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<p>April 23, 2003 -- BAGHDAD - They're tough, seasoned and lethal when they need to be - and they're working secretly in Baghdad, masking their identity by wearing U.S. Army uniforms and traveling in U.S. military vehicles.</p> <p>Fortunately, they're on our side. They're members of Britain's elite, highly secretive SAS, the special operations group that inspired the Army's counter-terrorist Delta Force.</p>

Now starring on Iraqi TV: news the American way. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather hit the Iraqi airwaves this week as part of a U.S.-led effort to use television to educate Iraqis about democracy. Freed for the first time in decades from state-controlled television, Iraq can now receive a nightly dose of "Iraq and the World." "It's not the kind of media they're used to seeing," said Norman Pattiz, chairman of the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors. The initial two-hour broadcast included news clips from ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS translated into Arabic. Fans of Fox news can...

As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. The burst of Shiite power -- as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday -- has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein. As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S. officials said this week, it failed...

The words popularly used to characterize the war in Iraq were "cakewalk" and "victory." From the beginning, war supporters here liked to say it would be a cakewalk, which it wasn't, but also a victory, which it surely was. Our military men and women deserve great credit for their courage, imagination and decency in a wildly ambivalent theater of war. But there is a new word to apply to the next phase of the war, and it is an elusive one. The word is "legitimacy," and the success of occupation will depend upon its political application within Iraq. Consider the...

The first great pilgrimage to Karbala that Iraqi Shiites were permitted to make in almost 30 years, starting Tuesday, April 22, may prove the defining event in the US-Iran contest for influence over Iraq’s majority Shiite community. The freedom to commemorate the 7th century death in battle of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was a mark in America’s favor. However, the striding pilgrims arrived with banners calling on the Americans to leave Iraq. Some also demanded an Islamic state to replace the Saddam regime. The three-day event in which a million or more dancing, chanting worshippers form processions...

The top American civilian administrator for Iraq met today in northern Iraq with the two main Kurdish leaders and called for a new Iraqi government to be a "mosaic," fairly representing all Iraqis. The official, Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, received a notably warmer greeting in the north than he had the day before in Baghdad, with cheers, hugs and a shower of flower petals reflecting his efforts in the early 1990's to help create the thriving Kurdish autonomous area of northeastern Iraq. "The new government of Iraq will have one leader, one army, one government," General Garner...

Americans accused of turning blind eye to killings by Kurds By Kim Sengupta in Kirkuk 23 April 2003 A bitter conflict is unfolding in northern Iraq between two minority communities, with the Americans accused of turning a blind eye to killings and ethnic cleansing. The Kurds, the victims of oppression by Saddam Hussein and previous regimes in Baghdad, are being blamed for a violent campaign of intimidation against the Turkoman population. Organisations representing the Turkomans say they want British and European troops to protect them because the Americans are acquiescing in what is taking place. Kirkuk, a city with a...

When Will Iraq Go Pop? by Jason Gay They now have Americans troops patrolling their neighborhoods, American-supplied radio on their airwaves, and pretty soon they’ll have Tom Brokaw, too, stentorially rhapsodizing on their rabbit-eared televisions. But is Iraq ready for Seinfeld? The American media campaign in Iraq is well underway, of course, even without Jerry. It began with psychological-warfare radio messages urging Iraqi soldiers to lay down their weapons and surrender. After Baghdad fell, a specially outfitted military aircraft continued to fly over the region, broadcasting public-service announcements and reassuring, look-into-your-eyeballs addresses from President George W. Bush and British Prime...

Rebuilders pay a visit to stricken Baghdad Garner calls top priorities restoring water, electricity Tuesday, April 22, 2003 BY CHARLES J. HANLEY Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Glimmers of a new Iraq were evident yesterday, as the American charged with rebuilding a ravaged country came to Baghdad, and Muslim multitudes converged on holy cities for a ritual long suppressed by Saddam Hussein's regime. But the work of rooting out the old Iraq went on. Military officials announced the arrest of a key figure in the bloody suppression of the Shi'a Muslim uprising of 1991 -- Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, the "Shiite...

SCENES of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims expressing their newfound political power on the streets of Iraq’s cities are causing growing concern in Western and Arab capitals. A fortnight after American and British troops deposed Saddam Hussein’s regime, there is a growing consensus that the only credible force to have emerged in the country is the Shia clergy and its followers, many of whom advocate the creation of an Iranian-style Islamic state. “There is real concern,” a senior British official said. “The Iraqi Shia are the only group to have made any real impact so far. There was...

