of the insurgency, has grown ever wider since he lost his base in Fallujah and was largely restricted to the Sunni corridor that runs from Mosul to north Babil.

Zarkawi's organisation is riddled with paranoia and division. Some of the guards who held Ken Bigley broke ranks and tried to help him escape. There was bitter dissent when Zarkawi and other insurgent leaders fled Fallujah and left their underlings to fight. Fear of betrayal has led to smaller cells operating ever more independently, preventing an overall insurgent strategy from developing.

Sunday's watershed election certainly marked a political defeat for the insurgents, but it was also a crushing military one. Despite having 5,200 polling stations to target, they could not bring off a major attack on a single one; one hapless suicide bomber apparently had Down's Syndrome.

Iraq 's insurgency is not about to end. Indeed, there is every chance that it has several years to run. Despite the loss of thousands, it has consistently been able to regenerate and regroup. Even Stockmoe acknowledges its resilience. The election, however, showed that while ordinary Iraqis are no fans of American troops, they hate the insurgents more.

The bumptious Shia cleric Muqtada alSadr and his ill-disciplined Mahdi army now have one foot in the political process. Even some Sunnis formerly linked to the insurgency are dipping their toes into democratic waters.

Not only that, but the kidnapping of Westerners seems to have dried up. Neither Shia nor Kurds have risen to the bait of sectarian murders by retaliating in kind. At last the Iraqi security forces — the key to the country's viability — are beginning to acquit themselves respectably.

Any number of screw-ups could still happen and no one should be declaring 'mission accomplished' just yet. But as Stockmoe might cheerfully put it, as he packs up his kitbag: the knuckleheads are in deep doodoo.

30 January 2005

'I did not fight the Iranians for years just so they could rule us now'

Sunnis in the birthplace of Saddam are set to defy their leaders' calls for a boycott of today's poll, reports Toby Harnden in Al-Ouja

THE GOAT pastures and wadis of the village of Al-Ouja would not seem fertile ground for the seeds of Iraqi democracy. In Saddam Hussein's birthplace, his opulent palace is bombed out, derelict and stripped of its pink marble - but in the hearts of his kinfolk and tribesmen he remains their proudest son.

"We wept when he was captured by the Americans," said Thaer Hatam Haza'a, 41, a former Iraqi army colonel who surrendered in 2003.

"He was humiliated, reduced to hiding in a hole. He was a great and powerful man and he was our brother. We fervently wish he was still our leader," he said.

Around the card table in the cafe, and elsewhere in the village, there were no dissenting voices.

Yet Mr Haza'a is a candidate in today's national poll and many inhabitants of Al-Ouja said they intended to vote, despite calls by Sunni leaders in Baghdad, 90 miles to the south, for a boycott. Even Sheikh Mahmoud Nidha, the head of Saddam's al-Bu Nasir tribe, has put himself up for election.

Few places in Iraq encapsulate both the tantalising hopes for a successful election and the gnawing fears of what could go wrong quite so absolutely as Al-Ouja.

As well as the lingering influence of Saddam, who was captured just a few miles away in December 2003, the potential for violence casts a shadow over the Sunni village.

Al-Ouja lies on the edge of Tikrit, however, where American forces have largely pacified what used to be known as "Ba'ath Party Central".

Village children swarm around American soldiers, who walk the dusty streets on foot, calling out, "Hey, man" to locals they have cultivated.

Even so, American officials now concede that they believe that fewer than half Iraq's Sunnis - who make up just 30 per cent of the population but were for decades the dominant group - will cast a ballot.

Some, they said, will not vote out of nationalist conviction. Perhaps one in 10 actively supports the insurgency. Many more might like to vote but are unlikely to risk dying to do so. These are the people whom the insurgents are trying to terrorise, and the Americans to reassure.

Across Iraq, candidates and election officials have been abducted and slaughtered, often in gruesome circumstances. On a wall in Tikrit last week, a scrawled message read: "Don't vote. We shall destroy all the election centres. Anyone who erases this will be killed within an hour."

A man paid to put up election posters for Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, died in a hail of machine gun fire, a police officer said.

"Everyone is scared that the polling station here will be attacked," said Badr Abid, an Al-Ouja shopkeeper.

"Perhaps half the people will stay at home. Also, people have very little information about the candidates. Their names are being kept secret for security reasons."

Gradually, however, more Sunnis have been expressing a desire to vote. Mr Haza'a wanted the election postponed but once the date was fixed he argued that every Sunni should vote, if only to prevent the majority Shia population from winning unchallenged power.

"We don't want the Shia splitting the country and handing the south over to Iran," he said, taking a long drag on a Gauloise.

"I did not fight the Iranians for years just so they could rule us now."

The bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sadistic sons, lie in unmarked graves in Al-Ouja's desolate cemetery. The simple mud hut where Saddam was born is still a place of pilgrimage for a few.

Slowly, however, the people of Al-Ouja, like many Sunnis in Iraq, are accepting that Saddam's rule really is over - and with it has gone their privileged position in Iraqi society.

Tribal leaders are striking deals with Iraq's new regional warlords, the local American battalion commanders. They may not like the American presence but they calculate that for now this is the only way to end the chaos brought by the insurgency.

Insurgent and American military commanders believe that the "fear factor" will determine whether enough Sunnis vote for the election to be seen as legitimate. "It's all regulated by the level of violence," said Col Lloyd Miles, the US Army's brigade commander in the north-east.

The risk that polling stations may be infiltrated is a real concern.

One night last week a black saloon car was pulled over by soldiers in Tikrit after it switched off its lights and swerved to avoid a Humvee patrol.