JAY GARNER, the retired US general appointed to run postwar Iraq, received a hero’s welcome yesterday when he returned to the region where he is fêted for helping to create a save haven for Kurds after the first Gulf War. Crowds of students cheered the 65-year-old head of the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq as he arrived in Sulaimaniyah, providing a stark contrast with his reception in Baghdad a day earlier. But even as Kurds assured General Garner that they wanted autonomy within Iraq, and he in turn praised the 12-year Kurdish experiment with democracy as...

The retired US general charged with forming an interim administration in Iraq has arrived in the north of the country on the second day of a tour around the country. Jay Garner received a rapturous welcome from crowds in Sulaymaniyah - in contrast to a lukewarm reception in Baghdad on Monday. He was sprinkled with flower petals and some people's eyes filled with tears of emotion as he walked through the streets, reports our correspondent in the city, Clare Marshall. Mr Garner is remembered in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq as the man who, 12 years ago, set up a safe haven...

The Iraq that is emerging in the post-war will be an extremely confusing place for some time to come. Yesterday, Jay Garner, the American who heads the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, landed in Baghdad among the first of many hundred ORHA officials. Asked what his greatest challenge would be, he said: "Everything is the challenge." A remarkably calm, folksy, understated man, Lt. Gen. Garner (Ret.) would not have been kidding. Repairing infrastructure (including the large south Baghdad electrical plant that was more effectively sabotaged than first reports indicated -- U.S. and Iraqi engineers have been working on it...

<p>BAGHDAD — Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, taking up his duties as Iraq's postwar civil administrator, toured a Baghdad hospital yesterday and said his priority was to restore such basic services as water and electricity supplies.</p> <p>As Gen. Garner became acquainted with the Iraqi capital, thousands of Shi'ite Muslims marched in the heart of the city to protest the reported arrest of a leading cleric by the U.S. military.</p>

Let's get one thing straight from the outset about Iraq. The Iraqi people need wait upon no one - military general, foreign government or international organization - to govern themselves, engage in commerce domestically and sell their property on world markets. Sovereignty resides in the Iraqi people and cannot be conferred by any outside entity or authority. It will not be the United Nations that confers legitimacy on the new Iraqi government; formal diplomatic recognition will come about the old-fashioned way - one nation at a time as the new Iraqi government exchanges ambassadors, signs treaties and engages in commerce...

Chalabi denies being contender for top job Shyam Bhatia in Karbala exclusively for rediff.com | April 21, 2003 18:22 IST Ahmed Chalabi's denial that he is in the running for the top job in Iraq is a frank admission by the Pentagon's favourite candidate that there are other Iraqis better suited, better qualified and far more popular than he will ever be.In a city like Karbala, the majority Shia population's spiritual heartland, the very mention of Chalabi's name is guaranteed to start people laughing. And in a country where so many families have lost at least one loved one to torture...

A SECRET graveyard containing the remains of nearly 1000 political opponents of Saddam Hussein was reported discovered yesterday. The al Qarah cemetery, about 18 miles from the centre of Baghdad, had unnamed graves containing political prisoners, the cemetery's manager and a gravedigger told a news agency. Mohymeed Aswad, the manager, said the bodies arrived more than a dozen at a time, all political prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison a mile away. Relatives of those who disappeared under Saddam's regime have already started arriving at the cemetery, searching for their lost ones. According to French news agency, AFP, the "secret"...

Having been forced to recognize that our soldiers won a brilliant military victory in Iraq, media commentators are trying to minimize that achievement by loudly proclaiming how much more difficult it will be to "win the peace" by establishing a stable and benevolent new government in Iraq. But the greatest threat to this goal is not the existing divisions and hatreds among different Iraqi factions. The problem is the advice these very same commentators are giving about how to deal with those divisions: that the key to the political reconstruction of Iraq is to ensure the right political balance of...

American governor for Baghdad says she does not recognise 'mayor' By Andrew Buncombe in Baghdad 22 April 2003 She has held some of the hardest jobs of any American diplomat, yet Barbara Bodine may be about to take on her toughest challenge yet. Ms Bodine is to become the US co-ordinator for central Iraq, assuming a position that will make her responsible for Baghdad. She arrived in the Iraqi capital yesterday with retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the man who is heading the civilian administration for the entire country. She immediately placed herself at the centre of controversy, saying America did...

Iran calls Garner "Israel's agent in Iraq" Teheran, April 21: Iran has called former United States General Jay Garner, who arrived in Baghdad today to lead an Iraqi interim government, Israel's agent in Iraq. The news network Khabar quoted on Monday Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying that the Iraqi administration should be composed of representatives elected by the Iraqi people and not by a retired American military man who is an agent or at least very close to the "Zionist regime" (Israel). The network said one of the main aims of the Garner team is to strengthen the...