Inside, nursing an improvised bomb, were two insurgents - one was an Iraqi police officer.

Under Iraqi interrogation the pair confessed that they were en route to blowing up a polling station.

The police officer would have made a perfect suicide bomber for an attack today.

Yet many in Al-Ouja are still determined to have their say. Monther Adham Ibrahim, 29, whose uncle by marriage was Saddam's brother, said:

"I don't know who the candidates are. Of course, I am scared of a bomb going off but I will go to the election. I want to make this country safe and if we have our own government then the Americans will go."

30 January 2005, Baghdad

Rocket attack on Baghdad embassy kills two Americans on eve of Iraq elections

TWO Americans were killed and five were injured last night when a rocket attack on the US embassy inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone breached the unprecedented security measures in place for today's elections.

It was the first fatal strike on the embassy complex, designed as one of the most secure areas in the world, and will heighten the widespread sense among Iraqis that nowhere in the country is guaranteed to be safe when they venture out to the polls.

An American diplomat told The Sunday Telegraph that the rocket hit the US Project and Contracting Office connected to the Republican Palace, formerly used by Saddam Hussein and now the largest US embassy building. One of the Americans killed was a civilian, the other a soldier.

Rockets and mortar bombs rain down on the Green Zone almost daily but seldom cause injury, not least because they are so inaccurate. Two Americans were injured when a mortar bomb hit the embassy compound in August.

Last night's attack came after Gen John Abizaid, America's senior military commander in the Middle East, admitted that suicide bombers were likely to penetrate polling stations today. Even as President George W Bush predicted that "the courage of the Iraqi people will allow the vote to take place", his top officer for the region warned: "Undoubtedly, insurgents are going to attack polling sites with suicide belts wrapped around them."

Gen Abizaid told an American newspaper that in the four Iraqi provinces where the insurgency is strongest, the election-day battle "will be tough and it will be difficult and it will be bloody".

In earlier attacks yesterday, insurgents seeking to disrupt Iraq's first free elections for 51 years claimed at least 18 lives. In one incident, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a joint US-Iraqi security centre in the town of Khanaqin, north-east of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi soldiers and five civilians.

Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, urged his fellow countrymen to defy the insurgents "trying to break us and to break our world".

The country's president, Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab in the interim government, told reporters, however: "We hope ... that most Iraqis will take part in the election but we know that the majority will not because of the security situation." Later he amended his comments, predicting that two-thirds of the 14 million eligible voters would take part.

More than 400 Iraqis have been killed in the past month, almost all as the result of attacks launched by insurgents opposed to the continuing presence of the American-led military forces that toppled Saddam Hussein from power 21 months ago.

Last night, the interim government renewed the state of emergency for another month.

30 January 2005

US troops will never overcome insurgents, warns senior officer

BY TOBY HARNDEN in Baghdad and PHILIP SHERWELL in Washington

THE INSURGENCY in Iraq will last at least a decade and American troops alone will not be able to defeat it, a senior US military officer in Baghdad has predicted.

Speaking on the eve of Iraq's first free election for 51 years, the officer conceded: "Iraqis are the ones who will have to defeat the insurgency, not multi-national forces.

"It is not necessarily a growing insurgency but it is a resilient one," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "We're looking at a long-term insurgency, probably at a lower level of violence than now. Historically, you look at a decade - and this is no different."

Iraq has been put under a virtual three-day lockdown for the elections, with unprecedented security measures bringing life to a standstill. There is a dusk-to-dawn curfew and travel between provinces is banned. Iraqi police officers will form an inner security ring at polling stations, bolstered by an outer ring of Iraqi troops, and American rapid reaction forces can be deployed if necessary.

"Undoubtedly, insurgents are going to attack polling sites with suicide belts wrapped around them," Gen John Abizaid of US Central Command told an American newspaper. Another senior officer disclosed that 400 Iraqi civilians, officials and security officers had been killed so far this month as part of a campaign of intimidation against voters. He said that insurgents had stepped up their attacks on polling stations, with 45 targeted on Friday alone.

Yesterday, in what coalition commanders feared was a taste of violence to come, eight people died in a suicide bombing in the town of Khanaqin, north-east of Baghdad. In all, at least 18 people lost their lives at the hands of insurgents. Other attacks have been foiled, including one in Basra.

The Iraqi government also said that it had arrested three senior aides of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Supporters of the terror mastermind, however, claimed that they had killed a candidate from the list of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, and threatened to release a video recording of the death on the internet.

The US military official maintained that the insurgency was ultimately "doomed" to failure and said that a successful vote today could lead to a noticeable reduction in violence by April. The Iraqi forces were becoming more capable by the day, he said, and would eventually take responsibility for security: "From having the intelligence about who the insurgents are, to having the ability to identify and turn them in - all those things, Iraqis do best."

The cautiously optimistic assessment has led to the Pentagon drawing up "best case" plans to cut US troop numbers in Iraq by half over the next 18 months as part of a wide review of the American military, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

It is hoped that a new strategy for training Iraqi troops - in which thousands of US military advisers would be attached to local units as "mentors" - will lead to dramatic improvements in security.

President George W Bush is insistent that America will not "cut and run", but the administration is keen to have an exit strategy ready before the US mid-term elections in late 2006 - as long as the "mentoring" strategy works.

"The administration does not want to go into the mid-term elections where they are now," said Dan Goure, a Pentagon adviser and director of the Lexington Institute defence think-tank. Generals and Pentagon civilian planners were working to cut numbers from about 120,000 - though there are 155,000 covering the elections - to 60,000.

Up to 10,000 American troops could be assigned long-term to Iraqi units, although US forces would still provide logistics back-up, air support and heavy armour.